Why would this be broadcast on television, you ask? To drive home variations on the themes that Sarah’s been shoving down our throats all season, of course.

Theme 1: Cutting down trees is HARD WORK done by HARD-WORKING ALASKANS!

Can you believe it? And would you also believe that there are perfume-scented pansies who write Sarah letters with their “pretty little pencils” about how offended they are that people cut down trees — apparently without realizing that they’re writing their sissy notes on the very paper that Alaska produces?! And did you know that those San Franciscan, falafel-eating pinkos really BURN HER UP?! Did you KNOW that?

Theme 2: Raising teenagers is HARD WORK done by HARD-WORKING MOMS!

And not only is it hard work, but this week we faced down the most difficult teenager in all the land — 16-year-old, eye-rolling phenom Willow. Oh, Willow got on Sarah’s last nerve in this episode. Each of Sarah’s kids look a little catatonic in every scene of her show, as if their will to live has been completely sucked out of their lifeless bodies, but nobody has perfected the look of blank contempt quite the way Willow has. And this week, she made our favorite Mama Grizzly GROWL.

Which brings us to our final theme:

Theme 3: Sarah is the HARDEST-WORKING MOM IN ALASKA! AND PROBABLY THE WORLD!

But we already knew that, didn’t we?

Before anything happened, however, we were fortunate that TLC was filming when Sarah realized her “refudiate” mistake was making headline news and listened as she explained that the whole thing was an accident — because apparently on Sarah’s specially designed Alaskan keyboard the “f” is right next to the “p” (either that, or she’s just a pucking idiot.)

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, this episode followed Sarah as she grabbed a chainsaw and felled a tree, and then hopped in a huge shovel logger and moved trees, and then drove a Boom boat and played bumper cars with the floating trees to push them out into the open water to be picked up by big boats to be taken somewhere to be made into patio furniture and Gideon Bibles — while Todd shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled listlessly in the background, Willow shredded lettuce in the Evergreen Logging Camp mess hall and I stuck red hot pokers in my eyes having realized that 40 minutes of my precious life had gone by and there was nothing I could do to get it back. Ever.

In between it all, Sarah pecked, prodded and squawked at Willow about how important it was to work hard and be confident and learn to cook and put the damn phone down once in a while when her mother was talking to her, dammit. Meanwhile Willow rolled eyes left, then right, then up, then down, then sighed and huffed and puffed and texted and slumped and scoffed and generally drove her mother around the bend. And it was exhausting. And yet somehow deliciously satisfying. Fight the power, Willow!

Finally, we boarded the plane to Kodiak Island where Sarah, Todd and Eye-roller made their first stop at the Kodiak Island Raceway — a place that could accurately be described as Mad Max’s Thunderdome set on a Mississippi flood plain. Here, Todd and Willow donned flame-retardant gear and took turns racing stock cars around the track while Master Blaster called out each lap’s time and Sarah waved a checkered flag from her rusty perch. There was a momentary wisp of excitement as Willow gently bumped into a dirt bank on her last lap, triggering fire-truck sirens and dramatic background music as raceway personnel rushed to her aid to find that … nothing was even the least bit wrong. Willow got out of the car, somebody asked her how it was and she said “pretty cool” and then went back to her phone, presumably to text boyfriend Andy about how bored she was.

We ended the day with a trip to Frasier Lake to watch Kodiak bears fish for salmon. Right off the bat Sarah’s hippie detector was triggered by the guide who explained that he preferred bear spray to a firearm when she asked him how he protected himself. “Bear spray is more effective anyway,” he explained, prompting a scoff from Sarah as she performed her own eye roll for the documentary cameras. Apparently there are Alaskans out there not sticking to the “kill anything that moves” script.

The episode once again ended with a long-winded soliloquy from Sarah — this time espousing the virtues of her “Mama Grizzliness” as a real Mama Grizzly frolicked with her cubs in the background, Todd stared blankly forward, the hippie guide munched on gorp and Willow sighed deeply, wondering if she was going to get home in time to watch “Gossip Girl.”

The first day they took a rafting trip down the Matanuska River with Piper, Willow and her nephew — Happy — led by their white water rafting guide, Mud Flap (Sneezy, Dopey and Doc were meeting up with them later…) “We’re going to be barreling down some pretty intense Class 3 rapids today,” Sarah explained, which is akin to saying they were going to be partying hard on Grape Ne-Hi and Planter’s Cheese Balls (Class 3 rapids are the rafting equivalent of driving over a speed bump at 10 miles per hour in your grandma’s Plymouth.)

“We’re not going to a ‘Star Trek’ convention or to the moon today,” said the unflappable, and a tad bizarre, Mud Flap as he schooled the Palins on what to do if they fell into the water. “If you don’t keep your hand on the T grip of the paddle, you will end up with ‘summer teeth,’” he continued, “meaning ‘some are in the boat, some are in the water and some are in your mouth.”  I loved Mud Flap — all the more after Piper fell into the water as she ran to the boat, prompting Sarah to warn her “not to use [Mud Flap's] mullet as a towel.” Aw, snap Flap!  (I guess you can’t be named Mud Flap and be easily offended.)

Once the rafting was done, it was camping time. As Willow canoodled with her boyfriend, Andy, with a “once bitten, twice shy” Todd looking on suspiciously, Sarah searched the RV for s’mores ingredients — explaining that she was making them “in honor of Michelle Obama who said the other day that [the American people] shouldn’t have dessert.” (NObama she DIDN’T!) 

The non-stop adventure continued as the Palins took to four wheelers to explore more countryside, shoot more guns and escape the “idiots and bloggers who hate our family.” (The irony of course being that most of these escapes seem designed to maximize her family’s chance of death.)  We ended our adventure at a mining camp to visit the Palins’ old friend Bones (who died shortly after the episode was filmed — rest in peace, Bones) to teach Piper to pan for gold followed by an expedition to find 365 million-year- old seashell fossils in the mountains (I wonder how Sarah’s fans are going to react to the news that she apparently doesn’t believe the world was created 6,000 years ago.)

The second half of the show was mother/daughter bonding time as Piper and Sarah hit the road and made their first stop at Peggy’s, a famous roadside diner. Sarah’s first bonding activity was designed “to show Piper what it was like to be on your feet all day, work extremely hard and wait on people,” as she strapped on an apron and started taking orders. I’m not sure if the lesson really stuck, as Sarah spent all of her time taking pictures with the customers while Piper wandered around the restaurant playing with her phone. “Mom is a horrible waitress,” Piper complained to us later, “I wouldn’t tip her because she spends too much time at the table’s talking. YABA YABA YABA YABA.”  Piper learned a lesson alright, but I’m not sure it was the one Sarah intended.

(Best line of the episode: ”She saw what hard work was all about…and [learned] tolerance for other people.” All we need is … tolerance.)

Our whirlwind Alaskan postcard ended with a quick trip to an Iditarod kennel followed by a helicopter ride to visit racers in training on top of the Punchbowl glacier. As the helicopter swooped dramatically over the pristine landscape, Sarah imparted her last lesson of the day: “I wanted to take Piper to show her what the glacier looks like now, and explain to her that centuries from now it’s going to look completely different.” Given that her mother thinks global warming theories are based on “a bunch of snake oil science,” I don’t know if Piper realizes that ‘completely different’ will actually mean ‘not there anymore.’

“Out in this territory anything can happen, but it’s nothing a shotgun can’t handle,” Sarah says, clearly giddy at the thought that she might have an opportunity to drop one of those attacking bears so that media outlets can replay the clip over and over again come Republican primary time. 

We learn in bear survival class, taught by a guy who could accurately be described as a cross between a coked up Mr. Rogers and Ted Kaczynski, that there are three options when encountering a bear in the wild: Say “no, bear” gently before falling to the ground and placing your hands over the back of your neck (while the naughty beast attempts to eat you), scare it with a warning shot or, if that doesn’t work, blow its brains out. But Sarah has a fourth option: “You need a partner who’s slower than you to survive a bear attack,” she tells Kate.

From there they travel to the firing range where cardboard bears have been set up to charge at our outback heroine as we watch scene after scene of her putting endless holes into its “kill zone.” Meanwhile, Kate stands off to the side wearing one of two expressions — the look one gets when one smells dog crap or the discomfort brought on by gas — which she exhibits for the entire episode.

The next day, Sarah and her family travel ahead to prepare the campsite — which is once again in a part of Alaska that can only be accessed by float planes (apparently the Alaskans who spend the spring hunting for food to survive the long winter receive some kind of government subsidy to charter private planes). Before the trip has even begun, Kate complains about the light drizzle that’s falling as her dour-looking brood wander behind her, perhaps knowing their mother well enough to know what’s coming next. When she arrives at the campsite, she walks immediately to a covered area where she remains for the entire trip — speaking to the TLC cameras or anybody who has the misfortune of walking nearby. Here are a few of the quotes, delivered as she becomes more and more agitated by her surroundings:

“I can honestly say I have never camped for real.” 

“Are you kidding me? Doesn’t a lodge sound more exciting to you?”

“We never did spray the kids with bug spray, which is a very big problem.”

“[People] did this before there were houses, why would [they] do it now?”

“I’ve been bitten about 200 times already. I know the kids are having fun, and that’s the only reason I’m tolerating it.”

“This is cruel and unusual punishment.”

“I’m standing in the ‘not rain,’ that’s what I’m doing.”

“It just kills me that people do this. It is just so shocking to me.”

And my personal favorite:

“I’m sorry I’m miserable, but somebody has to be.”

Meanwhile, her kids and the Palins gather firewood, cook hamburgers and hot dogs, fish by the river, collect rocks and keepsakes, make s’mores, laugh, find cool fish bones and generally have a ball.

“We are not camping people, I’ll scream it from mountaintops,” she says as her discomfort reaches the breaking point. “This is just ridiculous. There are no paper towels. How do you make sandwiches for eight kids on your ARM?! I don’t see a TABLE; I don’t see UTENSILS; I don’t see HAND CLEANSING material. These are not ideal conditions. I am freezing to the bone. I have 19 layers on. I have held it together as best I could and I am DONE now. I’M HUNGRY!” she yells finally, slamming her fist on the table and dropping, defeated, into a chair as her voice breaks.

Meanwhile, Sarah is becoming perkier the more Kate comes unglued. It has grown increasingly apparent as the show has progressed that her appreciation for Alaska is based partly on how miserable it makes non-Alaskans. And this non-Alaskan has had enough.

“Are you ready to go, or do you want to stay,” Kate asks each of her kids, to which each of them reply that they’d rather stay.

“OK, goodbye. You’re now a Palin; you’re not a Gosselin,” she says. When the kids don’t register any protest to this, she forces them to leave anyway.

“Well, I thought we were going to go camping with the Gosselins,” Sarah says as they disappear down the path, “We didn’t.  We had lunch with them on a sandbar.”  

She should consider herself fortunate it ended so soon. 

Sarah made sure in this episode that we clearly understood how hard she was clinging to her guns and religion. She takes us into the wild Alaskan Tundra to a hunting camp 14 miles from a place called Kavik — located north of the Arctic Circle. Kavik has a population of one, a hearty gal named Sue whose motto, “blood, guts and bullets,” clues us into the fact that we’re dealing with a real Mama Grizzly — and not just because her head was chomped on by one a few years prior. “Here, feel this,” she says, placing Sarah’s fingers in the holes in her scalp where the bear tossed her around. She goes on to explain how she broke free, crawled back to camp and sewed her scalp back on — presumably with the intestines of pansy Democrats she has squirreled away in her meat locker — before passing out for ten days until a relief plane came to rescue her. 

“Ewww,” says Sarah.

Sarah took the trip with her father, who for some reason refers to his daughter as “Sarah Palin” when he addresses the camera — almost as if it’s contractually obligated to do so. Dad is a jovial 72-year-old who doesn’t sleep the night before the hunt because he’s so excited in that adorable way that sweet old men can be — except that this sweet old man has a bookcase full of 30 skulls of dead animals in his living room, arranged by size from Elk to baby rodent.  ”Sarah Palin likes the varmint gun,” he mentions to Becker as they prepare for the hunt. 

Once settled into camp, our intrepid threesome spends the first day walking around the tundra looking for caribou. Apparently just sitting and waiting for them is not an option, even though after walking ten miles through wilderness (wilderness that looks exactly the same as the wilderness at their camp site), Becker bags the first caribou a stone’s throw from their tents. Meanwhile Sarah, whose Jimmy Choo-looking boots are soaking wet, sits by the fire vowing that tomorrow will be different — because nothing’s going to stop her from doing what it takes to feed her family. Except for stylish footwear.

And come day two, she is ready to go. She emerges from the tent, straps on the varmint rifle, ties her Loverboy-esque red bandana around her head, positions her designer sunglasses carefully and points to the horizon. 

“Let’s go west young man,” she says to her father, one foot raised high to walk purposefully towards her goal. “Uh, west is that way,” her father says, turning her to face the opposite direction. 

“Well, then let’s go EAST,” she says triumphantly.

Day two turns out to be more fruitful, as the hunting posse discovers a couple of caribou up yonder ridge. Everyone falls to the ground, including presumably the camera man, producer and sound guy from TLC. Sarah lines up her rifle and shoots. And shoots. And shoots again. And again. The caribou couldn’t have been more unfazed by the goings on if he was flipping through a Vogue and filing his hooves — perhaps sensing that Sarah might talk guns more than she actually uses them. 

After riddling the untouched Alaskan mountain range with bullets, she finally decides to switch from the varmint gun to her father’s big boy rifle and bags the cocky beast with the first shot. “It’s such a feeling of accomplishment,” she says to the camera before praying over its lifeless body and holding its head up by the antlers to snap a Facebook photo. And then the carnage begins as dad, Sarah and Becker carve up and bag the carcass to bring home to the family — who at this point we’ve been led to believe are only surviving on the marrow of bones scavenged from the bottom of their compost pile. 

Our camping trip ends as the hunters return to base camp to bid goodbye to Sue, who won’t see another human being for nine months. “This is the part I hate,” she says to Sarah, wiping a tear from her eye. 

“I know, we don’t like feelings either,” Sarah says perkily. 

“Hey, Sarah Palin, thanks for coming with me,” her dad says as Sarah hops into the plane to be taken back to civilization, “it was good getting to know you again.” 

But Sarah has already moved on. “Let’s get this bucket of bolts moving,” her gesture indicates to the pilot, “it smells icky around here.”

Back home, Sarah completes this week’s lesson by showing us how she processes her kill by butchering and wrapping up the legs, hind meat and ribs for storage. “Here we are, filling the freezer like we set out to do,” she tells us as the camera zooms in to reveal a freezer already filled to capacity — presumably with the previous year’s killings. She hesitates for a second before finding an empty spot on the door. Apparently some winters are tougher than others.

And Sarah loves Alaska.

Sarah loves Alaska so much that, during every episode, she takes us to a part of the state that we’ve never seen before. Only thing is, we kind of get the feeling that this is the first time she’s seen it too — or at least the first time she’s been back to that particular hell hole since she found something else to do. Not to say that much of Alaska isn’t stunning to look at, but most of this particular episode took place in Dillingham and the fishing village of Ekuk — places largely composed of mud and fish heads. “She seems to love it there,” Barbara Bush quipped recently about Sarah’s love of the state, “I hope she stays.” 

And Sarah loves family.

Sarah loves family so much that she made a point of telling us how she likes to go back to Ekuk every year to visit Todd’s family. Todd’s family members appear to be the only residents of Ekuk — which made the fact that she didn’t recognize Todd’s 20-year old cousin when she first saw her a tad bizarre. “I remember you when you were just a baby!” she exclaimed after realizing who she was. I guess the cousin had been smoking fish in the other building during Sarah’s yearly visits? Or maybe she’d recently had some work done?  Kidnapped and raised by wolves? Burka clad? 

This episode also featured the return of Track — Todd and Sarah’s eldest. We learned that Todd thinks Track is dumb, and he may be right. Track is taking over the family fishing business and he can’t seem to do anything right. He breaks the trailer. He leaves the fishing shack a mess. He sleeps late. He can’t even seem to catch fish, even when it appears that the only thing one needs to do to catch fish in Alaska is roll out a net, wait a day, and drag the net back into the boat. He’s off-Track.

Through the simmering conflict, Sarah explains the father/son dynamic to us — so that we understand their relationship is all part of the “fightin’ and learnin’ and lovin’ and all-Amerikin-in’” struggles that we all go through. Tight smile. Camera close up. Hold it. HOLD IT.

We also learned this episode that Willow is a little minx. We caught a glimpse of her naughty side in earlier episodes, but when her great-grandmother was giving a heartfelt prayer before her sweet 16 birthday dinner and all Palin heads were bowed in reverence, Willow opened her eyes, looked straight into the camera and smiled a mischievous grin. And we knew then (homophobic Facebook rant and rumors of illegal drugs and vodka-swilling aside) that she was TROUBLE. 

So, we came to the end of another mind-numbing Palin post-card, this one capped off to the swell of patriotic music on July 4th as fireworks erupted on the beach at midnight, just as the sun was beginning to set. Sarah held son Trigg as the light framed her face, Piper danced in circles on the sand, Todd re-folded dumb Track’s net, Track grunted and lit matches and Willow pocketed a dime-bag from a skinny, pimply faced lad while he moved from side to side nervously — before lifting a hoodie over his head and disappearing down the beach — hiking his pants up as he went. 

It was just another day in Sarah Palin’s Alaska, friend to North Korea, bastion of fish heads and family — where people work until midnight, talk about how hard they’ve worked until 2am and rise at 4am — for folks to start working. Or they sleep all day and smoke pot.