This is a great little new show. You may have seen an ad for it in an actual theater – which is where Adam and I first heard about it, and marks maybe the first time ever that I wasn’t pissed to be watching an ad in a theater. It is a good show, but there are some problems, it can get a little repetitive and neither Adam or I like the opening.
Eugene Cussons, the “host” I guess is what you’d call him, is charming, without being overly nice and sweet and “perform-y” for the camera, and sometimes you can see that other than saving chimps for a living he might kind of be a dick…which oddly, makes me like him more, if only because he seems more real. He’s got a great foreign accent (South African? I’m not sure) but that also makes me like him more…I’m a sucker for a British-like accents. The real stars of course are the chimps which are insanely cute and human-like, especially the young ones, which tend to be less scarred and traumatized and more interested in just hanging out with Eugene and being adorable and climbing trees.
The show consists of three primary elements – Eugene finding and rescuing chimps that are being mistreated, or that have been stolen, or are scheduled for termination (etc.); dealing with the frustrating details of the respective governments and travel and the myriad of other obstacles that get put in his way; and Chimp Eden itself, which is primarily a beautiful fenced in reserve where he can rehabilitate the chimps. My favorite bits are of course at Chimp Eden, if only because it seems less sad and more sweet and optimistic than seeing how badly many of these animals are treated, however the show can turn on a dime. Last week as Jao, a big “grandfather chimp” in “The Kindergarden” (he’s in with the young chimps because he is too aggressive to be in with the adults) all of a sudden tried to yank off Eugene’s boot – pulling him out of a tree – and almost taking his foot off. They constantly remind you on the show that the chimps are ten times stronger than a human, but man is it easy to forget. Eugene kept his foot (and his boot) in the end, but it was really intense.
Escape To Chimp Eden is on Friday’s at 9pm on Animal Planet, although you can catch repeats all the time as well.
You can learn more about the show here and can also check out a clip on youtube here, it’s not the greatest clip, not the one I would choose, but the best one I could find today.
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I like this one a lot. It’s my favorite. Wheeeeeeeeee!
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Thanks
. I was wondering why I got no comments on this one…I liked it a lot. Strange. -
I cannot stand this man, Eugene Cussons. I watched him ineptly try to get the abused chimps to follow him up a tree and when one of the chimps tried to stop him from doing a stupid thing he maced him! I cannot understand why Jane Goodall would let her good name be attached to an idiot like this. Maybe he wouldn’t try to do such ‘TV’ type things if he wasn’t being filmed for a series but he seems like an arrogant and petulant man so maybe he would. I refuse to watch this show and Animal Planet has lost some credibility with me.
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Poo Rang: Hmm. I do find him to be a bit on the arrogant side, but I forgive him for some of this because of how frustrating it must be to deal with the governments and red tape that he has to deal with for this project.
I had quite a different interpretation of the scene where he is being pulled from the tree. It was a pretty violent scene, and happened quite suddenly, and I found his use of the mace to be, while unfortunate, totally justified. It’s hard to remember, since they are such beautiful amazing animals, but that chimp (Jao) that had such a hold on his foot/boot is 44 years old, the alpha male in that enclosure, and at least 10 times stronger than Coussons. It’s a pretty dangerous situation.
I also can’t imagine, if he didn’t really love these chimps and want the absolute best for them, why he would devote his life to this project. It only really seems rewarding in what he gets from the chimps. He’s certainly not getting rich off the project, and the headaches of bureaucratic red tape and government policies, not to mention the idiocy of the common man, must make it really unrewarding in most other ways. He’s a little bit of an arrogant jerk, but I’m rooting for him, the chimps, and the project.
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I have a problem with this man as well. I’m sure he means well, and I admire his dedication to these animals. But I have a hard time understanding how he thinks *he* can teach a chimp to be a chimp, and how he thinks he can do it so well that they can be released into the wild again. It seems both stupid and arrogant. I was surprised that he is connected with Jane Goodall’s Institute, because I was sure she would not approve of his approach, methods, and interpretation of the chimps’ behavior.
Sure he loves them, but I sense that it his his head that dictates how to act around these animals, and not his heart. “I have to show him that I am the boss, that I am the alpha animal, so when he acts like a chimp and grabs my boots I’ll mace him in the face.” Yeah, he could pull off your foot — so get out of his tree.
I know it’s just TV, and that we don’t see the whole picture. But I don’t find him terribly sensitive to the chimps, and I think his own integration into the group is unnecessary.
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Wow. Everyone but Adam and I seem find this guy to be pretty horrible and his methods to be really off. I don’t know what to say, we’re all entitled to our own opinion, and I welcome the comments, but I just don’t agree.
First of all there is the fact that he is doing something to save these animals while I sit on my ass and watch tv, so that already earns him some respect in my book. And I’m glad he’s out there rescuing these chimps, as they have miserable miserable lives and even if his methods are suspect (which I don’t really know enough about animal rehabilitation to judge) they’re still better off, one time mace in the face or not.
It also seems to me, the uneducated viewer, that some of the chimps in the kindergarten (the enclosure with the young chimps, the old chimp Jao, and the mentally challenged chimp Cozi) DO need assistance in their rehabilitation, just like any animal that has never lived in the wild might. I don’t know enough about animal rehabilitation, or chimp rehabilitation, to be able to say what he is and is not doing right, but everything he has said on the show has made sense to me.
He has not and does not try to be the alpha male in the kindergarten, Jao is the alpha male, and Cussons must even ask permission of Jao to access the kindergarten. In fact, when they were on bad terms because of the mace incident, it took time and failed attempts before Jao would allow him back into the enclosure. This all seems very correct and appropriate, and in following with chimp family dynamics. His behavior in disciplining Xena, though rough, I also thought was correct, assuming you think he has any right to be in the enclosure in the first place, he had to discipline her as any elder chimp would in the wild, so that she would find her place in the group. In that episode with Xena, it did seem to save her life, because she had finally learned to trust him to a degree and didn’t go into the adult enclosure where she likely would have been killed and he would have been unable to go in and retreive her. This could all of course be clever editing in how it worked out with Xena, but I didn’t see anything blatantly wrong with his behaviour.
I guess the real debate here is whether he belongs in the enclosure at all. If everyone feels he should not be in there, then there is no argument I can make that he is behaving properly within the chimp group, because fundamentally people don’t think he should be behaving with them at all.
I don’t know, I guess I’m going to have to do a little research and also look into Jane Goodall specifically, since everyone seems to be responding to a “this is not her way” attitude.
As it is though, I think he’s doing a great thing, even if his methods are a little suspect.
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