Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Have you heard of The Skinny Dip? Listen closely: it is an amazing hidden gem of a half-hour documentary program from 2008 hosted by a Canadian woman who travels around the world recruiting reluctant people to go skinny dipping with her in large bodies of water. (What a sentence.)
Every episode of The Skinny Dip, which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime, goes like this: Eve Kelly, our intrepid host, hangs out in whatever country she’s in and pesters locals to accompany her on her journey. They roll the theme song, an out of place little folk ditty with hilariously straightforward lyrics such as, “They say hey, you’re so crazy / you’ve got no clothes / but they don’t know.” It plays over an animated silhouette of a woman taking her clothes off. Only then does Eve actually gets to where she has to go, and boy, are there mishaps! In the pilot, Eve falls through a sinkhole in the snow, but it’s okay, she laughs through the whole thing, bless her. The last two to three minutes are the actual skinny dipping. Lot of butts. Lot of sideboob. Roll credits.
As far as travel shows go, this isn’t exactly the most exciting. It’s actually sort of aimless, and everyone speaks in such relaxed tones that it sometimes feels like you’re watching a mumblecore film. The title is also pretty misleading. Skinny dipping has come to represent something inherently sexual in our culture, but there’s nothing at all exploitative about the nudity in The Skinny Dip. It’s almost liberating. Everyone’s so free and naked! Eve herself never acknowledges the fact that her show is breaking down this minor barrier; in fact, she doesn’t even seem to be aware of it.
Speaking of Eve, she is not a great actress. She stiffly reads her lines with a maniacally cheery disposition, cracks mom jokes that never quite land in the omniscient voiceovers, and doesn’t actually seem all that passionate about skinny dipping. You get the sense that Eve wasn’t the first pick for the host of The Skinny Dip. The show never really makes an effort to establish her personality. In the pilot, a member of her squad asks her how the hell, exactly, skinny dipping on camera became her job and she gives a very vague answer: “Since a young age, I’ve always been about like, fun and adventure,” Eve says, and that is her only comment on the matter for the entire first (and ONLY #BringBackTheSkinnyDip #WhereMySkinnyHeadsAt) season. I love it. It’s fine. It took all of one episode for me to get in Eve’s weird orbit. She doesn’t need to tell me why she’s doing this, I support her anyway. Maybe I too can become a professional skinny dipper who travels the world! Who knows!
If it sounds like I’m insulting Eve, I am absolutely not at all. Everything from her empty grin to her adorable Newfoundland accent calms me. She is so uncomplicated. Eve never seems to be in any actual danger as she traverses dangerous forest tundras or kayaks near killer whale habitats. Nothing really happens! There are no stakes! Even when problems do arise, the show never dwells on them for long.
In the sixth episode, Eve goes to The Bahamas and gets her team lost in a dark, musty, bat-infested cave. It could be a scene straight out of a horror movie if done right, but the show overlays it with Eve’s scripted voice-overs and music that sounds like it’s right off a kids Halloween party CD from 2004, meaning that not for one second are you worried about the outcome. “Okay, guys,” Eve says to her miserable companions. “I know you’re all feeling like crap, but I want everyone to think of the big payoff!” They frown back at her, but Eve is undeterred.
Sure enough, literally four minutes later, they make it out of the cave and the twee theme song rolls out again as Eve and the group run naked into the water. End of episode. For a show whose premise relies on visiting different countries, The Skinny Dip is so completely unconcerned with the world around it. It seems to exist in its own universe, which is perhaps the greatest underlying appeal of the thing. We all love our hardcore dramas, but sometimes a person just needs a break.
And honestly, Eve is braver than a lot of the protagonists on your favorite cable drama, damn it. Every time she gets in some extremely temperatured body of water, I clutch my pearls with one hand and raise my hand to the screen for a high five with the other. No one asked for this, but she did it, and that’s all that matters. I respect her and I love her and I love The Skinny Dip.
