This week’s Swamp People was titled Brutus the Cannibal, and opened with Chase Landry reflecting on his family legacy and his own life.
Now that he’s a captain of his own boat, Chase is humbled. He says: “My brother and my dad, I know what they went through with me now.”
It’s an early call of 7am on day 22 of gator hunting season in Louisiana. Chase is missing his deck hand, Holden who is late. One and a half hours!
Chase gives him a break and recalls his wilder, younger days. But you will see in this episode that Holden takes a yard when Chase gives him that kindly inch.
About 23 miles east on Bayou Black, Frenchy Crochet and Gee Singelton need 33 more tags and they need big ones too.
One of their lines nets a gator savaged by another. The mutilated gator is tagged and Frenchy muses that gator parents are pretty brutal, saying: “That coulda been his brother or his son!”
Frenchy would rather take a parental whooping than get his legs eaten off. Fair enough.
Daniel Edgar’s secret spot Froggy Bayou is 48 miles away in the Bayou Benoit area. Clever Daniel cut a road in there and takes the airboat up over the land.
There are thick spider webs everywhere. And frogs! Truth in advertising from Daniel as huge bull gators are heard bellowing. They are in actual Jurassic park, USA y’all!
They shoot a behemoth. The problem is the vegetation resembles overcooked green linguine, so much so that the hook practically stands up in it.
Then the unthinkable occurs as Dwaine goes IN this mess!
Using just his hands and sense of feel, he blindly searches underwater and then grabs the shot — and hopefully dead — 12-foot monster.
Meanwhile, there are about 100 gators all around them still growling loudly in Froggy “you gonna need your Depends undergarments” Bayou.
And insects. Did we mention there are spiders the size of dinner plates there too? #notenoughmoney
This leads to the point of Swamp People where our blood pressure is given a break and we are able to breathe.
You have to balance the insanity of jumping in thick dangerous waters — full of lethal ways to wind up with coins placed on your eyes — with some silliness.
Foot fetishists rejoice, as barefoot Glenn Guist is back on the scene and getting artsy in his bid to make some cash.
No cypress log retrieval for him brah, he’s going to offer some guided Swamp Tours.
Except the messaging gets convoluted as Todd rolls up and points out the egregious error. Glenn prefers to call it “Swomp”.
Brutus the Cannibal is real y’all as Frenchy and Gee are haunted again.
Frenchy says: “He’s around heyuh and he’s hungry!” Gee adds: “Oh we gonna get him.”
They keep pulling up chomped on gators and their hold is full of maimed reptiles. Our always upbeat and hardworking Salt and Pepper are having a rough time.
Back over to the Landry kin as Chase and Holden are on the job, as a huge gator is on the line.
Grand Lake is the scene as this rolling 8-foot beastie is giving it to Holden. “We really need to pull out all the stops and put some gators in the boat,” says Chase.
Over in Bayou Black, Frenchy and Gee have bought gator scraps to divert Brutus the Cannibal.
Undoubtedly this stuff smells to high heaven, and they dot the lines with this decaying entrails “boo-fey” as Frenchy describes it, adding: “You gotta beat him at his own game.”
Meanwhile, the Edgars have bagged three and Daniel has 80 tags to fill, saying “it’s on.”
Buzzards are following them, and Daniel says that is a good sign. He pulls up a line. A six-footer is bagged.
Glenn is open for bidniz in Gonzalez. He talks up a German redhead who rolls up on him in a rental car.
English is an issue as Todd mentions to her that Glenn accepts no Euros. Just U.S. American dollahs and that a lunch is included in the deal.
Kudos to them both for knowing that Euros are an actual currency.
Ach du lieber! Our Landry duo of Chase and Holden have a bull in their sights.
They shoot him and throw out a hook without securing the end of the line to the boat.
Chase is pissed and says: “That’s just as important as putting bullets in a gun!” Holden cocks it up two times in a row.
Finally, Chase gets the gator but not until he was ready to rip his hair out over his lil’ cousin.
Gee and Frenchy are on the move as a huge gator — possibly their nemesis Brutus — is on the line. Nope!
Brutus the Cannibal bull gator (it’s always rogue big males) strikes again as this one has his tail chomped off.
It’s personal now for Frenchy and Gee as they survey a boat full of mangled and “ett up gators”.
Now we return to the diplomatic interface of the single and ready-to-mingle American swamp man and his intrepid German-lady-wanting-some-gator-action portion of the show.
The American charm machine — aka Glenn — is working his savoir-faire and magic on our Svenya.
He serves her lunch, basic baloney sandwiches on white bread…and his feet are about a foot away from her food.
Svenya seems to be taking it all in stride.
Then real drama y’all as we are back in Froggy with the Edgars. Frustrated, Daniel Edgar is now all about the size of the gators as a line is down, and Dwaine says there’s a lot of weight to the line.
A huge gator surfaces. Nearly bites Dwaine. The beast plays possum and then definitely bites Daniel!
He tried to retrieve a two-dollar hook and the gator snapped hard and drew blood!
The force of the bite was “crushing” according to Daniel.
Dwaine tends to his dad, who really did narrowly miss a catastrophic injury. They didn’t dwell on it too much in the footage but trust us, you will see Daniel Edgar is not putting it on — he was hurting.
The dynamic duo of Chase and Holden have recovered, it seems…Nah!
They got a huge gator and NO BULLETS!
Finally, they find some and Ho redeems himself as Chase is like, “dude you are killing me.”
Their boat sinks low with big gators and they head back to Pierre Part for some food.
We are wrapping up and Frenchy and Gee need to find this cannibal! You know they got their Brutus!
The two set out to get things done, they leave no stones unturned to make a living.
About the size of him, Frenchy says: “He could be anywhere from an 11-footer to 13-footer gator,” as they haul in the cannibal.
Brutus measures in at 12.5 feet, and they give him the salt and pepper blessing.
We end with Glenn’s swamp tour with the Fräulein in tow, still. “Really what she wanted to see was some alligators,” says Glenn.
Finally, she spots a small gator sunning itself. Her bucket list is ticked.
Svenya will have loads of stories to tell about the two Swamp men who love guns, God and spelling “swamp” incorrectly.
She will also probably have PTSD from being in close proximity to Glenn’s feet.
The Edgars are cooking Creole style Étouffée and I can smell it from here, y’all.
Seriously, Dwaine needs a cooking show as the Edgars always have a good feast to savor after a hard day.
“Nobody can replace family, that’s as good as it gets!” says proud papa Daniel. Amen.
Next week we’ve got some Joey and Dorien drama, a Landry “choot, choot” contest and a Willie Edwards alert — my favorite and our hardest-working man on the Bayou is back too!
Swamp People airs Thursdays at 9/8c on History.