I may bleat (justifiably, mind you) about the intellectual dishonesty (and moral decrepitude) of the American press, but the British press really makes them all look like diaper-wearing amateurs. Take the whinging currently going on regarding Man vs. Wild‘s Bear Grylls and how he GASP! might have stayed in a hotel room while filming some episodes, or how experts might have done scouting, or helped with some aspects of setup. Oh (yawn) noes.One wonders if any of these complaining wankers even bothered to watch the show. The show’s intro voice-over distinctly says, “…show you how to survive…” It most assuredly does not say, “I’m going to widow my wife and orphan my child just so you pisspots at home can be sure I’m really jumping off this cliff.” Last I checked, he was actually jumping into quicksand in the Everglades to demonstrate how to get out. And swimming across a river in Greenland to show you how to avoid hypothermia. Eating the sheep’s eyeballs, little froggies, snakes, raw trout, etc. etc. to show you how to Not Die. It somehow makes sense to instead attempt to KILL your host in each episode? Then where’s your show?
Some of the specific complaints noted about the show in one of the whinging articles in question:
In one episode filmed in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains he was shown biting off the head of a snake for breakfast and boasting that he was living on ‘just a water bottle, a cup and a flint for making fire’.
Viewers were not told that he was actually spending some nights in the Pines Resort hotel at Bass Lake, where the rooms have Internet access and is advertised as ‘a cosy getaway for families’ complete with blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
So? I now know how to deal with a snake for breakfast, start a fire in the desert, make a shelter for the night, and find safe drinking water. The fact that the host of the show didn’t actually spend the night in that shelter matters precisely how? It doesn’t.
Mark Weinert, a survival consultant brought in for the programme, said one show also wrongly gave the impression that the adventurer built a Polynesian-style raft using only materials around him, including bamboo and palm leaves for a sail.
Mr Weinert had in fact led a team that built the raft, which was then dismantled so that Grylls could be shown constructing it on camera.
Quel horreur! You mean, it was indeed a raft built with the things around him, only HE didn’t build it… right there… on camera… while we watched… for five hours? Odd that, considering it’s only an hour-long show.
It’s a television show, you prats. Even better, it’s a television show that, in the credits, features quite clearly the names of the “Fixer,” the “Technical Experts,” and lists Grylls as the “Presenter.” So, if I have this straight, what you’re essentially bitching about is the show doesn’t specifically say, “some bits are dramatized because, frankly, we don’t fancy spending a fortnight in the field.” Well, I say that makes you rather painfully stupid. Killing off the host of the show is simply not good business sense. And now the Discovery channel will have to place a ridiculous disclaimer on each episode so that the weak of brain out there aren’t made to feel cheated.
Bad news, you have already been cheated, in the mental capacity department. But just try suing someone for that.