Man vs. Wild vs. Minibar

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I'm not usually a fan of entertainment where the subtext is, "Hey, here are a bunch of things you can't do... In fact, you'll never, ever, be able to even come close to doing any of this stuff... and you're a huge sissy."

Yet, somehow, I'm a huge fan of Discovery Channel's "Man vs. Wild" which features survivalist Bear Grylls, uh, surviving, just about everything the planet can thow at him. He parachutes into the wild armed only with the clothes on his back and sometimes, a flint, then hunts, hikes and fights his way back to civilization. Last week he gutted a polar bear with a spork before using it as a canoe to cross a lava flow.

And that is the subtext of the show. Every episode he punches Mother Nature in her fat-face all while pretending that one or two of us watching will be able to absorb enough of his lesson to survive.

We're not. And, we won't.

I've seen just about every episode and I can say with total honesty that I am no further from dying at any moment, than I was when I started watching. In fact, in the event of my death due to heat stroke, malaria, broken ankle etc., I'm pretty confident my last vision will be of Bear, shaking his head sadly, demonstrating how I shoud've tied the knot, and finally, hopping a ride on a nearby elephant and rumbling off.

Still, it's a great show. It's incredibly entertaining and filled with ridiculously cool moments. One of my favorite things is finding the moment in each episode, where, if I were in that situtation, I'd start crying. Sometimes it's during the opening credits.

Now there are reports claiming that portions of the show are faked.

...it has emerged that Grylls, 33, was enjoying a far more conventional form of comfort, retreating some nights from filming in mountains and on desert islands to nearby lodges and hotels.

...an adviser to Born Survivor has disclosed that at one location where the adventurer claimed to be a “real life Robin-son Crusoe” trapped on “a desert island”, he was actually on an outlying part of the Hawaiian archipelago and spent nights at a motel.

On another occasion in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains where he was filmed biting off the head of a snake for breakfast and struggling for survival “with just a water bottle, a cup and a flint for making fire”, he actually slept some nights with the crew in a lodge fitted with television and internet access...
Yes. You know what he did before he stayed in the hotel? He pee'd on a rag and then wrapped it around his head to prevent heat stroke. He bit into and swallowed a sheep's eyeball. He threw a stick (calling it a Native American throwing stick) at a rabbit, knocked it out, then skinned and ate it. I'm 31 years old and I've yet to catch a frisbee more than twice in a row.

People may use this as a reason to jump off his bandwagon (which is made of self-harvested yak bones and an eagle beak) but I don't care. It's not presented as a documentary, I don't see a night in a hotel revitalizing him enough to cancel out the prior day's hardships. If this is the extent of the deception, I'm fine with it. The stuff he goes through, the depths he's forced to sink to, tax the body to such a degree that I can't imagine making a habit of it is great for a long healthy life... If he's gotta stage a set-up here and there in order to, uh, not die, then I'm cool with it.

Bear, order a movie, set that wake-up call and flip the "do not disturb" sign... The sight of you paragliding off Everest on a Pterodactyl skeleton will be no less enjoyable because of it.

TheCoolerKing recently spent a night in the Catskills in a child-size tent because he doesn't understand how measurements work, and he was too stubborn to admit defeat by sleeping in the camper.

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/news/celeb/21971/Man-vs.-Wild-vs.-Minibar/