This weekend I discovered my new favorite TV show:

Man vs. Wild is a Discovery Channel program that teaches viewers how to survive in uninhabited parts of the world if you are a completely insane English person.

Here are two reasons to watch this show.

This:

And this:

What a lunatic. And that’s just from one episode.

His name is Bear, by the way. (As in: a bear.)

There are a few other survival-oriented shows on television, but they can’t compete. The best-known example is the Science Channel show called Survivorman, which is about some boring American dude trying to live in various places for a week without dying. It sucks. The tag-line is: “No food, no shelter, no fresh water, no tools…no camera crew.” First off all, a little wordy there, Survivorman. Secondly, it’s totally untrue. Survivorman has a huge swiss army knife in every episode. Last time I checked, a Swiss Army knife was a tool, and also 30 other tools. Plus, he usually starts every episode off with a fun pack of Fritos or something.

Basically, 40% of the premises to Survivorman are lies.

The worst part about Survivorman, in my opinion, is that the host doesn’t have a camera crew. The Science Channel tries to spin this like it’s some positive aspect to the show, when it’s really just a major distraction. When you see Survivorman climb a up a rock face or whatever, all you do is think about how he had to then immediately climb back down the rock to go retrieve his stupid camera. He puts so much energy into the cinematography, that you lose empathy for his struggle to survive. He always ends up whining about how hungry and tired he is, and you want to be like, “Well, Survivorman, maybe you’d conserve your energy more effectively if you didn’t do everything three times. You fucking idiot.”

Also, Survivorman doesn’t eat abandoned carcasses with anywhere near the same amount of vigor that Bear does. Bear eats animals like some kind of large powerful mammal.

If you ask me, that’s maybe my favorite about Man vs. Wild; the fact that Bear has a camera crew following his every move. It means that everywhere Bear goes, and every insane thing he does, there at least two dudes behind, filming (and judging) him.

Cameraman: “Hey, uhm, Bear? Do you want a sip of my water, dude?”
Bear: “Nah mate, it’s cool.”
Cameraman: “Well, how about a wet nap?”
Bear: “I’m fine, really.”
Cameraman: “Oh, okay…it’s just…well…you have shit all over your face.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under Food, Meat, Poop, Survival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.