Man Vs wild

I love this show. BEAR is awsome. but honestly i was watching it last night 5-30-08 & did bear really need to put that knife to his skin to show us that in -20 metal will stick it your skin. Did he really have to pee it off, then pick bug out of a tree with it to eat. It really wasnt needed but i still love the show

I've always preferred Survivorman to Man Vs Wild. (And I came to this conclusion before the whole hotel 'controversy').

Survivorman always seemed to appear to my more pragmatic nature, whereas bear always seemed to be about the dramatic stuff.

Can't remember which one...I think it's survivor man...but it's all fake...they stay in nice motels and eat in restaurants and stuff. It's not really like they make it out to be.
Fake TV...I just cant' believe it.

Survivorman is way better even though he complains a lot more. After the guy in man vs wild picked up a big piece of elephant dung and squezed the juices into his mouth I pretty much decided he was an idiot.

When did people start expecting reality TV as the default, and then start getting surprised when there's some hotels involved?

Man vs wild is badass to watch, for sure, but bogus on a lot of counts.

I agree that Man vs Wild is a little more extreme, but I don't think is comes off as "scripted" as Survivorman

I can't stand the way Bear pronounces "glacier"

I think if I had to be lost in the woods with someone, it would be Bear. But, as far as the show goes...survivor man is more hardcore he doesn't need any wussy camera team.

I think survivorman is more realistic (no camera crew, dropped off in the middle of no where), man vs. wild has a camera crew and you know that dude is up in a hotel at night sleeping pretty damn well.

I used to stay up all night and watch back to back episodes of survivorman.

I can't watch Man vs. Wild...that guy dispenses spectacularly bad survival information, urging people to do things that would get normal people killed. He deliberately puts himself in dangerous situations (falling down a crevasse, jumping through ice into a frigid lake, drinking suspect water, etc.) knowing that his athletic ability and large support crew will bail him out. He's all about shock value, and nothing meaningful is conveyed. Once the cameras are off, he's off to the lodge for a hot meal and a few drinks.

OTOH, once Les is on his own, he goes to great lengths to minimize danger. He's very much an "everyman" in the wild, and suggests survival techniques that are actually possible for normal folks that might unexpectedly find themselves in a bad situation. Sometimes he fails at them, and to his credit those failures make the final cut. At the end of an episode, he often looks totally beat to hell...just as most of us would!

c.n.budz said:

I can't stand the way Bear pronounces "glacier"

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There are about 60 million people in the UK that probably aren't very fond of how you pronounce it either.

I do think Bear is overly dramatic and having been in the British Special Forces doesn't necessarily make him smart. I recently saw an episode where he was eating raw gazelle meat right off a half-eaten carcass with flies buzzing around. Then later in the episode he was complaining of intense diarrhea... can't imagine how he got it.

Nice videos Ed, they demonstrate just how much credibility “Grylly Vanilli” really has!

BigKahuna said:

Can't remember which one...I think it's survivor man...but it's all fake...they stay in nice motels and eat in restaurants and stuff. It's not really like they make it out to be.
Fake TV...I just cant' believe it.

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That's Man Vs Wild. It was discovered about a year ago that, while the show purported to be just Bear surviving with a camera crew following him that he actually was getting help from the camera crew and was occasionally known to stay overnight in hotels when the show was making it appear he lived in the wild.

Survivorman is alone with his gear and a known pickup point for 7 days and pretty much discloses any special conditions or changes that are made to his 'alone by himself' conditions on camera.

I always felt like Man Vs Wild was more 'managed' the way the most common 'reality television' is while Survivorman is more documentary like.



While Les (Suvivorman) does complain a bit more I prefer that to the self aggrandizing and huge ego of Bear. Les also seems to dispense more useful, realistic survival techniques. He also tends to encourage a more 'handyman' approach--- assessing the stuff you have and finding a way to make that stuff do what needs getting done.

BlindLemonLars said:

I can't watch Man vs. Wild...that guy dispenses spectacularly bad survival information, urging people to do things that would get normal people killed. He deliberately puts himself in dangerous situations (falling down a crevasse, jumping through ice into a frigid lake, drinking suspect water, etc.) knowing that his athletic ability and large support crew will bail him out. He's all about shock value, and nothing meaningful is conveyed. Once the cameras are off, he's off to the lodge for a hot meal and a few drinks.

OTOH, once Les is on his own, he goes to great lengths to minimize danger. He's very much an "everyman" in the wild, and suggests survival techniques that are actually possible for normal folks that might unexpectedly find themselves in a bad situation. Sometimes he fails at them, and to his credit those failures make the final cut. At the end of an episode, he often looks totally beat to hell...just as most of us would!

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Could not have said it better my self.

BlindLemonLars said:

I can't watch Man vs. Wild...that guy dispenses spectacularly bad survival information, urging people to do things that would get normal people killed. He deliberately puts himself in dangerous situations (falling down a crevasse, jumping through ice into a frigid lake, drinking suspect water, etc.) knowing that his athletic ability and large support crew will bail him out. He's all about shock value, and nothing meaningful is conveyed. Once the cameras are off, he's off to the lodge for a hot meal and a few drinks.

OTOH, once Les is on his own, he goes to great lengths to minimize danger. He's very much an "everyman" in the wild, and suggests survival techniques that are actually possible for normal folks that might unexpectedly find themselves in a bad situation. Sometimes he fails at them, and to his credit those failures make the final cut. At the end of an episode, he often looks totally beat to hell...just as most of us would!

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+1 I still like watching MvW but it is more 'dramatic' and not as pragmatic

Air Pirate said:

+1 I still like watching MvW but it is more 'dramatic' and not as pragmatic

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A couple times watching MvW I've found myself imagining what Les would do in similar circumstances.

kornkob said:

A couple times watching MvW I've found myself imagining what Les would do in similar circumstances.

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I've done basically the same thing except I'm usually saying, "Les would never do something that stupid"

BlindLemonLars said:

I can't watch Man vs. Wild...that guy dispenses spectacularly bad survival information, urging people to do things that would get normal people killed. He deliberately puts himself in dangerous situations (falling down a crevasse, jumping through ice into a frigid lake, drinking suspect water, etc.) knowing that his athletic ability and large support crew will bail him out. He's all about shock value, and nothing meaningful is conveyed. Once the cameras are off, he's off to the lodge for a hot meal and a few drinks.

OTOH, once Les is on his own, he goes to great lengths to minimize danger. He's very much an "everyman" in the wild, and suggests survival techniques that are actually possible for normal folks that might unexpectedly find themselves in a bad situation. Sometimes he fails at them, and to his credit those failures make the final cut. At the end of an episode, he often looks totally beat to hell...just as most of us would!

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Quoting this because this is exactly how I feel about it. Nonetheless, I do watch both shows. Man vs Wild I watch more for the mindless drivel entertainment, Survivorman is more about how I'll survive the zombopalypse.

And I don't like how Bear says 'vitamins'.

c.n.budz said:

I can't stand the way Bear pronounces "glacier"

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No no no...what about...what about..."vihtamins"? Soooooo fricking annoying.

i saw an episode where bear stated how grizzly bears were nothing to be afraid of, but the black bears will hunt you down as prey. that pretty much did it for me. the guy's a moron. yes, the VERY few attacks from black bears are often predatory, but it was just a silly, mis-informed comment and the rest of the show seemed that way too.

les has a great idea, and despite his bickering (you'd be whining and bitching in his situation) he does have useful information and puts on a great show.

his little show on how to build a self-sufficient cottage in the middle of nowhere (and spend millions of dollars hauling in supplies with helicopters) was pretty silly, though.

"I'm no expert on wilderness survival, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Select last night."

my wife & i end up counting the number of times Bear says "disorientating". ...good drinking game, really.

My wife and I watched the episode of Bear in Alaska a few weeks ago where he catches a salmon and takes a big a$$ bite out of the side of the fish after clubbing it a couple of times to kill it and he carries a knife with him

....then a bit later he purposely capsizes a skiff and he tries to play it off as being in deep water but in actuality hes in 4 feet of water.

Hes a showman in the same sense that Steve Erwin was with animals except far dumber and even less informative.

Steve Irwin wasn't just a showman and a tv personality. he was a true conservationist and did some amazing work in his time.

he was a goof-ball, but give him some credit. his shows were entertaining and informative and mainly...he did something with his life.

bear is just a jack-ass making a fool of himself for money doing things that just about anyone could do with the right crew and trying to look important. but he's just a prostitute.

i saw an episode where bear stated how grizzly bears were nothing to be afraid of, but the black bears will hunt you down as prey. that pretty much did it for me. the guy's a moron. yes, the VERY few attacks from black bears are often predatory, but it was just a silly, mis-informed comment and the rest of the show seemed that way too.

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Actually hes correct- Most Brown attacks are from people walking up on a bear and scaring it. Browns really are skittish.

Black bears have been know to stalk/ambush and chase people. There are a lot of accounts of them stalking people. But fight back and they tend to back down.

I prefer Survivorman to MvW, but I'll watch them both. They give you stuff to think about, but you do have to filter out the bad info with what makes sense. Some of the things that Bear does is total unnecessary, but then again, he sometimes put himself into worse situations so that he can show the audience what to do in that situation.

I have a video a guy took about 2 miles from my house. He was bowhunting in a tree stand, and caught a black bear coming across the field he walked across on his way in. right where the bear met his crossing, the bear stopped, took a few sniffs and turned around and booked it out of there. He didn't want anything to do with humans. They are so shy that I've lived here for 15 years and didn't even know we had them in the area.

MikeFlynn74 said:

Actually hes correct- Most Brown attacks are from people walking up on a bear and scaring it. Browns really are skittish.

Black bears have been know to stalk/ambush and chase people. There are a lot of accounts of them stalking people. But fight back and they tend to back down.

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it was just the way he presented it. he probably googled black bears and said "ooh! i'll tell everyone they have to be afraid of being hunted!" Also, i think i addressed this in my previous post:

yes, the VERY few attacks from black bears are often predatory, but it was just a silly, mis-informed comment and the rest of the show seemed that way too.

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So this is totally out of context but Survivor Man is so much better.
But here is the out of context part.
I was out with a friend the other night and we stopped at a local strip club. So we sit down, SurvivorMan is on TV(great), We each get a decent beer, the stripper was ungodly hot and was stripping to MegaDeath

I am sorry, it doesnt get any better, then Survivor Man, Beer, Strippers, and MegaDeath, ALL AT ONCE, sorry bout the off shoot.

I think that is totally relevant. After all, finding hospitable shelter and maintaining a positive outlook are 2 key elements to survival.

Good point. and hey, bordom can kill you and you need to stay hydrated.

Arneba28 said:

So this is totally out of context but Survivor Man is so much better.
But here is the out of context part.
I was out with a friend the other night and we stopped at a local strip club. So we sit down, SurvivorMan is on TV(great), We each get a decent beer, the stripper was ungodly hot and was stripping to MegaDeath

I am sorry, it doesnt get any better, then Survivor Man, Beer, Strippers, and MegaDeath, ALL AT ONCE, sorry bout the off shoot.

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Megadeth, strippers, beer, and survivor man.

hmm...i might just do without les in that situation, but it sounds great in any case

He single-handedly created, produced, wrote, filmed, hosted, edited and wrote the theme music for these first two original, one-hour pilots for what would eventually become the series Survivorman. He remains the only producer in the history of television to produce an internationally broadcast series entirely written, videotaped and hosted alone.

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Les has survived the beast that is TV and has done it alone.

Nuff said.

I <3 Les.

Bear's a ****** canoe.

He single-handedly created, produced, wrote, filmed, hosted, edited and wrote the theme music for these first two original, one-hour pilots for what would eventually become the series Survivorman. He remains the only producer in the history of television to produce an internationally broadcast series entirely written, videotaped and hosted alone.

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And other than his lawyer he is raking it in! But good on him!

MikeFlynn74 said:

And other than his lawyer he is raking it in! But good on him!

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heh-- that and his insurance agent. His life and health insurance costs have to be through the roof.

"So, let me get this straight. For living, you go out into the wilderness with a pocket knife and a backpack filled with camera gear and film yourself trying to avoid dying for a week at a time. And you want life insurance coverage? ......... Excellent. My kids need braces and your premiums will fit that bill nicely."

kornkob said:

heh-- that and his insurance agent. His life and health insurance costs have to be through the roof.

"So, let me get this straight. For living, you go out into the wilderness with a pocket knife and a backpack filled with camera gear and film yourself trying to avoid dying for a week at a time. And you want life insurance coverage? ......... Excellent. My kids need braces, college, some BMW's and Benz's to learn to drive in, a 3 week vaction to the Bahama's for me and the wife, more college for the kids, my mistress needs a bigger apartment my dog needs a lasar attached to his head... and your premiums will fit that bill nicely."

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There, I fixed it for you.

dirtymike1 said:

There, I fixed it for you.

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I stand corrected. I grossly underestimated the size of those premiums. : )

kornkob said:

I stand corrected. I grossly underestimated the size of those premiums. : )

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Well I figure that for my super base, cheap-as-it-can-get, insuarance, I still pay in 4,500 a year. And thats for sitting at a desk in the AC. I figure that if you go and throw yourself into places like he does, even if he is sleeping in hotels, that he's gotta be paying out the ass.

When will he actually DIE?

You cannot get me drunk or stoned enuff to watch any of this crap. Reality TV my A*&!!