So I thought I started a thread on this back in season 1, but I can’t find it.
Anyway, the premise: Bear Grylls takes a celebrity out for a 2 day hike through wilderness areas for survival camping and lots of rock climbing.
This season: Kate Winslet, and now Michelle Rodriguez.
What’s mildly annoying is the lengths they go to to pretend there isn’t a camera crew with them. I mean, they film things like Bear arriving on a helicopter, then departing with the celebrity, and they film from both the helicopter and the ground, show both angles, but somehow there isn’t a camera visible. Or they are repelling down a cliff face and you get lots of camera angles of the repel from the ground and the side and above, but no camera people are seen.
Anyway, I was struck by something that has me wondering just how set up things are. One of the adventures was a hike through the Swiss Alps. Naturally, there was a lot of snow. I noticed there was a pretty well-worn path along the crest of the hill they were hiking. Then Bear decides it will be quicker to cut through the mountain using old tunnels from WWII, NAZI bunkers in the hillside. So they hike to an opening that has a lot of foot traffic for a secluded mountain.
Naturally they have to do some prep to figure the route, because they do things like stage exit vehicles or rendezvous locations and times. But it gets more frustratingly telling. So one episode (last season) near the end of the route, they came across a large rope that was strewn across a gap between two cliff faces, maybe 50 ft wide. And Bear decided they needed to climb across this rope that was already strewn and waiting. Another incident that season had them come across a log and rope bridge that was mysteriously waiting in the woods. :dubious:
This season, while hiking through the tunnels, bear “found” an old rifle shell, which he opened to scavenge the gunpowder to start a fire. Nice trick, but I’m really suspicious of him just finding one random shell. Especially with all the previously noticed footprints in the snow.
At some point, it begins to feel annoyingly fake.
Anyway, another element is how he finds food along the journey, which typically consists of catching something. One round involved a few bivalves from a stream and some eggs from a bird nest. Another had worms grilled on a rock. The roasted rattlesnake was pretty tame compared to that.
But the absolute worst has to be this last with Michelle Rodriguez. They are hiking through Nevada desert, catch some desert mouse. He typically makes the celebrity carry and help clean the food source, like throwing a trout down Kate Winslet’s shirt. Anyway, they have 1 mouse, which isn’t very big, and he doesn’t want to roast it and waste the juices. So his recommendation is to stew the mouse. Except they are out of water. So he has Michelle piss in the cup and they stew the mouse in urine. That’s right, stewed mouse in urine. Now they boiled it, which made sure if there were any infections, everything was clean. But it’s urine, and smells like urine.
And boiling urine concentrates it. Blech. So they each eat a bite of mouse and sip some urine. Even Bear admits this pushed his limit - drinking someone else’s urine. Just wholey disgusting. I’d have roasted the mouse and given up the grease.
Is this a new show? I saw one with Stephen Fry a long time ago. It was actually really neat. While out in the wild, they discussed religious views and the two got along really well. I liked it.
This is season 2. Season 1 ran a year ago. I don’t recall a Stephen Fry episode, but he might have done a UK version first, or something.
Yes, he does get some candid self analysis from the celebs.
One other thing I will note is his attitude is a mix of confidence with a hint of doom. He proposes the roughest things with the words “it will be fine” but a tone of voice that suggests he doesn’t think it will be so easy. Very odd.
Like using an old deer antler wedged between two boulders as a rappel point.
I watched a whole lot of documentaries over the summer, and one thing that annoys me is that I’ve started “seeing the other way”, and noticing the presence of the cameraman. Or more precisely, I notice that the scene is seen in a particular way, which implies a particular viewpoint, which implies a camera at that point in the scene, which implies an operator right behind that point, often where there’s alleged to be no people.
Bear could make a trip to the mall look dangerous. Given some of his techniques Bear could probably actually make a trip to the mall dangerous.
Bear can’t just walk across a small rocky stream. He has to stumble and splash like he is on his third day of running from Velociraptors with laser beams on their head.
Bear is to that Survivor man guy as Nacho Libre is to Olympic wresting.
Cyanide and Happiness does a lovely take on him (well, a character partly based on him, partly Steve Irwin going by accent, I’m sure there are other guys in the mix…). Spoilered because NSFW:
Correct, the British one was called Wild Weekend, with Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, and Miranda Hart.
The food is obviously staged, and the route they take is always prepared ahead of time, and framed to look more dangerous and limiting than it really is (the Kate Winslet one had them go down a cliff only to go right back up it again, barely advancing at all).
That’s not the point, though. It’s just an outdoor adventure, and is as “real” as any reality show.
Strange coincidence as I watched half a dozen of these back-to-back last night - there are plenty on Youtube. Heard of him but never seen the show before.
Don’t understand the problem - how would you do this without a cameraman and, as importantly for this kind of show, a brilliant sound man. I read that filming the show actually involves three others so I guess that would be film, sound and director. They obv. have to get up and down these climbs as well.
Of course it’s all planned, and it’s also really easy to take the piss out of it. The thing is kids love this, LOVE it, and that’s god enough reason for it to be.
The strong point of the show is that each challenge is appropriate for each sleb and they’re genuinely tested. That’s good enough for me.
Their reactions at the end are pretty telling. Tamron Hall was in pieces and then beyond elated. I saw the Kate Winslett and Ben Stiller - they were fine. Jake Gyllenhaal was prob my fav of the ones I saw. Man was he buzzing at the end.
My question is rather how can you do this with a crew. If it’s possible for the entire crew to survive, then how can it be difficult for the stars? The premise just doesn’t make sense.
I love the one he finds and carries a heavy old rusty chain though the whole episode ‘just in case’ he needs one. At the end he uses to climb up on a railroad trestle.
Every episode appears very set up and fake, I don’t mind the camera crew issue, but occasionally there is evidence of them which interferes with the shots and the illusion of no crew.
He’s personally the real deal of sorts, being a real mountain climber and former SAS member, although I’m sure his show is more concerned with being a good “show” and not really with presenting legitimate survival or outdoor techniques.
I mean, I was watching it the other day, and they showed the route that they were going to take- it was basically over a river, up one cliff, spending the night on the top, and then going down another cliff and over the same river again to the extraction point. They ate a lizard or something, and did a lot of rappelling.
In a real life situation like that, I suspect that people would just walk along the river valley around the bend to the extraction point, rather than engaging in crazy-ass mountaineering and desert survival stuff by going over the bend. But that doesn’t really make for entertaining TV.
Lots of dumb stuff like this. Bear was in the British SAS and climbed Everest. He would easily outlive Stroud in a zombie apocolypse. He is trying to make entertaining TV…that doesnt mean itr isnt real.
In the Aug 31 episode he admitted to pre-placing ropes.
I’m not expecting a real survivor show - I’m expecting celebrities in interesting situations.
I think a behind the scenes episode would be great (show how they film the episode - how many camera operators are there?
At least one more than they show in the behind-the-scenes episode, of course. Who will photograph the photographer?
And what the heck is Obama doing on a show like this? It’s one thing for the President to take an hour to appear on a talk show to get his message out (even if it’s a comedy talk show). But how many days does something like this take?
I went back to rewatch. Looking at the 4:20 mark here, you can see the path projects an unnecessary drop and climb. Hmmm.
The point is you make the concession this is a TV production and there is a team, rather than pretend they aren’t there. I realize it’s a TV thing to treat the production crew on any kind of event as nonexistent, to give the illusion the viewer is along as an individual. But it feels unnecessary in this situation.
Some documentaries of adventures acknowledge their documenter as a team member, basically one of the team carries a camera and films most things, or they rotate camera duties. In this case, making the crew invisible reeks of fakitude. We know there’s a camera, a sound tech at min, and they have to make the climbs and such. Often they’re on parallel tracks, or set off a distance on a different cliff face for the advantage. It does make for interesting filming of the two personalities, but it … bothers me for some reason.
Consider a different program for comparison - Mythbusters. Most of the time they talk to the camera and ignore the crew as people, but there’s no attempt to mask that the crew is there, and when they do things like explosions, the crew is protected as well. Long establishing or wide field shots will show cameramen, sound crew, etc as they stand around the stars/sets. But that doesn’t mean any of them spend any time talking on camera. The on air personalities have their job - be entertaining. The crew have their job - film and record the program so it can be edited to an entertaining show. Each does his/her role.
The could do it the same way. Not have to show the cameraman rappelling separately, just not hide that he’s there on a rope 20 feet to the left.
My question is not that it’s planned. They preselect an insertion point, they have a nominal route in mind and obstacles to face. They have a target area for camping and a target extraction, which has pre-posted vehicles or timed extraction rendezvouses. My question revolves more about he details.
Bear makes it sound like he doesn’t know exactly which cliff face they will scale, which river bend makes the most sense, which path through the canyon gets where they want to go. In the Michelle Rodriguez one, they are wandering canyons in Nevada. Any number of canyons will go sort of the direction you want.
(Side note, we actually did this briefly when I was a teenager. Scout trip to Zion Canyon. We planned a three day hike through the narrows, but didn’t have a strong detailed route, more of wander through with real time navigation. We aborted after a couple hours when the navigation was a little more difficult than expected, and the route had a lot more water. We were more swimming than hiking, and not really packed for that wet a venture trail.)
Anyway, he knows he wants from here to there, but exactly how to do that could be open to more real time navigating, or it could be scripted to the precise cliff face, ledge, and tree to camp next to. Just how prepped is the course?
I would expect a good, skilled, well-experienced outdoorsman to be able to wing it pretty well and still meet the extraction point, but a compass and map would be very beneficial for that, and he doesn’t appear to check one. He has the route strongly in mind and knows his landmarks and whatnot. Again, he could be dead-reckoning, or he could be retracing a route he has previously gone down. Which is it? He tries to make it look like the former, but the number of staged items strongly points to the latter.
Doesn’t change the fun of watching the struggles, but does affect it in a kind of meta way. YMMV.
Tom Arnold had a fairly rigorous climb for a 50 year old man with no prior outdoors skills, he lived to tell the tale.
First off, the crew are experienced adventure climbers on their own. Second, this is not intended to be a real survival risk adventure. It’s more a very low equipment, high adventure, live off the land trip.
There is real risk, but it is highly mitigated by equipment and practices. Bear is the one ultimately controlling their safety. For example, he’ll often do a tandem rappel, which consists of him controlling the rope and gear, and the other person tied off to his harness. They have to climb, but aren’t responsible for keeping the rope and feeding it through the figure 8 to keep from falling to their death. Or he’ll do a double rope where he goes down, then lowers them. Sometimes he does let one do their own gear work, but that kind of thing is probably determined in advance during prenegotiations about difficulty level and such.
For example, Michelle Rodriguez parachuted into a canyon and smacked into the one major obstacle in the area, a rock ridgeline. That was a risk, she was under her own control and he was genuinely worried when she came down aimed directly at it, and then wasn’t responding to the radio. But turns out she was fine, just bruised a bit.
However, they only eat what they find along the way, plus Bear has a stash of chocolate for a midnight snack. It’s a small bar.
What do the crew eat? Where do they sleep? We don’t actually get shown, but every once in a while there are glimpses of what may be. Like one where they captured a snake to cook and eat, but then Bear and the celeb only had small portions of the snake to eat. Well, there were 3 other people eating some of that snake. And they camped on a cliff face on a small ledge. They had to really crowd because there were three more on that ledge.
Why 3? Offhand I would imagine 2 camera and 1 sound, one of which may be directing.
I think his techniques are real, but the situation isn’t pure “what’s the best way to get from here to there to survive” and more extreme camping adventure.
Yes, I saw that, but it was also at the end of the route. They climbed that one rock face, and on the other side were motorcycles for them to drive off down the road. They were in a canyon. Prestaging extraction also put a reasonable place to prestage climbing ropes.
I have seen them abandon ropes and gear. I assume there’s a post filming sweep to retrieve things, etc.
They rendezvous and depart some strange location in the morning on one day, camp one night, and reach extraction mid to late afternoon the second day. It’s billed as 48 hours sometimes, but it’s really closer to 36, without travel time to/from rendezvous and extraction.
