He just bitches in “man” language.
Are you Jeff’s ex-girlfriend?
Funny… I apparently mistook this board as a place for the fair and free exchange of ideas. Guess I was wrong about that.
Why not respond substantively instead of goofy remarks?
If you have ever even watched the show. Which I highly doubt.
Just another forum for people who might have different ideas to be sarcastically responded to. Somehow, with the title I expected something different.
Disappointed again… straight dope …riiiiight.
I love how, before they start on a hike, they show a diagram of the landscape and draw a long, crooked line over rough terrain. Then someone looks at the GPS and says “It’s 600 meters this way!” 600 meters?
I thought “straghtdope” was more about finding truth, but I get it now. Not so much about the “straght” part as it isabout the “dope” part. I’ll find a different forum. Cool whi.e it lasted.
I really don’t understand why Grylls had to go through all the motions of “you’ve all done great” and “this is really hard”. Madeline and Ryan has to be the easiest choice so far this season, and after Lucky and Louie (the only other real choice) won the challenge, it was an absolute no-brainer. They had the easiest task of all, and it never occurs to Ryan to take the firestarter out of the damn wrapper?? Well, at least he tried, which is more than I could say for Madeline, who was utterly USELESS this episode. Hey, princess, you’re the one on the fire team, not Jeff. And this after that adventure with the shelter last week. Nice effort, probably a lot better than I would’ve done, but it was plainly obvious that at this point the game had gotten way too big for them.
Sooooo…who’s going to win? Well, that’s the great thing. I have absolutely no idea. I’ll just note the prospects, in absolutely no particular order.
Chris & Jeff - Were it not for Jeff’s knee injury, they’d be running away with this. Despite only winning one challenge and a seemingly endless run of heartbreaking close calls, they’re as strong and fired up as ever. Ryan, the last person who could match them physically, is out, so the title is still theirs for the taking. The question is, will they? Every week it seems another crack in the armor appears, and they’re up against two teams that are fit and healthy and have made recent trips to the feast pit.
The key here is Chris (who surprisingly didn’t get much face time this week). Letting Jeff go down the crevasse was damning, as was losing out to Lucky in a test of strength. This is the final step, the stretch run; heart and pluck and inspiration aren’t going to cut it anymore. He HAS to be the man if they’re going to have any shot at this.
Jim & Austin - They’ve been game, to be sure. They’ve made some mistakes, but they weren’t fatal ones, and, more importantly, they didn’t let them get them down. I honestly never know what to expect from them. One moment they’re a Scoutmaster and First Class Scout, the next they’re Homer and Bart in Call of the Simpsons (yeah, really showing my age there :)). Should be fun to watch in the final, and that’s all I’ll dare to predict.
Lucky & Louie - The grizzled veteran and the spunky, perky teenybopper. Surprisingly tough, always optimistic, and they’ve also made a few strategically sound choices. (Lucky giving up on the rope traverse saved valuable time and energy; it made him look a bit cowardly but he knew that wouldn’t doom him.) But now it’s them against four tough, determined men in an contest and environment that make absolutely no concessions for age or gender. It’s a bit disheartening, seeing the team with probably the best gameplan (and winning the challenge when it mattered the most) and knowing it will almost certainly come up short.
But hey, stranger things have happened, right? So instead of writing off this plucky duo, I’m going to be quietly rooting for them up to the very moment it becomes clear they’re out. Which could very well be Grylls’ final call.
Should be a blast. See y’all in five days!
Not taking it out of the wrapper does seem inexcusably dumb. It sounds like someone must’ve told them at some point that the wrapper was meant to be easily flammable and part of the process of lighting it or something, otherwise it’s so obvious to try that I can’t believe that no one came up with it. I mean they had like 4 packs anyway - try one without the wrapper and if somehow the wrapper is essential to igniting it, light another wrapped one and then toss the unwrapped one onto the fire. Plus didn’t they use those things before? Made no sense, and it wasn’t just the fire team - anyone else would’ve come over and said “wtf are you doing? I’m starving, take the wrapper off you idiots”
Ryan was probably the best individual player, but Madeline was an anchor. Crying, being negative, trying to get someone else to take care of her responsibilities - she should’ve had them eliminated a few episodes earlier. Pair Ryan with anyone half capable and that team wins.
I pegged Jim and Austin to win it from like 5 minutes into the first episode. They just had a practical attitude about everything and while they’re not the fittest guys, they seem to be pretty physically capable. They dominated the challenges - this episode didn’t really do a good job of showing how Lucky and Louie came from behind in the challenge, they were behind and suddenly just won.
For next season, they really need to balance the teams better. Having mixed couples in their 50s compete with young fit guys in their 20s is weird. If they want to mix it up, every team should be co-ed, or all teams should have one young and one old member, or something. The batch of teams they brought together this time was odd.
A couple times people here in the thread have mentioned next season. Based on Expedition Impossible a couple summers ago I’m assuming Get Out Alive is a one-and-done affair.
Has it been picked up for a second season? That would be sweet, but would surprise me.
Is anyone else still watching this? Damn, things dropped off in a hurry…
Won’t spoil the conclusion, so just some things to expect while you’re watching it:
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To his credit, Grylls looks at the whole journey up to that point when deciding who to eliminate. If you messed up one leg ago or even on the very first leg, he remembers it and he will hold it against you. Likewise, if you showed exceptional skill in a particular leg, it really raises your star. (I’m certain this was what saved Robin and Wilson in the second leg.) He’s completely demolished rock bottom plus one (may as well squeeze the last few drops out of that one :)), where all past success and failure get erased. This is REAL last man standing, something I thought I’d never see.
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It’s been nagging at me for the past few weeks, and now I’m absolutely certain of it: There’s a lot that we’re not seeing. Jim and Austin being so hit-and-miss for 90% of the journey and then cleaning up in three challenges, Jeff’s knee pretty bad/super bad/kinda bad but he can tough it out/not that bad/not bad at all/wait, now it’s pretty bad again, Lucky and Louie…well, pretty much everything…something definitely doesn’t smell right. (And now in retrospect, I’d really, really like to see the final challenge in its entirety just so I can figure out how in the hell Lucky won!)
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And now we have a rather ugly elephant in the room, because all this has raised the possibility that Grylls is grading on a curve. It’s okay to expect a strong team or a favorite to do more, but to require them to do more to get the same amount of credit is dirty pool. The wild does not give handicaps. If a team can’t get tasks done as well as the others, can’t move as quickly as the others, doesn’t have the stamina, doesn’t have the toughness, for ANY reason, they should be out of it. At the very least, they shouldn’t win it. This goes back to Royce & Kyle, who in retrospect absolutely should have outlasted Madeline & Ryan, but now we have something far worse, because judging by what we have seen (while keeping in mind point #2 above), the team that won should not have. Not even close. Hell, Royce and Kyle should’ve taken their place in the final; they wouldn’t have won either, but at least they’d look like they belonged there.
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So it is with some regret that while I liked the show overall, I have to deem the end result a disappointment. Yeah, I heard the grumblings on Television Without Pity, but they grumble about everything there. But with a whole damn lot at stake with no second or third prize, everything Grylls relentlessly preached, everything he supposedly stood for, and in the end a decision that makes no sense, I have to ask, what the hell does he stand for? And more to the point, what the hell does it really take to win this? I can see several possibilities, and none of them sound good.
Just so we’re perfectly clear, I would’ve been fine with either other team winning. Maybe one deserved it slightly more than the other due to overall achievement, but both were worthy. Hell, the best thing to do would be to split the prize 250K/250K. Or better yet, 225K/225K/50K; being the worst of the best should be worth something. If Grylls really is making it up as he goes along, and unless there was a massive editing job (which I’m not ruling out) that’s exactly what he is, there’s no excuse to cling to this one feeble thread of “winner take all” while trashing every other aspect of it.
Ah, well.
(I’m on vacation. I got time to write.)
I’m going to grab the last episode On Demand – as I said earlier, I had no idea this show was even on until I saw this thread, and I’m a sucker for survival shows. Obviously we’re in the minority 
I was surprised by the final winner (BTW, DKW, take a look at your paragraph 4 – so much for not giving away the ending, eh?) but I can sort of see it. Grylls has stressed all along things like spirit and optimism and so forth, and L&L were good at that all through it. Remember Louie saying that “Duck was better than eggs”? That was good spirit at its finest. And she was also the only one of the women who actually did the rope traverse properly.
As for Jeff – Grylls didn’t go into it in the finale, but it was pretty clear that Jeff’s insistence of doing things himself was at least several times a detriment to the team as a whole. Especially when retrieving that goat: no way should he have been the one to go down into the crevasse, let his partner do that while Jeff anchors the lines. Much faster that way, I’m sure, and the importance of hurrying to get your camp made before dark was often stressed. Also we were shown quite a few comments by Jeff about not being able to go on (although he apparently did.) I think he got marked down by Grylls for putting his ego above the needs of the whole group.
Don’t know why the father/son team didn’t win, given they won so many of the challenges.
I was impressed by Lucky & Louie during the finale. They managed to make a flame, though they didn’t keep it going. Just getting the flame was impressive, though. They probably made the best shelter and best raft of the three teams. And they started the signal fire. Essentially they dominated the finale, so by the time the final camp rolled around I was okay with either them or Chris & Jeff winning. L&L had redeemed themselves in my eyes all the way up to legitimate contender.
However, based on Bear’s speech during the reveal, I was certain he was giving the win to Chris & Jeff. Everything he said pointed to them. So even though 60 seconds earlier I felt L&L would be a legitimate choice, by the time he finally revealed it I felt it was a bad decision.
I respect the decision to knock Cris & Jeff out of the running for their “low-rider” raft. Staying out of cold water was something they never learned, and was a problem for them in both the very first and very last episodes. That’s a fair demerit in that it’s a very serious survival mistake and they never learned it.
With Chris & Jeff out of the running, it’s between L&L and the father-son team. The father-son team was equally terrible as L&L throughout the game; they saved themselves from certain elimination multiple times by winning immunity. L&L were a little bit worse overall but significantly better in the finale, so I’ll take that as a fair win.
It’s hard to ignore Bear’s final speech, though, and that’s the only thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a L&L win.
Starving - You’re asking me to delve into my reality TV thought processes? I’m on vacation; do you have that kind of time? 
Oh, very well.
The thing is, all three teams had a chance to blow it tonight. Chris & Jeff were getting mentally run down, and the little mistakes were starting to pile up. (Working in an environment which periodically has moments of incredible stress, I know what that’s like.) It honestly looked like at any moment the sword could drop, the one fatal blunder that killed their chances for good. Jim and Austin, like I already mentioned, were always plagued by inconsistency, and every misstep gets magnified in an extreme environment. When the flint broke off, I felt for sure that they were done; they were VERY lucky they found it fairly quickly.
And I never said the L’s were completely out of it. (I know that reality TV has a way of trashing my predictions. That’s why I always hedged with things like “almost certainly”, which in retrospect was a wise precaution.) I’ve seen 11th-hour miracle comebacks in reality shows. The L’s had the makings of one when they won the final challenge; if they dominated the final leg, really shown superior skill and intelligence and mettle, I could justify them winning by a nose. The thing is, they didn’t. The raft was fine, but they couldn’t get a fire going. I know some of us are trying to rationalize after the fact, but it was clear to me: They just weren’t that awesome.
In fairness, Chris & Jeff did make judgmental errors. Yes, I remember Jeff’s dive into the stream fully dressed, and the unwise decision to go down the crevasse, and yes, that raft could’ve been sturdier. But the thing is, they weren’t disastrous. Jeff could’ve hosed the whole group, but he didn’t. The raft could’ve sunk, but it didn’t. Contrast that to say, Robin & Wilson getting stuck in the water crossing and Ryan & Madeline doing jack to save them, which did have pretty serious consequences, and neither team was punished for it.
And that just brings us back to that big ole elephant: What the hell does it take to win this? If it’s contributing to the overall effort and getting results, Chris & Jeff should’ve won by a mile. If it’s following procedure whether or not it gets results, I have to give the nod to Jim & Austin. If it’s thinking on ones feet and stepping up in the clutch, Jim & Austin. All criteria I would’ve been perfectly fine with.
Now, if it’s cheerfulness, positivity, good attitude, keeping your damn mouth shut? Then Lucky & Louie. And while I think those things matter, it’d be pretty damn lame if they were the sole criteria for winning half a million bucks (and looking at Royce & Kyle’s elimination, and also Alicia & Spencer, come to think of it, you really have to wonder). And if those were the sole criteria, Grylls should’ve made it clear from day one so that contestants wouldn’t shoulder double loads and share fire and catch eels for nothing.
So in summary: Before the final leg, I would’ve been happy with this show no matter which team won. After the final leg, I would’ve been happy with this show if one of two teams won (or if Grylls said the hell with it and split the money three ways, but of course reality TV can’t ever do anything surprising and original). And I was let down.
And for that reason, I’m done with this. (Didn’t even last as long as The Amazing Race. That’s saying something.)
They never found the broken flint. They spent 5-10 minutes looking for it and then gave up, borrowing fire from Chris & Jeff.