It seems that Bear Grylls has been seen a phony when it comes to his show for quite some time and yet there’s still people that will defend him for not being as epic as so many people thought. I’m still in awe of why that is. Make no mistake about it, the guy’s been through a lot in his life and he’s proven he’s tough, but when people watch a show that’s depicting survival techniques they kind of expect the guys at the helm to avoid any slips that might otherwise show the people at home that things are actually pretty safe on the set and in fact are about as average as a walk in the park.
The guy isn’t a phony when it comes to all the stuff he’s done, but on the show he tends to put in a days work and then goes off to spend the evenings in a comfortable location such as a lodge or a hotel with full amenities. That could be construed a couple of different ways. One is that he’s a TV personality, he’s paid his dues and done his time in the wilds throughout his own training and he’s proven that he’s tough. Two is that he doesn’t really practice what he preaches and enjoys the luxuries too much to not seem hypocritical. We might all agree that a day spent learning and/or using survival techniques could possibly be offset by a nice evening spent in a cushy hotel somewhere. It doesn’t do much for his credibility on the show but it’s hard to argue since it is in fact a show.
It’s just too easy to wish that the camera man might understand what’s going to happen when he pans a little too far left to show just where the ‘dangerous’ fissure ends. You know, the fissure that Bear was talking about that could be dangerous, even though it terminates less than ten feet down in some places, and has a perfectly stable area to walk across. Yeah, that fissure. Tough or not that’s a hard sell to anyone when you’re trying to look like a serious survivalist. A lot of people have been trying to call him out on some of the phony things he’s been doing on his show, especially since it seems like a guy who’s been in the SAS, climbed Everest, and done a wide number of things should be able to survive in the wild for a couple of nights without having to head on back to a cushy hotel. That seems a bit hard to swallow really.
I won’t deny that the guy’s proven what he can do throughout his life. Anyone that can fall from a great height, break three vertebrae, and then somehow get up and get back to it after eighteen months is a serious trooper. But he’s made a few mistakes along the way as well, along with this clip and the fact that he left his son on a rocky outcropping to teach the local rescue service how to do their job.
Isn’t good parenting supposed to be the father’s job?
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