Rediscovering My Love of "Man vs. Wild"

I returned home from an LDS Mission to Spain in August of 2006. A few weeks later, I was attending BYU in Provo, UT. My new roommates and I made a discovery on Discovery..."Man vs. Wild."

Imagine, if you will--for those of you who weren't there to witness it first-hand--the reaction of three 21 year-old guys living alone when they came upon that show.

It's the closest you can get to being outdoors while still watching TV.

Bear Grylls, host and star of the show "Man vs. Wild" building a fire.

For those of you who have never seen the show, here's the premise:

The show centers on a man named Bear Grylls, a former member of the British Special Forces. He now travels the world speaking and teaching survival classes and techniques. From this stemmed the show "Man vs. Wild" (as it's called in the U.S.) Each episode shows Bear being airlifted into the middle of an expanse of wilderness somewhere in the world (The Sahara Desert, The European Alps, etc.) and he has to survive long enough to be rescued or find civilization. In each episode he brings a few key items, like a cup, a knife, or flint. In a true survival situation, you would do/eat almost anything, and that is true of this show as well.

In the Kalahari Desert episode
Bear eats the leftovers of a zebra killed by lions or hyenas.

As you can understand, a show like this--so far out of the norm of television programming--would caputre the attention of (mostly) men and women around the world. We tuned in with rapt attention every week, and even printed a schedule of every time episodes would air for the rest of the school year.

So, also understandably, I was more than a little heart-broken to be wrenched from my illusion of reality when I found out that Bear Grylls doesn't do everything on his own--he recieves assistance on more than one occasion. As I read rumors on the Internet, and watched interviews on TV, it seemed everything was unravelling. For a time, I confess, my love of "Man vs. Wild" grew cold.

But, like the emergence of new life in the spring, my dormant love reflourished and grew when my wife Kathleen bought me a DVD collection of the first two seasons. As I watched them, I was at first dissappointed, because I realized things had been changed from how the episodes originally aired. For instance, in the episode that takes place in Alaska, Bear is seen eating a freshly-caught, live, uncooked salmon. In the original episode, they lead you to believe that he caught it with a stick. In the DVD version, they make it clear that Bear lost patience trying to catch one, so he ate one that a member of the crew caught.

Bear devouring "the freshest Salmon you'll ever have."

At first I was outraged that I had been so easily duped, and I if felt like I had been betrayed, or that the show had been cheapened. But then my feelings began to be pacified...I thought about it, and I realized that THIS IS STILL REAL. Do you see him eating that Salmon? Do you see that Zebra? He's really doing these things.

So, say what you may, "Man vs. Wild" is still an amazing show. The events and things he is doing are real. And if you want him to be completely up-front and honest with you, just get ahold of the new DVDs...they have changed everything to make it factual and not misleading.

And I love it.