NBC
Bear Grylls is best known as the most vocal and strident proponent of eating faeces and drinking peepee. It’s a popular misconception that he only advocates this in the most extreme survival conditions. He’ll chomp on a turd for fun at the drop of a hat and he doesn’t care who knows it. As a completely secondary interest he has a TV career suggesting how to survive and thrive in inhospitable environments. You may well remember him submitting to physical and psychological torture from Sergeant Gary Coleman on Escape to the Legion or eagerly seeking out camel’s piss on Man vs Wild. But now he’s on some other shit and I’m not just talking about the kind he routinely eats. Because now Bear is fronting an elimination based reality TV survivalist show Get out Alive. It’ll either break him or break you.
The New Zealand wilderness is the place, survival is the name of the game and $500,000 is the prize. 10 teams of 2 shitbirds comprise the cuntestants. Each week Bear Grylls WILL drop the shitbirds into a hostile place and each week one couple WILL be eliminated. Who’s got what it takes?
24-year-old shitkickers from Alabama Ryan Gwin and Madeline Mitchell believe THEY have what it takes. “I’m not just a beauty queen” says Madeline “I can get out there and get dirty”. I’m guessing Ryan is counting on that Maddy.
“I’m not just a beauty queen” says Madeline “I can get out there and get dirty”. I’m guessing Ryan is counting on that Maddy.
Bear doesn’t want to know about Madeline getting dirty though. His focus is on the group as a whole cooperating. Each week the teams will have to handle four essential elements of wilderness survival. Fire (hot thing useful for warmth), food (animals, plants, water), obstacles (river, valley, mountain) and shelter (igloo, teepee, mud hut). On obstacle detail is computer geek Austin who nearly drowns everyone leading them across a freezing mountain river. Then, armed only with a bandanna and GPS, Pepsi Max advert looking twats Jeff and Chris lead the bushwhacking for food to find a dear Bear has stashed in a cave. That seems like a bit of a cheat but whevs.
Bear watches from a safe distance like a creepy stalker and he occasionally pops into tell them they’re doing shite. Bear being Bear it doesn’t take long for a familiar theme to crop up. “Tomorrow I need one member from each team to bring a water bottle – filled with urine”. Of course he does! That wine cellar back home won’t fill itself. He constructs some bullshit task with them mixing it with muddy water, boiling it, cooling it then drinking it but we know the truth.
Chicago natives Vanessa Vazquez, and Erica Franklin are particularly useless at this task – they’ve been shit at everything actually. They were on the food team and spent about as much attention on the dear as Roy Jones does on his children. When the time for elimination comes it’s a simple enough choice for the Bear: “You’re out of your depth.” he tells the girls “You wouldn’t make it out alive. Hand in your knives”. And with that they are gone “We’re always going to look back on this and know that because we made it through this, we can make it through anything” says Vanessa. Is it churlish to point out that they actually didn’t make it through this and that they in fact can’t make it through anything? I do hope so.
One thing is for certain. Bear Grylls will continue to have an unquenchable appetite for urine and faeces, one that we not be sated by fair means.
One thing is for certain. Bear Grylls will continue to have an unquenchable appetite for urine and faeces, one that we not be sated by fair means. That this deviant is still allowed on network television is simply astonishing.
The verdict: Bare funny.
Marks out of 10: 6