Izzy hit it on the head. What you see on any of these shows is for entertainment value only. They are controlled by the producers and directors. Yes they made decisions and took the money, but TV is for entertainment and amusement. Bear has done things in real life that very few people have done, and he did it for real. If someone offered you a load of money to do a show like that and told you to make it more exciting, would you quit in protest and give up the money?

]Back to the topic. I've read through a lot of Bear threads. Then I saw this one and the other one. I stopped and thought about it for a bit. I think we're all giving him a bit more flak than he deserves. He's a television presenter on a television show. Let's get down to brass tacks and see what he has accomplished. He's gotten a lot of kids interested in the outdoors in a time where kids aren't too interested in anything outside of a video game. That alone is good enough for me.[



All very good points stated above. And the fact that television is greedy. And I'm sure a very large portion of the things many of us disagree with. Was all done for the ratings game. Yes some if not many things were dangerous. Or would get you killed or hurt, poisoned,or harmed in other ways. But we still watched. Which in turn made him money. The channel money, the advertisers money. And got more kids interested in something besides video games. So yeah I'm not a fan of tv bear. But maybe in real life he's ok. And for his paycheck. I'd probably do a backflip off a cliff and drink urine out of a snakeskin too. ;p

Let's not forget his line of Gerber gear (insert eye-rolling here). He definitely knew how to capitalize on his 20 minutes of fame.

"According to his Discovery Channel biography, Grylls lives on a converted barge on the River Thames in London with his wife Shara and their sons Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry."



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/201.../#ixzz1pBbQPkBg

At least he does't have to mow the lawn.

My 2cents - Bear had established himself as a bona fide adventurer long before the tv series and has overcome serious injury to get there.

The tv series itself was entertainment - 10 seconds thought and you should realise he is accompanied by a tv crew (like a lot of 'reality' shows), and the stunts would need to be arranged otherwise they would be too dangerous.

Don't like the products - don't buy them. Do a decent review and let others decide (FWIW I have seen good and bad reviews, and a lot of the bad reviews are related to Gerber not Bear)

Don't like the programmes - turn over and watch Les, or football or Desperate Housewives or whatever floats your boat.

It's a democracy and a free market, and we are all grown ups so we get to make choices

Who names their kids Marmaduke and Huckleberry?

I think that bright spark is an adherent to the "Fear Sells" marketing philosophy.



In the last week they've aired "Preppers", which is about a bunch of (mainly) urban survivalists preparing for the TEOTWAWKI/WROL with underground shelters, and "Apocalypse 2012", which needs no explanation.

[RANT]
Both of which are nausea invoking and not helping those of us who simply don’t want to have to rely on others help when things aren’t peachy.
[/RANT]

We now returned you to your regularly scheduled thread.

Talking of which: Notice how Discovery Channel's statement is phrased? Classic example of how to damn someone and destroy their reputation without actually stepping over the line. It's right up there with "insufficient evidence for a prosecution".
i.e. Not a shred of evidence, absolutely innocent but we will just imply.

I don't know about the rest of the line, but from what I've heard about the Ultimate Survival knife it appears to be a solid, reliable knife in a useful (and affordable) package.

While it's not necessarily my cup of tea aesthetically speakinig, the addition of a non-serrated model this year removes my only real technical concern about the knife. Frankly, I don't think it would be a bad choice as a primary knife for someone heading outdoors. There were some reported issues with the pommel in the first generation, but I understand that has been resolved and all the currently available knives are okay.

Here is one fairly indepth review from the British blades forum, and (from what I remember) a test video with some reasonably good results by Adam at Equip 2 Endure.

All that to say, I think maybe Bear's taken a bit more heat over the whole Gerber thing than is really warranted.

Yes, my understanding the pommel was breaking off of those first generation models under reasonable real-world use (it isn't supposed to be removable). Here's an example.

That said, Bear was taking heat for the knife before anyone was able to test it out (similar to how some, now, are giving Les Stroud a hard time for his new knife line).