From most of your post i can tell you all really hate Bear and the show. <img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" /> haha

ive only seen the show once ,so i cant really comment. Some of the stuff was alittle crazy, like jumping into a river with a bear on your trail. I wouldnt jump(being im afraid of heights,lol),but i suppose that be better than being chomped on by a bear.

It’s not that people hate Bear, it the dangerous approach he takes. In a survival situation some of the stuff he dose could get you hurt making the problems you have a lot worse. Why run down the steep hills or jump off ledges or any of the other stuff that could twist and ankle or break a limb if you don’t have to.

To me the show is more about flash then survival skills.

I really do not hate Bear at all. I admire his physical condition and his fortitude. What I do hate is the way he handles a "survival situation". He goes out of his way to take extreme risks and sensationalizes almost everything on the show.
He surely has a crew along, thus has a safety net of sorts. That does not give him license to do dangerous stunts to demonstrate how one should go about surviving in the wild. Some of the scenes are almost certainly staged carefully to impress the viewer, while demonstrating little good survival sense.
The show is a direct opposite of Survivorman, where Les Stroud improvises wisely, takes minimal risks for the sake of drama and shows viable technique in each segment. Maybe Survivorman is not watched by the same audience as the X-Games, perhaps that is the viewer type that Man vs. Wild is aiming for.
I have run down a few mountains, when I knew what was over the next rise, I have parachuted into the dark in unknown territory in service of my country and I have risked my life a few times, perhaps too many. But, I would never recommend those techniques to someone in a survival situation and preach that as the "manly way to survive".

I would like to know Why he uses exotic places to stage his shows. It seems to me we have plenty of spots in the U.S. to make the show intresting to those of us that do watch it. The chances of most of us being lot in the rain forest are slim, also the Swiss Alps are off my travel list

Yeah, Bear is an idiot, (on the show anyway) Someone should call Discovery on this show, and hold them accountable. Is this stuff what they want to represent?
I loved him drinking the untreated jungle water, and then being up all night with diareha, and vomitting. All the while he had a metal bowel on his canteen, and a flint striker! Idiot. That was priceless.
Then the next morning he hikes a 1/2 mile to find some tree, and does not even mention the ash from his fire that he could eat and use to calm his stomach. Did anyone else notice that he didn't look any worse for the wear, after that "Horrible night" <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
To me the whole show is hard to buy. This guy is not like Les Stroud, he has a camera man/crew with him. I loved it when he said he had gotten lonley in the French Alps episode. I started thinking, "talk to the camera guy" if you are lonely. (Or arrange to have a camera girl <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />)
As others have said, all of the unnessessary risks he takes, have me assured the whole show is "staged".
I guess at best his show does raise survival-preparedness awareness. At worst, it is somewhat irresponsible.

Does anybody knows what kind of knife Bear Grylls uses?. I am not a knife expert but I am sure that somebody in this forum ________
On the last show when he was building the snow shoes he was using a lock blade Swiss Army knife. but that is not true for the previous shows, where he had a fixed blade knife that I have no idea what it was.

Saw the latest "show' last night he was in Alaska ( saw last ten min) he was walking along and found an old boat (newly painted) and proceded to paddle (in the boat of course) toward the shipping lanes, the boat started to sink (BTW his paddle became a square nosed shovel) so he swam the last 200 yards to shore (cameraman already in the water) started hyperventilating as he swam, got to shore collapsed, got up took off shirt to wring it out then started doing pushups to get blood flowing again heard a motor in the distance, started waving his arms, backpack anything to attract attention (what? no signal mirror in backpack so much for SAS training)
what a joke, Lets all watch Les Stroud on Suvivorman.

It sounds like a comedy..... <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

My 2 cents worth: I only watched the French Alps episode, but I think widget's assessment is the most reasonable opinion posted on this whole thread. Les Stroud's show is much more educational. Man vs. Wild is not something someone truly wanting to learn survival skills needs to watch and learn by, Bear is too wreckless.

Bear is not really doing anything except reading and preforming to a script. I only watched one episode, one of the first last season Ultimate Survivor I think. From what I have seen and heard from other this latest season is the same, not worth the effort to watch. <<>>