Okay, maybe schmuck is a bit strong, it just seems that early on Bear's show was touted as another survival demo, and that seems quite misleading given the type of activities he undertakes. Maybe his is a delineator of just how far you can go to survive, assuming you have the constitution and elite training to do the things he does. That's what seems to me to set Les apart. He gets in more realistic scenarios and his examples are much more mundane, focusing more on reasoning your way through and tolerating discomfort rather than extreme risk activities and consuming things that would make the average person seriously ill. Is Bear's show entertaining? Obviously it has a following, and I even prefer to watch him over the usual pablum selection of primetime junk. When I watch him, my mind is usually trying to come up with less risky alternatives to his efforts, or to try and identify all the things wrong with his approach that could spell disaster for the average adventurer.

With this last season of Survivorman shaping up as it is, the contrast between the two grows even more. If Bear's objective is to entertain and amaze, then Les' seems to be more to give people more practical knowledge and demonstrate the difference between what can and can't be tolerated in a survival situation.