Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

TRAVEL Reality Shows Suck Too

Here’s a news flash: reality TV shows are really fake. Even when they’re travel shows.

A post at HotelChatter discusses the revelation that the Discovery Channel show “Man Vs. Wild” is a bunch of hooey. “In the end kids, remember–never trust reality TV.”

The story originally came from the New York Post, with the kind of headline we’d expect from them: Grylls’ Thrills Bogus. A producer from the show says that while host Bear Grylls was supposedly braving the elements and dehydration in the wilderness, he was really holed up in a nice hotel with comfy mattresses and cable TV. And it gets better:

In another instance, where Grylls was supposed to be surviving on a desert island, he was actually in Hawaii and spent nights at a motel, Weinert said.

The same episode had Grylls building a Polynesian-style raft using only materials around him, including bamboo, hibiscus twine and palm leaves for a sail. Weinert said he actually led a team of builders to construct the raft.

It was then taken apart so that Grylls could be shown building it on camera.

In another episode, viewers watched as Grylls tried to coax what seemed like a wild mustang into a lasso in the Sierra Nevada.

“I’m in luck,” he told viewers, apparently coming across four wild horses grazing in a meadow. “A chance to use an old Native American mode of transport comes my way. This is one of the few places in the whole of the U.S. where horses still roam wild.”

In fact, Weinert said, the horses were not wild but were brought in by trailer.

That’s it. I’m never trusting anyone…..with a name like “Bear Grylls.”