Get Out Alive TV Show

I've been watching my way through Bear Gryll's newest TV show, Get Out Alive, a "reality" show of sorts, since it started at the beginning of the summer. As much as it's the one show I'm watching each week, I'm not enjoying it anywhere near as much as I did Man Vs. Wild.

The amazon.com blurb for Get Out Alive is as follows:

"Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls" is a larger-than-life adventure reality competition series hosted by world-renowned survivalist Bear Grylls. Grylls leads this non-stop extreme survival journey that tests 10 teams of two beyond their wildest imaginations as they venture into the unforgiving and dramatic landscape of New Zealand's South Island. Their mission is threefold: survive the wild, journey as a group and avoid elimination. Each week, Bear will send home another team. In the end, only one duo will remain -- the team that he believes has shown the most heart, courage, initiative and resolve in their quest to "get out alive" and claim a life-changing grand prize of $500,000.

The biggest things about Get Out Alive that I don't like are probably mostly due to the elimination format of typical reality TV shows, mostly the way each team sits there and tears apart the decisions made by all the other teams in the individual interviews.

There are times though, and I'm going to try to say this without giving away any spoilers for the show and the individual episodes, where I wonder if one of the entrance qualifications was to never have watched any survival oriented TV shows or read any books - mostly when it comes to the creation of shelters each night. I haven't done any of that myself, and I still find myself shaking my head at some of what they've come up with, just based on some of my reading and from watching Man Vs. Wild.

My third biggest gripe is that when Bear is demonstrating things for the various tasks, they're not very clearly done for the camera, such as the creation of the rope stretchers or the pulley-system last night. I'd like to have a clearer idea of how they were doing things like that, just for my own knowledge, and I found it nearly impossible to follow the way that was formatted on the TV. Maybe
 the book Living Wild, which I reviewed a couple of years ago, but I've forgotten. Right now, the book is also packed away, so I can't double-check it either.

Even with those complaints, I'm looking forward to next week's episode, which I understand to be the finale, and perhaps to any future seasons of Get Out Alive. I definitely have to say that the scenery is absolutely spectacular.

I have to hope though, that Bear is going to be doing something more like Man Vs. Wild again. If so, I'm definitely looking forward to it, although I will probably also watch any future seasons of Get Out Alive.