Last night I stayed home, anxious to see a program that I was really looking forward too. I am more into the science and nature aspects of Discovery rather that repeats about TBMs and building BIG things (though I like some of those too :P ) Anyway the previews made this out to be a really exciting show, and this Bear chap seemed and still seems like an interesting sort. But the show I though was a terrible failure.
In an attempt to make an "exciting" show filled with danger they went overboard and made a very staged looking show with very wooden performances.
The one saving grace of this show was the preformance buy the main character Bear. Aside from 3 incidents he came across very well. There were times, however, where in an attempt to make things seem more dangerious than they were, he exagerated things to the corney or just stupid. Night one he spends runing away from an imagined bear (animal, not the main character) because he had eaten a snake and was worried that the bear might be following the smell. But on another night after he has scarffed 2 fish and but some more up a tree (granted about 100m from his camp) he doesn't feel woried about bears at all. Another time He got dewy-eyed while talking about his family and how much he missed them. Please...it had been 3 or 4 days by that time! Not really long enough to get that emotional. (Though I have to say he gave a good performance.) The really silly one was where he jumped off a cliff into the water, when you could clearly see that he could have just walked around it.
There were other things that just reemed really staged, starting in the opening moments when he conviently get's stuck in a tree and there was a camera team there to see him get out of it...everything just seemed too staged and convient.
The worst part had to be the two wilderness survival guys who were supposed to be monitoring his progress so give or send aid if he got into too much trouble. Somehow they were watching this on a computer with a fully edited version of the show on it, instead of watching a live feed. And to top it off their banter was wooden and stale, truely dreadful.

In short, I felt that this show insulted my inteligence. It was a very suferficial attempt at sensationalism of the worse sort. For shame. For a much better show of this sort watch "Manhunter" A reality show about a person or persons who have to avoid a professional tracker. That was a very good show. Man vs Wild...a very bad show.

I would be interested in hearing other points of view; for or against. What were your views?

You can't expect the shows to be good since you don't enjoy it. For me i love that shows, wonderful! But i tell you ,in fact this show can be very beneficial ,i even record whatever crucial things Mr Bear said. I know it will be useful for me since i am an adverturer.AND you can't expected every firmed shows to be perfect!