An insult to real Seals, Scouts, and Green Berets
Just what we needed... another completely fake survival show.
I could tolerate the fake scenes of each overweight former soldier being "kidnapped", and I can try to ignore how somehow their keen special forces instincts failed to associate the oncoming rush of a big camera crew with the predictable outcome. Try as I might though, I couldn't stomach the Seal who rushes into an "elevator" that is actually a kidnap truck.
If it were just the setup kidnappings that were so poorly scripted, maybe the rest could be watchable. I might even be able to suspend disbelief in the frequent scenes of the buddies watching on video monitors and pretending the tapes they are watching are live footage.
But sadly the survival scenes seem just as scripted and phony.
How are the soldiers going through days of international travel without knowing where they are? Oh right, they're not, it's play acting.
How do the soldiers know exactly what their destination is? Oh right, they do know because it's all pre-scripted.
What's really astounding is that if you're going to cheat and fake everything, that you couldn't achieve a better end result.
The script writers even put a fake "twist" into each episode. It's some added challenge or yawningly contrived speed bump. One time they puncture the guy's raft, luckily they had an underwater film rig to capture this "spontaneous" event. Another time they hire a group of fake tribals to "attack" the player. After days of starving, he approaches a completely benign village, yet somehow "senses" the danger and stymies their trap by throwing rocks at the village roof.
And yet even without playing by any rules, the resulting episodes are a mess. Time continuity is broken with soldiers making reference to events in other episodes that shouldn't have happened yet. Confessional shots will show a player in one comment with a wind-burnt face and the next he's all smooth.
Over-production and cheats are exposed. One example is a guy starting a fire with a (supposedly) stolen flare gun. He's been dropped in the Gulf with nothing, yet somehow he has insurance company approved safety glasses while using the gun.
Another is a guy who supposedly kept a fire lighter up his nose for several days, without it affecting his speech or breathing in any way. The same guy has been given a prop shield that just happens to contain the exact items any insurance or safety person would demand the actors have for the given circumstances.
Laughably bogus biometric charts are frequently shown. Since when does internal body temperature or heart rate have the same chart as a penny stock?
It's too bad, because this show could have been better without all the cheating and lying.
Lay it out as a "mission" that the buddy soldiers have set up for the player. Tell him his mission, and film it. Do away with all the fake kidnapping and fake drama. Would there be anything wrong with saying: "OK sport we're dropping you in the Gulf of Mexico and you have to get to the rendezvous point 8 miles East." Instead the blatantly dishonest setups just disrespect both the viewer and the player.
Surviving on the land for 100 hours is impressive enough, why diminish it with amateur production and fakery? It's an insult to real Navy Seals, Army Scouts, and Green Berets.