Discovery's Man Vs. Bear Is Every Reality Show Ever... But With Bears - And those "godless killing machines" are what make this otherwise trope-filled reality show fun to watch.

[Ubiquitous]

When I heard that Discovery was airing a show titled Man Vs. Bear, my first
thought was of a new kind of legal drama, something involving animal rights -
salmon fishing disputes, maybe?

Nope. As the booming announcerly voice of Brandon Tierney informs us in the
opener, "For the first time in _history_, humans will enter the grizzlies'
_own_ turf! To take them on in a competition unlike _anything_ that's _ever_
been seen before!"

Turns out Man Vs. Bear is a reality-competition show, one that is exactly
like every other reality-competition show and yet, weirdly, unlike _anything_
that's _ever_ been seen before. because bears. Real live bears, the very same
"godless killing machines" that once haunted fake Stephen Colbert's dreams.
Three massive grizzlies pitted against 21 of the strongest, toughest Ninja
Warrior castoffs Discovery could find, in a fight to the death. And by "fight
to the death" I mean being eliminated from the show and having Brandon
Tierney sternly ask you to "please leave the mountain."

There are so many disclaimers, direct and implicit, in Man Vs. Bear that if
it were a pharmaceutical ad it would need to be five minutes long. And yet, I
have to say I enjoyed the hell out of it. As a competition it's pretty lame.
But as a specific kind of reality subgenre - the one where humans of mediocre
talent are goaded by TV producers into taking on a challenge way above their
heads and failing spectacularly - Man Vs. Bear is more than. well, bearable.

"In the wild, only one species claims unchallenged dominance . the grizzly
bear!" we hear Brandon Tierney intone. I'd fact-check that statement with
Animal Planet if it weren't irrelevant for the purposes of this show. For as
we learn from an opening graphic, the grizzlies on Man Vs. Bear were rescued
as cubs, have spent their lives being pampered by humans in a Utah sanctuary,
and "could not survive if released in the wild."

The bears - 1400-pound Bart, his sister Honey Bump, "and their friend Tank" -
were taken in by Bob and Lynne Seus, a conservationist duo who have dedicated
their lives to raising awareness of endangered wildlife in America, largely
by getting rescued animals on camera. The Seuses were responsible for
introducing millions of moviegoers to an Alaskan brown bear named Bart, who
had dozens of movie and TV appearances, notably 1987's The Bear, before his
passing in 2000.

Technically the Bart in Man Vs. Bear is Bart 2 (though I'm not telling him
that to his face). If anything, he's had even more screen time than the
original Bart. He and his sister had their childhoods chronicled on TV and
he's had many dramatic roles, including a storied Game of Thrones episode and
a horror film about a killer grizzly on the loose. If you're trying to
protect a species under threat, playing a godless killing machine doesn't
seem like the best career move. But what do I know? Did I think up Man Vs.
Bear??

Anyway, the hapless humans serving as the bears' ringers for this week's
premiere include a 63-year-old bodybuilder and a millennial mom who brags of
having "lost 100 pounds, twice." And here is how they lose:

Challenge 1: "King of the Mountain," aka the dunk tank. Bart's job is to take
a rope in his mouth and pull the human off a platform into a pond. The
human's job is to not look like a rag doll being thrown off a diving board. I
think we all know how this turns out. So, moving on.

Challenge 2: "Brute Force," aka Bart's circus trick. While the humans try
rolling a barrel five times their weight, Bart rolls one that's less than
twice his, and looks almost bored doing it.

Challenge 3: "Apex Predator," aka the bear version of a hot dog-eating
contest, only the humans eat crickets instead of hot dogs and Tank is Joey
Chestnut.

Challenge 4 is a race that really isn't a race. The humans have 37 seconds to
run an obstacle course, climb a tree, and ring the bell. Why 37 seconds?
Because that's the amount of time it would take for Honey Bump, the fleetest
of the three bears, to make up a 100-yard gap on a fleeing human. This is the
strangest challenge. Honey Bump doesn't even take part in it - she's just in
the shot while we watch our human scurrying through the course. Also, why
would you make a game out of the one thing you're not supposed to do when you
get on the wrong side of a grizzly? Best not to overthink it. Which brings us
to.

Challenge 5, "Human Prey," aka bear handball. The human stands inside a metal
cage ball poised on the edge of a pit. Their job, as in the dunk-tank
challenge, is to forestall the inevitable for as many microseconds as
possible - in this case, getting rolled into the pit by a creature seven
times their size.

Ira, a 43-year-old MMA enthusiast, was all bluster going into the metal ball
- "Now we're comin' into my territory, the steel cage!" - and lasted two
swats. "Busted my mouth," Ira says afterward, looking dazed. "I was
intimidated, and that doesn't happen." That's because it's a grizzly, sir.
You're supposed to be intimidated, even if the bear in question is more
familiar with chowing down at the catering table than the picnic table.

Man Vs. Bear is chock-full of reality-TV tropes, whether they belong there or
not. My favorite is when Tierney informs the show's runner-up that it's time
to "please leave the mountain," and then not 30 seconds later he turns to the
winner and says, "You may leave the mountain." Why not just tell us you're
all sharing an Uber? Viewers who don't follow stunt shows like this may be
disappointed to learn that they don't live up to the hype, but really, that's
part of the entertainment.

And like all winning reality formulas, Man Vs. Bear has that one added
ingredient that gives the whole thing a slightly different, and in this case
irresistible, flavor. When you're trying to win the ultimate competition
known as the Nielsen ratings, that's usually enough. As my former newspaper
boss told us when layoffs started, "You don't have to outrun the bear. You
just have to outrun the guy next to you."

https://youtu.be/6OOcQb005-c

--
Watching Democrats come up with schemes to "catch Trump" is like
watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Road Runner.