Pretty Good

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

They obviously spent a lot of money on good cameras and post production. If that is praise it ends there. They forgot to make this a show. Nothing about it is entertaining. If it is a reality show, there is zero social game. The competitions are tying sticks together in high grass. All of what makes a reality show a show is missing from this series. Having one guy choose who goes home at the end of the show and ultimately who wins is perhaps the biggest mistake. I get it, Bear is some kind of survival guru icon. So what? Him deciding who goes deletes any element of social game this might of had. They need to either just cancel this series or take it back to the drawing board for the next season. A TV series ultimately must be a show. Nobody cares if 10 people have to cross a creek. Only some hard core survival show enthusiasts care enough about what Bear thinks to watch a network series based entirely on his opinions disguised as a reality show.

So, from my perspective - I'm not a Bear Grylls fan. I'm not particularly into survival shows. I can be entertained by them, but I'm not a survival expert or anything. But I really, really enjoyed this show. Because it's reality TV without the "reality" TV. There's no voting, no backbiting, no idiots blathering on and on to camera, no "alliances", no endless footage of nothing happening, no pointless melodrama - all that is stripped out and replaced with a competition. A competition with real stakes, that required real effort and focus (not necessarily skill - will get back to that). And elimination is purely determined by judgment - on the teams' individual contributions that day. No voting. No stupid bickering. Just people who are forced to work their hardest at something very unfamiliar. And because it's a real competition - the exact opposite of every other reality show happens. Instead of devolving into idiots bickering and arguing over nothing, the people come together. Because they're forced to work together. Because they need each other - they need teamwork to succeed. THAT never happens on reality shows. In Get Out Alive, there is none of that dumb high school melodrama ("OMG u betrayed me, bitch"). But there IS real drama - the pain, tears, and struggle of real people in the face of real challenges, to pull through. That's what reality TV is supposed to be - a sincere look at the pure core of humanity. And "Get Out Alive", in its best moments, succeeded at reaching that goal.But there is a criticism - a quasi-criticism. And other people have brought it up. That it's not truly a survival show - that it doesn't test their skills, their physical ability. And that is a valid point - it's not really about survival. They're not truly put into life-death situations and tested to reveal their life-death survival abilities. But I don't think that was ever the point. The contestants chosen for the show were not picked for their survival skills or physical ability - they were old, young, strong, weak,. They're just normal people - regular everybodies selected specifically because they weren't the strongest and the most expert. And so the challenges weren't truly the type of tests you'd expect for experienced wilderness survivors. So, it's not really a survival show - it's a survival competition. It's Survivor. But without the reality bitchiness. If you don't like reality TV, this is the reality show for you.

What can I say? This show is simply awful. There isn't much survival education in this program. It is simply about childish games where if you win you get to pig out in the feast pit or if you are hungry you have to eat worms and eyeballs. There is also a massive amount of product placement in this show, which I find tiresome.For me the emphasis on "winning" in this show is totally misguided. If the show is was surviving people should be judged on the skills shown after they have been taught basic bush craft skills. For example, Bear could have taught the teams how to cross rivers safely, how to treat someone with the early signs of hypothermia or how to use a map and compass.Given the increasing number of tourists who come to New Zealand each year and get themselves into trouble this is the responsible thing to do. Many of incidents in the New Zealand wilderness are due to mistakes people make.

While I enjoy watching Bear, this show has too much of the contestants trying to win money and not enough Bear. I hope he has not canceled his other show in favor of this show. It appears that the producers may have picked some contestants that were not up to the challenge. I got a bigger kick of seeing Bear solo. It seems like he is cast a an authority figure who is charged wit fussing at the contestants. I found this less entertaining than the other show. I think it would have been more fun to watch people who are already in great shape attempt to keep up with Bear. For example it would have been fun to watch "fish out of water" people like firemen, personal trainers, and other who are already in excellent shape.