Ah, yes. What else can be said about Bear Grylls, Discovery Channel’s intrepid adventurer and host of Man Vs. Wild? Besides having a cool name, Bear has been on a mission to bring celebrities along with him for his dangerous outings into extreme environments. As much as we applaud this move — for there’s nothing like an arid desert or arctic wasteland to whip an over-pampered Zac Efron or Paris Hilton into shape — the trend seems to be reaching the limits of even Grylls’ imagination. Isn’t there already a popular reality show called Get Me Out of Here, I’m a Celebrity? Well, with Grylls, you know the experience is going to be more Grizzly Adams than Guest Relations.
So this season’s Man Vs. Wild (airing Monday, Aug 3, 9 p.m. on Discovery Channel) starts with Bear dragging along Will Ferrell to Sweden’s frozen far north for two days of survival skills. Hey, if Ferrell can survive bombs like Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby and Bewitched, he can probably survive drinking his own urine in the company of Bear Grylls.
The two arrive in a helicopter where they descend to the Swedish wilderness, rappelling down a rope ladder. Sounds okay, until Ferrell’s legs get tangled in the platform of the chopper and he’s practically dangling from 50 feet above the ground, in danger when the copter blade’s downdraft threatens to dislodge him. He gamely shouts “Mommy!” for the camera. This might have been the shortest Man Vs. Wild episode on record, but Grylls manages to free the comic actor’s legs from the snarl. “I’m just glad I didn’t vomit,” quips Ferrell when he reaches safe ground. “Because that would have been embarrassing, to be screaming and vomiting at the same time.”
It gets better. The two descend ragged 100-foot ice cliffs, learn to make snowshoes from birch saplings in order to wade through thigh-high snow drifts (Ferrell rejects one resilient branch saying “That one’s too bendy and livey”), build rodent traps and start their own campfires. “When do we start drinking our own urine?” Ferrell keeps asking. “Just give me a sign.” It’s actually refreshing to see that Ferrell’s real-life personality is not very different from his onscreen shtick: even though he’s clearly freezing his cojones off in the Swedish outdoors, he keeps making with the jokes. Maybe it’s a survival reflex.
Grylls, for whom two days in the wild is a cakewalk, keeps dispensing facts in the voiceover of the episode: “In sub-zero conditions, the body burns 6,000 calories a day, twice as much as under normal temperatures….” (Too bad Ferrell eats their emergency-ration Twinkies back at base camp.) His intro of Ferrell is a little Hemingway-esque, but what can you expect from an ex-British Special Forces commando? “Ferrell is someone whose idea of a mountain normally has a ‘Hollywood’ sign on it… He’s 200 pounds of movie muscle. But there’s no stunt man here to take his place…”
In one of the more amusing bits of this Man Vs. Wild special, the unlikely duo “happen upon” a freshly killed reindeer. Of course, Grylls quickly sizes up what parts of it are still edible: “The brains, the eyeballs, the tongue…” Suffice to say, when they drag the head and a couple legs back to camp and cook them over a campfire, it’s probably the only chance you’ll ever get to see Will Ferrell eating roasted reindeer eyeball. Worth a watch just for that.
Now, there’s been some controversy over whether parts of Man Vs. Wild are actually set up, and whether the crew and star are sometimes carried off to safety if conditions get a little too extreme. (For the record, there’s a disclaimer at the start of the program, saying what’s what.) True too, Grylls can be a bit obnoxious at times. He seems to take the “survival” thing just a little bit too seriously. In a way he’s like the character Gareth from Britain’s The Office: never going three minutes without mentioning his stint in the army. But he has donated a sizable amount to charities through these adventure specials, and if he can save one Hollywood star from perishing on a camping trip, who’s to say he hasn’t contributed his share to humanity? He even displays a rare sense of humor by the end of the 48-hour adventure, in which the two have had to share a tent at close quarters: “I think the low point for me was having Will mistake me for his wife in the middle of the night.”
Ferrell has his own deadpan take on his companion: “His breath smells like animal poop.”
And do they finally get to drink their own urine? Tune in to Man Vs. Wild: The Will Ferrell Special to find out.
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Men vs. Wild: Will Ferrell Special premieres Monday, Aug. 3, 9 pm on Discovery Channel and encores Tuesday, Aug. 4 at 12 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 8 at 6 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 9 at 10 a.m.