Discovery has yet another survival show, this time titled Man, Woman, Wild that premiered last week. I just caught both episodes and, like every other survival show they have, is pretty entertaining but not exactly chock full of really useful info. The show features a married couple, Mykel and Ruth Hawke.

It took me about 15 minutes to get over Mykel Hawke's (real name) voice, which sounds like it should be voicing over an action movie's trailer. His constantly furrowed brow matches his voice quite well. He does seems to know his stuff, has a respectable background, and is not a complete drama queen like Monsieur Grylls. The show paints his wife as clueless, but her background indicates that she has been in some pretty crappy places in her life as a journalist, so she is no slouch either.

I have seen several people on the Intarwebs comment that the wife cries too much and is overacting. My response to that is that those guys are obviously not married. As a married man, I can 100% say that my wife would negatively react to my wanting to slaughter a cute puttering turtle, having animals infiltrate our shelter in the pitch black night, hacking the leg off of a freshly killed wildebeest while a lion is prowling about, seeing her husband wrestle a boa constrictor, etc. Most dudes I know would cry just as fast. She is not a survival expert, so I will have to throw some respect her way for doing all of that in the first place, even if there is a camera and support crew out there with them. After watching the behind the scenes episode for Man vs Wild, the camera crew is not any better off than the people on camera.

I will keep on watching, even if just for the sheer entertainment value. I will say that if you decided to have a drinking game based on how many times Mykel says "baby," you would be passed out drunk in about 10 seconds.

I also watched both episodes this weekend and I'll have to say, my wife actually watched them with me. I think it's a pretty good portrayal of what life in the wild would be like with my wife. There has been quite a bit of stink raised of mykel Hawke being a sort of pariah of the special forces but as you said his skill set is fairly solid.

I did read an old thread on the "quiet professional" forum ( green berets now called special forces name themselves quiet professionals) where Mr. Hawke said that's actually a pseudonym or screen name and is not his birth name. You can find the whole mess linked from the bladeforums thread on this topic. All in all I'd say it's a lot better family entertainment than some of the other offerings out there.

David

I haven't heard about any of the drama. Do you have any links?

I've started DVRing this and the other show. I haven't watched the other one yet, but I saw two eps of this. I liked it. I agree the guy's skills seem solid. I like when he says, "People know we're out here, so we're going to stay put and let them find us." It's about frickin' time somebody said that on one of these shows.

It's an interesting premise setting up with his wife. It's nice to see that she's game to learn this stuff and isn't just a whimpering pile of nerves.

Also, my wife agrees with me that there's something really cute about her when the IR light is reflecting in her eyes during the night shots.

I found that thread and read through most of it. He does come off as kind of a douche, but I'm not a quiet professional, so I am not exactly offended by his trying to profit from his experience. More power to him. I don't know how much real combat he saw, but I'm all for guys like that making money in the private sector after serving their country.

At times, he ends up sounding over dramatic.

All in all, though, it's been an interesting watch. I like what they did with the Mexico ep, because I think that really shows the kinds of danger you would be in if you were out there on your own.

Yeah, the Mexico ep looked miserable. I do have to give her credit for toughing it out, even after they had to call in a medic.

I've only seen one episode of this... the one where they maybe were in... I have no idea, they had a raft, she went out and caught some sort of sea food for food, and they built a sea weed still... She got pissed with him for saying she had no mastery of physics (when really, the things he was telling her to do to reinforce their raft shelter made no sense...) when she wasn't doing what he wanted her to do with their shelter.

And yeah, I was getting vaguely irritated with her... But after a while, despite her whole clueless act, it became really obvious that she wasn't that clueless (she was finding the food, had researched what things looked like, etc...), knew how to make bowls or whatever out of seaweed, etc... The guy's fake southern accent thing was driving me crazy... and his shelter building seemed kinda pathetic.

Special Ops guys do not need shelter. They just scare away bad weather.

I saw a couple of more episodes last night. I don't think I can stand either of them. Wtf is with the redneck southern accent with an australian accent that guy does? And why is he such a retard? Yeah, she may not know anything - but she's pretty good at rooting around and finding food and lots of her ideas are a hell of a lot more practical than his.

I watched the stupid colorado river rafting episode and the cook island one.

And I'm not sure why they're both whining constantly about being hungry and cold.

And luckily when they went rafting, they just happened to take steel wool and a 9 volt battery to start fires with. Who the hell takes steel wool rafting with them? Or uses 9 volt batteries anymore?

I take steel wool to scour my dutch oven that goes backpacking with me. 9V batteries are in my pack with the smoke alarm. You know, just in case the fire gets out of control.

There actually are some flashlights that take 9V batteries, but they are so niche and rare that no one ever has any on them. Steel wool I have seen people take when I was in the scouts.

The old fisherman who fed us coho salmon on one of the islands had a 50 year old cast iron frying pan... He was very proud he'd never ever washed it - he just boiled some water in it after cooking fish and wiped it out.

The standard way to clean cast iron pans is just to scour them, steel wool, sand, kosher salt, whatever and go. Unfortunately I can't get all the members of my household on the same page with that

Ugh, do they clean them with soap? That completely ruins a cast iron pan.

I just use my hand to wipe the stuff off when it is still warm and then wipe it down with oil to keep it from rusting.