If you want to prove your strength and puff your chest out and be the manliest man that ever manned, it’s not enough simply to beat another human.

Nay, mere mortals, you must now defeat a bear as part of a reality TV show called Man vs Bear.

Look, we’ve already seen it all, so what’s another truly bizarre show in amongst the rest?

The Guardian asks if Man vs Bear is the weirdest TV show of the year, and they’re far from alone in that thinking.

Before we go to the trailer, let’s enjoy the ridicule heaped on the show and those who choose to compete on it:

In round two of Man vs Bear, the men try to push a 2,000lb barrel across a patch of land faster than a bear can. They all fail, because the bear is eight and a half feet tall, and also a bear. In round three they have to eat a giant mound of bear food faster than a bear can. Again, they all fail because the bear is a bear, and it has both the jaw size and dental structure to accommodate the food, and it weighs between six to 10 times more than the men, and the men are not bears…

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show as stupid as Man vs Bear. And that’s saying something because, for a while back there, shows really tried to be stupid….Before streaming came along and provided everyone with a smorgasbord of prestige drama, this is the sort of dumb crud that people actually watched…

So in a way, it’s good that someone has made Man vs Bear. It’s a beautiful throwback. It’s heartening that, in this fractured media landscape, there is still room for an aggressively gormless television programme about a bunch of absolute idiots who have the sheer deluded balls to assume that they would ever be able to beat a bear at anything at all.

Alright, let’s do this thing. Show me a trailer complete with dramatic music, a husky voiceover, and snarling bears:

All those boxes ticked.

You may have figured out that the bears aren’t plucked from the wild. Instead, according to The Blast, all three featured in the show are owned by Doug and Lynne Seus of Wasatch Rock Mountain Wildlife in Herber City, Utah:

Bart was orphaned at 5 months old in the Alaskan wild when a poacher shot his mother. He was rescued by wildlife officials after a three-day search. He was named Bart after the famous Bart the Bear, who was also owned by the Seus’…

Honey Bump is also 19 years old and is the sister of Bart. She was rescued after their mother was shot by a poacher. The Seus’ named her Honey Bump because she apparently ran everywhere and bumped into just about everything…

The eldest bear on the mountain is Tank, a 24-year-old Grizzly who stands 7 ft tall and weighs over 850 lbs. He was adopted at six weeks old by a breeder from Wisconsin.

Great, but I’m more intrigued by what kind of human goes on a show like this.

Enter 64-year-old Steve Taylor, who definitely isn’t trying to gain more followers on Instagram so he can score free ‘protes and oats’:

Just your average, well-adjusted bloke.

By the way, and before you ask – yes, PETA has already condemned the show as a “sickening stunt” that trades in “exploitation”.

To finish, back to the Guardian’s piss-take of how we got to this point:

It’s hard to see what the point of Man vs Bear is, having watched the first episode. Is it that we should fear bears? Because that seems sort of redundant, given how inherently petrifying bears are. Is it that man will never be able to eat a pile of dead insects faster than a bear? Because, if it is, who does that information even serve?

…In the final round of Man vs Bear the men get inside a big metal ball and try and stop a bear from pushing it into a ditch. They always fail, because they are normal-sized men and the bear is literally a bear. Donald Trump will be re-elected president next year.

Damn – that’s the most terrifying bit of all.

Man vs Bear airs on the Discovery Channel in the US from tomorrow.

[sources:guardian&theblast]