Anyone else watching this?
I confess, I’m a sucker for all things cryptozoological, especially sasquatch. Hell, I’ve got a sasquatch-as-private-eye novel in with an editor right now. So I couldn’t resist.
Wow. Best hour of comedy on television. Four BFRO members go tromping off into the woods to find Bigfoot. Bigfoot, on the other hand, does not want to be found, especially not by these guys.
Wait.
Sasquatch is a private eye in your novel? Or a private eye finds himself trying to apply the tricks of his trade towards finding a sasquatch. Because the latter sounds like it’d be a fun read, but the former sounds like Harry & The Hendersons turned up to 11.
Yeah I’m watching it as well. I’m endlessly fascinated with Bigfoot and I seem bent on absorbing all the info I can about the phenomenon. Mostly because when I was 8 I believed at the time I saw one. I hate myself every time I watch a new Bigfoot show. I keep hoping that some day a show on Bigfoot will be made with a skeptical point of view but every time I’m disappointed. There seems to be more bigfoot hunter shows these days. As if the phenomenon is catching a second wind.
The problem I have with all these shows that have the viewer follow people into the woods looking for Bigfoot is nothing really happens. It can’t really so they end up creating fake tension. They build up to nothing or if something happens they can’t identify in 20 seconds… it MUST BE BIGFOOT!
Once I got my car stuck on a snowy logging road for a night. The only thing that scared me was the chance of seeing a bigfoot. Not that I thought one would hurt me. It was an existential fear of what a bigfoot’s existence would do to my world view.
There’s quite a bit of controversy over the show, which includes mis-used (or re-used) footage, fake sounds when real ones were reportedly heard (but not recorded), production shenanigans, and all kinds of buffoonery (mostly from Matt Moneymaker, the so-called “leader”). It’s all a giant mess where quite a few people are pointing their fingers at each other, and where Discovery/Animal Planet looks extremely bad (wow this sounds really familiar).
The sheer number of crazy assumptions that pass on as solid truths is simply incredible. Bigfeet typically call out to one another in a variety of screeching howls which Matt says “frequently” leads to them approaching the other. It’s “well known” that Bigfeet (or “squatches” as they bastardize the Indian term) knock on trees several times to announce themselves or talk to one another or… something. Bigfeet like peanut butter. Bigfeet all act exactly the same despite the fact they may be in wildly different environments spanning from the jungles of Florida to the Pacific Northwest. Bigfeet should appear as all one solid color in thermal imaging or when seen visually (which seems to be a recurring argument in one way or another every episode, but for different reasons). Encounters with Bigfoot happen more often when it rain/snows because they can sneak around better, which makes sense, but claiming that Bigfoot calls carry better is ridiculous since precipitation, especially snow, tends to deaden sound, not let it carry. Matt is a freakin’ moron of epic proportions, proclaiming extensive field knowledge overrules everything else, making various “scientific discoveries” about Bigfoot no one else knew, and in one classic instance goes running after what could have been a Bigfoot on a ridge (in a highly mis-edited sequence) at night in the dark. Yeah. Great idea.
The team is buoyed by a voice of reason, a skeptical scientist named Renae, who always has some great points. Matt berates her in the previously mentioned episode, and the actual Bigfooters (or BFRO members) always seem to mold a new understanding of evidence to fit their theories. At one point they re-create a video showing a Bigfoot crawling up to a stump to steal a candy bar (or whatever) that was made by someone the BFRO members knew well and were sure he wouldn’t fake the footage. Renae correctly points out that the person who represented the Bigfoot in the footage obviously had the same size and shape as the footage, meaning it was about 6 foot tall or so, way too small for a bigfoot. “That means it’s probably a juvenile,” says one team guy (Cliff). Both Bobo (the guy imitating Bigfoot) and the supposed Bigfoot in the previous footage both appear as one solid color, so the thermal imaging is apparently not calibrated correctly for the temperature. As Renae doubts the thing is a Bigfoot, the others basically overrule her stating that the photographer is impeccable. That’s besides the point–the footage could easily be a hoax and the photographer would have no idea.
The best part about them going to these places and gathering evidence is that they go there seemingly for a few days, find great “evidence” (the last one in Oregon with the Bigfoot calls is probably the best they could come up with), then leave. Wouldn’t you want to stay for like weeks or something? I mean, you had “CLEAR EVIDENCE” that Bigfoot was there, why not stay and study it? Why go to Bumfuck, Georgia when you know you have something solid?
Matt is also claiming that despite their huge issues with the production team that they were the #1 rated show on Animal Planet and that they were just about to head back to Oregon to start filming a second season. This is despite the fact that the show is nowhere near #1 (the ratings are terrible) and AP won’t confirm anything about a second season.
— Alan
I’ve never understood the whole Bigfoot myth thing at all, and its persistence and popularity astound me.
Because Bigfoot is cool.
— Alan
Because it’s about making episodic TV, not finding (or debunking Bigfoot).
Bigfoot? Pfft. American cryptozoology is for lightweights. As per this documentary, Norwegian cryptozoologists are the real thing.
-Tom
Bigfoot documentaries begin and end with Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie.
Equal parts horrifying and heartbreaking. Available on Netflix Instant, but don’t expect the feelgood movie of the year.
Im right with you, love me some Bigfoot! And your right they cant go out and film and have nothing happen.
For one im soo happy that this is still around, I think we need myths and crazy shit, because real life can just be so damn depressing.
The book’s more Hammett-meets-Alien-Nation-with-Sasquatches. And I confess to never even having heard of that comic.
Not surprising. Nobody having heard of it is probably why it’s been reduced to recurring minis and isn’t an ongoing title. For what it’s worth, the comic grates on my very last nerve, as it’s written in such a way that it leads me to believe that the authors believe in the Loch Ness Monster, so your book is probably better.
And this is why I watch it for the comedy value, regardless of my personal take on sasquatchery. Whether it’s Bobo falling off the porch while trying to track a far-off blob through NVG, or making fun of Cliff’s bad imitation Bigfoot calls (“Did he just go through puberty?” “I practice them. In the shower.”) or watching Moneymaker trying - and failing - to hustle through the woods while the rest of the team is calling him an idiot, to every single forest noise being ascribed to sasquatches in some sort of sasquatch-is-my-imaginary-childhood-friend-so-I-know-him-better-than-you-do twisted accretionist logic, it’s hysterical.
Thanks :-) I certainly hope so…
That reminds me of the Animal Planet pet psychic show that I think never got past the pilot. Basically, the “psychic” was so incompetent, it was completely obvious that she was just doing cold reads (poorly) on the people she was psychic-ing.
The only possible explanation I had for it was that it must’ve been conceived as a “secrets of magic” kind of show where they demonstrate different techniques every week to inform the audience about how its done. Each week would layer progressively more complex or sophisticated techniques, until the audience was really well informed and savvy about seeing through that bullshit.
That was my theory anyways.
I had Grover Krantz (low post count, can’t to a wiki link to him) as my Anthropology 101 professor when I went to Washington State and will always have a soft spot in my heart for Big Foot. Other professors would occasionally make derisive comments about the subject but his class was really popular. You could really tell when he went off on his Big Foot rant that he sincerely believed in his search.
I’ve got one of Krantz’s books on my shelf. Dermal ridges ftw!
I watched one episode of this, and that was enough. I knew going in it was most likely going to annoy me, I was just hoping it would be minimal, and that there would be at least some attempt at giving a real skeptical voice to things.
Instead I got all the worst features of Ghost Hunters cranked to 11. It’s pseudo-scientific bullshit, and it pisses me off that AP passes it off as anything other than a farcical, fictional piss-take on this very kind of show. I’d probably love it if it were presented as that, but it’s not; it’s straight-faced, and, worse, as noted above, it’s actively hostile to the minimal skeptical voice it has.
I hate, hate, hate that shit like this is given any kind of credibility. There’s enough fascinating weirdness in the world that we can sincerely examine, we don’t need to perpetuate hokum and further degrade public understanding of science and reason.
Fah! Fah, I say!
And at that I’ll stop, lest this become a rage thread.