In the history of civilization, no man has ever been able to wrap a urine-soaked shirt around his face, roll around in freezing snow naked and drink elephant feces fluid without being appointed the village idiot. That is, until a television show began airing Friday nights on the Discovery Channel.

Man vs. Wild host Bear Grylls is a man’s man. If you’re an animal, he’s an animal’s man. At least until he rips off your head and eats you raw. With a first name like Bear, you know he means business.

Bear is a bona fide adventurer who has served in the British army. Trained as a survival expert, the superhuman he-man has climbed Mount Everest, crossed the icy North Atlantic in an open boat, and has even hosted a dinner party while suspended under a hot air balloon 24,500 feet above ground. This was all after breaking his back in three places in a parachuting accident.

In Man vs. Wild, Bear risks his life by stranding himself in the dangerous wilderness, and trying to find his way back into civilization. In the past two seasons, Bear has been to the deserted islands of the Pacific, Mount Kilauea in Hawaii, the African Savanna, and many other locations.

When faced with starvation, he has dined on everything from BBQ snakes to pig eyeball to half-eaten zebra carcass, served with fresh urine.

At times it seems bleak, but where us mere mortals would fail, Bear rips through the rough terrain and wildlife to triumphantly return home to his wife and two children, one of which is named Marmaduke.

Bear has even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, an experience that he says ranks “quite high on the scary list!” As Oprah giggled at the video clip showing Bear trying to generate heat by padding snow on his naked body, it was clear: Bear Grylls had tickled our fancy and enchanted our hearts.

Then he ripped our hearts out, tore them into tiny pieces, barbecued them over a fire pit, and then urinated on them with a scandal that rocked basic cable television.

In July, a consultant for the show told the Times of London that Man vs. Wild wasn’t as wild as we thought. The insider revealed that Bear allegedly slept in a lodge equipped with television, hot tubs, and the Internet on at least one occasion, when he was supposed to be roughing it in the mountains.

In other episodes, Bear was aided in building a raft, used a flotation device when riding down a river, a scene with wild horses was choreographed with tamed horses, and molten lava was simulated with special effects. Ironically, a scene where a bear attacks Bear’s camp was allegedly shot with a man in a bear suit.

I, along with millions of other viewers, had put my faith in Bear. We were there for every moment. When Bear drank those elephant feces and ignored any possible fecal-oral transmission of tapeworm, we cheered the triumph of the human spirit. In essence, we were all drinking elephant feces. It was real. Or at least we thought it was.

Was I incensed when I found out that it might as well have been Winnie the Pooh on Man vs. Wild?

Of course not, that would be silly. Man vs. Wild was a triumph in ratings because of the sheer “luck” in which Bear ran into seemingly threatening wildlife and terrain, only to conquer both with his quick thinking and charm.

I suggest that when the show returns to the Discovery Channel this September, the season premiere drop Bear into a confined space with all of his faithful viewers. There would be no commercials, and something tells me that this time, Wild would win.

As the season two commercial says, “Does Bear Grylls really need to do these things? Probably not.”

But you might.