Hungry Ojos said:
Can someone who has seen all of this post the bullet points of what happened and how it all turned out? Or is it too soon for a spoiler post?
I've seen all four episodes that have aired. I think there are going to be six episodes total.
Essentially this is a 5,000-mile expedition across South America that was "organized" by a rich, former IDF special forces guy, Mickey Grosman, who wanted some attention and did it under the guise of raising money for cancer. He convinced a number of people to join him along the way. He has a team of five native Ecuadoreans and an American videographer. Everyone else joined him along the way for only a portion of the expedition. To say it turned out to be a ****show would be a massive understatement. It's like some sort of twisted bizarro-world basic training reality TV stunt.
Spoilers ahead ...
Mickey Grosman is an authoritarian tyrant who doesn't listen to what anyone else has to say. It's his way or GTFO, even if that means leaving your ass in the middle of the jungle 500 miles from civilization.
There does not appear to have been much very serious logistical planning for the expedition. Grosman frequently disregards the safety of the people with him.
Grosman likes to belittle and criticize people who aren't as magnanimous as he is, especially those who are slower who he feels jeopardize the pace of the expedition. He actually brought a baby pacifier with him and would force the people who were slow or got injured to suck on the pacifier as punishment.
He hires some rando local guy to take them through desert mountains because the guy claims he can get them through in two hours. They immediately get lost in an area where there is zero water and end up staying the night in the desert where the videographer almost dies from being so dehydrated.
He was caught on camera multiple times staging events to make the expedition look more exciting (i.e. a guy falling through a dilapidated foot bridge - where his safety harness is fully visible)
At one point he claims to have been kidnapped by indigenous people and federal police and held until a $20K ransom was paid. Everyone from the expedition who was interview flatly denied that ever happened, and video shows there was never any threat from any of the locals.
As of the fourth episode, his videographer quit the expedition, he kicked multiple people off the expedition, including three or four of the five original Ecuadoreans. He had allegedly promised those five $20-25K each for their services on the expedition, but they were lucky if they received more than $600. Of course he claims he wired them the money using Western Union, but every single one of them deny ever getting paid.
