The Grand Tour

How The Grand Tour’s Swiss Trip Really Went Down

We are now on the cusp of 2018, and ever since Survivor debuted 18 years ago, sending reality TV’s popularity into the stratosphere, we have been smothered by reality shows left and right. Love it or hate it, reality TV is basically here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Having nearly 20 years of reality TV under our belts, I would assume all of us pretty much know that “reality” is more often than not as scripted as any other drama and sitcom on TV. It’s not a great secret. What you see on TV is very rarely how the events really played out in real life.

Apparently, Gizmodo’s latest article makes it seem like they just stumbled upon this information, as the entire piece is simply dripping with cynicism and goes to great lengths to point out how everything on the Swiss trip of Episode 1 was not as it seemed.

I’ll be honest; I’m biased because I am a big fan of the boys, but my dislike of the article’s tone aside, there actually is some pretty interesting information here (if you can get around the article’s blatant hatred of anything TGT related).

For starters, it appears that Park Weggis, the “wellness retreat” that the boys stayed at, is in fact not a wellness retreat. According to TripAdvisor, it actually has a restaurant called the Park Grill that serves stuff like steak and drinks:

Next, we take a look at the actual driving portion of the film. Even though Hammond claimed that going through town would be quicker than taking a ring road, a look at a map of the surrounding area shows that going through town was completely unnecessary and they could have reached the museum just fine without traversing through town. It’s almost as if they purposely went through just to make a more entertaining segment!

The article then goes on to nitpick more of the episode, but here’s my point; it’s an entire article dedicated to nitpicking everything in the episode as being “fake,” but don’t we all know that reality TV is just that? And the author REALLY doesn’t like Jeremy, which is ironic, because don’t they realize that’s just a persona as well? They’re all basically playing a character on the show, so in the midst of pointing out how fake everything is, why suddenly think that Clarkson’s character is the one real thing?

Gizmodo, if you’re going to hold The Grand Tour accountable for presenting itself as a factual show, then you need to hold every other reality show (and probably every competition show) accountable as well. This is not a phenomenon that’s specific to The Grand Tour.

Tony Hsieh

Cars, the Buffalo Bills, video games, comics, sandwiches, jelly beans, and the shooting star press; these are the things that Tony loves (in addition to his family, of course). When he's not spending his time writing tech reviews for theslanted.com, Tony puts his lifetime love of muscle cars to use on his 2015 Mustang GT. Tony's top three favorite cars are the 1973 Mustang Mach 1, Ferrari 458, and Aston Martin DBS.

Related Articles

One Comment

Back to top button