Mermaids: The Body Found

I stumbled upon this when they re-ran it on the Discovery Channel. It looked fishy (no pun intended) from the beginning, but, since this was the Discovery Channel, I thought that it was a reenactment of actual statements. Wrong. It was very easy to tell that the "scientists" were actors. They were trying too hard to look "candid" and genuine. So that struck me right off the bat. Then we were treated to a "video" of a teenager stumbling across the body of an alleged mermaid. Again, very obvious that it's fake with blatant, poor CGI.

I have no problem with any of this. It's a free country and there are people who believe this stuff. However, I do have a problem with this kind of stuff being shown on the Discovery Channel. The Discovery Channel has (or had) a reputation of having legitimate scientific programing. They've had plenty of ACTUAL documentaries in similar style to this and to put this program on the channel, regardless of how many times they alluded to how it was fake, is completely inappropriate. I expect this kind of stuff on the SyFy Channel, where it would be appropriate, not on a channel like Discovery. I believe this program, more than any other in recent times, speaks to the poor state of U.S. television.

This show is the reason I quit watching Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. After the initial airing and subsequent negative feedback, I thought they had learned their lesson. I just saw that they are re- broadcasting this pathetic show. The very nature of both networks has been completely compromised by this "found footage" rip off. Every development executive involved in this project should have been fired immediately. Now I see they are actually re-broadcasting this garbage. Thank goodness for Natgeo and PBS. I really love nature television but I have lost faith in the credibility of the information presented on Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.

I dont know why everyone is so upset by this, mermaids do not exist so obviously this is not a documentary. Animal planet did another mockumentary on the Yeti and the Dyatlov pass incident. This one got a lot of hate speech also but if you watch these with an open mind and realize that they are actually for entertainment purposes you can actually enjoy it. If they can do documentaries on real animals, why cant they documentaries on mystical ones? Ask yourself, do you hate all fictional movies, books and songs because they are based on an unreality? no, so what good reason is there to hate this?

The mocks use factual mystery to create this fiction, that is what makes it better. The bloop sound for example. The acting is good and I like it how the interviews are done. Animal planet clearly has enough money to go beyond the study of animals and I think its a fine thing that they do things like this. Im impressed that Animal Planet are actively willing to destroy their own market by taking a less serious root but in doing so they possibly might be creating a new one? I hope they make more like this, I think one on the Lochness would be a great show.

"Fun Fact: It's always fun when a network with a reputation for fact based programming decides to present a non-factual program with no warning!"

Im just a simple computer guy I love history and mythical stories. This mermaid documentary caught my attention I saw those closed websites you see on all the articles a guy with my background I can probable research a website a little more then the average person all the websites shows as shutdown by homeland security are in fact owned by the discovery channel. Now answer me why would Dr Paul Robertson's personal website be owned by the Discovery channel? That piece of evidence alone shows me one financial reason to create a back story for the show. While entertaining, I would love to entertain the ideal of real life mermaids. However this particular show to me shows a lot of work to make. What could be a true story has a lot of hidden un-truees. Have fun! You never know what's on TV I am a found believer do your own research I don't believe everything I see or read.

But I enjoyed this documentary so much, I don't even know why. I'm going to watch it again for sure.