Boston Rob Balks On Bigfoot
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 18th, 2006
I’m on the road again, but don’t forget, as Craig mentions, to watch “Sci Fi Investigates: Bigfoot” tonight, October 18.
The New York Daily News has an overview here.
There’s one fragment they have as a sentence in their review that says it all:
Smirking, most of the time, when he’s not laughing out loud at the absurd earnestness of his less skeptical expedition mates.
I may agree with “Boston Rob” on his choice of a baseball team, but I don’t have to like the under-theme of ridicule in his show, as expressed most often non-verbally by Mr. Marino.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Let’s see, Jane Goodall on one hand and then “Boston Rob”.
The Scifi channel put some effort in this episode!
I haven’t seen a full episode yet – I watched the beginning of the show on voodoo. But is it too early to vote him off the show? As a replacement I suggest Natalie from the Animal X series.
Yeah, Natalie from Animal X…excellent…
Boston Rob…how the hell does HE get a gig like this?
I’m really not getting the Boston Rob hate, the other people on the show are kinda ‘loopy’
It’s healthy to have a good skeptic on any supernaturally tinged show. Nothing is better than turning one into a believer on live tv!
It’s healthy to have a GOOD skeptic. Simply smirking and ridiculing others’ beliefs is not being a skeptic; I call that being a jerk.
I might watch it once just to see for myself, but if there is any of that condescending bull, I’ll watch baseball too.
I have to agree with Kittenz in that, a skeptic will at least have a few words to say, a reason for being skeptic.
Laughing at those working their rear-ends off trying to find these creatures? Most definitely qualifies more as jerk than anything else.
Of course, chances are this show is “Just” for entertainment value, and that few if any involved with it actually care about finding -Anything-. I haven’t personally seen the show, but I’ve read a few things about it, and it just seems like a little something to make some cash, or gain some veiwers. One or the other, perhaps both.
I watched the voodoo episode, and the Rob guy wasn’t too bad. He smirked a little, but he seemed to flow with the spirit of things. I’ll have to see what he does in tonight’s episode before I decide whether or not to like him. Skepticism is wonderful, but open-minded skepticism is the best.
Boston Rob is half a halfwit.
Watching the show presently, I have to say it would be a good show minus Boston Rob. I am all for the skeptics… but please spare me the MORONICS!
The series needs to get better fast, or they have lost one viewer.
As a sidenote… You think SciFi could afford a better costume. Lousy. Just Lousy.
I saw the first episode and thought it was terrible. It looked like the most manufactured “documentary” show I’d ever seen. It was built on marketing strategies, not on being a good paranormal show. None of the people seem to experts in their respective fields. I also like how Rob (who, no doubt, got the job only because he’s a loudmouth who was already known from reality TV)’s “specialty” is that he’s a skeptic. Shouldn’t all of the members be skeptics. It’s not like skepticism is something one must study in school. It just takes a willingness to restrict one’s emotional reactions until they can be processed rationally.
It was like they were just trying to say “look at us, we’re balanced because we have a ‘skeptic’ too”, when the show is obviously built to support the paranormal things they investigate. It comes off really bad when 3/4 members at least sort of buy everything they see.
this SHOW just plan SUCKED!!
investagtion..very little
science … NOPE I did not see it
looked like a bunch of Jr high kids out in the woods playin and getting paid for it..
waste of time..
ROB you put the F in fool.. you just showed how ignorant some people are..or can be
I watched it and it wasn’t too bad. And the team members had varying degrees of skepticism. Debbie was approaching it skeptically and was less skeptical after seeing the dermal ridges on some of the casts. (She’s crime scene tech so she has experience with fingerprints.) It would be better if they focused on the evidence more – like how there are thousands of footprint casts and they form a bell curve distribution by size.
The show was ok. It could have been a lot worse. There were enough semi credible tidbits in there to peak an average couch potato’s curiosity- given the first hand reports and meldrum’s foot casts. I’m glad to have finally seen the memorial day footage- although could not see much on my tiny tv.
Saw it. Wasn’t impressed.
I saw it. I think I’ve figured out the reason for someone like Rob being included. They advertise him as ‘the skeptic’, but I think he’s really put in to represent the ‘everyman’, someone without the technical and scientific backgrounds of the others. Someone for the ‘average viewer’ to relate to.
As to the quality of the show, and his part in it. Sigh. It started out with Rob talking about how many sightings there have been all around the world. Then, once they get shown the footprint casts and such, suddenly he’s not convinced. He keeps up with the smart aleck attitude, being more of a scoffer than a skeptic.
The show did demonstrate just how hard it is for someone with limited resources to do a convincing hoax of a film or a footprint. That’s the one good point of the whole thing. Of course it wound up as ALL tv shows ‘investigating the unexplained’ do. Inconclusive.
Reality T.V. meets Science- Yeah, Rob is a meat-head, not an investigator. He needs to save some of his “money for nothin” and get an education. Why would a baby Bigfoot print be more over-the-top unbelievable for this guy than an adult print? Is it too much of a brain strain to conclude that it points to a viable breeding population? Their whole team was embarrassing. Autumn was gracious and professional, as always. This SciFi team demonstrated less scientific discipline than an episode of Jack Ass. They show up for a couple of nights and expect a welcoming committee? Why doesn’t SciFi do it right, suck it up and send a qualified team, who know what a bell curve is, into a remote hot spot area for a week with the right equipment and do an adequate job of it? I’m tired of these shows that waste time educating the lowest common mentality with the same old basic Bigfoot 101 education. OLD NEWS. Time for the rest of the world to catch up! I have to stop getting sucked in by this lousy SciFi channel and hope for the day when someone introduces a Science Channel.
Watched it. Horrible. It’s tragic that a network that can put out something as impressively engaging as the new Battlestar Galactica and the sketchy but still above average Ghost Hunters still has to wallow in substandard mediocrity with this sad excuse for a paranormal program. And for the record, Autumn should have put her foot in that archaeologist’s a$$ for pulling that “har-larious” fake Bigfoot scream prank on the trail. Ding. Dang. Dumb.
gridbug,
I have to agree, that was about the stupidest thing anyone could have done.
I’ll take Ghost Hunters any day. Why did they have to ruin my Wednesday night TV lineup by putting this in there?
Better yet, how about some old re-runs of the Leonard Nimoy show from when I was a kid, what’s it’s name, “In Search Of”?
I personally think that the Scifi channel should make a public apology for “Boston Robs” sexual comments, when he implied to men watching the show, how the length of Bigfoots footprint related to the size of Bigfoots male reproductive organ. “You guys know what I am talking about”. Rob needs to better educate himself and research Gorilla reproductive organs. Then he might not blab-out gutter humor in a documentary! Come to think of it… when Rob was in the monkey suit, I never saw one!
Boston Rob has got to go. I just finished watching the sci-fi investigate bigfoot episode. The only thing that I got from it is that Autumn should have her own show. The investigators on the show were o.k. for the most part, but damn, Boston Rob is a total idiot. He made himself look like a jackass in that bigfoot outfit, he insulted Oregonians and wouldn’t accept any evidence presented to him at all.
Stick to the movies Sci-Fi and leave the serious investigations to those true to the field like Loren and associates.
SCI FI Investigates: Bigfoot
SCI FI Channel air date Wednesday Oct 18, 2006
Review by Robert A. Goerman
The biggest disappointment here was Autumn Williams. Her “field surveillance and research techniques” expertise included pathetic attempts at calling-in Bigfoot as if she were dealing with a spring gobbler and luring it with a tempting smorgasbord of bacon, rabbit, and liver as if her quarry was a half-starved coyote. A tiny plot of ground, not much larger than a backyard flowerbed, was cleared and the soil loosened up in the high hopes that this elusive creature with its impressive stride would tiptoe precisely across.
Rob Mariano placed a crude sign, “BIGFOOT STEP HERE.”
My thoughts exactly!
When these tried-and-true “field surveillance and research techniques” failed, Autumn Williams had Rob Mariano bloody his hands by repeatedly bludgeoning a tree with a wooden baseball bat. Other members of the SCI FI Investigates team were encouraged to whoop and hoot at the surrounding darkness.
Where was this intrepid Bigfoot researcher’s video and photographic evidence? Her state-of-the-art equipment “captured” squirrels and deer in the dead of night with impunity. Why not Bigfoot?
Where was this researcher’s Bigfoot hair samples and DNA analysis?
How many casts of footprints can Autumn Williams show us that were collected on different dates and in different locations that belong to the same specimen in this area she has chosen because of countless reports, signs, smells, et cetera?
What about three-toed Big Hairy Smellies?
Is Autumn Williams typical of what the Bigfoot research community has to offer?
What truly makes SCI FI Investigates enjoyable is the humor and chemistry between the team members: “Boston Rob” Mariano (skeptic), Deborah Dobrydney (Crime Scene Investigator), Rich Dolan (paranormal investigator), and Dr. Bill Doleman (archaeologist).
Mariano’s attempts at hoaxing his own Bigfoot video end in hilarious failure.
That scene alone was worth the price of admission!
No one-hour (less commercials) paranormal investigative show is ever going to solve any enigma. People have always encountered unexplained lights, objects, creatures and entities. Closure is too much to hope for. The only exception would be a television show that zeroes in on a single event such as the so-called “Philadelphia Experiment” and proves within all reasonable doubt that the whole thing was a hoax.
I will be watching SCI FI Investigates: Mothman on October 25th.
Count on it.
—Robert A. Goerman
When, oh, when are the television networks going to tire of feeding us the same, tired, repetitive, “group of people who develop petty interpersonal conflicts” reality TV show format?
This show was just plain awful! (But deer and squirrel video capture was great).
I think a group would need to spend at least a few weeks out in a known sighting hotspot, not one or two nights. I did have to laugh at that idiot Boston Rob taking a tumble in that stupid costume. It just proves how difficult something like that Memorial day footage would be to fake. I do miss Autumn Williams’ show on the Outdoor Life Network.
Why did they cast Boston Rob?? Was Paris Hilton or K-Fed not available?? Saw the show twice, isn’t getting any better yet. Hope it does.