Eaten Alive Viewers Outraged Man Wasn't Actually Eaten Alive

Apparently the only thing worse than promising a man will be eaten alive by an anaconda is for a man to not be eaten alive by an anaconda.

Many viewers felt Discovery had pledged adventurer Paul Rosolie would be utterly consumed by an anaconda on his special Sunday night. After all, the show was called Eaten Alive and its official programming guide description told viewers that a man “enters the belly of an anaconda.”

What viewers eventually saw during the two-hour special was a large anaconda attack Rosolie, coil around him, then start to eat his helmet. That’s when Rosolie had to call in his team to rescue him, saying his arm was being crushed. “I started to feel the blood drain out of my hand and I felt the bone flex, and when I got to the point where I felt like it was going to snap I had to tap out,” he said.

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As we pointed out in our in-depth Q&A, Discovery had refused to say how much Rosolie was actually consumed. When we asked Rosolie how much he was “eaten,” he told us, “the story of this is an attempt. When you say Nik Wallenda is going to cross the Chicago skyline, they didn’t promise he was going to make it; they promised he would attempt it. So the show is called Eaten Alive and that’s what we worked as hard as we could to do. As for what happens, you’ll have to watch.” Rosolie also said he spent months recovering from the encounter.

Yet as a result of the way the show was marketed, a special that was once slammed by animal activists for being “cruel” to a snake is now being mocked on Twitter for not going far enough:

For more, here’s our interview with Rosolie.

This article originally appeared on EW.com

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