I'm having Josh Gates withdrawal. Thanks to Barry at Gnostalgia, I found out why Josh wears the necklace. Not as exciting a story as I imagined (I thought it was a talisman) but it does make Josh even more gosh-darned romantic and sentimental.
I have to say, Season 3 was my favorite. It was just the pinnacle of awesomeness. Not saying season 4 sucked, but something seemed off with the chemistry of the cast and the locations weren't as funky as I like. I want to see places no one ever goes to see the extremes of my planet from terrain to local flavor to their urban legends and ancient sites.
So, I'm just waiting around for the live episode to kick off the season on March 17th and thinking about my lost love (“Destination Truth,” although Josh is pretty cute too).
Here's my top 5 favorite episodes and why:
1. Romanian Forest: This had all the elements for totally bad mojo and most delicious spookiness. You have a plane falling apart in midair, strange freaky lights, and then one of the cast getting thrown in front of the camera and scratched. It was just creep-o-rama.
2. Doll Island: Okay, we all agree-super scary idea; an island filled with decades of decaying dolls EVERYWHERE. Add onto that a doll whose eyes open, lots of creepy thrashing around on the roof top and you get an uber scream fest.
3. Mt. Fuji/Suicide Forest: This was just as dark and urban legend feeling as possible. An unnaturally overgrown forest on the edge of Mt. Fuji where youths go to off themselves. It's about as dark as it gets and as scary when they find an empty camp of a suicide victim and then capture something forming on film.
4. Haunted mining town in Chile: This episodes wins for freakiest amount of travel methods to get to a place. This super remote mining town that is abandoned had a super scary graveyard and lots of creepiness. It was just the kind of place I'd give anything to spend a night. The ghost hunter in me appreciated this locale the most for paranormal searching.
5. Bermuda Triangle: This episode cracked me up and gave me the chills. I love when Josh complained about the boat not working and then listed all the things that go wrong including a Jurassic dinosaur. They got some freaky stuff going on and made you wonder if they were right in the middle of it. I didn't expect the triangle to just “turn on” for them, but they went about it a good way, actually finding the place where it was most likely to happen.
Honorable mention: For finding awesome places with perhaps not a lot of activity: King Tut's Tomb, Chernobyl, Great Wall of China. Thanks for the Josh tour and the attempts. It was very bad-ass and very daring. I don't know who Josh has to sleep with to get these locales, but damn he must be good!
Place I'd most like to see him go: I'd like to see him go to Antarctica if it had phenomena. It would be very much like the SciFi movie “The Thing" and he'd look blasted cute in one of those arctic white coats with white fur on the hood, screaming at us over the howling winds.
What works about Destination Truth?
Josh. His team comes and goes, but honestly not many guys can pull this off; making fun of locals but still being well loved and adored. The first times I watched it, I cringed. I wasn't sure it was a relevant paranormal exploration show. It seemed more like a vehicle for a personality. After a few more episodes, I realized that this was genius. If you took a guy in khakis and took him on serious quest for a leprechaun, it's not going to fly. He needs to go to exotic locales, realize how ridiculous the travel experience was, interview intelligently, take on difficult dangerous tasks fearlessly, but still flash a charming smile—you know the routine, Indiana Jones. None of it would have come together if they didn't find a host who was both highly intelligent, truly loves world travel and cultures, seeks knowledge and experiences, and has so much charm.
When I'm done watching an episode, I feel like I traveled with a crazy travel buddy, explored remote exotic locations, spent some time in the dark getting scared, ate some horrible food, took a too-long flight, and actually put a notch in my belt for adventure and seeking the truth.
Keep it up, DT and lucky new season in another month!
