I’ll say this much for FoF, their preciseness is impeccable.  Their sticking with tradition is admirable.  No, I’m not referring to the investigations themselves, I’m referring to the fact that this is the third meeting in a row that they’ve started at 11:34am.  I’m referring to the fact that they steadfastly refuse to succumb to pressure and change their clothes.

The first episode of this night’s pair centered on the Memorial Day Bigfoot that was videoed in 1996 at Lake Chopaka in Washington.  This case is setup by Bill, still neatly adorned in his black shirt and white pinstripes.

As he tells us, Lori and Owen Pate were flyfishing at the lake (he even makes a casting motion for emphasis).  Their dog started barking at something up on the hillside and, when she looked, she saw a large figure running across the hillside, grabbed the video camera, and started filming.

We then see the footage with Lori narrating.  Funny though, you don’t hear any dog barking.  Ben asks Bill what his feelings are about the credibility of the filmer and he replies that their attention was drawn to the hillside by their dog (remember that testimony later)  and that they were simply setting up to go fishing.  The dog was barking, Lori turned around and saw something, the camera was right there, she grabbed it and started to roll tape.

Bill, Bill, Bill.  When you are asked about the credibility of a witness, it’s not appropriate to use the witness’s story to emphasize credibility.  How do you know the whole story wasn’t made up?  I’m not saying that it is, but Bill doesn’t know at all.  This is the lesser known Arguing by the Ignorant.  All that notwithstanding, this is chosen as the first investigation and Bill, Austin, and Chi-Lan begin the investigation.

They head to Chopaka Lake.  After some conversation speculating about the video and Bigfoot in general, Austin sums things up by saying, “I think we’re just going to have to wait until we get there, on location in person, and we’ll have to find out for ourselves.”  For ourselves?  You mean we can’t have someone else do this and just report that?  Man!

They drive up to the Recreation area where Lori and Owen Pate are waiting for them.  Bill starts out by asking them to just “Tell us what happened”  Owen begins by indicating an area of ground behind him and saying that their campers were there.  Lori jumps in to tell us that she was cooking and looked out her back door and there were a couple of boys down here who were pointing up at the hill.  Owen then says you could see it stand up by the bush back there.  Lori went back in and got her camera and that was when she started taking a picture.

Where do I even begin to start pointing out the inconsistencies of that story with what Bill told us during the initial story of this event?  Well, the only things the same are Lori was there, Owen was there, there was a lake, and they filmed a figure running across the hillside.  NONE of the other details match.  Lori says it was the boys pointing that drew her attention, Bill tells us that it was a dog barking.  Bill says they were flyfishing, Lori says she was getting dinner ready.  Did Bill just make $#!% up for the setup?  Or has the story changed several times?  Big flag.

Austin then shows us his talent for leading a witness by asking…well, not really asking, more like telling the Pates “So then you guys aren’t Bigfoot hunters or anything, you were just campers standing by, and all of a sudden…”  And the Pates nod.  Well, maybe he’s trying to lull them into a sense of security with a good cop routine?  In either case the Pates nod affirmatively.  Lori turns to her right and possibly starts to raise her right arm to point and begins to say “No, you…” and the scene cuts.  Hmmmmmmmmmm!

Chi-Lan asks them “What is your gut telling you these creatures are?”  Creatures?  There was only one.  Oh well.  Lori responds that “My gut says that it’s…it’s Bigfoot”  Owen’s gut says “gurgle gurgle” and then he looks up in the air and mumbles something, the only intelligible word being “Sasquatch” and then adds “It didn’t run like a man.  When a man runs, they’re up on the ball of their feet.  This one was kinda striding on his heels.”  How that can be determined from the grainy, jerky, out of focus, leg-chopping footage is anyone’s guess but it sounds scientific, right?

Austin demonstrates his ability to take a statement and come up with a completely non-related conclusion with his question, “So you’re saying its speed was not like a human, that a human couldn’t move at that pace?”  “Yeah”  “Okay”  Huh?  So striding on one’s heels means you’re flat-out hauling at inhuman speed?  I’ll have to remember that.

Chi-Lan does the usual request to borrow the original camera which is permitted.  Bill asks where the figure was actually seen and going to and Lori says she thinks they live back in there (the trees) and Austin determines that they now have “a good place to start”

The plan is to have Chi-Lan go to where Lori filmed the footage from.  Meanwhile Austin and Bill will map out the course with flags and prepare to “run it”.

Austin rambles about their first test.  He very confusingly tells us that “So I’m going to test the first theory that skeptics say ‘Nobody can run as fast as the Bigfoot in that video’”  Umm, question for Austin.  Usually you folks refer to “Skeptics” as those who don’t believe in whatever creature or phenomenon you are testing.  Such a person would not use the statement that the creature exhibited inhuman speed as a means of debunking a Bigfoot film.

Chi-Lan, at the lake, is looking at the video and guiding Bill and Austin where to put the flags and they lay out a course.  There is an interesting bit of dialogue here which makes me think the walkie-talkie scene is staged.  Bill says (into his walkie) "Hey Chi-Lan, can you see us up here?"

Chi-Lan 'responds' into her walkie saying, "You are on the right trail, they just have to run a straight line across that hill behind the crest, Austin."  Hmmmm, Bill is the one who asked the question so why does she respond to Austin by name?  Why does she say "THEY just have to run a straight line…"?  She's talking to THEM, she should continue with the YOU form for pronouns.

While Austin sticks flags in the ground, Bill tries to cover for Austin’s earlier statement by explaining that the Pates believe that the figure in the footage moved too fast to be a human.  The time to travel the distance was recorded at 10.6 seconds.  Umm, question for Bill.  How did you account for the edited cut in the footage?

With the flags in place, Austin does some stretching and prepares to match the speed of the creature in the footage in what has been titled “Run Test #1”

Bill gives a 3-2-1 countdown and yells “Run Forrest, Run!”  Forrest, er, Austin, starts running and that seems dramatic enough for our first commercial break.

Bill appears to aim a speed gun at Austin though we never get the results of it.  Chi-Lan is squatted low to the ground, holding the camera a few inches above the gravel, much as I’m sure Lori was doing. Loud annoying drums pounding in the background as Austin does his run.

Austin completes his run in 9.28 seconds.  Austin is inhuman.  Cut to scene of villagers charging out of the forest with torches and pitchforks ready to rid the earth of the inhuman Austin.  Oh, wait, where was I?

Bill admits that Austin just demonstrated that a human CAN run as fast as the creature in the video.  Do we know Austin is really human?  Wasn’t he an ATV-riding spider in an earlier episode?  To make things more realistic, though, Austin is going to rerun the course wearing a 10-lb Bigfoot suit.  This represents Austin’s first change of clothes.

Run Test #2 takes place 45 minutes later and we see Austin donning the fur suit and mask looking less like Bigfoot and more like, well, I don’t know, but that mask was really goofy-looking.

Bill counts us down for the next run and Austin starts charging across the hillside and gets several meters before ash-canning down the slope.  Chi-Lan asks if Austin is okay and Bill responds by saying “Austin is not 100% okay.”  Problem is that that could have been filmed anytime during this episode.  “He actually had a pretty hard fall just now.”  Bill goes on to say that there may be a bit of a concern with the experiments and that Austin thinks that his ankle may be sprained.  To emphasize this, we get a shot of a still-suited Austin walking normally back to the starting spot.

Bill continues to say that “If it is, it could compromise the rest of the experiment results.  But, he’s a trooper and he’s gotten back to the starting position.”  At least DT brings a medic with them on these types of trips (pun intended)  Course, if they had, the medic would probably just laugh.  If you sprain your ankle, you ain’t running across a hillside with or without a Bigfoot suit.

Austin prepares another run and Bill counts us down again.  Austin starts running pretty good, I don’t see him favoring his other leg at all.  I also notice he’s running on a fairly defined path.  Was the Bigfoot that was filmed just out for an afternoon jog?

After the run we hear Bill say something about it being a bit slower and then he expounds by saying “It seems like the suit is definitely a handicap.”  Yeah, possibly, but a sprained ankle would also slow a guy down, wouldn’t it?  Bill informs Chi-Lan that the time was 12.06 seconds.  That’s only a second and a half slower than the original runner, assuming that the edited scene was correctly added in.  They also only do that once so we get no range of times that it could take.  Usually your first run is slower until you get the feel of the terrain and suit.

Now Bill brings up the fact that in the second part of the Pate’s video the creature appears to grow by about 8 inches in height.  One of the theories is that Bigfoot was actually carrying a baby which then climbed up onto its shoulders.  So, to simulate a baby Bigfoot climbing up his shoulder, when Austin nears the end of his next run, he’ll lift his mask up to replicate the change in height.

I had to laugh (well, I was laughing at most of this) at the title of the next one.  The Growth Test.  This is done at 3 in the afternoon and Bill counts us down one last time and Austin starts his run.  At the end he lifts his mask and in review Bill says that it looks fairly close.  Austin confirms that it gets really hot in that suit when you’re breathing and that you want it off to breathe.

Chi-Lan reinforces the similarity by telling us that “It really does look similar guys when you compare the original to what we shot.”  Similar.  So Similar is good enough in this case, but wasn’t good enough at Valentown?

As they are packing the vehicle, Bill states that they’ve been able to replicate the video with some mixed results.  Not sure what was mixed but okay.   At this point they stray from course again.  They’ve replicated the video.  Replicating it doesn’t really mean anything, but more on that in a moment.  The video is what they are trying to prove is fact or faked, NOT the existence of Bigfoot in general.

But, Bill says that, “there are so many eyewitness accounts (step in here anytime, Neil) of a Bigfoot type creature in the area that it does warrant a NIGHTIME investigation.  Especially considering that these are nocturnal creatures.”  It was at that statement that I yelled something at the TV about the original video and pretty much every other one that we’ve seen being filmed in the DAY.  Truth is he doesn’t know.  This is the even lesser known Arguing from Ignorance by the Ignorant.

But no one is going to take a nighttime investigation from him, so he is going to head over to the Dorothy Scott airport in Oroville so he can head up in a spotter plane.  Bill will bring a thermal camera and hopefully find evidence of a cryptid in the area.

Chi-Lan and Austin set up three IR cameras and sandtraps in case Bigfoot is an avid golfer.  Well, actually the sandtraps are just areas of sand around some fish which the Bigfoot likes (especially with a light Tartar sauce) and hopefully the sand will let them see his tracks.  The sand and fish set up, Chi-Lan and Austin head back to base camp to wait for Bill.

Chi-Lan, sitting on the ground with Austin, looks at her watch and says that Bill will be flying overhead at any minute.  Bill will be up all night long flying around and will send GPS coordinates if he sees anything.  My how technical…but just wait.

Bill’s plane lifts off in pretty much broad daylight for his night time investigation.  Chi-Lan and Austin spot his plane and Bill confirms that he is picking the duo up on his imager.  As he does so, he detects another heat signature and says that it looks like there could be another (another?) fisherman or camper nearby.  He asks them if they see anybody and they don’t and say that it is completely deserted.

Bill then proves he’s a total non-geographer by giving coordinates of the hit.  They are, and I quote:  48.87 WEST and 119.2 NORTH.  Okay, quick lesson for anyone not up on geographic coordinates.  West is given for longitudes, North is given for latitudes (at least in this hemisphere)  Latitude runs from 0 at the equator to 90 degrees North at the north pole and Longitude runs from 0 at Greenwich to 180 West out in the Pacific.  He has reversed the coordinates.

But, let’s assume that he means 48.87 North and 119.2 West.  The coordinates he just gave them would require them to hike 23 miles to the east.  Better get marching guys.  We can’t give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he just rounded, either.  Longitude should be around 119.7, that’s no rounding error.  And if you’re giving precise coordinates to a ground team, you need to give about 4 decimal places of precision.

To their credit, Austin and Chi-Lan start running toward his coordinates.  Pretty good for a guy with a sprained ankle…feet are really going to be sore about 23 miles later!

Well, that’s enough drama and we get the last commercial break.  A bit of Nightvision footage and some thermal shots and the object is getting closer to them.  But…nothing.  Chi-Lan tells Bill they are at the coordinates and ask if the heat signature is still there.  Chi-Lan and Austin must both be inhuman.  23 miles in a few minutes?

Bill replies that the object has moved 40 yards up the hillside.  Well, if his judge of distance is as good as his ability to read coordinates, the thing could be in Quebec for all we know.  Chi-Lan and Austin continue to chase the “creature”  And soon there are more than one of the creatures and they’re big!

At one point they were 15 to 20 yards away from Chi-Lan and Austin.  Then Bill immediately says “Then it doubled that speed…and now it’s even farther”  Now he’s confusing distance and change of distance wrt time.  Austin interjects some sense by saying they could be dealing with wolves, coyotes, or bears.

Bill loses the heat signatures and will continue to sweep the area and will radio down some more bogus coordinates if he sees anything.  Austin then discovers a print and they cast it.

Then it’s back to the Situation Room at, you guessed it, 11:34am.  These guys aren’t even trying anymore!  Either that or their clock is busted.

The test runs are recapped and it is agreed that the video recreation was very close.  Bill points out that the problem was that there was eyewitness testimony (and still doesn’t see the discrepancies) and that they then decided to do their own investigation.  He recaps the heat signatures etc

The cast of the print is brought out finally.  The cast was sent to Dr Thomas Wake who is at UCLA (he does exist)  Wake doesn’t know what it is but that it is too small to be from Sasquatch.  I don’t buy that.  This assumes that we would know how big a Sasquatch print would be to be genuine.  It also doesn’t take into account juveniles.

The team insists that the Pates were victims of a hoax (based on no evidence whatsoever)  They all agree the video is a fake but that the Bigfoot phenomenon is real.  !@$%@#$!!  Based on what?  Strictly conjecture!

Now I have to repeat my problems with this show.  Just because something can be recreated doesn’t mean the original is fake and just because something can’t be recreated (by a particular group) doesn’t mean that the original is real.  The whole premise of the series is flawed.

Discussion of this episode here.