Tuesday, May 13, 2008

American Gladiators

American Gladiators(the new one, season 2). I've been wondering lately what is wrong with my movie consumption. I think right now it's the Red Sox. They're taking up an awful lot of my evening time, taking the place of 3-4 movies a week, minimum,

Sunday night was the season premiere of the new American Gladiators, and I watched it tonight. Overall I'm happy with the additions this season. There are a few new events that seem fun, and many of the older ones have been spiced up. We also have a few new gladiators, last season's contender champions among them. On the women's side they have sexed appealed it up, adding two attractive female gladiators to bring their grand total to two. On the men's side, they have brought in Rocket who, while also adding some sex appeal, seems to be only fit for chasing on the wall.

First of all I'm very glad I was watching this on DVR. There's almost as much fluff in AG as in the Olympics. Skipping ahead in 30 second chunks has rarely been so useful. They try to make us care about these useless overly energetic wannabes, with time they could use on another event. I love the events, but despise the fluff.

Speaking of fluff, the second set of male contenders featured a man with a prosthetic leg.
"I want to prove I can do anything". Well, you can't. Lame Lame Lame(ha!). It's like when there was the little person on the Amazing Race, who kept shouting she could do anything then complaining when people wouldn't help her pathetic flailing at things she needed to reach, eventually crying that it wasn't fair. This contestant, John, was just terrible. He was awful at every event, he should have been embarrassed to prove that he in fact couldn't do the same things as his two legged opponent(The Wall was the worst event, as Wolf visibly started late, then climbed slowly trying to make John feel like he had a chance). Then came the Eliminator. I thought the two women in the first match up each taking over 10 minutes to finish had been bad. John struggled to swim, then kept getting his prosthetic caught in the cargo net. He limped his way to the travelator, the clock no longer displayed. Unable to climb after several attempts(edited to seem like not as much time) they turned off the damn conveyor belt. John barely walked up even still, then he was greeted with a heroes welcome at the end. Really? That's worth celebrating? He was bad at every event, and had to cheat just to finish. Bravo gimpy, bravo.

The show is still fun, but lets concentrate on the athletic events, not the autistic students or underdog stories.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just as a note. Jet is Monica, the female winner from the first season. ROCKET is the new male who, though on speed, is apparently unable to do anything but the wall. I wonder why they're not offering the chance to become a Gladiator anymore...oh right, speedy guys don't equal Gladiators.

Ilyas said...

duly noted and corrected.
I bet Rocket can do that bungee ball thing. And I'm a big fan of Jet