Archive for August 25th, 2008
Wipeout vs. I Survived A Japanese Gameshow
I knew I was going to watch Wipeout as soon as I started seeing promos for two reasons: 1) I really like watching mXc on Spike TV and 2) John Anderson is one of Sportscenter anchors that I really like. Teaming him up with John Henson to just goof on people hurting themselves seemed like an incredibly awesome hour of summer television. A few weeks after that I started to catch promos for I Survived A Japanese Gameshow. Since I rarely pay attention to what channel anything’s on (and since I watch 99% of my television now on DVR) I had no idea that both shows were on the same channel (I assumed one of them was one of Fox’s patented shameless rip-offs). Once I found out that ABC had them both, I was happy to see the glorious two-hour block of ridiculousness.
The two shows were surprisingly different. Wipeout is, literally, just people hurting themselves with Anderson and Henson goofing on them. Gameshow, on the other hand, is a standard reality show format. People do stupid things and one person gets eliminated every week. Gameshow also again forces me to question whether or not people who are on reality TV shows have ever actually watched a reality TV show. Everything that happened on Gameshowwas clicheed reality show stuff. See if you can place any of these things from other shows:
1) The manipulative hot girl that makes guys do stuff that she wants.
2) Some person huffily saying: “I can’t believe he stabbed me in the back like that.” I can. In fact, I’d be shocked if he didn’t.
3) The shock and surprise when they bring a previously eliminated person back to be an injury sub.
4) Some person getting inappropriately angry when someone does, indeed, stab them in the back.
5) Some person saying: “I need to do what’s best for me. I’m here for the money.”
I continually fail to see why people stay interested in these shows. They’re all the same. At the very least, Wipeout doesn’t pretend it’s anything other than people doing stupid things for money. They don’t even particularly care that nearly all of their obstacles are impossible for the vast majority of people. They want people to look stupid for the amusement of the audience… that’s why they have people who have no business running an obstacle course run an obstacle course. Even the people competing treat like a joke. On the other hand, Gameshow has the ridiculous confessional thing where people stare into the camera and honestly tell us about their strategy for velcroing themselves on to walls.
I give the nod to Wipeout for just stupid summer amusement. Unfortunately, I waited so long to get this out of the queue that both shows are over… but NEXT summer I give the nod to Wipeout for stupid summer amusement.