2008 Woodie Awards
'American Gladiators' lights up NBC
Travis Weldon
Issue date: 1/24/08 Section: Intermission
Anyone who hasn't seen Malibu talk about his injury on Youtube needs to see it right away. It's priceless.
I have one major problem with the new show. The older version treated the games like an athletic competition. I don't get a sense that the new one does. It seems they try to make it more of an entertaining, drama WWE-type of event. The show used to treat "American Gladiators" as a real sporting event. The new one doesn't do that.
After an event, the show used to break for commercial and told you to stick around by telling you what the next event was. Now, it tries to have you 'stick around' by cutting to commercial right before the referee starts the event.
The play-by-play announcer is just a faceless voice describing the play and the 'hosts' are horrible. Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali are suppose to host the show, but are nothing more than sideline reporters who ask the same questions to each contestant. Mike Adamle and Larry Csonka did the narrating and sideline reporting by themselves and did a much better job.
That being said, there is too much of the sideline reporting in the new show. Because of this, there are only four events before the eliminator.
I would much rather enjoy six events and less of the standard, "How are you going to beat the gladiator?" questions.
The bread-and-butter of the show has always been the eliminator. This one is harder to finish, but can be cheated. For example, the handbikes used to have a seven-to-10 second penalty for falling. Now, there is none and you can just climb the ladder and continue. Since I have not seen a contestant perform the handbikes perfectly, why not just fall off and climb up? It would save a lot of time.
Another gimmick in the eliminator is the contestants have to swim under a wall of fire.
For safety reasons, the fire will be turned off if a gladiator ever runs out of breath, so why have it in the first place?
I can understand NBC wants to make this show different from the cult classic, but some changes have to be made.
I can live with it for now, but they should end the needless cliffhangers and treat the show like an actual athletic competition.
I have one major problem with the new show. The older version treated the games like an athletic competition. I don't get a sense that the new one does. It seems they try to make it more of an entertaining, drama WWE-type of event. The show used to treat "American Gladiators" as a real sporting event. The new one doesn't do that.
After an event, the show used to break for commercial and told you to stick around by telling you what the next event was. Now, it tries to have you 'stick around' by cutting to commercial right before the referee starts the event.
The play-by-play announcer is just a faceless voice describing the play and the 'hosts' are horrible. Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali are suppose to host the show, but are nothing more than sideline reporters who ask the same questions to each contestant. Mike Adamle and Larry Csonka did the narrating and sideline reporting by themselves and did a much better job.
That being said, there is too much of the sideline reporting in the new show. Because of this, there are only four events before the eliminator.
I would much rather enjoy six events and less of the standard, "How are you going to beat the gladiator?" questions.
The bread-and-butter of the show has always been the eliminator. This one is harder to finish, but can be cheated. For example, the handbikes used to have a seven-to-10 second penalty for falling. Now, there is none and you can just climb the ladder and continue. Since I have not seen a contestant perform the handbikes perfectly, why not just fall off and climb up? It would save a lot of time.
Another gimmick in the eliminator is the contestants have to swim under a wall of fire.
For safety reasons, the fire will be turned off if a gladiator ever runs out of breath, so why have it in the first place?
I can understand NBC wants to make this show different from the cult classic, but some changes have to be made.
I can live with it for now, but they should end the needless cliffhangers and treat the show like an actual athletic competition.