Cru Jones Society

 

When CJS reader Gutter asked for a post on American Gladiators, I immediately jumped at the chance to write it. Neither Hart nor Limon had seen enough of the new version to comment conclusively, and, growing up, I had a huge boner for this show. Along with professional wrestling and the Chicago Cubs, American Gladiators was one of my childhood obsessions. So, before we discuss the new show, I think it important to reflect on the original. It was after all, one of the hallmark shows of our youth.

Virtually everyone I know between the ages of 24 and 40 has fond memories of American Gladiators. Bring up the show to anyone in this age demographic, and invariably you’ll get some mildly overblown nostalgic tale of watching the show in elementary/middle/high school at some odd hour of the day. The wrestling nerds I used to write with talked about watching WWF Superstars on Sunday afternoons followed by American Gladiators, and did so like they were recalling their favorite uncle who passed away when they were 12. I count myself in this group as well.

It’s more than 15 years later, and I can still remember my two favorite male winners of the show: Lucian Anderson from Season 2, a Latin male stripper who defeated some old, former-Marine in the finale; and Wesley “Two Scoops” Berry, the purest natural athlete ever to grace the show who would go on to compete and DOMINATE International Gladiators after ripping up the American version in Season 5.

If you grew up in the Denver area, your Saturday nights were always set. You’d watch Saturday Night Live from 10:35 until 12:05, and then American Gladiators from 12:05 until 1:05. To this day, this stands as one of my top three show lineups of all time (FYI: The other two are NBC’s current Thursday night comedy lineup, and the absolute murderers’ row of syndication in college – an uberblock of The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Friends, Blind Date, Home Improvement, and That 70′s Show from about 3 until 7. Amazing! That was four hours where nothing was accomplished except beer drinking, snack food-eating, and ball-busting with the roommates. Ahhh, I miss college…).

I started this Saturday night ritual in 3^rd grade, and staying up until 1:00 in the morning when you’re 9 years-old is a huge deal. I remember going to school on Monday and everyone would ask each other if they had watched SNL and American Gladiators two days earlier. If you didn’t and couldn’t recite pertinent details from either show, you immediately took a tumble down the social pecking order. Even in primary school, knowledge of “cool” stuff was paramount to your survival. It’s amazing anyone gets out of school alive when you think about it. It’s fucking brutal trying to fit in. I was at least reasonably popular. I can only imagine how hellish this kind of stuff was to the dorks in my class. I mean, none of us even understood Rob Schneider’s “Improper Orgasm Guy” – or whatever the hell that sketch was called where he nuts every time someone mentions bottled beer, Chinese food, or Jim Kelly – but we sure as hell were quoting it on the 4-square court. I’m sure our teachers and recess monitors were thrilled.

But more important than watching Saturday Night Live, was making yourself stay awake for American Gladiators. It’s true that lasting more than an hour past midnight before you’ve even hit puberty just to watch a syndicated television program is impressive – and useful in maintaining social status – I think we all just liked American Gladiators better.

No one understood the subtext of Wayne’s World or what “schwing!” really meant, and there’s not a 10 year-old in the world who is excited for seeing Neil Young perform twice as the musical guest. Hell, I remember the Jeff Daniels episode where Sinead O’Connor tore up the picture of the Pope. Out of those three people, the only one I had a tangible grasp on was The Pope. And I’m not Catholic, so my understanding of his importance at 10 years old is fuzzy at best.

Gladiators had no underlying themes, no political satire, no musical guests that played music you didn’t like/didn’t yet understand. It was, very simply, two men and two women competing against each other in series of inane events to determine who was the best athlete. This is not a concept difficult to grasp even to a pre-adolescent. It’s certainly easier to understand than figuring out in elementary school why a skit like “Coffee Talk” is funny on a multitude of levels.

The original Gladiators was brilliant in its simplicity. The set looked like a souped-up version of your high school gymnasium – and with the big rock wall, maybe like your neighborhood rec center. A huge area where various events could be set up, lots of tumbling mats everywhere, and a red, white, and blue theme to remind you that you were watching AMERICAN Gladiators. It appeared as though with enough practice and enough training, you could one day participate in the events featured on the show.

And who didn’t create their own scaled down versions of the events on the show before they were old enough to start training for real? My friends and I had a shitload of Nerf guns and created our own assault course. The Gladiator would shoot the Nerf Arrowstorm at the contender who had to move from station-to-station (with barricades made from couch cushions, toy cardboard bricks, and other equally adorable innovations) to use some of the lesser Nerf toys like the Missilestorm, Ballzooka, and Nerf foam football to shoot back at the gladiator.

Our best set-up was at my friend Fred’s house, who had an enormous backyard and a tree house. We created an Eliminator course that was, dare I say, as challenging as the real one (if you’re between the ages of 10 and 14). The gladiator would perch in the tree house and rain water balloons down on the contender as he navigated through slalom courses, low-crawls, various climbs, and hurdles on the way to the finish. We’d time the event (with penalties for each water balloon shot landed on the contender), and the winner got bragging rights for the night. It was one of the finest accomplishments of my youth. And some of the most fun I’ve ever had.

American Gladiators may have ended in the last century, but for college kids with ridiculous amounts of spare time, it never died. Various incarnations littered syndication after the show officially went off the air. In fact, I remember watching re-runs on USA, TBS, Spike TV, and ESPN Classic until they announced the re-make in 2007.

The best summer of my life occurred before my senior year in college in large part due to American Gladiators re-runs. Senor Limon and I were both in summer classes that year. During the third summer session, we were both down to one class per day. I had the unfortunate honor of taking a class at 8:40 in the morning. If you don’t understand the tragedy of such a class… well, you obviously never went to college.

However, this unfortunate, unavoidable scheduling malady reaped unexpected benefits. True, I had to wake up at an ungodly hour of the day to listen to some nerdy, bookworm creep (who never wore a belt with his Dockers – this always annoyed me) prattle on about how to construct a quality argument in a position paper, but this bullshit class paved the way to syndicated television bliss. The following is the finest daily routine I’ve ever had in my life.

8:30 – Wake up, put on a hat, jump on the scooter, and ride to my bullshit writing class

8:40 – Sit in class, pretend to pay attention, recycle papers I wrote the previous semester and get an A despite putting in zero effort

9:40 – Hop back on the scooter and ride home where I’d make either scrambled eggs and bacon, or a delicious bagel sandwich for breakfast

10:00 – Watch two episodes of Saved by the Bell on TBS on the transcendent 1408 Brentwood reclining loveseat

11:00 – Watch two episodes of American Gladiators on Spike TV on the same couch and usually fall asleep before the second episode was even halfway over

1:00 – Should I still be awake, there was usually a Cubs game on WGN where I would then fall asleep for sure

Somewhere between 5:00 and 7:30 – Wake up, have dinner, binge drink with Senor Limon, half ass homework for the bullshit writing class, and go to sleep

Next day – Repeat cycle

God, what a fabulous schedule. If I could re-create it, I would. But then, I don’t live in that glorious collegiate shelter where you only have to get good grades and don’t have to worry about making a living, pleasing a boss, or paying for health/car/renter’s insurance. I doubt someone would pay me for keeping that schedule now, but believe me, I ponder everyday how I can con someone into doing so.

Given my history with American Gladiators – adolescent late nights worn like a badge of honor, mock Eliminators created in friends’ backyards, college scheduling nirvana – it’s no surprise that I was as excited for the re-make as anyone else.

But the more I learned about the show before it’s premiere, the more I became worried. Where was Mike Adamle, the show’s original host? Where was Todd Christiansen and his fearless mustache/mullet combo? Or Larry Csonka, my personal favorite co-host? (Of course, Larry probably couldn’t tear himself away from fellating Mercury Morris and Bob Griese after the Patriots lost this year’s Super Bowl prolonging the ’72 Dolphins circle jerk for at least another year. Oy.) Where were the Gladiators from the previous show? I’m sure they’re old now, but who wouldn’t at least like to see Laser or Nitro as a sideline reporter? Hell, where was Larry Thompson, the show’s original referee?

All of them were gone. In their place: Hulk Hogan and Layla Ali. Ali is obviously striving for a career outside of boxing after her success on Dancing with the Stars lest she have to keep boxing and end up like her trembling, sad sack old man. Hogan seems happy enough serving as the festering, cancerous boil on my life that never goes away. I haven’t liked Hogan since I was 11, so the prospect of watching him every week was unappealing at best. Nitro, Laser, Ice, and Lace had been replaced by Wolf, Titan, Crush, and some large, unathletic woman named Hellga. Larry Thompson no longer made the calls; those duties were now handled by some fat sack of crap whose name I can’t even remember.

Undeterred, I eagerly watched the premiere. Despite Hogan’s persistently obnoxious presence and stupid orange face and the referee who looked like he hadn’t seen the business end of a sit-up since the bicentennial, I was happy, but underwhelmed by the new version.

The games all looked the same (more or less), but hung heavy with the weight of Hollywood over-production. Assault was good the way it was. Why include more complicated weapons, a sand pit, and a smoke screen? Contenders used to get knocked off the Joust platform onto tumbling mats. Now they fall into the show’s 75,000 gallon water tank. Is this necessary?

They’re never wet during the next event and the women always somehow end up once again with perfect hair and makeup, which alerts us to the nonlinear reality of filming a show like this. Logically we know a show isn’t filmed in real time, and that there are numerous production breaks to set up each event, but the old American Gladiators never tipped its hand in such a way. The events were edited to convey continuous action and never slipped a continuity gaffe into the broadcast like the wet/dry contender conundrum we see on this version.

The show’s producers fell into a common logical trap by assuming that bigger, badder, and wetter is better. It probably went like this: “If we’re going to remake American Gladiators, then goddammit, we have to be everything the old show was, only bigger! We need to improve the events! We need to make the Eliminator longer and more difficult! We need a gigantic pool! And fire! And compressed air sending people flying through the air! And covers of popular rock songs!”

I say, no you don’t.

The original had heart. The original had charm. The original had Mike Adamle sitting on a camera crane with his feet dangling to interview victorious gladiators after the Joust. The original had Roman-style horn music for its theme song, not generic power rock. The original was red, white, and blue, not the gunmetal, white, black combo that serves as the color scheme for every other male-targeted show on earth. This is AMERICAN Gladiators, after all. The original was just that – original. The new version might as well be a remake of Dog Eat Dog hosted by Brooke Burns.

In the original, Mike Adamle called the action as it happened giving the show a sense of immediacy and injecting with an added dose of urgency. Now the show employs a voice-over guy to add play-by-play in post-production detaching the show from the viewer even further. Csonk used to ad-lib his interview questions to the contenders after each event. Hogan’s head might as well be a typewriter the way he reads the cue cards. Layla Ali is so wooden in her delivery, she might as well take up a second job as Heather Mills’ peg leg. 

While the production, or perhaps more appropriately, the over-production, of the show and the uninspired broadcasting certainly irk the shit out of me, my biggest problem with this new version is the gladiators themselves.

The original crop of gladiators had personality. No one could out-trash talk Gemini. Lace always had a smile on her face. Nitro took everything dead serious. Ice was the most fearsome female gladiator in the history of the show and filled a bizarre niche in my youth: Frightening, muscular woman I was inexplicably attracted to.

I’d get on board with these new gladiators if any of them ever did anything interesting. Wolf howls at the moon and looks like he escaped from a fetish porn movie somewhere, but that’s about it. Titan looks like a Ken doll with a plastic face, perfect blond hair, and zero personality. Justice somehow makes a 300 lb. black man with a faux-hawk remarkably uninteresting. And none of the female gladiators have even strung more than 5 words together.

What’s even worse: If you’re not going to be say anything interesting, at least dominate the contenders. I have yet to see someone not get through the entire Gauntlet. Wolf might be the worst Hang Tough player of all time. I have yet to see Venom win a single event. Hellga is the least athletic person in the history of this show. True, she’s built like Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, but she has the agility of your high school pre-calculus teacher. You can see when people move like athletes, Hellga moves like she’s afraid of getting hurt. Crush is the only one who seems poised to establish any kind of dominance. She’s beginning a Gemini-like run of excellence on the Joust, and it’s one of the only parts of the show I find compelling. At least none of them are there to screw up The Eliminator.

Which brings me to my final gripe: The Eliminator. The Eliminator should be hard, but it shouldn’t be so hard that everyone gasses out less than halfway through and stumbles breathlessly across the finish line to collapse in a near-catatonic state. Eliminators used to take about a minute and a half and were more often than not, an actual race. I saw someone this season take more than nine minutes to finish. Nine minutes.  They were both incapable of making it up the travelator due to the sheer exhaustion of completing the beginning of the course. They seemed as if they were going to hurl like a freshman at the end of wrestling practice and stood there hands on knees sucking wind trying to gather the strength to conquer the final climb. Frankly, it was embarrassing.

The Eliminator was either too hard, or these were not elite athletes. Judging by how many contenders I’ve seen with bent over huffing and puffing at the foot of the travelator, I think The Eliminator might be a skoch too difficult. And is it really necessary to make them do the entire thing wet? How needlessly cumbersome.

I had incredibly high hopes for the new American Gladiators. But like most re-makes, this one has failed to live up to the original. I don’t fully understand our obsession with recapturing the magic of things that fascinated us in years past, but like everyone else, I fall for it nearly every time. I suspect it’s the familiarity – like in college when you fool around with your neighbor time and again even though she’s not that hot, and you know you’re just setting yourself up for painful drama later. But it’s easy, it’s comfortable, and it’s right there. Who can pass it up?

But I think it’s time to move on. Some things translate well to modern times – I’m told the Charlie’s Angels movies are quite good – but mostly remakes come off like trying to drink a suicide as an adult. You’re standing holding a giant cup filled with every beverage option the fountain has, thinking to yourself, “You know, this was good when I was a kid… now, not so much. And they even have better sodas now! What happened?”

I still watch the new American Gladiators whenever I have some free time or want to zone out before bed. But more often than not my Tivo automatically deletes the new episodes before I watch them to clear up space for the other ridiculous shit I make the effort to record like Jeopardy, Rockies All Access, and Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil. It’s no longer can’t miss television. I don’t wear my viewership like a badge of honor. I wouldn’t set aside two hours to flop on the couch for it after class (or work, I suppose). And I don’t think there’s anything they can do to change that.

But it’s probably not me they’re after. I’ll be interested to see the kids at the pool this summer. If they’re having jousting contests over the water, maybe they’re on to something. If there are kids throwing water balloons at each other while trying to scale the junglejim, maybe I’ve misunderstood. If some little shaver on the swim team asks me to call him “Militia,” this show has clearly passed me by.

And I hope for the sake of those kids, they can waste the day away watching re-runs of it on their college couch. And I hope when the inevitable third generation of this show returns twenty years from now, these kids bitch about Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Natalie Coughlin as hosts. As for me, you can find me watching Laser and his righteous flattop scamper up The Wall to yank off another weak contender on ESPN Classic.

Now if only I could get paid for it…

edagger@crujonessociety.com