American Gladiators: Awesomely Bad or just Bad?

Last night was the new season premiere of American Gladiators and it was a two hour event of, well, over the top cheesy competition. Now I know that the show is never going to be a quality show. I would compare it to a reality show like "Rock of Love", where you know what to expect, you sometimes wonder why you are watching such crap, but you cant look away. The only difference is that after watching "Rock of Love" you feel an urgent need to take a shower, but I digress.They advertised that they had new events, new Gladiators and a new Eliminator. I wasn't very impressed with any of the new events, but they did make the rock wall enormous.

The two winners from last season also debuted. "Jet" is the female winner and damn she got really cut over the break, her abs are amazing. The male winner "Rocket" also debuted but he is such a small guy compared to the other Gladiators that they will probably only use him for the rock wall. By far the most uneccesarily dramatic debut of a Gladiator was "Phoenix". She appeared in shilloeute and she was wearing these big angel-like wings. Then these two explosions occured and produced big balls of fire and Phoenix flew through the air and landed in front of the flames, ready to kick some ass. I died laughing, it was so ridiculous.

Also funny was one of the contestants was doing Assault, which is the game where you try to shoot the Gladiator while being shot at, and the girl picked up the shoulder rocket and shot it backwards. She had a hard time at the eliminator too, falling on her head twice.

One thing that really annoys me about the show is it appears being physically fit is not nearly as important as having a good story. Every contestants has had some sort of obstacle they had to overcome to be there. Thats nice and all but they dont neccesarily put the best athletes in which makes it less competitive. For example they had on a guy last night that had one leg amputated from above the knee. He did well in some events but watching him try to finish the eliminator was just painful. He was obviously struggling and started falling and staggering a lot and at the end they had to stop the treadmill ramp for him to get up it. He finished and everyone was cheering for him but I felt bad for his competition. That guy won but he beat a guy with one leg, not much to brag about and they cheered more for the one legged guy then they did him.

Also either every contestant on the show failed speech class or the writers are horrible, but they should eliminate all talking and interviews from the show. The hosts are bad and the contestants say the most idiotic and lame things that I feel embarassed for them.

Nick and I discussed this via text message last night but it appears you have to be stoned and or drunk to be able to watch this show. I would add that it is also better if you are stoned or drunk with other people so you have someone to make fun of it with. Having said that I will still watch it and I still think it would be kinda cool to be on the show, I just need to put on 30 pounds of muscle and experience some sort of tragedy before I would have a chance to be on it.