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Hosted by Hulk Hogan & Laila Ali

WOMEN’S MATCH: Nikki Key / Nikki Smith vs. Vanessa Warren

MEN’S MATCH: John Siciliano vs. Gerry Garcia

NOTE: This show is choosing contestants based on their sob stories as John Siciliano is a former paralympian who had his leg amputated above the knee. An amputee? A Cyborg? Is this allowed? That’s not fair, man! But seriously, they were having tryouts to find the best people to compete for this show, and they want us to believe that an amputee made the cut? We’re watching American Gladiators not American Special Gladiators.

I really hate how they add stories and emotional crap to the show. I don’t care if you’re deaf, or have half a leg, or were abused as a child. I watch the show to see people get pummeled by the gladiators, not to know about their personal problems. It’s the same reason I don’t watch the Olympics anymore. Just show the goddamn events and shut up.

Now, I’m not annoyed by the guy himself, and kudos to him for going out there and competing. But the show just completely took advantage of him and the viewers in order to create a spectacle and draw viewers/money. Out of the thousands of people that tried out, there is barely a chance that they would RANDOMLY choose that guy, so they obviously did it on purpose to make the show more interesting. The producers of the show (and writers for the announcers) just wanted to milk that story as much as they could (which is what this show has been known for since it came on earlier this year). There is always an overdramatic story with each contestant (mother died earlier, used to be fat, is in the military, is a cop, is a firefighter, etc…) but this amputee man really takes the cake.

Event #1:

Women’s Pyramid - Venom vs. Nikki, Jet vs. Vanessa

Jesus, soccer mom is OILED and WTF was that shoulder waggle by her?! Anyhoo, neither contender gets anywhere near the scoring zone so Soccer mom > Air Force.

Men’s Hang Tough - Justice

I wouldn’t have kept the leg on if I was John; one less thing for Justice to reach at. I also wanted Justice to go “He’s no Kurt Angle!” when Hulk asked him about going against a gold medalist. Anyways, Justice defeated both contenders handily. The one-legged guy froze after 2 moves in hang tough.

Event #2:

Women’s Gauntlet - Venom, Crush, Jet, Hellga

Crush looks like she put on some pounds here. Nikki Key is forced to retire with a sprained ankle suffered in Pyramid, so Nikki (#2) Smith comes in to replace her and earns TEN BIG POINTS by going through the Gauntlet. Vanessa also scores TEN BIG POINTS, BROTHER!

Men’s Rocketball - Wolf and Titan

Wolf has fangs now? Are you KIDDING ME?! Anyways, John scores 1 point whereas Gerry scores 5.

Event #3:

Women’s Vertigo - Phoenix

Holy crap! Phoenix is hot…. but those wings are cheesy. Oh, and she can play Vertigo as neither contender scores any points. Anyways, Vertigo is awesome in scale and concept, but horrible in execution as it favored for the gladiators it’s not funny.

Men’s Powerball - Militia, Toa, Titan

John’s running was really hard to watch, despite the one-legged guy getting the clear advantage here as the pity point he scored was basically a freebie as you could see they were going easy on John as they had one Gladiator on him during Powerball while Gerry constantly had two, and that Gladiator never took him all the way down, probably for fear of hurting him. Then all the Gladiators got out of character and congratulated him with high fives for his one point. Oh, and I would feel so dumb if I were the blue dude. I score nothing but one leg manages to get one? The unintentional comedy on this ep is through the roof. And it also looks like they closed up the holes on the pods as well.

Event #4

Women’s Powerball - Jet, Venom, Hellga

Shame there’s no Crush in this game as she’s hot and awesome and almost as entertaining watching her there as it is on Joust. Anyways, Vanessa scored one point, while Nikki scored two.

Men’s Wall - Wolf vs. John, Rocket vs. Gerry

HA! I knew they were gonna roid up those contenders for competition. Evan Almighty is like… I so got this guy. And he gets him after blazing up that thing, despite Gerry being a really good climber himself. And Wolf, the biggest douche of them all, gave the one-legged guy some extra time on the wall by choosing to reach around and grab his good leg instead of risking hurting him by tearing at his prosthetic.

ELIMINATOR

Women’s
Nikki has a 0.5 second head start, though Vanessa wins in a good back and forth race. Making them swim at the end of travelator is still pretty dangerous. Nikki was screaming “help me” when she finished. One more reason why that was a bad idea.

WINNER
Vanessa Warren - 3:21

Men’s
Gerry gets a 1.5 second head start. The uglython continues as the one-legged guy falling off the barrel roll looked painful. Is it wrong for me to really laugh at that dude? This is pretty hard to watch. These things were clearly designed for someone with two legs. In the end, I thought for sure they were just going to reverse the travelator and just bring the one legged guy up, but in the end, they turned off the treadmill, with neither the commentator nor the hosts acknowledging it. It’s like saying, “We knew you couldn’t finish like a regular person, so we’ll take it easy on you, but act like you finished it the same way everyone else did, then give you extra credit since you did it with one leg.” The producers should be ashamed for ever letting that happen. Though saying that, I’m sure they could’ve found a more athletic amputee than this guy. I understand that the guy wanted to compete, but that was embarrassing and painful to watch. I was cringing at him trying to compete in the obstacle course. His opponent could have had a tea break while reading the morning newspaper and he still would have won. The commentating was really annoying too, as the announcer spent the whole length on John saying ‘inspirational’ and it derivatives ‘oh, by the way Gerry is on the hand bikes, but look at the perseverance of John! Truly and inspiration to us all!’ And when he finished, they TALKED TO HIM MORE THAN THE WINNER. Wouldn’t you feel like a loser to be the guy who just won and think, “Well, I beat the amputee in an unfair race… and now everyone is giving him the attention and ignoring me. I wish I could have raced someone else.” And I feel like the amputee guy must have felt like an idiot too. If he didn’t, it was surely because of the exhaustion.

WINNER
Gerry Garcia - 3:03

Final Thoughts: I liked the changes they did. They kind of overused Jet. She doesn’t need to be in so many event. I also liked the upsizing of the events (Wall, Hang Tough). As for the new events, Rocket Ball, Vertigo, both pretty meh. The Eliminator seems a bit better, though a bit rough dumping them in water at the end of it. However I think the second rope swing could be replaced with something else (since they already did one).

The pegleg publicity stunt completely ruined the second episode for me. More power to the dude for actually getting out there and doing something, but it was pathetic on NBC’s part. He couldn’t even compete in half of the events. If anything, we should feel bad for Gerry. If he wins, it’s “Oh whatever, you got a free pass by competing against a cripple!” If he loses, it’s “Wow…you can’t even beat a guy with half as many legs as you!” I’m all for giving people equal opportunity but the guy should not have been on the show if he could not complete the eliminator. That was just pathetic that they let him flop on his torso and crawl across the teeter-totter, and turned of the treadmill. The Gladiators didn’t even go hard on him. Titan didn’t hit him hard at all during power ball and was actually cheering him on during it. Wolf gave him extra time on the wall climb by going around and pulling him down by his upper body rather than his foot. It was not fair for Gerry either because the Gladiators were going easy on the cripple and then he had absolutely no competition for the eliminator, so he just got a free ride to the next round, and that’s not fair to the other thousands of people who tried out for the show.

I actually felt soccer mom was pretty useless, sadly. In Gauntlet she got steamrolled and the Air Force mom was able to break her tackles in the footballesque event. In Pyramid she did ok but no one sucks at that unless your Mayhem.

Oh, and cameramen; would it kill you to hook us up with some more gratuitous zooms or at least leave the camera on people for more than two seconds?

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Tags: American Gladiators

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 3:14 pm and is filed under TV Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.