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Tonight a double-travesty is occurring: the broadcast of both "Wipeout" and "I Survived A Japanese Game Show". Both of these shows take a good idea (for immature jerks like myself), Spike TV's "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge" aka "MXE", and turn it into garbage. "MXE" is an overdubbed (by members of LA's comedy troupe the Groundlings) and hilarious replaying of episodes of Japanese gameshow, "Takeshi's Castle" while "Wipeout" and "I Survived A Japanese Gameshow" are lame parodies of the pretty lame original "Takeshi's Castle", how come the networks just don't get this difference? How can we have respect for the people that said "OK" to drop the millions to fund this crap?
- It's official: we think we're watching TV programs but we're really watching commercials. The Wall Street Journal looked at product placements in TV programs and the numbers are shocking. If you watched NBC's "The Biggest Loser" in the first three months of 2008, you saw just shy of 4,000 product placements in the program, Fox's "American Idol" is a close second with about 3,300 placements. While it's true that product placements are more prevalent in "reality" programming, even dramas are not immune: CW's "One Tree Hill" had over 550 placements in Q1 as well.
8:00pm Wipeout ABC - Series Premiere. The great John Henson, of "Talk Soup" fame, hosts as contestants attempt to conquer elaborate obstacle courses.
8:00pm America's Got Talent NBC - 2 hour special, enough Hasselhoff for ya?
8:00pm Celebrity Family Feud NBC - Series Premiere
9:00pm Hell's Kitchen FOX - Chef Ramsay invites the final three chefs to recreate a signature dish
9:00pm Frontline/World: Jesus in China PBS/KCET - China's underground churches
9:00pm Deadliest Catch DISCOVERY - Storm waves tear up the decks of the Early Dawn, North American and Northwester
9:00pm I Survived a Japanese Game Show ABC - Series Premiere. Host Rome Kanda hosts as 10 Americans compete on a real Japanese game show for the $250,000 prize.
10:00pm Flipping Out BRAVO - Jeff celebrates Zoila's birthday in a nasty way
11:35pm The Late Show With David Letterman CBS - Actress Charlize Theron; actor Richard Belzer; Motley Crue performs!
12:05am Jimmy Kimmel LIVE ABC - Radio personality Adam Carolla; actor Peter Berg; actor Romany Malco; Billy Idol performs!
Pic from "Frontline/World: Jesus In China" courtesy PBS
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I highly doubt Wipeout will even come close to the comic genius of MXC, but it will still be fun to watch people eat it in various creative, painful ways.
MXE is to be revered, but there was a mini-preview of "Wipeout" during a break in last night's very special episode of "The Bachelorette," and I confess I laughed my ass off at the various spills taken. But then again I just admitted to watching "The Bachelorette" so clearly I have no moral compass.
you guys are hilarious - if only that hilarity could be absorbed by "Wipeout"