American Gladiators "Episode 206" (2008)

American Gladiators is the only unscripted (or reality) show that I watch. I was a huge fan of the original growing up so I had to give this new series a try. My best friend and I actually both watch so there's an added incentive. It's mindless fun but this season has me growing increasingly more frustrated with these gimmick episodes. People just want to see the contenders go up against the Gladiators. We don't care if they're partners, siblings or married (as in this week's episode). The format is fine the way it is. I didn't mind the Hulk theme so much as that's background color. But these contender gimmicks just give these uninteresting people more of a chance to go on and on in front of the camera. Hopefully you're still awake when we do get to see an event. I guess the producers felt that the show needed a more human interest angle to keep fans engaged. I'm going to plainly state, you are making a show which is supposed to be just action boring. We don't care if next month the two female contenders are competing alongside the two male contenders who are possibly their babies' fathers with special guest host Maury Povich. We want to see out Gladiators take out these contenders for daring to challenge them in their events.

As this is an unscripted show there's not much for me to critique per se so I'll just go over what I liked and didn't like. The men started off poorly in Joust. They both were knocked off in under five seconds and they were bad losses. I commented that one looks like that scene from Mortal Combat where Johnny Cage is doing an action scene for his new movie and the stunt guy forgets to go down. Titan hits the guy, he pauses for a second at the edge and then falls off the podium. Way to impress your wives guys. The Pyramid saw the first male contender ever to win but he won because his uniform ripped when Justice grabbed him. Not the best way to get into the Gladiator history books. At least we got some Wolf action who is my favorite male Gladiator. The men were the first to compete in Sideswipe and we are waiting with bated breath for the time when one of the Gladiators just swings by and kicks one of them in the face.

The women kicked it off with Powerball which I am convinced has to be the Gladiators favorite event. It's just tackling the contenders with a raw fury. Kendra (Blue) gets nailed right at the buzzer and she goes down hard. From the initial angle it look like Steel clotheslined her which made for a great laugh-out loud moment. The third event for the ladies saw them go up against Crush (hands down, favorite Gladiator and the hottest). After taking down Ally (Red) pretty quickly, Crush faced off against Blue whose husband say he would like to see Crush get wet at least once . . . moving on. Blue was able to hang off after dangling over the water for most of the clock however if Crush had performed her stomp move as she had last season, Blue never would have survived.

Not much else except for noticing that the Blue couple were getting a little more frisky each time we were shown them getting ready in the locker room. Not sure what was going on there that the camera didn't reveal. And next week we get to look forward to "American Gladiators: The Biggest Loser Edition". I'll give you a spoiler: it's us. Favorite moment: Going to have to go with the lookalike clothesline in Powerball. Brings back those MXC memories.