Gladiators

I'm sitting here watching the end of the first episode of the revived American Gladiators. As I wrote before, I was excited that they were bringing the competition back but also skeptical of how they would bring it back. So far, I'm moderately entertained...but I'm also pretty doubtful of its genuity. I just watched the women run through "The Eliminator," the final obstacle course, which was of course redone. As far as the course goes, I think they did a good job...the women were struggling to get through it. Swimming under fire was a nice add-on...as far as the barrel roll, they totally stole that from Ninja Warrior. I just find it hard to believe that the leader of the course struggled for about 45 seconds to get up a 10-foot, inclined treadmill that had a rope to help them get up it...struggling so much that she lost. I mean...that's a dramatic finish...a little too dramatic.

The men just finished...the NYC firefighter beat the skateboarder from San Diego. I bet zero people lost money on that one.

As far as the Gladiators go, there's no Malibu-like character, but they did a good job of creating some personalities. There's Wolf, probably my favorite so far, who lives up to his nickname physically AND vocally. They created an American Indian persona, named Toa, who belted out what HAD to of been an authentic Indian war-chant before one of the events. The others seem pretty standard in comparison...just purely jacked-up meatheads. The female gladiators...well let's just say that the OLD version of the show had female Gladiators that would give you nightmares. There's been improvements...BUT they still have much bigger guns than me and could probably easily give me a black eye.

Well...what I thought was only an hour-long episode turns out to be a 2-hour episode...so I'm gonna go enjoy it!