Wipeout! Game Show Completes My Soul

I am in love. Nothing has so gratifyingly scratched my persistent itch for slapstick humor since John Ritter tripped over his bellbottoms into lemon meringue pie held against Suzanne Somers' chest. I watched the rerun of the first episode with my grandma on Sunday, and my heart was transformed. I was skeptical at first (we had had a bad experience with American Gladiators the week before....two thumbs waaaaaaaay down), but by the time the second girl had to have her buttcrack digitally censored because her pants were falling down, and then she proceeded to bellyslide limply through the obstacle course's finale because she was close to passing out from fatigue, I laughed so hard I gave up grading papers and propped my feet upon the pile of them at the other end of the couch, leaned back, balanced a plate of sandwiches on my chest and focused on nothing else for the rest of the hour.

I miss the golden age of Double Dare after school. I miss Marc Summers and his obsessive-compulsive disorder at odds with the gaggles of green-gooed kids tackling him around the waist from the sheer bliss of their new bikes and Nike tennis shoes they won from successfully de-flagging The Giant Nose. I miss Legends of the Hidden Temple with Olmec and I even sort of miss that stupid Shop Til You Drop show my little sister used to make me watch with her. I miss obstacle courses.

Thank you Wipeout! for being my summer companion. If you have not yet experienced this television program, please watch the following clip in all its entirety. You will not be disappointed. You have to keep from getting cynical in the first couple of minutes, namely the girl who hates her ex. John & John, the commentators, are particularly punny in this first round, but things really get rolling with Margie Stubbs, the second contestant. She won me over to this show. She did, and the Big Balls did. I have yet to see someone try to cross the Big Balls that didn't make me laugh out loud in realtime. I love the Big Balls. I'll say it again. I love the Big Balls. I'm not ashamed to say that. The Big Balls are my favorite. And I even finally found John & John palatable when they quipped, after the particularly effeminate kah-rah-tay specialist bellyflops off part of the course, that he "must have received his rainbow belt from the Bob Fosse JouDou." It was a distasteful joke, but a suprisingly clever one. Or maybe that was just because it came after a long stream of puns.

Remarkably, by the time the show progresses to the end and you've seen people fall on their heads enough times for them to have lost vast amounts of freshman college curriculum brain cells, you are actually rooting for the last survivors on the final obstacle course. This one is held at night time, and there is a glorious spectacle of fire and water, and it's all very electric and post-apocolyptic. I want all my friends to start watching this show so that someday when I'm on it you can all cheer for me while I make an ass of myself reality-TV-style. Watch it. Tuesday nights or Sunday nights. ABC.