Reluctant TV Complaint

Just about anyone who reads this will know that I have a special relationship with the old 70s era TV show "the Superstars." It was the original "Trash Sport" dynasty (though the producers of the old "Home Run Derby" and "Shell's Wonderful World of Golf" might argue, they were different in that the competitors were, respectively, Major League Baseball players and professional golfers). It was a beautiful competition, with baseball players and football players and skiiers and track and field types and boxers all competing in some goofy sports with an arcane scoring system. There were 10 events, of which each athlete needed to compete in 7, plus the obstacle course (or maybe that was the 10th event, but I remember it was mandatory). The events were straightforward, athletic type events, like a swimming race that damned near killed Joe Frazier. There was usually a bowling or a billiards or something goofy thrown in for balance, but in general it was real sporting events, legit competition, and it was names you knew trying hard to win, with a ton of action packed into every show.

This new incarnation, not so much.

Hey, look, I know, this is the easiest post imaginable. "Something from my childhood is changed and therefore inferior! waahhhh!" It's really not all that difficult or imaginative to dump all over the modern version of something. That's why I gave this crapfest every chance to succeed. But it just ain't happening. My complaints are many, and they break down as such...

A. The set-up:
Instead of a bunch of recognizable and semi-obscure athletes, they took 8 "athletes" and 8 "celebrities" (believe me, those quotation marks are carrying a lot of water there) and teamed them together. Each team is a boy-girl team, with each male "athlete" paired with a female "celebrity" and vice versa. The quality of athlete varies widely...Terrell Owens down to Kristi Leskinen (apparently some sort of skiier), while the quality of celebrity really flatlines at the top (uh, Dan Cortese?) and goes nowhere (one of the Extreme Makover designers? Seriously? Were all the Baldwins busy? Are you sure?). Along the way, we get such luminary athletes as Robert "Fourth Banana" Horry, Lisa "Impending ACL Tear" Leslie, and Jeff "Wearing a baseball cap 'cause I don't feel like putting on the hairpiece" Kent. The celebrity side...Christ, I'm not even going to bother, but suffice to say there are a couple of supposed models, an Iglesias (not that one...no, not that one either) a Baywatch dude (no, none of those), and the chick from the Doritos commercial from the Super Bowl a few years back.

B. Quantity and quality of action:
The teams compete in two (2) events each week. Two whole events, one filmed each day. After the two events, the top X teams are "safe" the bottom X teams are "going to the obstacle course" and, ostensibly to eliminate ties, two teams perform in "the rubber match" which is not nearly as dirty or interesting as it sounds. Essentially, they get a mini-do-over from the second event, and the loser goes to the obstacle course. That night, they go double elimination relay on the watered-down (sadly, not literally) obstacle course, and the loser is eliminated. Herein lies a major flaw. Whereas most competitions are about winning, this one is entirely based on not losing, a fact that skiier Bode Miller has exploited successfully. But, you say, just look at the nearest analogue in the reality-show world, "The Amazing Race," in which the losing team is eliminated each week, and a team could conceivably finish 2nd to last each week until the finale and win it all. This is true, but at least on TAR, the winner of each leg gets a prize. In this show? Nothing. It's never even really mentioned who won the week. That means the bulk of the thing is about who is almost losing. I'm completely used to the fact that most modern day game shows (Survivor et. al.) celebrate mediocrity (can't be seen as too competent, I'll be exposed as a threat!) but this isn't Survivor, this is the Superstars. This is supposed to be about ubercompetence, not scraping by.

Back to the quantity of competition. Two events. I'm sorry, let me go back into my dwindling supply of sarcastic quotation marks and say two "events." One of them was a long jump, though a long jump into water, which was vaguely awesome. But, in total, the thing had about 90 seconds of actual athletic exertion, total. Because each team member jumped once. One jump. Sure, they got a "practice" jump, so I'll give them a full three minutes of action. But this was fully one third of a 90 minute episode. Then they had to show each competitor wading out of the water and telling Warren Sapp (no, I'm not kidding, it's actually Warren Sapp. What, like you thought he was busy?) how it felt out there. Gah.

The most recent episode was the breaking point. There were 5 teams left, including a team that had been eliminated and brought back citing the shady "if another team drops out, we bring back the most recently eliminated team." Apparently, someone in Buffalo caught wind of the fact that their high priced free agent WR was competing in an athletic endeavor and, more to their shock, I'm sure actually trying, and so they put the stop to that but quick. But I digress. The 5 teams competed in a "relay race." In this race, each person had to run in the opposite direction from their teammate around a "course" (it was the cart path around one hole at the golf course at the resort this nonsense was filmed at). They met somewhere in the middle-ish, handed off a baton and ran back. First team with both members back wins. They were a little vague about the distance, but the incredibly stiff John Saunders (more on him later) referred to it once as a "half-mile" run. I'm thinking that means each competitor ran a half mile (give or take where they met up with their partner) in total, or a run of less than 5 minutes (most people can walk a mile in just over 1o minutes, if they try). And that's your day's grueling event. Wow, kids, a whole 5 minutes of effort? Say it ain't so. Turns out, that was the endurance test for this week, because the next day's event was bowling. Ok, sure, they used to do bowling on the old show, so it's legit, but it was the format I quibble with. First, the bowling lane was, for no discernible reason, set up to stretch out over the pool. That made it incredibly wobbly, and meant that the pins were falling when I don't think they should have. But more importantly was the scorekeeping. Each team bowled a frame. Yes, one frame. Each partner threw one ball. The team that had the lowest total was eliminated. The the scores re-set to zero and they did it again, eliminating the next team and the next and the next. That means that to get to the winner, a total of 14 frames were bowled. Not by each team, but total. Bowling less than a game and a half takes about 15 minutes, and that's with beer involved. I mean, was it too taxing on the editing staff to have them edit down (or, god forbid, show) one full game of bowling? Do the producers think so little of their audience that they fear that we wouldn't understand the complex bowling scoring system? If that's the case, I've got news for you...the people who you are the most worried about are the ones who generally bowl the most.

That's about 20 minutes of action, followed by a best of three elimination round on the obstacle course (by my count, each round took about one minute to complete, but I'd be willing to go all the way to 90 seconds each, so 3 minutes for the 2-0 sweep. Twenty-three minutes of athletic competition, (did I mention that the relay race seemed edited down some?) to fill an hour-long episode. That's less action than a major league baseball game, and just barely more than my 5 year old's tee-ball game. It somehow makes it worse that this was recorded over two days. On the old show, by the end of the 10 events, the competitors were gassed. I think they did it over a couple days as well, but it was more than one event per freaking day, that's for sure.

C. The presentation
Four words: sideline reporter Warren Sapp. There's a female sideline reporter as well, named Jenn somethingorother, and I have no idea who she is, nor do I care. They are both predictably awful.

But the real surprise amongst the announcers is the generally competent and amiable John Saunders. Here, he's terrible. He's trying to sound like part Jeff Probst, part Alex Trebek and part Bob Costas (otherwise known as TVs White Man's Holy Trinity). He's clearly reading the "play-by-play" from a script in post-production, and it's poorly written by some intern who's not a writer OR a play-by-play person. When he goes into reality-show host mode, he's so stiff and bad that every time he goes into faux-drama patter "and we'll find out (Shattnerian pause) what challenge awaits you next," the heretofore unmentioned athlete Brandi Chastain actually gives him the fake scared "ooooooh," complete with "I'm scared" finger wiggle.

That's not to say it's a loss. There is, at least, some unintentional comedy. The psychosexual ramifications of the dynamic between Brandi Chastain and her much younger partner, Julio Iglesias Jr. give us, like some dirty-minded "Before and After" clue on Wheel of Fortune, a Soccer M(om)ILF vibe, complete with his occasional lapse into the "besibol been berry berry good to me" Latin Lover stereotype. Lisa Leslie's complete and utter lack of the most remote shred of athleticism is both awesome and telling (how could she lose the basketball shooting competition? Seriously?!?!) Robert Horry (pre-elimination) constantly trying to cop a feel on his partner under the guise of celebrating with his teammate brings new meaning to his old "Big Shot Rob" nickname. TOs partner (I'm not going to bother looking her up, she's some model) was such a horrible person and a bad teammate, she made him into a totally sympathetic figure. And the fact that the most anonymous team (ballroom dancing show guy, extreme skiing woman) is probably going to run away with this thing is exactly what ABC deserves for putting this moronic thing on the air.

Ok, well, that's enough of that. I should go. Keyshawn Johnson is judging "Iron Chef America" on my DVR right now, and I need to go make a bunch of "Just Give Me the Damn Balsamic" jokes.