"Hole in the Wall" - September 11, 2008 and September 18, 2008 episodes

September 11, 2008 episode

The first contest was between team sumo sandwich (two sumo wrestlers and one non-) and team jockeys. I think I either hadn't noticed from the preview shows or they didn't do them during the preview shows, but after each puzzle was attempted, they showed what the correct position was supposed to be to complete the puzzle. One of the complaints I had during the preview shows still held true - the puzzles weren't fair. One team got a puzzle where they just had to make shapes, and then the other team got a puzzle where they all had to jump. Jumping is a lot harder, and I think both teams should get like for like.

The second contest was between the Georgia peaches and the New York meatballs. No, I don't remember (or care) what the names were for. My complaint for this competition was that the contestants weren't svelt and yet the holes they were supposed to go through were actually too small for them to physically fit through. OK, so all the contestants don't have to be skinny, but at least give them puzzles they can actually do. It's one thing to have to try to figure out how to contort yourself into a shape to fit through or to even have to jump through, but if you are ACTUALLY LARGER THAN THE HOLE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO GO THROUGH, it is literally impossible for you to make it through. How is that fair?

Speaking of not fair, they didn't seem to be too careful in some of the judging. The object is to make it through the hole and not break anything or be shoved into the freezing cold water. In the puzzle for three people, there was on instance where one person made it clean through, but the dividing partition between the other two people was broken off. But if you watch the tape, you can see that the person in the middle made it perfectly through without touching the wall whereas the person on the right was the one who knocked out the piece. And yet, they only got credit for one completion. They should have gotten credit for two, since it was just the third person who messed up. If the third person hadn't been there, the middle person would have made it just fine, so how can it be fair to penalize the middle person for the mistake by the person on the right?


September 18, 2008 episode

The first contest was between the burger boys and the chicken wing chicks. Wow, were the boys amazingly flaming-on-high-heat gay. It was just too funny to watch them. At one point in my life, I spent a lot of time around a lot of gay men, and I can't remember anyone being quite as flaming as they were. This was the first competition between teams of different genders. Well, sort of. The women did make it through one particular puzzle, but because they had moved completely out of the play area when they did it, their completion did not count.

The second competition was between little people (and they were even allowed to bring a dog, who was also dressed in spandex but who did not play in the game) versus female body builders (who I swear must have either been transsexuals or on steroids or both, because their facial features were totally masculine, and their voices were incredibly low). Brooke Burns actually had knee-pads on so that she could be on her knees to be the same height as the little people when she was talking to them. That was funny to see her scooting around like that.


general thoughts

Those space-suit spandex outfits were just crazy. Yeah, even if you were fit, you still looked pretty stupid in them, but if you were carrying any extra poundage, it was there for all to see. You could not pay me enough to wear one of those and agree to be seen on national television or by anyone for that matter.

I wish there was actually more "show" to the show. They spent a lot of time talking to the contestants and showing you over and over again what happened, including recapping the events so far. Ummm, ok, it's only a 30 minute show - you're showing me things I saw 5, 10 and 15 minutes ago. Are you assuming I have short-term memory?

I did find myself being more and more annoyed at the unfairness of parts of the show - one team being given harder puzzles than others, people not getting credit for making it through because their teammate didn't make it, and giving people puzzles that were literally impossible for them to solve. There was also one puzzle that I wasn't sure how it was supposed to work, and it was a single-person puzzle too. Well, when they showed how it was supposed to work, the figure was just lying down in the horizontal opening, which wouldn't have been so bad if it was just on the ground, but there were several inches of wall underneath the opening. So the only way to solve the puzzle was to be able to levitate yourself? Ridiculous.

I noticed this time that host Mark Thompson made a lot of comments about what happened, usually during the replays of the puzzles, and a bit at other times as well. It's pretty clear that those comments were either done after the fact or at least not done on mic for the crowd and contestants to hear. And some of the comments were actually really mean and made fun of the contestants in lots of ways. The problem I have with that isn't so much that the contestants were being made fun of, it's that they wouldn't even know about it until they saw it on TV. I also got tired of hearing Mark say the same thing over and over again before each puzzle.

I had thought that some mindless fun might be interesting, but the show isn't funny enough to be worth the time it takes me. I had wondered whether something I enjoyed watching on YouTube for 5 minutes would be enough to keep my interest in a TV show, but I didn't count on the other frustrations I found with the show, so it's not so much mindless fun as much as it is irritating with occasional laughter. So, I'm dropping the show from my viewing list, and the husband is as well.