This show is ridiculously stupid, completely inane, and I love it.
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been laughing the whole show!
I saw a clip of it, and it looks like a Japanese show I’ve seen clips of online (do a search for “Human Tetris”, IIRC
I’m pretty sure this is the next great television show, now that “The Wire” has finished.
It’s about conformity, you see. And how society faces us to contort in strange ways to fit through whatever fate or culture throws our way, lest we be swept away into the pool, representing failure, poverty, social ostracism, and insanity. All the while, we are mocked for the strange dance we must do to try and stay alive.
The first round is the thesis in its simplest and purest form. One man stands alone against the world. He must take the shape society expects from him.
The second and third rounds expand on this. Two, and then three stand against the wall. But rather than taking comfort and support from each other, the fate of one is locked with the others. Both succeed, or both fail. Sometimes they must act together to fit as one through a single hole, and sometimes they must separate. But it’s all the same. One failure dooms the whole team.
The fourth round, I feel, slightly weakens the work’s thesis by losing the interdependency of the teams. The increased speed does, however, serve to heighten the sense of difficulty and futility.
The final round is sheer brilliance. Now the player, representing mankind as a whole, is blind. He cannot even see what is expected of him. He must be guided by the vague descriptions of others. His reward is success, money and accliam. But success is rare.
I have seldom seen a more chilling indictment of human society.
What a complete and utter trainwreck.
It’s not enough for contestants to go on and make fools of themselves, they have to get insulted by the host, too? How long do you figure for each attempt at The Wall, 30 seconds? That’s four-and-a-half minutes, padded out to thirty. One wall had a shape where you’d have to sit on your ass with your feet in the air, and then jump to get through the hole. There were others where you’d have to kick your leg up, but the hole was at least twelve inches too short.
This show is intended for people who take joy in watching others fail. Count me out.
It was pretty funny in the way that MXC is funny. It seems kind of limited in where they can really go with it though, so I doubt it will remain entertaining past a couple of episodes. MXC at least has a variety of different ways to make people look stupid.
Yeah, pit a bunch of healthy people versus a bunch of overweight schlubs-who could possibly guess the outcome? I will now attempt to wash this out of my brain by watching clips of Pink Lady And Jeff.
No kidding. Watching the commercials for this I was very excited. But damn was it slow paced and boring. I noticed the much too short leg hole too, which gives some crazy advantage to shorter people. Oh well.
It’s not about the failing, for me – it’s about the FALLING – or rather, watching people attempting NOT to fall. That’s funny stuff.
As it happens, I and a couple of friends were in the studio audience for the taping of the next-to-last episode of this show back in July. If you think padding it to 30 minutes is bad, try watching it for two and a half hours. They’ve only got one wall, so they have to reset it after every attempt. It’s the worst audience I’ve ever been in – not because of the length, though. Before every take, they had us stand, applaud, and cheer. Our instructions were to continue for the entire time the cameras rolled. We couldn’t even hear what the two hosts were saying.
However, it was all redeemed because we got to see Brooke Burns get dry-humped by a sopping wet little person. She was a great sport about it.
We were supposed to be in the audience for the final episode as well, but we left after the first taping.
All kidding aside, I was surprised to see the commercial for this.
I mean, I’ve seen clips of the Japanese version on YouTube. I just assumed it was one of many events on a show with a variety of wacky challenges. You know, like an adult Double Dare.
But just the wall? You expect me to watch an hour of this? Weekly?
Or… it was just a waste of perfectly good styrofoam.
In the original Japanese show, this challenge is one of a series they do for each episode. I’m surprised that in the US version, a whole show is devoted to just this one challenge.
I definitely don’t think it’ll have staying power, but I found it entertaining. Yes, people fail, but come on, if you can’t have a sense of humor as a contestant, you’re on the wrong show. It’s so comically stupid that I don’t feel bad laughing at the failures. It’s not like people are getting hurt, or it’s a serious competition. I’d be perfectly willing to make an ass out of myself on that show. It’d be fun!
My wife was chastising me the whole time I watched, saying “this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever watched.” True. Very true. But it was still funny.
I think I’d rather see games like this one:
Complete and utter shit, and that’s coming from a guy who doesn’t necessarily look at that as meaning “I won’t watch it ever again”.
I won’t watch this ever again.
I watched the first three “walls”…two of them had holes that were far too small for the competitors. If you’re not going to at least make it possible for the contestant to succeed, then there’s really no point, is there?
Add to that the complete lack of funny, and the horse-faced woman braying at the contestants between each round…<shudder>…no thanks…
I guarantee that whoever decided to produce this show was only aware of the YouTube clips, and didn’t research the full show at all.
This show was officially licensed from Fujisankei Communications, the producers of the game show from which the inspiration comes. According to a Fuji TV rep, the “hole in the wall” segment has only aired 10 times in Japan, but FremantleMedia- the licensor and producer- has sold it as a standalone show in over 20 countries.
Who popularized it in the States anyway- Ellen Degeneres? I know she recreated it on her show a lot.
My boyfriend and I both watched this after declaring it too dumb to be on TV. We were right, but it’s still pretty funny. Not something I’ll go out of my way to watch, but if there’s nothing else on…
Oh, and we think the secret to the hole-being-too-small thing is to think three dimensionally. If any of the contestants turned their body a bit, they could have fit through easily. Going at it a ninety degree angle made some of them nearly impossible.
Definitely. Some of the cutouts seem to assume your legs are about 2 feet long, maybe less. It seemed like some of them figured that out eventually. MXC (or as we called it “Asian Injury Bonanza”) is basically a vastly better version of this show. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the Japanese show Takeshi’s Castle, redubbed to make the whole thing even more ridiculous than it already is.
That is the most hilariously fucked-up thing I’ve seen in months. I was actually crying while trying to laugh as quietly as the contestants.
I don’t need to watch that gain.
But on the “too short” point, I don’t think that is an issue. The first fit-guy showed how it should be done. He didn’t go through the hole in a static position. He wiggled his way through it.
If the leg hole is too short then you can’t just stick it out parallel to the wall, you need to rotate a bit to shorten the silhouette of your leg.
But still, in a single 30 minute episode I think they completely explored the nooks and crannies of the concept and a second episode seems superfluous.