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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Forgive me father for I have watched the Deadliest Warrior on the Spike Network

If you are unfamiliar with the Spike Network, it is a cable based network that, near as I can tell, only broadcasts testosterone laced programming. The only time I watch it is when I am at the gym and can't bear to watch another episode of the Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network or stomach back to back episodes of King of Queens. My gym only springs for basic, basic cable so there isn't much to choose from.

Anyway, normally I will watch a program called the Unit, a series about a covert military unit that only deals in black ops. It deals with the day to day family lives of men trained to rip your head off and crap down the hole. Woven in with the mundane assassinations and blowing up foreign capitols is the subplot of the wives of the men in the Unit. It is riveting.

But I digress.

The other day the Unit wasn't on. What was on was a series called the Deadliest Warrior. The premise of this reality show is that members of a group called the Fight Club team up with scientists to analyze in great depth what the outcome would be if famous warriors from different eras in history were pitted against each other. For example what would happen if an Apache warrior ran into a Roman Gladiator at a bar and got into a dispute over peanut shells? Or who would win a belly bumping contest, a Samurai or a Viking?

The scary thing about this show is that there is a group called the Fight Club and that they get to play with sharp objects. This is role playing and historical reenactment on steroids. These guys hack away and club anatomically correct dummies and then ooh and ahhh at the wounds they've inflicted. Then they smack each other on the butt and fist butt a lot. It is totally whacked.

But I watched back to back episodes. Just in case you are curious, an Apache warrior can whoop a gladiator (but I bet not Spartacus) and a Samurai has the upper hand when fighting a Viking. The show determines this by inputting the data gathered as the fight club hacks up the dummies with the appropriate weapons for the appropriate warrior. They then run a computer program that averages the number of times either genre of warrior would win. The show then recreates the ultimate showdown battle an reveals which warrior wins.

It is pitiful that I watch this and kind of enjoy it.

BTW, a ninja can beat a Spartan by throwing ground glass in his eyes. I don't think this is very sportsmanlike.

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