Them Bananas

Deadliest Warrior August 26, 2009

Deadliest Warrior (Tuesday, 10pm, Bravo) is just about the dumbest TV show I have ever seen.

The premise is simple: Two of history’s well known fighters – or fighter types – are chosen to do battle. Their armament is divided into 4 categories (Long-Range, Mid-Range, Short-Range, Special) and each category is tested to determine a victor. The winner is chosen through a combination of “field tests” and what we are assured is an “extremely advanced game engine which took 3 years to develop” — but which appears in reality to be a simple enough spreadsheet. In the final 15 minutes, we’re treated to a “combat simulation” to illustrate who the winner is.

So it sounds a little dry, right? Some nerd with a spreadsheet and some badly shot fights. The reality is that Deadliest Warrior is inexplicably entertaining. The meat of the show is the series of comparative tests they do on the weapons. Take last night’s episode – Spetsnaz vs Green Beret. The weapons being tested? Both warrior’s grenades. So how can you compare two grenades to figure out which is best?

First of all, you should always try to avoid applying the same test to both grenades. Jesus Christ. Get the fuck out of here, Einstein.

What makes a truly great grenade? (One of the reasons the show is so fun is you find yourself asking weird questions like this all the time). Range of explosion? Damage done? Raw amount of explosives? Fuck that. Like most aspects of Deadliest Warrior, it’s really about whose experiment is the most ludicrous.

For the first grenade they put it in a washing machine and as you watch the thing get blown to kingdome come on a highspeed camera you can’t help but think “surely this has to be the high point of this weeks show”.

But then for the second grenade, they basically put the grenade in a large perspex box (about the size of a shower unit) with 2 full-size mannequins and a dead pig. They blow it up and you watch these scientists/maniac’s pick around the wreckage saying things like “oh hell yea!” and “holy Jesus, look at this head wound!”. Sometimes they hug, and you are never more than 30 seconds away from an honest-to-god non-ironic fist-bump.

I swear I’m not making any of this up.

Onto the panels: Each warrior gets a few experts to ‘represent’ them on the show (this usually translates to using the weapons in a “controlled” environment). These guys are often complete psychopaths. Once you’ve seen a grown man smashing a mannequin to pieces with a shield, screaming the whole time, you can’t help but wonder what went wrong in his life. What horrible sequence of events led to this person existing in the universe? Are those tears on his cheeks as he tries to retrieve that handaxe from the shattered ruins of a gelatin body created to resemble a human? Or is it just synthetic blood from it’s horrible, staring, lifeless eyes?

When the episode ends you are left wondering if there’s any point watching television ever again. Where the fuck do you go from here? Surely it can’t get any better…. and then they show a preview of next week’s show, where a ninja slices through 3 hanging pig-carcasses with one swing of the blade. I mean, guys, you had me the instant that ridiculous narrator opened his mouth “WHO WILL BE, HISTORYS, DEADLIEST, WARRIOR?”. Everything else is just gravy.

Like pretty much every horrible, cheap TV-movie you’ve ever seen, the whole thing should be utterly repulsive. And yet somehow it passes through to the other side – it’s so insultingly juvenile that you just can’t get annoyed or irritated or bothered at all – at best you’re left sitting there with an idiotic grin plastered across your face.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show like this. And I’ve seen a lot of shows.

Stupid, insulting, and juvenile – and the best show on television right now. You owe it to yourself to switch your brain off and watch this.