The show Wipeout on ABC may be the first television show in the history of television in which the title can serve as the concept, pitch, and synopsis for the entire show. If someone were to ask, “What is the show Wipeout about?” they would have inadvertently answered their own question. The show is so simple, that watching 5 minutes of it the other day is enough for me to fully understand what the show is about and why it is (apparently) popular.
First, Wipeout is a testament to American efficiency and impatience. I find its parallel in Pixie Stix from the candy world. Pixie Stix is basically the acknowledgment that what kids really like in candy is sugar, so why
waste time and effort on the complicated artifices through which the sugar is delivered (i.e., the candy) when you can just dump a bunch of colored sugar in a paper wrapper and call it a day? Why suffer through the tedium of chewing and processing through non-sugar foodstuffs just to get to what you really want?
Wipeout works from the same premise. For centuries, humankind has invented complicated systems to produce the desired effect of being able to watch grown men and women horribly injure themselves. The Greeks had their athletes run around buck-naked, covered in oil (and mostly drunk), all in the hopes that a few might crash into each other and then land in uncomfortable positions. In modern times, we’ve created sports wherein really athletic people moving at full speed, run (or skate, or jump, or drive, or whatever) toward each other in ways that are sure to, eventually, produce ligament-busting, career ending, collisions.
But really, it’s a whole bunch of pomp and circumstance for very little payoff. Even a football game produces only a handful of concussion-inducing collisions or nauseous bone snaps. In Boxing or even MMA, the fighters spend sooooooo much time avoiding getting hit—it’s really a waste of everyone’s time.
Wipeout, like Pixie Stix, cuts out the facade. The point of Wipeout, purportedly, is to run through an obstacle course, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually impossible to do. I
don’t even know if there is eve a prize for the person who finishes. I don’t know if anyone ever has finished. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. The show is literally 30 minutes of people falling down and hurting themselves. It’s the Holy Grail, what previous shows like Americas Funniest Home Videos aspired to, but could never achieve because inevitably, there was that video of a kitten playing the piano that came between the man being whacked in the face with a 3 Wood and the woman burning her face in a waffle iron.
Wipeout is just people getting smacked in the face with waffle irons over and over until it’s finally over.
I think the next step in the show’s evolution is obvious. Right now, there still is a lot of time wasted where the contestants don’t wipeout. Sometimes, through some loop-hole in the laws of physics, they manage to run over the inflatable bridge, that is only being supported by a single wisp of air, without falling into the reservoir of raw sewage below. This, clearly, is wasted time.
I suggest Wipeout 2.0, in which contestants are, one by one, pushed off a 500 foot ledge where they fall, bouncing off inflatable protrusions on the way down, sort of like a helpless pinball in a pinball game. When they reach the bottom, they get their prize—the chance to compete in Super Wipeout 2.0, which is basically the same as Wipeout 2.0 but this time when they get to the bottom there are also crotch-biting crocodiles.
Even if ABC won’t buy it, I’m sure Fox will be interested.
Hey, I own season 1 of wipeout on DVD. That show is gold. But, just like text messaging, this American fad has been around Japan for a while. See: Takeshi’s Castle. Well, really just see Spike’s MXC – because Wipeout is a complete copy of that.
I think the Japanese have the “wacky game show” market pretty much locked down. America should stick to what it does best–reality shows about really rich people. Hello Miami Social.