Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Wipeout premiere on TBS. Read at your own risk!
Wipeout is back on television over at TBS, and minus a few changes, it's largely the show fans from the past will remember with some additional flare. The color scheme is a little different and hosts John Cena and Nicole Byer are nice additions to the whole experience, but we all know the real value of this show. While it's still hilarious as hell to see people take a hard fall, after the premiere, I had to wonder: is it worth the cost?
Two teams put their bodies on the line on a variety of intense courses, and as anyone who has watched Wipeout knows, there's no escaping unscathed. The premiere episode had a dude literally get blasted by a target before he officially started the course, only to make him flop like a fish before falling into the cold waters below. It wasn't just humiliating, it looked incredibly painful.
It was apparently painful enough that, on a few occasions in the premiere, some teams literally were taken out of the running because they were frozen by fear or unwilling to go through the pain of getting smacked or walloped by the obstacles. I can't say I blamed any of them in the slightest because even with all the padding, some of those hits looked like they could cause a concussion.
Plus, let's try to remember these people are getting crushed and slammed for America's entertainment for $25,000 split between 2 people. If I went on Wipeout and blew out my quad on a challenge, I'd spend at least half that money to have it repaired. Honestly, that even feels like a conservative number. I'm not sure half of that prize money would cover the medical costs of a big injury to a contestant.
Do I care about the lack of substantial prize money enough to boycott Wipeout? Hell, no. I'll continue to watch people scrape their face and scorpion pose until the series runs out of willing participants to take on the challenge. Still, though, I definitely wondered how many people watching alongside me had the same thought and whether or not the contestants who didn't win the prize in the premiere regretted even going on the show in the first place.
All kidding aside, the Wipeout reboot did have an unfortunate incident in which a contestant died during filming, so a part of me hopes that injuries aren't quite as bad as they looked in the premiere. I'm all for watching people beef it on obstacles, but I definitely don't want to see people ruin their bodies or worse, just for my entertainment. Overall, the reboot is solid, though perhaps the show could take it just a bit easier on the blindside hits to competitors?
Wipeout airs on TBS Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET. John Cena is great in it, and anyone that agrees should definitely see some of the other things he's up to. Like, why the hell is he doing random interviews in his Suicide Squad outfit?
