Couch potatoes, rise up
THE MONITOR
'Pros vs. Joes' and 'American Gladiators' give regular folk a chance to be heroes. Many, however, are sent back to their living rooms bruised and battered.
YOU know the type: nestled into the couch, beer at the ready, shouting at the screen. Forget baseball or football -- trash-talking is our true national pastime, the God-given right of all Americans to express their most vitriolic feelings from the comfort of their living rooms.
We do it to politicians, prevaricating and dodging questions. (They're just asking for it.) We do it to celebrities, pretty, sometimes vacant and often smug. (Really asking for it.)
Athletes, though, would seem to be less appealing targets. There's something impenetrable about their physical prowess that should, rightly, prevent such thoughts from taking hold. Their strength and skills aren't relative -- they're absolute.
But Americans are stubborn in their can-do commitment to self-expression, so stubborn in fact, that they're willing to put their physical health on the line to back up the words they utter in private. It is the only explanation for "Pros vs. Joes," which starts its third season on Spike TV on Wednesday (regular time slot is 11 p.m. Thursdays).
On this uniquely cruel show, very fit and extremely hubristic laymen square off against a range of recently retired (or not) professional athletes in challenges that are sometimes entertaining and more routinely humiliating. In previous seasons, this has involved attempting to score a goal against Claude Lemieux, playing home run derby with Jose Canseco, and getting beaten about the head by Roy Jones Jr. It is one part celeb-reality, one part "Fear Factor."
Some people don't even need the allure of the pros to put their bodies at risk. The competitors on "American Gladiators" (NBC, 8 p.m. Mondays) are content to compete against the freakishly muscular in-house warriors, and they pay for it -- there have been injuries in two of the first four episodes this season.
"Gladiators," which debuted this month with generally charmless hosts Laila Ali and a slightly desiccated Hulk Hogan, resurrects the late '80s-early '90s syndication franchise with few tweaks. (Reruns of the original air on ESPN Classic; sorely missed in the reboot is co-host Mike Adamle, who gave the charmingly amateur proceedings a dose of seriousness.)
