More Holes! More Walls! More Brain Damage!
“Hole in the Wall” / Dustin Rowles
TV Reviews | September 17, 2008 | Comments (49)
Do all them hard trivia questions on “Jeopardy” hurt your little brain? Does all that letter spinning on “Wheel of Fortune” spin your head? Is “The Price is Right’s” Plinko too complicated for you? Not enough life lines for you on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”? Can’t quite figure out the strategy behind “Deal or No Deal”? Have you been waiting for the day when the networks would bring you a game show without a messy set of convoluted rules? Have you often wished for the ability to throw your own legs over your shoulders so you could blow yourself?
Have I got a show for you!
It’s called “Hole in the Wall,” a game show specifically designed with America’s collective mental deterioration in mind! For a short time each week, you can tune in to “Hole and the Wall” and actually feel your own brain rot, like a tooth immersed in cotton candy and carbolic acid. If you could buy a robot that would insert your right hand beneath your underwear elastic and move it back and forth over the head of your penis for you, then your life would be perfect! You wouldn’t have to think ever again (bonus: Masturbation assistance!).
Have you ever considered that our founding fathers, that Abraham Lincoln and our World War heroes, et. al. have fought over the last 200 plus years so hard to bring us: This. A show where people line up to squeeze through holes in walls for cash? We dropped the Atomic Bomb for: This? “Hole in the Wall” is supposed to represent our hard-fought freedoms? No wonder the terrorists hate freedom. This is what we do with it. I think I may hate freedom, too.
Fuck me, Kung-Fu Jesus. With the knobby end of a pole.
Here’s how “Hole in the Wall” works: The Fox Network scours the land for the dumbest, most idiotic, brain-damaged morons it can find, puts them in silver body suits, and asks them to be themselves: In other words, brain-damaged morons who squeal like teenage girls who’ve just discovered their fun spot. Then, in teams of three, these brain-damaged idiots are asked to contort their out-of-shape bodies in such a way as to fit into body-shaped holes in a wall moving towards them. If they successfully slide through the hole, they win a point. If they don’t, they fall into a pool of colored water. It’s like “Double Dare” for adults. With brain damage.
If you have difficulty picturing something that stupid, and if you were smart enough to throw your television out a window around the time the writers went on strike (and you’ve been blessedly saved from the previews), here’s a short, one-minute demonstration:
In that particular clip, “Hole in the Wall’s” producers recruited an obese brain-damaged woman to participate, knowing that American audiences love nothing more than to see a rotund woman fit through a small hole (or, even better, get pushed into a pool). Big Man! Little Hole! The show would be a lot better if the pool was filled with barracudas. And the makers of the show were forced to play.
Anyway: The show also has a lobotomized announcer, weather man Mark Thompson, who cleverly does play-by-play, as the action is happening, and then again, and again, and yet again, during the replays (real-time and slo-mo). And then again, later in the show, when they do a recap — you know, in case you missed something while you were wiping the drool from your chin. What’s so brilliant about the concept, however, is the many ways in which the announcer can not so slyly sneak in a double entendres to keep your senses awake. Like these (all from the half-hour preview show):
It’s Time. To Face. The Hole!It was almost instinctive the way the guys mounted each other.
They took a ride into the pool.
They all end up wet.
Then he flexed his way through a very tight hole.
All the while, Brooke Burns — a pair of long legs attached directly to a set of huge teeth — does all the sideline reporting, if by sideline reporting you mean she wears a short dress and slightly wet hair and smiles pretty for the camera while the contestants offer up their brand of brain-damaged smack talk and ushers on the apocalypse.
Granted, yes: Americans aren’t the only ones dumb enough to watch “Hole in the Wall.” It was originally a huge smash hit in Japan, but then again, in Japan, they sell used underwear in vending machine (no, really). In fact, there are now versions of the show in 20 different countries across the globe, which suggests that stupidity may kill us all before global warming does.
I think I’m going to go turn on my air conditioner, just to hasten the latter. And maybe co-opt that used underwear idea for the States.
Comments
Posted by: socalledonlycousins at September 17, 2008 2:09 PM
teenage girls who've just discovered their fun spot
Keep talking, I'm listening. Where do I meet these people?