This weekend I watched the first couple of episodes of ABC's I Survived a Japanese Game Show. Going into this I expected to see a rip off of Takeshi's Castle/Most Extreme Elimination Challenge but with fat and stupid Americans as the contestants, and that's pretty much what I got. The premise behind the show is that ABC duped some random reality show contestants into flying to Japan without any explanation. Supposedly the contestants only knew that they were going to be in a reality show, nothing more. "This is what happens when you put 10 strangers in a Japanese Game Show, what happens when you stop being polite and start getting real?" Well, Real World this ain't...
The contestants on I Survived a Japanese Game Show were basically kidnapped from LAX by ABC and taken to Japan where they are put up in a Real World-esque house and proceed to shit all over Japanese culture. For example, not thirty seconds after the segment starts someone walks into the bedroom and sees the traditional Japanese style bedding. The reaction to this was as to be expected, "OH HELL NO! I AIN'T SLEEPIN' ON NO FLOOR!" It's a shame they didn't object as loudly when ABC kidnapped them in the first place... Seconds later one of these bumpkins wanders into the bathroom and takes note of the toilet in a similar fashion, yelling "Hey ya'll, they got a remote control for the toilet!" This is followed by plenty of hooting/hollering and toilet-remote flailing. What ABC didn't show us was probably the 35 minutes of footage where each person takes a turn flushing the shitter from a different room in the house.
This entire show was created to get people to laugh at Japanese culture though... So ABC knows exactly what's going on. They just want to cash in on the MXC demographic (read: 14-36 year old guys who refer to their friends or themselves as "dudes"), but that's kinda their job...
Majide!
Majide is the name of the fake Japanese game show ABC created to torture these people for your amusement. Majide means "seriously?" or "you've gotta be crazy" in Japanese. The format of the game show is kinda like Double Dare. In the first episode the teams were split into two groups. The team that could eat the most dumplings in two minutes would win. The catch is that only one person would be eating, the other four people would have to run to them on a treadmill with the dumpling on their head while the other person would grab the dumpling without using their hands. After falling on the treadmill you'd be thrown backwards into a pile of flour. The second episode's task consisted of a human claw game that resulted in much shouting and crying.Like all reality shows there is an elimination round. The first time around it an MXC style trampoline game where the Americans had to slam into a mock windshield like an insect. The two contestants for this game were chosen by the losing team. The first loser was a single mom who managed to fail at every attempt during the dumpling run and the second contestant was a black lady who was chosen by the white contestants probably because they were sick of all this Anglo-Japanese racist that they were eager to pick on some black folk again. Seriously though, the black lady didn't screw up or anything, there was just an awkward moment where the white dude from the south was all, "Um, I think the black lady should go home," and she was all, "WTF!?!?"
The second elimination game was between two white chicks, one of which was the loser who was sent home the previous episode. Confused? Well, there was a middle aged white guy who got sick (of the stupid show?) and went home, so the producers brought back the loser from the week before.
In the end this show is no where as fun to watch as Most Extreme Elimination Challege. Which in turn is no where near as fun to watch as a real TV show (Lost, Law and Order, Top Gear, etc). What this show needs is crazier stunt games, not lame shit they did on Double Dare like fifteen years ago.
