Keeping Score

Thunderdome. Sans Tunder. Or Dome.

In an effort to hopefully catch another American Gladiators type show, I made the mistake of watching The New TNN's Thunderdome last night. Anyone bother to catch this piece of crap yet? It's on late (midnight, one am?) on The New TNN. There's a reason why it's on at midnight: people are either too drunk or too asleep to notice just how bad it is. Surprisingly, it's not even listed on The New TNN's website.

I figured something was up when the women with the large boobs in the bikinis started talking. Then the words that were coming out of their mouths started sounding a lot like "I really like to race," and "nothing compares to the feeling when I'm in control of a car that's moving so fast." I've seen professional female athletes, and unless it's college volleyball or tennis, they're usually not...how would you say...supermodels. The pretty girls tend to realize that crashing cars and taking hits has a tendency to ruin the manicure they just paid eighty bucks for.

Then the pre-race interviews happened. Can you say wrestling? Because that's exactly how fake it was. If I wanted bad actors yelling at each other, I'd go watch wrestling. Or porn. I'm not going to watch TNN ruin what is a very real sport by having women with fake tits and bad actors with shaved heads lose thier very not real temper when the idiot with the mic asks them a loaded question about their "competitor." Let's review the fouls, shall we?

1). Having the actors put on their helmets and drive off camera in one shot, and then having two stunt doubles in the next shot wearing completely different gear tends to show your hand. And really, next time, hire female stunt drivers to act in place of the large breasted, wide hipped actresses. It's just a bit obvious when it's a guy with a wig on under the helmet, guys.

2). Paintball on motorcycle side-cars doesn't work. Maybe the general public doesn't know this, but you can't give guys a paintball gun with a see through ammo hopper with no ammo in it and expect to fool me into thinking he's actually shooting at the other guys. Besides the obvious lack of ammo problem, there weren't any paintballs flying through the air. They only move at 298 fps, which is about five times slower than a bullet. So yes, you can see them. Also, if someone had 100 hits on them, as you purported in your "stats" at the end of the race, they would appear as if someone had poured a slimy bucket of paint on them. Having a guy with only three red paint splats on them even though the tally said 100 makes you a dumb, sad liar. Oh, and while we're at it, no one manufactures red paintballs. For obvious reasons, the sport of paintball makes painstaking efforts to not be mistaken as a firearm firing bullets. Thus, no company has ever made a red paintball. EVER. Furthermore, having the guy point the gun at the other motorcycle, and adding sound fx of a paintball gun firing doesn't work, either. Paintball guns release a small puffy cloud of CO2 (at least when you're using CO2 cannisters, as the show was) when they fire. It's like a muzzle flash, only it's a puff of gas. And your guns didn't have them. But wait, there's more! When you had the interviewer who wasn't wearing eye protection get "shot" by having blood squibs go off underneath his shirt, you broke every rule there is worth having regarding paintball safety. You don't even pretend to fire a weapon at someone who isn't wearing eye protection. In fact, if you would have even consulted one person who played paintball, they would have told you that no one is allowed anywhere near live paintball guns without eye protection. It just isn't done. Plus, those squibs were painfully obvious. But enough about the fake paintball already.

3). People who know how to drive cars fast don't wear heels with exposed toes. They just don't. So don't bother showing women who have no business lying about what good drivers they aren't getting in the BMW Z3 which they don't really own wearing shoes that no race car driver would ever wear.

4) Look, I know you're desperately trying to come off as a "sports entertainment" type show, but could you have found a color commentator who didn't want to be Jesse "The Body" Ventura so badly?

5). I can appreciate your attempt at making different characters, but when your Mad Max guy is wearing armor which has rubber tire treads stapled on top of the football pads he's wearing, I start to nitpick. When I find the metal grille from a PC coolant fan dead center on the front, I start to laugh. Hard. Was this show supposed to be a comedy?

I don't even know why this stupid show is called Thunderdome. If they're going for the "Mad Max" angle, why didn't they call it Roadwarrior. There's no Thunderdome in this show. There's not even a dome. No Bordertown. No Master Blaster. No nothing.