8 Responses

1. Carrie

   1

   May 20th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

   [hulk hogan]You said it, brother![/hulk hogan]

   Seriously, the Travelator doesn’t bother me as much as the net-climb right after the swim. That’s what drains everyone and slows it all down. Without that, maybe contenders would have enough energy to really hit that Travelator - and the teeter totter can give them an extra boost if they figure that out early enough.

2. Darren

   2

   May 20th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

   A swim and then a cargo net. Shades of Fort Boyard.

   I agree about the teeter-totter before the Travelator. If you look at the floor between the crash mat and the ramp, there’s not a lot of runway there to get going up the belt. Too many people stumble right away. You’ve got momentum going down the thing, use it.

   And you know, it’s all well and good to bring contestants on who are missing limbs, but if you’ve designed your final event such that a person with an artificial leg can’t navigate it nearly as well as *every* other opponent you’ve cast, it’s kind of an empty gesture. They had to shut off the Travelator for him, for criminy’s sakes. It wasn’t fair to him, and wasn’t fair to the contestants who weren’t given the equivalent of a free pass, and had to fight to come in first during their match. You can bring people on like that, but have to do it in pairs.

3. shelly

   3

   May 20th, 2008 at 9:00 pm

   Personally, I don’t like either of the current Eliminator courses (S1 or S2). Oddly enough, they both make that stupid ball pit from the final season of the original series look like nothing.

   IMO, the best courses were…

   AG S5+S6: Versaclimber, slide, handbike, spinning cylinders, cargo net, zip line, plexiglass wall, treadmill/travelator, paper burst/barrier.

   International Gladiators 1 and 2: high and low hurdles, rope climb up to platform, hand ladder (women) or hand bike (men), spinning cylinders, cargo net, zip line, balance beam, travelator, paper burst/barrier.

   Sigh.

4. Brig Bother

   4

   May 21st, 2008 at 5:16 am

   It’s quite interesting that in the new UK Glads which is based very heavily on New USG S1, the Eliminator seems to work a lot better in that unless there’s some very good editing going on it’s not taken anyone more than two goes to get up the travelator. The cargo net is about half the size which may or may not be a factor.

   Also, you can’t wrestle in Earthquake - it’s basically sumo on a tilty platform. That’s a bit different to your version, isn’t it?

   New UK Glads is downloadable if you know where to look.

5. steve

   5

   May 21st, 2008 at 5:48 pm

   Can I just say something in NBC’s defense… The episode you’re referring to (which I’m assuming is the all-cops episode on Monday) had two particularly slow male contestants in the Eliminator… The posted time of ten minutes by the contestants was in fact extremely high, looking at the leaderboard. Most of the Eliminator runs were in the 2-3 minute range. If it took them ten minutes to run it and they aired it in ten minutes, just as they would air a two-minute run in two minutes, then what’s the major fault? You’d like to see them edit out the gameplay so you can go pull the laundry out of the dryer a couple minutes earlier? It’s like editing out the middle ten seconds of the Race Game on TPiR. If, however, they took a two-minute run and aired it in ten minutes, you’d definitely have a valid point. I know the women’s run was in the two/three minute range, how quickly did that air? (I don’t have it taped, so I couldn’t check.)

   And also, do you notice that the travelator does slow down a bit after the contestant gives it a few tries? This was especially apparent in this week’s case, as well as the disabled contestant’s run last week. They have the ability to slow it down a bit, and I think they actually do, after the contestant gives it a good X tries. I’d almost like to think that some contestants know this ahead of time, and make a couple of half-effort runs, just to get it to slow down for them.

   And I guess I really should reemphasize, using the giant see-saw for momentum is the optimal strategy, I think one of the women on last week’s episode did that as well. Most contestants get off the see-saw, stop, and look at the travelator for a few seconds before going for it… you think execs tell them to do that for drama? I wouldn’t be surprised, really…

6. Brig Bother

   6

   May 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 am

   They certainly edited the men’s eliminator down, they didn’t show ten minutes of it at all.

   The travellator is slow anyway, the real problem is that it’s too steep and long.

7. Scott P.

   7

   May 23rd, 2008 at 9:20 am

   I think the travelator would be better where it was in the original AG, at the start. Then it’s a drain to the energy level but it’s navigable. Too, didn’t they let contestants run up the non-travelated slope after 3 tries on the original?

   A suggestion for the handbike/tightrope sections is to bring back the “penalty pit,” where Gladiators wait below to detain them for 5-7 seconds. Otherwise, people will keep on dropping off and just climbing up and taking less time to do so than to navigate the actual obstacle.

8. steve

   8

   May 26th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

   Because you sparked my interest, I watched AG tonight with a stopwatch in hand.

   –Men’s Eliminator–
   Actual time (according to the show’s timers): 2:10
   Airing time (according to my stopwatch, timing what they aired): 2:10
   The times match, no big dilemma here.

   –Women’s Eliminator–
   Actual time: 2:57
   Airing time: 2:27
   Hm, interesting… If anything, they actually cut off some extra time from this Eliminator… Maybe there were some extra attempts at the travelators that they cut off? In any case, it’s clear from this episode that they didn’t try to pad the show by expanding the airing time of the Eliminator.

   Obviously, this example doesn’t really represent every Eliminator run, and maybe in the past they have stretched out the eliminator run to fill in extra time, but considering how the ten-minute times posted by the men on last week’s episode are the outliers of the stats so far (including one other ten-minute women’s run, it seems), I think the extra-long Eliminator you’re preaching against was a rare case, and nothing to concern yourself over. Please, keep watching with delight! You seem to enjoy everything else about the second series so far, don’t let one bad run ruin your entire experience.