Go on and admit it, you heard the Surfari’s version of Wipeout in your head when you thought of this show from the 2000s, and it’s only natural since it embodies the very nature of a wipeout since anyone who watched the program knew that if a person had that intense of focus on what they were doing it only took one wrong move to send them tumbling from the course. The good news though is that Wipeout, which was cancelled in 2015, is coming back and will be added to HBO Max’s lineup according to Zak Wojnar of Screenrant. It’s unknown if the original hosts will be back but whether they are or not there’s a good chance that whoever is selected for the show will be given plenty of chances to engage in the same witty banter that helped to make the program a lot of fun when it first aired. On top of that the idea is that the courses will be changed up in a big way, though it’s fair to think that there will be some recognizable elements from the original show as kind of a throwback to appease fans that remember what Wipeout was like to begin with. The show was a good bit of fun back in the day and it hasn’t been gone for such a long time that people would have so easily forgotten it, as despite the pace that show business moves at there are still plenty of moments that people remember quite well since they made such an impact.
This is undoubtedly some of the best of reality TV since there’s no way to fake falling off the obstacle course in a show like this and while there are plenty of ways to cheat it becomes pretty obvious after a while too if a person reaches the end of the course without any real trouble. That’s a big part of what makes the show after all, watching people wipe out on one part of the obstacle course and go plummeting into the water below. Sometimes the hits and fumbles look kind of brutal, but thankfully the safety of the contestants was usually a very big concern and unless something truly untoward happened they were able to get back up and be none the worse for wear. Ryan Smith of CBS News wrote an article having something to do with this a while back. Some of the hits did look painful but the people still managed to continue and worry about any aches and pains later. Plus, they signed up for it and as a result it was no one else’s fault that they couldn’t anticipate the course, right? One very interesting part of this is that unlike other contests that require agility and strength, Wipeout didn’t really go for the elite and those that were in the best shape or had trained to be Olympic athletes and so and so forth. It took quite a few people that didn’t look as though they could run a half mile to save their lives, and it folded them in half, bounced them off of obstacles, and basically punished them in every possible way without incapacitating them all for the enjoyment of the audience. And even better, we get to see it done again soon.
Like I said, as far as reality TV goes this is one of the best examples of true life and what people are willing to do while on screen to get a bit of notoriety. Some folks will put themselves through the hardest and most demanding challenges known to humanity in order to get on camera, but Wipeout kind of takes the cake since the object isn’t to get hurt or to laugh at other peoples’ misery, well okay, it’s funny to laugh at people trying to outsmart the course, but instead it’s a show that attempts to pit people against a course that is hard if not impossible to predict and to marvel at those that actually make it through. Being in shape for a show like this definitely helps as being able to hop over certain obstacles and balance on others and even evade other traps is definitely a must for those that want to make it to the end without too many spills. But given how difficult the course is overall it’s almost impossible to see someone complete it without getting knocked off of a platform at least once. And that’s what people came to expect from the show, so that’s what they got. It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of new contraptions and challenges will be thrown into the mix, and it will be intriguing to see if people that are out of shape and think they can take the course will be up for the challenge. One thing is certain, there will be laughter aplenty when the show returns.
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