Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

I was catching up on American Gladiators. That’s right, I said I was catching up on American Gladiators.  I had missed the summer premiere and decided to watch one of NBC’s online episodes instead of, you know, obtaining the episode some other way. I applaud NBC for putting full episodes online, of course, but the experience was lacking in several ways. Why doesn’t NBC put the content from their HD broadcast online? I’m not saying they should put a full HD resolution stream up; that would obviously cost them too much in bandwidth. However, they could maintain the HD aspect ratio and scale down the resolution. I mean, why not? Standard definition is on its way out, and a 4:3 aspect ratio is starting to feel claustrophobic.

As you might expect, NBC inserts commercials into the online broadcast, or rather, NBC inserts commercial, singular. One commercial, for Gas-X, of all things, repeated twice in a row. At every commercial break. After the first couple of breaks I just started hitting the Mute button, and if my computer hadn’t cost me four months’ rent, I’d have eventually thrown it across the room in anguish. The commercial is torture. In it, a hapless job applicant is so preoccupied with the churning refinery that is his GI tract that he hears a seemingly endless string of fart puns throughout the 30 second conversation. Couldn’t NBC have gotten a better commercial than this? For that matter, couldn’t they have gotten two commercials? Advertising exists to make a product more memorable or desirable. Unfortunately, endless repetition of the message has the opposite effect (did I ever tell you about my younger brother’s Barney phase?). You know what? I hate Gas-X.

I don’t have much to say about the episode of Gladiators itself. It’s still monumentally stupid, but worthwhile for the one or two moments in every episode that are going to make you laugh out loud. Also, I’ve now empirically confirmed my theory that it’s better to watch this in a group.

I thought I’d have more to say about the Paralympic athlete featured in the premiere, but I don’t. I’m a big fan of this kind of thing, and I have to hand it to NBC for letting the guy compete in the first place. If I learned anything from this episode, it’s that while it’s really hard to climb a cargo net with an above-knee amputation, it can be done. I only wish that more people had tuned in to see it.