Ah, Spike TV, the male programming response to Lifetime. All killing, sex, and low-brow humor all the time. If you remember back to when Spike TV first got its start, it had little more in terms of content strategy beyond buying up the rights to the entire James Bond catalogue and broadcasting them 24/7. It may have made the holders of Ian Fleming’s estate ecstatic, but after about a month the channel was in dire need of something new. Gradually the channel began to produce its own content and eventually it got to the point where its unique content was marginally watchable, if you were bored or drunk on a Saturday. Deadliest Warrior represents the current pinnacle of the channel’s programming. It’s that great? No, but it’s perfectly aimed at the testosterone-infused audience thanks to the use of weapons and the wholly ridiculous nature of its concept.
Ever wondered who would win in a fight between a knight and a pirate? How about between the Yakuza and the Mafia? Or a Spartan and a Ninja? That’s right, a Spartan and a Ninja. Or heck, how about an Apache against a gladiator? Okay, so maybe these pairings never crossed your mind, but now that they have, aren’t you curious? Almost all of the warriors tested in the series have an impressive reputation behind them. Whether they’re slicing and dicing or gunning and grenading, each episode has a pretty decent match-up between two of history’s most celebrated classes of warrior.
The concept will entertain anyone who stumbles across it thanks to its combination of three different tests. First there are ballistic dummies, built with false skeletons and ballistic gel designed to emulate the resistance of human flesh and bone. Then you have pig hides which usually get sliced to bits in a way that makes Rocky’s time in the meat locker look absolutely pathetic. Finally, Max Geiger, the team’s computer expert, plugs the results of all the different weapons tests into a simulation program and calculates who would win the most fights out of a thousand (during which the show treats the audience to a dramatic re-enactment). What really provides the show with most of its panache is the high-speed camera captures of the devastating damage a weapon inflicts. Watching a club shatter the ballistic gel and bone mock-ups generates a lot of the show’s most awesome moments. One of the most interesting moments comes when the legendary katana is pit against a Viking’s chain mail – easily giving you more respect for the armor.
For sheer mindless entertainment’s sake, you can’t do much better than this.
But if you insist on thinking during the show you’ll notice a few important errors in their brand of the scientific method. Due in part to the differences between two warriors, but also because of the producer’s eye for what will create the coolest spectacle; certain weapon comparisons lose all validity when the parameters used to test them are ignored in favor of the “wow” factor and so that one side doesn’t completely dwarf its competition during the testing phase. For example, in comparing Green Berets against the Russian special forces Spetsnaz, it was stated right up front that the Green Beret’s grenade had more explosive power, yet they decided to test them anyways. However, the tests used were different for both munitions. The Spetsnaz’s grenade was placed inside a washing machine to simulate an exploding vehicle while the Green Beret’s was placed in a tight confined space. The goals for each grenade were different, and in the end were meaningless because they decided to throw out the incomparable results in favor of the basic power. What they knew going in to the tests. Finally, the second biggest gripe is all the pathetic trash talking. The time in between each experiment becomes little more than the experts on one of the two sides making excuses for why their team will be the strongest despite the utterly destructive capability they just witnessed at the other warrior’s hand. To make matters worse, they get more screen time at the end making it feel something akin to Judge Judy where the losing team rationalizes what went wrong, and where the winning team boasts of how they were confident they’d win all along.
Episodes in the first season of Deadliest Warrior include “Apache vs Gladiator”, “Viking vs Samurai”, “Spartan vs Ninja”, “Pirate vs Knight” (which is just so comically ridiculous in how the final simulation ends), “Yakuza vs Mafia”, “Green Beret vs Spetsnaz”, “Shaolin Monk vs Maori Warrior”, “William Wallace vs Shaka Zulu”, and (oh dear God) “I.R.A. vs Taliban”. At least one of those titles grabbed your imagination, and rest assured watching the weapons tear through ballistic dummies and pig hides in slow motion is far more enthralling than it ought to be.
DVD Bonus Features
If you didn’t get enough of the three-man crew of Geiger, Geoff Desmoulin, and Armand Dorian voicing their doubts during the show, you can join them in the extras for “The Aftermath: Post-Fight Analyses” which is exactly what it sounds like. The final two items include the producers talking about their creative choices on the show and a wrap-up prepping the audience for the inevitable second season of the show.
You can tell they’re having fun making this show, and you can just bet that the History Channel or National Geographic wishes they’d gotten here first. It’s similar to the popular series Fight Science with more emphasis placed on savoring those brutal bouts where the ballistic dummy gets ripped to pieces.
"Deadliest Warrior: Season One" is on sale May 11, 2010 and is not rated. Documentary, Reality. Directed by Michael S Ojeda, F Paul Benz, Tim Prokop. Written by Suzanne Ali, Brittany Graham. Starring Geoff Desmoulin, Armand Dorian, Max Geiger.
