When did game shows stop focusing on intelligence and ability? Okay, Fear Factor is definitely not the first in a line of game shows that concentrated more on chance than on wits. Years before Fear Factor there was Let’s Make A Deal, which featured Monty Hall handing out prize money for various things ladies had in their purses. Later, it was revealed that Hall would hide behind door number three and sniff said items for his own pleasure, but that’s another story. Apparently the novelty of money for nothing eventually wore off. Think about it: even on Double Dare, a game show aimed at children, Marc Summers would at least ask you to recite the last five presidents in reverse-chronological order before sending you leaping through a hoop made entirely out of flaming dog shit.

NBC saw gargantuan dollar signs in the flaming dog shit business. Consider the fact that the company had to have taken meetings about the conception of this television show. Actually, don’t consider it, I’ve made a short play that details the realization of Fear Factor so you don’t have to waste time coming up with a scenario yourself. Enjoy!

(Fade in: Boardroom)

President Of NBC: Gentlemen! We need something new for our block of nightly programming. And I am not looking for any of this pansy family drama ballyhoo; I want action! I want stunts! I want things exploding in balls of fire, glass shards, broken teeth, tear-soaked faces bawling at the camera for the sweet release of death, the works!
Faceless Drone: Gee boss, I was thinking about this for a while now, and I’ve been meaning to spring it out on you. It bangs! It pops! It sizzles! It’ll knock your gob clean off your body!
President Of NBC: Well, what is it man?! Time is of the essence, and I’m late for a salt-water taffy pull!
Faceless Drone: All right, all right boss, here it is: we get six people. Now, they got to be dumb people, real lunkheads – and six of ‘em, three men, and three women. And let’s make sure to throw in a few black people to appeal to the urban demographic.
President Of NBC: I’m listening.
Faceless Drone: Now, we gather them up into a group and… Well… Uh…
President Of NBC: Yes? Spit it out, man!
Faceless Drone: …make them do silly shit?
President Of NBC: For example?
Faceless Drone: Oh... You know… Stunts involving heights… Water… Force them to eat things… Like… Crickets… Beetles?
President Of NBC: Will there be testicles?
Faceless Drone: Oh, anything you say, chief!
President Of NBC: Great! I will write up the papers in freshly shed blood while you sacrifice the small child to Utu, God of sun, whom, without him, we would shrivel and die because secretly we are immortal and have existed for thousands of years!

It completely astounds me that Fear Factor made it through the conceptual stages, the planning stages, the building of sets, the contestant searches, the filming, the eventual unleashing onto television and finally the DVD release of season one – which I am now being forced to write about because the people who work behind the scenes for this site secretly loathe me, but wanted to show their true colors rather than leaving all that pesky doubt in my mind.
           
As mentioned in the previous bit of writing (which I admit was not a whimsical fantasy but pure, unadulterated fact), each episode of Fear Factor features six contestants battling it out for a grand prize of $50,000. And since the show is called Fear Factor and not Cousin Joe-Joe’s Adventure Through Chocolate Paradise, in order to get to that wonderful cloth sack full of money, each contestant has to prove themselves in a series of three “extreme” stunts.

The first and third stunts are basically generic feats of daring usually involving either height or water, and aren’t much to talk about. There’s just so many times you can watch a cocky 20-something nearly vomit when confronted with jumping from the roof of a speeding semi truck onto another. But stunt number two is the deal-breaker when it comes to this show and it usually involves laying in a pit of something creepy (snakes, rats, worms), or eating insects or various animal body parts. Oddly enough, you can see the depressing (d)evolution of the show when it comes to the eating of live insects. I’m not talking about the killing of poor, helpless animals on television for entertainment value because that’s an unquestionable amount of ugliness, but consider two episodes that really show off how much more psychotic the show eventually became.

In episode two (titled Truck Jump, Worm Coffin, Catapult – that’s creative) the Worm Coffin segment starts off with each contestant picking out random sheets of paper in a bowl full of worms. These sheets of paper are instructions on how many worms they will have to eat – either one, five or zero. When the paper is picked, it is returned to the bowl, thus giving each contestant a fair chance. When faced with eating one worm, the vegetarian immediately backs out.

Flash forward to episode six (Sub Dive, Cricket Crunch, Speed Drop) and the contestants are now participating in a game of darts, aiming at a bull’s-eye that goes from one to nine. After each contestant fires off their dart, it is revealed to the group that the number they got in the game coincides with the number of crickets they will have to eat. Everyone goes through with it, ovipositors and all.

Sadistic? Cruel to everyone involved and probably to everyone watching? Undoubtedly. But I guess the creators of the show had to become slightly more diabolical when it comes to gastronomical madness in comparison to the more active stunts, which come off about as dangerous as a game of touch football. In fact, after sitting through multiple instances of people being dropped from large heights, or escaping from wet cars, I will say that I would participate in nearly everything that has been shown on this show, all of them if I were drunk enough to choke down the sheep eyeballs. And that’s not even taking into account the cash prize; I’d do it just for fun.

But then again I live with my parents and write DVD reviews on the Internet, what do I have to fear other than my own failure in life as a human being, and what is guaranteed to be a surprisingly quick and painful death due to early heart failure? Bring on the snakes, bitches!

Disc Presentation
Considering the nature of the show, it’s not surprising that Fear Factor is a mixed bag – when the material requires a camera to be up close to a speeding jet ski, the results are a bit messy (if not downright ugly), but when the camera isn’t required to be dipped into a hole full of rats and worms, the show fares much better, with a sharp image and accurate colors. On the audio side, there’s a decent Dolby digital 2.0 surround track that keeps the dialogue up front and a hint of foreboding music in the back speakers. When your audio and video is from a pinhole camera that’s attached to a person’s screaming, contorted face, you can’t expect much.

Disc Extras
I had crossed my fingers hoping for a DVDROM feature consisting of a .pdf file that collects every waiver a contestant has to sign but no, all we get is a preview of season two, which is really just a “best of” package. Joe Rogan hosts more of the same, but this time you get to see Coolio’s head covered in scorpions. All I can say is that it’s been a long time coming. And it was worth the wait.

The Bottom Line
A decent package of a despicable show. Generic people doing lousy things to themselves and each other for a couple of dollars and some television screen time (I seriously doubt your family and friends are going to be proud that you managed to make it through the entire pig liver). Fans should plunk down the cash to pick up the set when they’re done burning ants with a magnifying glass. Everyone else – beware.

…

Two pants because, while the format gets a bit tedious at times, at least I wasn’t bored with it.