So I caught the season premiere of the revamped American Gladiators last night. I went in expecting nothing and got...well, I don't know what I got. But I had fun.

If you're not familiar with the show, here's how it works. A large group of men and women compete for a money prize. The elimination process works like a bracket -- two men face each other, and two women, etc., and the winners move on to the next round. They compete for points against the Gladiators, a group of burly men and women that try to prevent them from doing well. There are lots of goofy events like jousting with giant Nerf-tipped weapons, scaling a 50+ foot climbing wall while Gladiators try to throw you off, and so on.

I'm not too familiar with the original version of the show (aired in the late '80s / early '90s), but the non-presence of the Gladiators was made up for by the over-compensation of a few (Wolf and Titan in particular were HILARIOUS). The contestants were fairly obnoxious overall; I guess in the original version they didn't spend an undue amount of time letting them talk. Now, hearing the asinine dross coming from their mouths...I wanted some of them to lose. Except for Chad the skateboarder; he sadly lost, even though being one of the few people that had a good sense of humor about the whole thing.

Anyone else catch this?

I TiVo'ed it and caught the first 20 minutes before I had to go to bed. I liked it, though the events seemed heavily-edited, rather than having the "live" feel I like from sporting events.

Yeah, the editing is frustrating. Especially near the beginning, when one of the initial contestants suffered an injury. They just kept looping it from different angles. Ouch.

They also need to work on editing out the schmaltzy testimonies from each contestant. After the umpteenth, "I'm doing this for my children...they're the light of my life" (cue violins teary-eyed wife in the crowd), I was ready for some burly guy to come on and say, "Eh, I'm not doing this for my kids. They still haven't cleaned their room."