American Gladiators, Season 2

I'm not as down on the re-make of American Gladiators as Sacha, but he is dead right on one point: The trash-talking and intros and backstories are worthless. The show would be completely unwatchable without the aid of a timeshifting device. But with one of those you can skip right past every stupid word that comes out of the Hulkster's mouth, and knock off an hour episode in about 20 minutes!

So what's new in season 2?

There are some new events, and many of the old ones have been revised to be a bit more balanced.

Some new Gladiators, including the winning contestants from last season. Seeing the old winners back is pretty interesting - both are way more muscular now. Not steroids big, but clearly they've been working out a lot in preparation. I thought that their relative smallness might be a hindrance, but both are doing fine. It's pretty funny watching Evan (aka Rocket) tear people off the wall - he was untouchable in the first season in that event, and now he's doing smartass things like climbing above the contestants and attacking them from above.

One oddity in the first episode was an amputee competitor - he had a couple different prosthetic legs he used for different events. I'm not saying I could have done better than him, but his treatment was pretty patronizing; everyone kept congratulating him on a good effort when he clearly wasn't keeping up, and by the end the Gladiators were going out of their way to give him a fighting chance. Not that it did him any good.