European Television

The television, in most countries of Europe, is very, very different from what we’re used to. See, here in America, any word that is considered “risqué” is not allowed at all. This frightens our government, the same government who plans said to the terrorists “Bring it on” and who plan to solve healthcare by making it more complicated, but cry when they hear a dirty word.

We’re simply too uptight here, but their television can be sometimes strange compared to ours.

I was watching a program in England. It looked like a really, REALLY violent crime show. A man shaved all his hair, including eyebrows, nose hair, armpit hair, and even pubic. (Yes, it showed it.) He shaved all of this off into a sink and turns the water on, making all the hairs go down the drain.

It then cut to a dark mansion with an old, heavily obese man walking around in his house. He sits down in his chair and sips at his tea.

Then suddenly, the same man who shaves himself breaks through the window. He has a dagger in his hand. He fights the fat man for two minutes, then, finally, the obese man gives up. The bald man had him cornered.

The fat man said, “I swear, I know nothing! Please, I’m innocent!” This is simply exciting. What could he possibly be denying?!

The bald man said, “All the evidence links to you! We have three Honda Civics that haven’t been sold. You know why? Because they’re too expensive! So you know what you need to buy? A Toyota Prius Hybrid!”

Then the bald man slits the fat guy’s throat.

By far the goriest and longest commercial I’ve ever seen.

But don’t exclude the French from this argument. Oh man, they have some messed up television there.

For example, they have their own version of “Fear Factor” in France. So, a French “Fear Factor”.

Anyway, the challenge was to go through individual small rooms with the person’s “worst fears” in it. Apparently, the French are scared of about anything. As Adam put it, it should have been called “Sentimental Factor”.

So the guy suited us. In this room, he had to crawl under a table and stick his head through an opening that went to each individual section with their fears in them. All he had to do was walk through each, with only his head, and survive each hall of horror.

The first small room had a spider in it. The guy entered with his head and said in French, “Oh, no…”, but the spider isn’t even bothering him. He’s on the other side of the room, bothering nobody.

And the guy’s just freaking out like it’s the apocalypse. He ran through there without looking back. The spider’s just sort of like, “What the hell?”

The guy comes to the second room and it’s filled with three frogs. The guy screams in terror. The frogs are just standing there, staring at the camera while this whole deal is going on.

The guy once again runs through the second “challenge”.

Then the third one came. This was the breaking point. The guy is in the middle of a poorly contained mental breakdown. The next room has dead flies in them. They’re on the other side of the door so they won’t touch the guy. And the guy is yelling at the flies, “GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!'
And the guy quits the game right there.

After each player completed a challenge, they had to visit some old guy on top of a mountain boiling something in a cauldron and he would give him/her some clues to the next challenge, and I new that what he told them was useful or inspirational because the players always left with a smile on their face. Then after they’d leave, the creepy old short guy continues to stir whatever is in his cauldron.

Then the next challenge came along! They had to pick a woman to put on mountain climbing equipment and their task was to walk with it on.

That’s it.

That’s all they had to do.

Now to give some credibility to the show, they had to do something completely terrifying. They picked a woman to have a pale filled with meat and had to be chased by three Siberian tigers.

But the last one was by far the best.

A person was picked. What they had to do was hang on to an immobile cylinder. They even gave him a ladder to climb up it! And guess what?

HE FELL OFF!

Italy had interesting television as well, like I didn’t know that Billy Ray Cyrus on “Hannah Montana” had the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger.