Fear Factor Season One

July 11, 2006

Rated: NR Runtime: 500 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

One of the best train wrecks on TV, Fear Factor has earned it’s reputation as being a complete waste of time and brain cells. For that alone we love it!

Fear Factor Season One The premise is simple. Get a group of 3 girls and 3 guys and have them compete with each other in various “stunts” for $50,000. Sometimes the people are related or are a couple just to make it more interesting, but in virtually call cases the ladies are gonna be worth watching. It’s always a set of 3 stunts, with the first and last being physical and the middle one being mental. If you come in last, you’re gone.

It’s the mental stunts that everyone talks about as Fear Factor defines a mental challenge as what you can force yourself to eat, touch or be touched by. For example, in the first season they poured 400 rats on the players, had them eat sheep eyeballs, eat live beetles (mmm, crunchy!) and be covered up by 300,000 meal worms. Watching the reactions is worth your time even if you feel like throwing up yourself.

The physical stunts range from grabbing onto a helicopter while doing 30mph in a boat, to jumping from one 18-wheeler to another while they travel down the road at 50mph. Interesting, but not all that interesting. It also get a bit repetitive after a few shows, but fortunately you can just hit the “next chapter” button and get right back to roach eating!

The other thing interesting to watch is the competitiveness between the players, remember that they are playing for 50K. Faced with all types of challenges, most of the player actually end up cheering for each other and offer encouragement to get through the challenges.. but occasionally you have one that decides to taunt the others instead. Watch this with a group of friends and you’ll quickly spot the ones who have that same streak in them as they will enjoy the taunting while others just get annoyed by it. Of course, many times the contestant doing the taunting will get pissed if they in turn get taunted. Damn babies.

If you’ve got a lot of friends that you want to subject to seeing people eat bugs and eyeballs then by all means buy this DVD. Otherwise it’s still worth a rent for the guilty pleasure of wasting time if nothing else.

Posted by John | Filed Under 3 Stars, DVD, Drama, Joe Rogan, NR