As what feels like a betrayal to all of
my fellow men, I am not into sports. I really could not care less
whether the Bears or Tiger Woods win the World Cup.
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| I think he just scored a goal here... |
I just find a bunch of grown men
playing games I learned in elementary school PE for a living to
be...well...about what I just described. I'm not interested. However,
if you were to strap medieval suits of armor to these men, then put
them on 2,000 lbs beasts of burden, then have them try to ram another
armored guy off his horse with a ten foot pole arm, you have my
attention. Thus, I bring you my thoughts on the recent History
Channel series: Full Metal Jousting.
From the first advertisement for the
series, my interest was piqued.
The show is pretty simple: professional
riders and medieval showmen have come to compete in a real jousting
competition for a large cash prize. For the sake of pairing, the
competitors have been divided into two teams, the red and the black,
to whittle away at each others numbers.
Each episode of Full Metal Jousting
is divided into three segments: choosing the competitors who will
square off, a training period, and the actual joust. Occasionally
some kind of drama within the teams will be advertised, but it's
rarely anything as serious as the previews make it out to be.
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| YOU MEAN REALITY TV LIES TO ME?! |
So what works? Well, the detail that
they put into how jousting works. The show takes time to educate the
audience on how the game works, and the proper way to do it, rather
than focusing too heavily on the nonexistent drama between the
jousters. This lets us fully appreciate what we're seeing, and has
its focus on the right aspect of the event.
The downside? As much as I like this
show, I honestly can't imagine jousting taking off for a few reasons,
despite how many competitors want to be “professional jousters. The
big problem is: the amount of equipment involved. Armor, horses,
lances, it all just adds more and more cost. Second, the skills
required simply aren't widespread enough amongst the populace. How
many professional polo players do you hear about? Very little.
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| Not exactly Wheaties material. |
For what it is though, Full Metal
Jousting is a good game show, and I would definitely argue that
it's a sporting event. It may be confined to the TV or medieval fair,
but its totally worth a ride.
