TVSquad

ABC's newest stunt game show Crash Course looks exactly like the kind of show that bloggers and critics watch just so they could put their "Suck Extinguishers" to good use.

And yet 45 minutes of TV viewing later, I'm not even feeling the need to break the protective glass. On the surface, it appears to be just another reality/game show with typical contestants having their ids scared for life for cash and/or prizes and most of it is just that.

And even though it met those stereotypical expectations, I still didn't hate it. Part of me actually kind of (gulp) enjoyed it. Did I just swallow my brains along with my pride?

There isn't anything remotely spectacular or unique about it. Five teams of relationship-themed contestants participate in amateur driving challenges for a chance at $50,000. The teams are separated into five groups of two people in varying relationships such as a pair of obnoxiously loud roommates, a whipped husband and a domineering wife and an uncomfortably close brother and sister from the sticks.


The main focus of the show is on the action each of the driving challenges provide, but they are interspersed with the heavily-edited action inside the car as they pass or fail each game. The roommates whoop and holler when they barely pass a challenge. The wife tells his emotionally exhausted husband to shut up every time he dares to open his mouth. The brother and sister exchange hugs with no sense of personal space. The contestants can drive your last nerve off of a cliff, especially mine since the only characters I cared about, a pair of MILF single mom models, got kicked off the show in the first round.

All of these behaviors are observed and commented on by the show's hosts, Dan Cortese and Orlando Jones. They crack bad jokes at the contestants' erratic tendencies, making them near carbon copies of Wipeout's John Anderson and John Henson, respectively, only with marginally better writing. And when I say marginal, I'm talking "cathode-ray thin" marginal.

Those aspects of the show drag the production almost to a louder screeching halt than an AMC Pacer can produce. But the actual meat of the show, the precision driving challenges, make up for it.

It is actually fun to watch these amateur stuntmen drive heavily reinforced Fords across skid panels and up moving flatbed trucks for points. It's like a dumbed down episode of Top Gear with all of the educational car news and reviews cut out of it.

So even though half of it aims for mediocre reality entertainment, the rest is just dumb summer fun for wannabe gearheads who appreciate the clumsy gracefulness of a car fish-tailing and taking a header into a concrete curb.