TVSquad

G4 has been bringing Japan's Ninja Warrior to the states for a few years now. And for those of you who haven't seen it, it's one of the most addictive and difficult challenges in the world. The past several runs, they've even worked to send a group of Americans over to Japan to compete in the competition alongside a whole bevy of Japanese personalities and athletes.

Now they're taking it a step further, creating an all American Ninja Warrior. Unfortunately, the plan is to send ten American competitors over there to compete on Sasuke, the official Ninja Warrior obstacle course. I'd have much rather them build an American version of the course here. That way, like in the Japanese version, they can have 100 competitors from all walks of American life.

Just imagine. We'd have actors plugging crap giving it a try, and reality show contestants trying to extend their fifteen minutes. And most of them will fail and land in the water. The fear I have is that if we only have ten contestants in Sasuke, what happens if they all blow the first of four stages? Show's over?

G4 must be getting on my nerves. I'm giving Web Soup another few weeks because Chris Hardwick is still warming up. I'm more upset on Ninja Warrior's evolution, becoming more and more American. By adding several G4 characters, they are diluting a fun Japanese show.

I can forgive a show like Iron Chef America because they are their own separate entity that is respectful to the original, but inserting G4 people into the original Sasuke feels forced and unnecessary, as if Sasuke just got taken over by Americans.

There is nothing inherently wrong with turning a TV series into a video game spinoff. It can fill in the gaps between seasons to quell the viewers' hunger, let audiences explore characters from new perspectives and even give the more hardcore couch potatoes some much needed exercise even if they only burned 1/100ths of a calorie solely through their thumbs.

The problem is video game developers pick TV shows that should never even become a travel sized board game. Developers have given the greenlight to games based on shows like American Idol, Desperate Housewives and even ... Grey's Anatomy?!? I hope that last one was a first-person shooter.

There are far better shows that offer far more entertaining elements for a kick-ass video game. These are the shows that should be next in line for a pixelated re-treatment.

Part of me is pleased that a federal court judge told the former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to stay put when NBC asked him to join their latest celebrity grovel-fest.

He's continuing to grab any media time he can long after the media forgot how to pronounce his last name by promoting the new I'm a Celebrity...Get Me a New Agent Out of Here. And despite my convictions to the contrary, another part of me wishes he would get more.

Mind you, this is the very dark part of me that giggles when elderly people fall and wishes there was a semi-pro "Scarin' Babies League."

The Chaser's War on Everything, a satiric hidden camera prank show from Australia, aims to be everything most shows of their ilk fail to achieve. It's satirical, unbiased in its stance against everything from commercialism to phony diplomacy, and more probing than a proctologist with banana hands.

This sparks a startling question: what the hell is a show this smart doing on the G4 Network?

The show found its way to the States earlier this year as part of the network's Duty Free TV block of foreign cult faves like Trigger Happy TV, Unbeatable Banzuke and Ninja Warrior. It's become one of the better shows on the all geek network, which either says worlds for the three-year-old show or doesn't say much for the rest of G4's original programming. I'll let you decide while reminding you this is the same network that once produced a game show where the first person to vomit lost. Even Fox wouldn't sink that low. Wait, are we talking about some kind of survival situation?