Bone In The Fan

G4’s New Show Doesn’t Make Me Gag.

I didn’t think that I had set my expectations too high.  I didn’t expect Hurl! to be well written or well shot, I didn’t expect to be drawn into a dramatic story arc that would keep me coming back every week, I didn’t expect to learn anything.  But with a slogan like “Just relax, let go and hurl” you’d think that the show would give us a bunch of people puking up gross food.  Maybe some splashing, maybe some chain-reaction vomits. You know, people hurling. Worth a giggle or two.

Nope, not so much.

To begin with, there were only five contestants, two of which were eliminated in the first round; not because they puked but because they didn’t eat enough of the macaroni and cheese they were all supposed to eat to advance to the next round.  If I want to watch people shovel mac and cheese down their throats until they can’t see straight, I’ll go to a Spears family reunion. I tuned in to Hurl! to watch people stupid enough to enter a puking contest on national television actually hurl, not walk off because they only ate two pounds of crappy elementary school steam table food.

If ONLY the contest was to hit a bull's eye with puke.

The rest of the show consisted of more food being eaten followed by the contestants being rolled around around in big balls while horribly unfunny sports-style commentary explained what was going on (because it was so very complicated.) One more contestant was eliminated because he didn’t eat enough pie, leaving two.  Then it was a waiting game until someone finally “relaxed, let go and hurled.”  But when the only real puke moment finally arrived, they put these really stupid graphics of cups over the chunder-stream so that you couldn’t see it actually happen. What? I’m sorry?  Is it too much to ask that when you make a show about people puking you actually show the morons gak?

Why are they in hazmat suits in a tunnel? I have no idea.

And as if completely missing the point of the show weren’t enough, for no apparent reason this disaster was shot in the middle of an underground two-lane street and featured a bunch of guys wearing fake-looking hazmat suits that covered their entire bodies except their FEET – the one place they might get hit by puke, not that we’d actually see it.  Oh, and there was a wildly cheering crowd of at least a dozen people.

You’d be more entertained at Carrot Top’s Vegas show.  Plus you’d have a better chance at seeing someone actually puke.

Dear god he's frightening (yet still more entertaining than Hurl)