game-show contestants are in it for the cash and prizes, he says the motivation is far different for the Japanese player. "It's one of the only avenues they have for release, where they can actually let go and not be conservative anymore," notes Weed. They then vote their two worst teammates into an elimination game, such as "Splat on a Windshield."īy now, you're probably picking up that the most consistent themes in Japanese game shows are humiliation and embarrassment - sometimes to the point of being sadistic - which oddly enough can serve as stress relief for conservative Japanese. The teams compete in bizarre games, with the winning crew in each round getting a "reward," such as a VIP tour around Tokyo, while the losers suffer a "punishment," such as having to haul rickshaws around Tokyo. I Survived moves two teams of five unsuspecting American contestants - who, by the way, didn't know they were going to Japan - into a house in Tokyo. We took those elements and then designed new games around them," with a little help from Japanese game-show producers to make the stunts more. ![]() "We watched hundreds of hours of Japanese shows and looked for all of the consistent themes," says Smith, "whether it's being dizzy, use of treadmills, falling into water. But for sheer zaniness, I Survived executive producers Arthur Smith and Kent Weed have gone all-out weird. They must mimic those shapes with their bodies to allow them to pass through the walls, lest they get knocked into a pool of water. Popular around the world, Hole pits contestants against solid walls coming at them with odd-shaped openings. But the Japanese will shock to any extreme." "Ironically, we're more puritan over here. "There is a great desire to shock over there," notes Hole in the Wall executive producer Stuart Krasnow. Indeed, Americans, accustomed to such family-friendly game shows as Jeopardy!, The Price Is Right and Deal or No Deal will likely find the new shows somewhat jolting. "It's going to be like nothing that American audiences have ever seen on network television," says I Survived host Tony Sano. ![]() A domestic edition of Hole in the Wall is coming this fall on Fox. Tonight ABC will air back-to-back premieres of Wipeout (7 p.m.) and I Survived a Japanese Game Show (8 p.m.).
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