Who Needs the Writers Guild...

...when you can watch American Gladiators?! Dude, NBC has revived the 1980s camp classic, where relatively buff people compete in inane events against the Gladiators -- professionally buff people with character names that are part superhero, part porn star.

I watched the two-hour premiere Sunday with my favorite Gladiator, Rach, and, with the exception of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," probably had the most fun in months watching a TV program. Everything comes together perfectly for sarcastic comments the whole time. To wit:

1. The producers are so insensitive they've named three of the four black Gladiators "Mayhem," "Stealth" and "Militia." So while the white Gladiators are either in the mold of Greek gods or comely sex kittens, the black characters connote riots, robbery and Black Panthers. And the "Samoan" one (unclear if he's actually Samoan, but he does have a lot of tattoos so he's probably at least half Samoan, right?), "Toa," does a lot of "native jungle dancing" and threatened to scalp one of the competitors before one event. Yay, primitivism! I do like "Wolf," though, who pastramis it up in all the right ways. And he appears to be at least 45 years old.

2. The hosts, Hulk Hogan and Laila Ali (her dad, thankfully, probably doesn't realize she's sullying the family name like this), are buff, but certainly not engaging, interesting or good interviewers. (And why in reality TV are there interviews after every micro-plot development?) Most of their questions follow the lines of "Are you scared?" or "Will you give it your all?" or "Your cute kid in the crowd must inspire you?"

3. Dude, the events: In "Assault," someone just fires tennis balls -- apparently at 100 mph -- at you while you run around trying to hit a target with a soft ball and a slingshot. "Gauntlet" means trying to run past four Gladiators while they smash you with foam cylinders and pads. "Pyramid" involves trying to run to the top of a foam pyramid while a Gladiator beats the crap out of you. (A full list is on the home page, linked to above. Just scroll down.) These competitors must've signed their lives away before NBC allowed them to participate.

4. The producers have also tried to make the "citizen competitors" compelling, as though this really has storylines. In the premiere, one woman practically tore her ACL in the first event, yet in three interviews and produced pieces they touted her devotion to her three kids as a single mom, so even though she could barely stand for the final interview, everything was OK because she loves her kids. And there was the 30-something guy who, 14 years ago, apparently missed his tryout for the show's original incarnation because he was sitting in L.A. traffic (double "dude"), and had been waiting to return ever since. I mean, really, in May 1999, you think this guy was at dinner with his friends, despondent over missing his shot at "glory," wishing writers would go on strike so networks would have to fill primetime with ridiculous crap, leading to the resurrection of "American Gladiators"? I mean, I'm sure it sucked, but I think he got over it pretty quickly.