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.

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?

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.