Tonight's the Battle of the Network Stars

While watching the twins edition of Fear Factor the other day in all it's jiggly glory, I had a sudden and profound flashback to the '70s of my childhood. I'd seen all this before. The force this realization struck me with was like that of an epiphany: The reality TV craze of today is a retread of that from three decades earlier. Instead of Real People we have The Simple Life. That's Incredible! has been retooled as Jackass. Wild Kingdom lives again as The Crocodile Hunter, and so on. Even Ripley's Believe It or Not! has resurfaced, albeit in a cruder, louder, freak show format.



But Fear Factor is the key. It's setup is so much like that old classic Battle of the Network Stars that I'm surprised some enterprising producer hasn't launched a campaign to revive the old chestnut. After all, Battle of the Network Stars boasted as much jiggle appeal as the current bikini-clad contestants on Fear Factor, especially if you consider the all-supermodel contests that show has featured of late. Sure, a Network Stars revival wouldn't quite be the same without Howard Cosell and Dan Haggerty, but wouldn't it be great to see Bob Costas in the booth with Kiefer Sutherland and Jennifer Garner running a modern-day obstacle course, or the cast of Survivor in a life or death tug-o-war against the housemates of Big Brother? The mind boggles.

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