‘World’s Dumbest’ lives up to its title

“World’s Dumbest”

Since television is alternatively referred to as the “boob tube,” shows about the human race’s most stupid members are a dime a dozen on TV.

For some not so strange reason, viewers just love watching other people behaving as dumbly as they do—and getting themselves into a whole lot of physical trouble.

Take one of the “stupid” program type’s most popular exponents, “World’s Dumbest,” shown locally Tuesdays on Warner TV. A recent telecast of the compilation of klutzy videos featured an annual race that had made an otherwise obscure town famous.

It was a crawling race through a long pool full of mud, with a most unusual obstacle thrown in to complicate the competition: The muddy gunk was studded with live electrical wires that would occasionally give unlucky hapless crawlers a hot zap and jolt that made them shoot straight out of the pool in pissed-off pain!

Also one for the dubious hooks was a montage of bike-trick videos that featured riders who delighted in risking life and limb by doing impossible stunts—that invariably ended in pratfalls and bruises.

Most stupid feats

Living up to its program title, “World’s Dumbest” welcomes videos from all over the cretinous globe, from which the show’s editors choose the most stupid feats of all.

Aside from the examples mentioned, the week’s Top 10 included a really impressive “roller bike” contraption purposely built for the video—a spiral constructed out of plywood that the contestant’s motor bike was supposed to do a flashy loop-de-loop around!

It was a great idea—until the actual scheme was put in motion—and the bike crashed into the plywood, punching an ugly hole in it!

No impressive loop-de-loop this week, folks. Sorry. And, back to the drawing board!

To sweeten the supposedly funny pot, the show features sardonic comments from a group of “B” comics, who all try to be as sassy, cynical and cruel as they possibly can be.

Fully bent on adding invidious insult to already egregious injury, they let it zip and zap all over the place, reducing the show’s already self-admitted dumb-ass contributors to even more abysmally dimwitted idiots.

Truth to tell, however, the caustic “B” comics are sometimes so ruthlessly cruel that viewers root for their hapless victims, instead. So, the joke’s on them!

Another showcase of dumb-ass antics focuses on idiotic efforts that are funny on their own, with no vicious commentary needed—or desired. Recent features included a video of a dolt who somehow got himself trapped in a self-locking room.

Horror

In his initial nervousness and eventual horror, he failed to read a small sign next to a switch that would have automatically opened the glass door—and ended his arduous ordeal.

So, his horror and terror escalated further—until he felt he had no other recourse but to break the glass door down with his foot!

How dumb can you get? Very!