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Don’t touch that dial: Test Pattern tunes into television, entertainment and pop culture links, gossip and idle chat from around the Web. Our annual commercial contest, held every summer, recognizes the best and worst in TV advertising. Multi-link Monday offers up five fast, fun links to fill in those workday boredom breaks. Other topics range from movie mistakes to canceled shows we’re still mourning. (”My So-Called Life,” anyone?)
MSNBC.com Television Editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper started Test Pattern in 2003. She also operates her own pop-culture Weblog, Pop Culture Junk Mail, which began in 1999 and has earned praise from Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times. You’ll occasionally see her on MSNBC cable or hear her on radio discussing the ABCs of TV.
There are two groups of people in this world who take delight in watching people fall down. One group is probably teenage boys. The other is Japanese television audiences. I don’t belong to either of these groups, but I might as well because when it comes to moving pictures of people, nothing’s better than when those people leave their feet.
I’ve spent a good deal of time on the Internet (YouTube specifically) watching videos of people accidentally slipping and tripping. I’ve laughed at people falling off treadmills and others crashing hard on buttered floors. I also laugh pretty hard every time I come across “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge” on cable, which basically answers the question, “What would happen if that guy lost his balance while jumping over that moving thing 8 feet above that muddy water?” Sadistic? Perhaps. Hilarious? Indeed.
Tuesday night ABC brought “Wipeout” to American audiences and for an hour I laughed while 24 mostly talentless people humiliated themselves on national TV (kind of like “American Idol” only with a lot of slippery water hazards). For my money, the entire hour could have been filled with the obstacle where contestants jump from a stable platform onto a big, bouncy ball suspended above water — Boing! Splash! Repeat.

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