'Superstars': ABC Ruins A Perfectly Good Old Weird TV Show

by Linda Holmes

I have fond memories of the old ABC Superstars shows, which would gather athletes from different sports and have them compete against each other in events like swimming and, most famously, an obstacle course. In the above clip, Joe Frazier swims against, among others, Jean-Claude Killy. It's kind of great. (Though not for Frazier, who unfortunately can't swim.)

I didn't even know until I was reading up on the show that it ran long enough for more recent editions to be won by Jason Sehorn. But now, ABC brings Superstars back tonight, with a twist. Of course.

And what kind of twist? A twist involving random B-list famous people. Of course.

How they messed it up, after the jump...

Instead of giant athletes going head-to-head, we have two-person teams consisting of an athlete and a miscellaneous "celebrity" -- David Charvet, who used to be on Baywatch a long time ago! Julio Iglesias, Junior! Dan Cortese!

(By the way, I am working on a theory that Dan Cortese -- who started hosting MTV Sports in 1992 and has never really done anything except endure -- is a vampire and cannot die. It's just a theory, for now.)

The athletes this time around include Jennifer Capriati, Brandi Chastain, Kristi Leskinen, Lisa Leslie, Bode Miller, Robert Horry, Jeff Kent, and -- oh, yes -- Terrell Owens.

Their "celebrity" partners are Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Ali Landry, Paige Hemmis, Joanna Krupa, and Estella Warren, in addition to Charvet, Cortese, and Iglesias. (Feel free to use Wikipedia to inform yourself who in the heck some of these extremely famous people are. Irony noted.)

The teams will compete and, in keeping with the way all reality-competition shows must now work, one team is eliminated every week over six episodes.

The problem with this setup, unfortunately, is that it removes all the charm from the show. Superstars used to be funny precisely because the athletes seemed really invested in it. Football guys actually did not want to lose at the obstacle course to baseball guys. They were all serious athletes, and when you put a bunch of serious athletes in a contest against each other, they're never entirely in it for fun, even if it's a novelty television show.

Now, based on the clips ABC has made available, the new version includes a lot of junk like models kayaking against professional athletes. Who cares? Why do I want to know whether Ali Landry can ride a bike? If David Charvet doesn't run an obstacle course as well as Terrell Owens, isn't that sort of a non-story?

Even aside from the inclusion of Dancing With The Stars pro dancer Chmerkovskiy, there's a lot of Dancing With The Stars influence here: put together the accomplished person and the theoretically unqualified celebrity, and see how the unqualified celebrity does. The problem is that the athletes, unless the clips are misleading, aren't training the celebrities. They just happen to be paired up with each other.

I'll say this for it: it's filmed at the stunning Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, which is one of the very few sun-soaked locations that I and my pale, pale skin have actually dared to visit, and it will make for an awfully pretty setting. (Though in my experience, competition will frequently be interrupted by nice ladies coming by and offering to sell you a necklace or braid your hair.) Other than that, though, I can't see much reason to dive into a summer of Terrell Owens just to see whether Julio Iglesias, Junior wipes out on the obstacle course.