Episode 3: Big Girls Don't Fly
Hellga: Going BallisticOK, so somebody needs to make an "American Gladiators" fan video of Robin "Hellga" Coleman being catapulted off her perch during "Assault". The soundtrack for the clip should be "Ride of the Valkyries".
Competitor Belinda Gavin managed to hit the "Assault" target with a projectile from one of the pneumatic cannons, and so Hellga was vaulted high up into the air - supposedly at speeds approximating 100 miles per hour. Trailing smoke and cinders, she disappeared from view in a blur and then was deposited in a waiting pool of water. NBC's cameras followed Hellga's trajectory from at least four different camera angles. It was spectacular.
Belinda Gavin was responsible for the two most spectacular video clips of the evening. In addition to rocketing Hellga into the next zip code, she also made a tearful, on-camera confession that her goal in "American Gladiators" is to be able to rescue her mother from living in a trailer park. That's Emmy material, right there.
Though Gavin was the most entertaining competitor, it was the spectacularly athletic Monica Carlson who came away with the win. Carlson not only beat Gavin at "Eliminator", her time was better than any other competitor, male or female, so far in the series. She's pretty amazing.
Gladiatrix:
So I'm guessing you know that she cried when the target was hit, but before the production staff sent her flying? (In filming it doesn't happen immediately.)
Frank Lofton:
That's too bad. I wouldn't want to have to do that, either. So I guess that explains why NBC had so many camera angles on her from the rear - the network had time to set up?
someone:
Something strange about Monica's time: when the episode was shown, they gave her a time of 2:00 (which was the fastest overall at the time), but in the next episode, the scoreboard had her at 2:20. What happened there? I'm guessing that penalties were retroactively applied for falling off the hand-bike and barrel roll (did she fall off the barrel roll too?), but it's still very strange that they didn't apply them until a week later. Can anyone enlighten me?
Frank Lofton:
I have no idea. I didn't notice. One of the problems with the show is that the film schedule varies radically from the way finished episodes are put together. So I would more suspect a mistake in editing than any kind of penalties.
someone:
I checked another AG forum to see if anyone had noticed it: they had, and someone had posted a link to http://www.nbc.com/American_Gladiators/scoreboard.shtml, where her time is still 2:00. It must have been some kind of editing error, as you said. They mistakenly added a minute to Molivann's time, too, apparently, although I hadn't noticed that.
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