Praetorian Championship (TV show)

Praetorian Championship
Genre	Reality game show
Presented by	Clyde Burton Samuel Pembroke
Country of origin	Libertas Omnium Maximus
Original language	English
No. of seasons	25
No. of episodes	619
Production
Running time	22 minutes
Release
Original network	FBS II
Original release	September 30, 1998 (1998-09-30)

The Praetorian Championship is a controversial Maximusian daytime television reality game show which has aired since 1998. Taking its name from the Praetorian Grenadiers, an elite Iustitian republican army company which fought to the last man during the Iustitian Civil War, contestants on the show complete in a series of timed physical challenges each week meant to simulate real life combat and survival scenarios.

History

Originally started as a purely recreational, tongue-and-cheek competition by Clyde Burton, at the time an undergraduate lighting and sound design student at Elizabeth Public College, along with a number of his close friends in 1990, the championship was eventually picked up by FBS in 1997. The first episode, "End of Your Rope," aired on September 8, 1998. Despite subsequent claims by both the network and Burton, Burton was quoted in the EPC school newspaper in 1991 saying, "In truth, I started [Praetorian Championship] as a joke. It was a way to get all my drunk friends to do really dumb stunts for my amusement." As the show grew in popularity throughout the early 2000s, its budget burgeoned, leading to obstacles becoming increasingly absurd and grandiose (often featuring very real pyrotechnic elements). Burton left the show in 2009, believing that weekly scenarios were becoming technically easier and genuine challenge was being substituted for "smoke and mirrors" theatrics in order to increase viewership.

Format

Each season, 24 contestants, usually college-age men and women, compete in a series of timed challenges to become the eponymous Praetorian Champion. Each episode contains two self contained challenges, referred to as "the hard challenge" and "the harder challenge." During the "hard challenge," contestants compete for advantages in the "harder challenge." The contestant who finishes the "hard challenge" in the least amount of time is exempt from the "harder challenge," instead being tasked with harassing the other contestants (often with a paintball gun or fire hose). The last contestant to compete the "harder challenge" is eliminated. This process continues each week until only two contestants remain for the season finale. The season finale abandons the time-challenge format, opting for a head-to-head foot race through an obstacle course. Eliminated contestants are invited back to throw tennis balls at the finalists as they complete their last challenge. The winner of the final challenge is given the honors of "striking the set," literally detonating that season's obstacle course using explosives. In 2018, the "striking-of-the-set" marked the largest non-military detonation of explosives in Maximusian pyrotechnical history.

Both finalists are awarded M$50,000 in prize money, while the winner of the final challenge is given a gag-award and the title of Praetorian Championship. Gag awards in the past have included a pyramid of light beer, a twenty-foot tall inflatable lawn ornament depicting a duck wearing a beret, and a semi-automatic, industrial scale potato launcher. Praetorian Champions are also given the opportunity to "double or nothing" their winnings by competing the next season, though no champion has accepted the offer to date.

Criticism

Injuries

The Championship has been criticized in the past for the frequency in which contestants are injured while competing. Although obstacles must pass safety checks by licensed, independent health professionals before being added to the championship, many contestants have been injured over the show's multidecade run. To date, concussions are the most common injury, occurring eleven times in twenty-five seasons. Additional injuries have included broken wrists (2), a bruised rib, sprained ankles (4), a fractured radius, and a broken clavicle. Minor bruising and lacerations are an implicit hazard of participating in the Championship. Waivers of liability, which contestants are required to sign before participating, are reportedly more than a hundred pages long.

Commercialism

Episodes of the Praetorian Championship are notoriously rife with commercials and sponsorship callouts. Popular corporate slogans and logos are plastered on practically every square inch of the Praetorian Championship set and commercial breaks usually make up almost 1/3 of the show's runtime. Showrunners have, in the past, claimed that these over-the-top callouts are meant to reinforce the satirical and comedic atmosphere of the show, but these advertisements are for real products and are paid for by real companies.