'1000 Ways to Die,'
this show being 1001
Returning Spike series is bad enough to be parody
By Tom Conroy
Dec 4, 2009
At some point in their adolescence, most boys play a game in which they try to think of the “grossest” death possible — you know, like being sucked into a wood chipper or covered with honey and tied to an anthill.
Some boys who never got past that stage are currently producing “1000 Ways to Die.”
The second-season premiere episode, which will be shown at midnight this Saturday on Spike (the regular time slot is Wednesdays at 10 p.m.), features detailed reenactments of various gory deaths. That alone is probably enough for many viewers, but those looking for substance, wit or even genuine chills should look elsewhere.
“Warning,” reads an onscreen disclaimer. “The stories portrayed in this show are based on real deaths and are extremely graphic. Names have been changed to protect the identities of the deceased.” Or to prevent viewers from Googling them and finding out they don’t exist.
The first segment tells the story of “Connie,” a failed actress who decides to get her breasts enhanced so she can become a stripper. After an unscrupulous (and ethnically stereotyped) plastic surgeon gives her cheap implants, she dies when she goes on a plane and the reduced cabin air pressure causes them to explode.
This urban legend is so widespread that the Discovery Channel’s “MythBusters” series devoted a segment to debunking it. But the producers of “1000 Ways to Die” don’t really seem to be trying to fool anyone: The tone is tongue-in-cheek, the acting in the reenactments is over-the-top, and one can almost hear the narrator leering over every salacious detail.
Remarkably, all of the people who die in these supposedly true stories have it coming to them, in the way that teenagers who have sex in horror movies always die immediately afterward. A construction worker who is cut in two by a rope while goofing around has been smoking marijuana; a woman who chokes to death on edible panties has been doing something you readers will have to imagine yourself.
In a switcheroo, one segment starts with a drunken teen pool party, but the kid who is killed by a meteor has been trying to get the partiers to join his prayer group. “Stan was a speed bump in the cosmic flow,” the narrator says. “So the cosmos sent a hit man.”
So much for the show’s concern for the deceased or their surviving friends and relatives.
The writing seems to be deliberately bad, but it fails to be so bad that it’s good. As Connie gets on that fatal plane, the narrator says, “She couldn’t help but notice all the double takes on her double D’s.”
As befits a show aimed at eternal adolescents, the show amps up the gross-out factor. Viewers get close-ups of what appear to be pieces of Connie’s flesh as they hit another passenger’s face.
When the visuals aren’t disgusting enough, medical experts appear on camera to add details: A gastroenterologist tells us that when that unlucky construction worker split in two, fecal matter from his internal organs would likely have been splattered about.
At this point, one starts to look for a small-print disclaimer saying that the whole thing is an elaborate postmodern parody of junk television. But it doesn’t really matter. Whether parody or the real thing, “1000 Ways to Die” is just plain bad.
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