Saw that the second part was playing on ESPN and was immediately intrigued. Of course, like any kid growing up in the 90s I loved American Gladiators and I was in the mood for a documentary so I flipped on the first part.
I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting; of course something about how the show was created and how it was run behind the scenes but one of the first interviews was with Malibu and I realized that yeah, profiling the Gladiators themselves was a really cool idea. The doc touches on the production of the show itself but like every kid I idolized the Gladiators and it was great to see the human side of them
The main conceit of the creator of the show being a complete scumbag helped really drive a lot of the narrative and made the doc into something I wasn't expecting at all but was really relishing. The show itself is always fun but I have to admit, my heart broke a few times watching it after seeing some of the Gladiators be vulnerable about what they went through, physically and emotionally, and where they ended up.
