Top 9 Things I Think About Legends of the Hidden Temple

It is too late and I am too tired to make sense, but the thing is, I haven't posted in like, a billion days, so I gotta do this. It's like I'm Johnny Utah in Point Break and I've gotta let Patrick Swayze surf that wave.

Sort of.

Anyway, the other day was Kirk Fogg's birthday and it got me thinking about the game show (and touchstone of youth) Legends of the Hidden Temple. Here were the nine things I thought.

9. I would be willing to bet that kids routinely died in that moat at the beginning.

I mean, you never heard from them after that! Uh-oh, the Green Monkeys fell off their makeshift raft and into the smoky waters below, too bad they won't ever make it out alive! What's that? They won't be going home empty-handed? Oh, right... because they don't have hands anymore, because there are alligators in the moat.

8. They ran out of things to hide in the temple after Season One.

It's all painstakingly documented on this Wikipedia page. Seriously... check out a few of these gems: The Bent Shaving Pan of Jedediah Smith? The Golden Spider Web of Robert the Bruce? The Pearl Necklace of Gwalior? These all reek of FAKE.

7. The Temple Games were ludicrously repetitive.

They used the same set-pieces from episode and if you watch, say, five or six in a row--as you USED to be able to do on Nick GAS--it shows. There are like, five games, tops... the crawl through the tunnel game, the climb up the net game, the slide down the wet thing game, the put things in a bucket even though you are tied to something with elastic game, and the make awkward banter with Kirk Fogg game. No one ever one that last game.

6. You just know some dude uses “I won Legends of the Hidden Temple” as a pick-up line.

And the saddest part is, he's probably not lying. He probably was a Purple Parrot, he probably did make it through the Temple, and I bet he did it without getting caught by a Temple Guard, so his partner never got to go in, too! Not something to brag about, dude! Be a team player... jeez.

5. Basically just an exoticized Finders Keepers.

Right? Right? You guys remember that one, right? Someone please tell me I did not hallucinate an entire gameshow.

4. The Temple guards were all convicted felons.

Do you remember when they would jump out and grab kids in the Temple Run? That was full on assault-and-battery! Those kids were traumatized for life--regardless of whether they had an extra pendant of life!

3. Space Camp is NOT worth going through the terror of the Temple for.

Step 1: Buy freeze dried ice cream at the Science Museum. Step 2: Hang upside down in your closet. You have just gone to Space Camp. You never had to put your life at risk, either.

2. Kirk Fogg clearly a prisoner.

And Olmec is the one holding him prisoner. At night, Kirk is forced to brush Olmec's giant stone teeth. They sleep in the same room, except Olmec doesn't sleep, he just berates Kirk for being small and weak. Then, temple guards whip Kirk until the sun rises. Then, they start filming the show.

1. Before they came up with the Temple, before they came up with a giant talking stone head, before they came up with any of it, they clearly came up with… The Shrine of the Silver Monkey!