Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (or "MXC") is the ultimate in reality
sports, where contestants comprised of two teams are physically and
mentally challenged and eliminated through crazy and challenging games.
To add to the fun, commentary is given to the audience through the
hilarious comments of Kenny Blankenship and Vic Romano, along with
special correspondant Guy LeDouche and Captain Tenneal.
Type: Reality
Languages: English
Status: Ended
Runtime: 30 minutes
Premier: 2003-04-13
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge - Most Extreme Elimination Challenge - Netflix
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC) is an American comedy
television program that aired on Spike TV from 2003 to 2007. It is a
re-purpose of footage from the Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle which
originally aired in Japan from 1986 to 1990. The re-purposed “MXC”
created a completely new premise, storyline and characters. The MXC
re-purpose created two teams competing against each other à la a typical
Saturday afternoon network football game broadcast, with players trying
to win points for their teams by surviving through different challenges.
In the original program the Count and his underlings would follow the
progress of the players as they moved through the course. In the
re-purpose Count Takeshi became veteran network announcer Vic Romano and
the count's flunky became young upstart Kenny Blankenship. Most Extreme
Elimination Challenge was created and produced by RC Entertainment, Inc.
(Paul Abeyta and Peter Kaikko) in Los Angeles, California and Larry
Strawther (a writer and producer on a number of network sitcoms). The
three were friends who had worked together at Merv Griffin Productions
in the late 1970s. Strawther was the staff on the “Dance Fever” pilot
which Abeyta took over as Executive Producer the following season, while
Strawther stayed with “Jeopardy!”. Between jobs they would occasionally
try to create their own projects. One of these was the 1990s talk show
spoof Night Stand with Dick Dietrick. MXC is the property of both Tokyo
Broadcasting System (TBS) and RC Entertainment. The 2004 special episode
MXC Almost Live is the property of Viacom International, which was
filmed in Orlando, Florida by the producers of MXC.
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge - Production - Netflix
In the show, the contestants' names are usually names of celebrities,
network bosses, or family members and friends of the producers or voice
actors. Several recurring names appear in the show; the most common
family name is Babaganoosh, since the producers of MXC were given short
deadlines for producing episodes, therefore giving them limited time to
write the scripts. Babaganoosh comes from Darga as his family is from
the Middle East, where Baba ghanoush is the name of a local eggplant
dish. During the production of the show, the network bosses stated that
they did not want the producers to repeat games from episode to episode,
but the producers ignored this, knowing 1) they didn't have the rights
to enough episodes at the time to not repeat, but 2) some of the games
(especially “Log Rollers” and “Sinkers or Floaters”) to be interesting
and funny every time. Some fan-favorite and recurring games included Log
Drop, Wall Bangers, Dope on a Rope, Rotating Surfboard of Death, and
Sinkers and Floaters, amongst many others. Due to the high viewership
and popularity of MXC in the United States, several of the original
Japanese actors whose acting careers were failing at the time MXC aired
in the United States got massive career re-boots because of the U.S. fan
base. While the basic premise of MXC is that of a legitimate game show,
its true premise is that of a comedy not intended to be taken literally.
All original audio was stripped from each show for legal reasons, and
all audio was added by producer-writers and an audio technician, leaving
none of the original audio from Takeshi's Castle. The script is
completely unrelated to the original Japanese dialogue; Both Abeyta and
Strawther's original notes deliberately avoided any references to
Japanese or Asian culture. The characters could be from Iowa. Some
thought the only Japanese-related, albeit loosely, term used for the
show was the name Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, which has a
Japanese-like naming style. But Strawther noted that the title – pitched
by Abeyta – was a spoof on network buying tendencies of the time –
"Extreme sports were big and the term was being thrown around
everywhere. We thought it was funny to use “Most Extreme.” All the
producers and writers admit that they had no knowledge of what the
contestants or actors were originally saying during the filming of
Takeshi's Castle. MXC's early scripts spoofed pop culture, or mocked
various celebrities, athletes, sports announcers, politicians, with the
occasional sexual pun. In later seasons, with network encouragement,
sexual puns and references took on a much larger role, to the dismay of
some of the show's producers who felt the cheap jokes led to its demise
earlier than necessary. Contestants are given seemingly incongruous but
humorous names and occupations based on their team and physical
appearance (e.g. Sal Bloomberg from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a meat
handler team member in the Season 1 episode “Meat Handlers vs. Cartoon
Voice Actors”, aka “Network Boss”). In addition, the various challenges
are all given humorous names, such as Sinkers & Floaters or Wall
Bangers. Any water or mud used in a challenge is given humorous names
from Kenny and Vic, notably “septic sludge”, with Kenny usually
following it with a more specific name (e.g. “runoff from a local chili
cook off”). The footage for a single episode of MXC can come from
multiple episodes of Takeshi's Castle, and occasionally the same
footage, including challenges, will be used in multiple episodes with
different character names and dialogue. Unlike international editions of
Takeshi's Castle, the original text that appeared on screen is left as
is, with the characters often playing off of it. Production Team Trivia:
All four of the Producers / Performers / Writers on the series are alums
of the famous Groundlings in Hollywood: John Cervenka, Christopher
Darga, Mary Scheer, and Victor Wilson. The creators/Exec Producers Paul
Abeyta and Larry Strawther had worked together at Merv Griffin
Productions in the late 1970s. Strawther had worked on the company's
pilots for the re-boot of Jeopardy! and Dance Fever in 1978. When both
shows sold Strawther went with Jeopardy as its head writer and Abeyta
came over Merv's talk show to exec produce Dance Fever. Kaikko worked
for Dance Fever's distributor 20th-Century Fox and while overseeing that
show he struck up a longtime friendship and business partnership with
Abeyta. Strawther went on to write and produce network sitcoms,
including Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Night Court and My Sister Sam
and some movies like Without a Clue, but between jobs he would work with
Abeyta and Kaikko on spec projects that seemed like they would be fun.
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge - References - Netflix