Kinda suspicious...

I just watched this show for the first time today as part of a marathon on Spike TV.

Interesting concept. And let's be honest - anyone who watches the show can't blame the producers for peddling such exploitative crap any more than they can blame themselves for watching it.

The more I watched it, though, the more suspicious I became that some - if not most - of the purported 'reenactments' of odd and violent real-life deaths actually happened in real-life.

It's kind of hard not to notice that pretty much all of the purportedly real-life stories have three classic features of an urban legend.

First, nearly all of the victims seem to be getting their just desserts. Everyone who dies was doing something illegal, irresponsible, or was at the very least a monumental jerk. One of the reasons we love urban legends so much is that - unlike real-life - the bad guys of urban legends always get what's coming to them.

Second, many of the 'facts' that are presented as foregone conclusions are things that no one could possibly know or verify. In one of the stories, a stripper got her mouth taped shut by an assailant - whose breath was so foul that she then choked on her own vomit because the tape prevented her from spitting the vomit out. The reenactment also makes clear that the assailant left the scene right before our poor stripper met her demise. So, the obvious question is - how would anyone know it was the guy's breath that made her barf? At best, it would have to involve some creative guessing.

Third - and the one that makes me most suspicious of all - is that more than a few of the stories seem to bear a strong resemblance to stories that have been circulating for years - and sometimes decades or even centuries - in various incarnations. The woman (a real bitch, of course) who died from her exploding breast implant seems an awful lot like a favorite practical joke DJs would do in the 80s where they would call a recent breast implant recipient (usually at the behest of their boyfriend or husband, who had just shelled out ten grand on their boobs) and tell the woman that she had accidentally received nitroglycerin implants instead of sillicon - and that her boobs could explode at any minute (typically, when the woman became furious and/or hysterical, the DJ would say "ma'am - for the Love of God - DO NOT raise your temperature!!")

Another story about the guy (who was, of course, a major jerk) while on the toilet dropped a cigarette into the commode and blew himself up because there happened to be gasoline in the potty seems an awful lot like an urban legend that dates back to before indoor plumbing - when a hapless cowboy blew himself up in an outhouse when he tossed a cigar down the hole and ignited a cloud of fecal-produced methane. It's been re-told through the years in various forms; the producers of 'Lethal Weapon 2' even cited the legend as the inspiration for the bomb planted beneath Danny Glover's toilet that was activated when he sat on it.


My guess is that - like urban legends - some of them are actually true. My guess is also that - like urban legends - some of them could have happened, but finding documentation is another matter. Finally, my guess is that - like urban legends - a good portion of them are total bull-plop.