TV Madness 2012: A Look Back

TV Madness isn’t like the Presidential election. Your vote actually matters here. Two votes! The final battle came down to two measly votes.

Cameron came into the finals with a nearly indestructible robot skeleton under that nice-looking exterior. Still, that wasn’t enough to fend off Jack Bauer and his action-hero gruff-talk. Bauer’s road to the finals wasn’t easy, and he was almost taken out by Malcolm Reynolds before he got there. A tie-breaker had to separate the two. But here we are. Jack Bauer stands atop a mountain of TV character corpses – the victor!

When the tournament started, I had my favorite dark horse picks. I really wanted to see The Tick go far, along with Hurricane Spencer (Hulk Hogan). Sadly, neither of them made it past the second round.

At times, we had lengthy discussions about how best to quantify what characters could actually do. For example, it was hard for some to distinguish David Banner from The Hulk, or even The Hulk from other versions of Hulk (like the one in ‘The Avengers’). This led to, what I thought, was a questionable run of wins for David Banner, whose 1970s TV Hulk was basically just sticky green paint applied to Lou Ferrigno. Yeah, that’s kinda not the same thing as the impenetrable green dispenser of death in the movies.

Girl power! Three of the Final Four characters were female. I didn’t see that happening, but it was fun to watch. There are some female TV characters who have kicked a whole lotta ass over the years, and they were vindicated here, taking out man after man. Yes, a man ended up winning, but only after taking quite a beating.

Like the Movie Madness tournament we had last year, TV Madness had its share of controversy.

The biggest controversy came when Brisco County, Jr. – who had already improbably defeated Jonas Blane – appeared to be well on his way to ousting Buffy from the tournament. However, some readers expressed dismay at the results. Brisco led by so many votes that you’d think Bruce Campbell himself was running around to different computers and furiously voting as much as he could. Well, that might’ve been true. We checked the voting logs, and Brisco got an enormous number of votes from one particular IP address. Something underhanded definitely went on there. In the end, Buffy took the match when the votes were corrected. Then, she promptly lost to Cameron.

I know that some of you may not be happy with Jack Bauer winning. If you’re one of those people, take solace in the fact that it really sucks to be Jack Bauer.

18 comments

  1. JM

    Diversity of opinion + voting = fail.

    Of the 100 poll clickers, I’m guessing 95% are unsatisfied by these results.

  2. EM

    I regret not seeing any of the Star Trek entrants competing head-to-head. In particular I wanted to see Seven of Nine against Captain Kirk. Would he come out on top (read that as you will)? or would she manage immunity to his charms? But Worf vs. Kirk and Worf vs. Seven would have been interesting matchups as well.

    • EM

      And although I sided with Buffy against Cameron—if Cameron had to win, I would have liked to see the final round be Cameron vs. Seven of Nine: two she-cyborgs from the future locked in battle. Actually, I think I would have framed that battle as a highly logical conversation…

    • Aaron Peck
      Author

      We could have a tournament with JUST ‘Star Trek’ characters although I’m not well-versed enough in all things ‘Trek’ to pull it off.

  3. Shannon Nutt

    Considering the options (Mal?! Brisco?! Cameron?!), I’m quite happy with the Bauer win. Someone should forward the results to FOX…maybe they’ll finally make that damn movie.

  4. William Henley

    I honestly thought Sylar (or however you spell his name) was going to sweep this thing. He didn’t even make it into the top 4 (did he even make it into the top 16?). I think half of these wins had to do with the way the characters were matched up against each other. Not that I am complaining about that, but some of the characters who probably could have been in the finals met early on with someone who was able to exploit the one weakness that character had, even though the opponent was not particularly strong.

    It was a weird tournament, to say the least. But it was fun. So, since we did movies last year, and TV shows this year, are we going to do video games next year? Oh, maybe we should do gameshow hosts (Mark Summers versus Bob Barker anyone?), or reality TV shows (Ty Pennington versus Ryan Seacrest) or something. Eh, we have 9 months to think about it! 🙂

    • EM

      Maybe we could do organizations: the Rebel Alliance vs. the Klingon Defense Force, SPECTRE vs. CONTROL, the Avengers vs. the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, etc.

      We also haven’t done much with animation.

      • Ohhhh, Power Rangers vs The League of Justice! Of course, the Power Rangers should get their butts handed to them. They usually are loosing the battles anyway until one person or something shows up and saves the day.

        Monster Madness sounds REALLY cool!

    • EM

      Of course, if Aaron doesn’t want to wait nine long months, maybe we could do an October-ending Monster Madness…

  5. Jack Bauer beat heroin, and he is the son of Robocop, whom he also beat.

    Robby the robot was lucky to get a second season after the writer’s strike killed the first season.

  6. Boo to Bauer winning!! 😉 Ahh, well, such is public opinion! It was a close call, though!! I remember after I voted and saw the numbers it was spot on 50/50.

    I like the idea of a ‘monsters’ tournament. Imagine The Thing vs The Alien vs Dracula vs The Devil vs The Elder Gods etc…!! 😉 Ahh, what fun times would be had… I remember when I were a lad, we only ‘ad a coal monster, and ‘e ‘ad ten kids to feed!!

  7. Umm, Bauer was the son of the guy who invented space travel in the Trek universe to begin with … although he did kill Robocop, yes …

    Anyway, I too would’ve loved a Trek Versus match but I don’t understand this Seven of Nine obsession most people here have. She doesn’t do anything except pose.

    I love this monster madness idea but am going to have to think about some other monsters from popular cult movies before I bother posting. 😉

  8. Superman

    I knew Bauer would go far, but I didn’t think he would make it all the way. Clark Kent should have gotten much farther than he did. He was Superman, even on the show. Not like the Hulk being not as strong as movie/comic Hulk. He WAS Superman. Unless 60’s TV Batman had anti-Superman spray (which he probably did) no one should have beaten him.