Gross Out and Knockoff, but Hardly Any Sendup

Evans Vestal Ward/Comedy Central

Dave Attell with guests on Comedy Central's new version of "The Gong Show."

“Hurl!,” an extreme eating contest on the cable channel G4, has a certain elegance, an economy of action and intent that is too often lacking in contemporary ballet or fine dining. Contestants, almost all male, eat as much as they can in one sitting, then exert themselves in a strenuous physical activity. He who eats the most and vomits the least wins $1,000.

As the show’s premiere on Tuesday suggested, “Hurl!” will not win any public service awards from the National Eating Disorders Association. It revels in “hurl cams,” close-ups of young players power-gobbling tubs of macaroni and cheese, and instant replays of the losers puking. And like so much summer cable fare, it is basically a straight-to-YouTube event, a spectacle that only teenage boys want to watch in full or at any length at all. But just because it is puerile and revolting, doesn’t mean it is stupid. “Hurl!” has a disarming “Jackass” knowingness: it is tongue-in-cheek as well as face-in-bucket.

“Athletes have long understood the connection between what they eat and how they perform,” a gravel-voiced narrator intones as a supermarket cart careens through well-stocked aisles. “But tonight a new breed of competitor will find that these things are now one and the same.”

“Hurl!,” like “Reality Bites Back” and “The Gong Show” (back-to-back shows that begin tonight on Comedy Central), are attempts at satire. And at least in that sense they are almost quixotically brave. It turns out that it is as impossible to parody the fearless, effervescent vulgarity of shows like ABC’s “I Survived a Japanese Game Show” or NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” as it is to outfiddle Yo-Yo Ma or undersell Costco.

posted by Don "Moses" Lerman  # 7:49 AM