[Wids]

"The Deadliest Warrior" was a fun TV series while it lasted, wasn't it? :)

Sure, if you're really anal-retentive about world history, those niggling little details are going to wreck your enjoyment of the show. Joan of Arc's longsword was just for show; she was a good Catholic girl, she was big on holding herself to the "Thou shalt not murder" Commandment, and so she never actually killed anyone with that longsword, even in the heat of battle; that's what her soldiers were there for. So how the show's producers expected her to beat a battle-hardened veteran like William the Conqueror in a toe-to-toe fight is beyond me.

But if you watched the show just as a form of beer-and-pretzels entertainment, The Deadliest Warrior delivered in spades. It was always fun to watch the combat consultants chop up dead pigs and gooey ballistics dummies with various weapons and in various ways, and the consultants themselves tended to be colorful characters. Like Snake Blocker, an Army knife-fighting trainer and full-blooded Apache who was a consultant for the Apache Warrior vs. Roman Gladiator episode. Snake Blocker! How cool of a name is that? Also, Saulius "Sonny" Puzikas, a former Spetsnaz operative who acts as one of the Spetsnaz consultants for the "Green Berets vs. Spetsnaz" episode, somehow manages to be funny and scary at the same time.

But my favorite part of each episode would have to be the simulated re-enactment battles at the end of each episode. I can't really describe why I like them so much; you'll just have to see for yourself. So here's a selection of some of my favorite skirmishes from some of my favorite episodes:

SWAT vs. GSG 9

Comanche vs. Mongol

George Washington vs. Napoleon Bonaparte

Saddam Hussein (and the Republican Guard) vs. Pol Pot (and the Khmer Rouge)

Theodore Roosevelt vs. Lawrence of Arabia

Ivan the Terrible vs Hernán Cortés

Crazy Horse vs. Pancho Villa

Navy SEALs vs. Israeli Commandos

KGB vs. CIA
(Yeah, the video quality sucks. Why are people still camcording TV screens when it's so simple to hook a computer up to a TV and record directly off the video feed these days?)

Celt vs. Persian Immortal

Vampires vs. Zombies

See? :)

So how many of you are familiar with this show? And which episodes are your all-time faves?