TV Article 'Wipeout': TV's Happiest Accidents The splashing, bashing guilty pleasure returns for another round of comedic carnage By Dan Snierson Dan Snierson Dan Snierson is a former senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. He left EW in 2023. EW's editorial guidelines Published on May 27, 2011 04:00AM EDT You don’t have to wait until next summer to watch the Olympics. Every week on Wipeout (June 21), someone will earn a metaphorical medal for waging a physics-defying battle against the show’s injury-inducing obstacle course. This year, the challenges are even ”more demented,” says host John Henson, who annotated a few challenges for EW. ”There’s an obstacle called Chutes and Splatter. It’s a sadistic take on a school playground.” Any unprecedented contestant contortions? ”There’s a particular style of wipeout we have engineered successfully this season, and that is a face-plant where your back bows enough that you kick yourself in the back of the head. We refer to that as the Scorpion. There are only two ways to achieve the Scorpion. One is 15 years of dedicated yoga practice on a mountaintop, and the other is the Wipeout course.”