Vintage Review – Legend of the Hidden Temple
April 7, 2020
Do you remember the 90s? Of course you do. If you’re on here, you’re either old enough to remember the full decade, or clueless on 98% of the content. In this new series, created mostly out of boredom and increased free time, Bloggin Hood and friends (but mostly Bloggin Hood) will re-watch classic shows of yesteryear. This could be a cartoon, family show, or game show. I left the tradition “adult” sitcoms and shows out of this. You don’t need me to tell you Seinfeld is funny. However, what you may remember about these shows from your youth is misguided.
Nostalgia blinds us all, like a poor, uneducated 3rd grader who stares at the sun for a few seconds too long. Somebody needs to determine whether these favorites growing up were as good as we remember, or the victim of hot smoldering nostalgia. With each show, I’ll review a specific episode. If I’m familiar with the show, it’ll be a randomly selected one, or one I particularly remember being great. If I’m not that familiar, I’ll watch the first episode to judge it. For shows I know, I’ll touch on the characters, and my recollection of the show. Then I will review, as non-bias as I can, if the show stands. You might think as a 30+ year old adult, I won’t like most of these kids shows. But again, if you think that, you’ve literally skipped every other post. Good work.
Today, we will decide if Legends of the Hidden Temple is phat or wack. You try coming up with more updated 90 terms. I dare you.
Concept
One of Nickelodeon’s flagship shows in the early 90s, six teams of two children would face off in three rounds of competition, eliminating teams until one remained. Rounds consisted of crossing a “moat”, answering questions, and then competing in a few games. Afterwards, the winning team would complete in the temple run, where they to navigate through puzzles to retrieve an artifact within a time limit. There was also a taking rock statue thing.
Theme Song
It’s not exactly a classic track, but the theme song fits the show. You have a few jungle animal sounds mixed in with the painfully early 90s music, and the talking stone face guy welcoming you. This ain’t Ducktales, but it’s not bad.
Review
Legend of the Hidden Temple is likely one of the shows that pops in your head when you think of 90s nostalgia. I’m right there with you. The temple run itself is iconic, enduring in many Millennial minds despite the show not airing new episodes for 25 years. In many ways, the Temple run was Nickelodeon’s version of the Supermarket run in Supermarket sweep. Sure, there was less hams, but the parallels are there.
As previously discussed in the Supermarket Sweep blog, all of the build up to the three teams racing around the supermarket, well, was, shitty. The games were forgettable, the host was abysmal and the contestants might as well have been cardboard. Was the supermarket runs entertaining? Absolutely. But does it makes enduring 20+ minutes (plus commercials) to get to it? Honestly, it just might, especially if you like watching awkward people try to engage with other awkward people. I do, so I can’t recommend Supermarket Sweep enough. It’s not a good game show, but I mean, we have the time to watch it.
Legend of the Hidden Temple is designed in the same way. The entire point of the show is to make it to the Temple Run and receive prizes. The main difference, other than grocery carts vs bloodthirsty guards, is that this show has elimination rounds. Sure, you could drop the ball completely in Supermarket Sweep’s question rounds, but you still get to run up and down the aisles trying to stockpile bags of dog food. On Legend of the Hidden Temple, only one of 6 teams get the opportunity to run. In a way, the buildup for the run is more important. This means you need to keep the audience engaged for all the games leading up to it, and then the run has to be epic.
Now, I’m no fool*. 1 There’s a difference in marketing shows, especially game shows, for children and adults. As a kid, I was fascinated with the Temple Run, and how I would navigate the traps and avoid the temple guards (we’ll get there soon). I never realized just how absolutely atrocious the lead up to the run is. Was it because I watched the show at 12 and not 32? Was it because I only got to watch Nick very infrequently as I didn’t have cable until 7th grade? Was it because I was that obsessed with the Temple the rest didn’t matter? I think it’s a little of everything, but to put it lightly, watching the show in 2020 does not put it in a favorable light.
To put it more meanly, watching Legend of the Hidden Temple in 2020 is the television equivalent of jamming rusty blades in your eyes.
They’re planning on reviving this show as a Quibi. If you’re streaming anything in the last month, and let’s face it, you have, you probably have heard the term, but don’t understand it. Have you fear – I don’t either. I think it’s like a streaming service but with shorter shows. This is likely because their writers couldn’t fill 22 minutes with ads. That’s a bad sign. It’s also ironic considering the budget for advertising Quibi on other channels and streaming services was huge. Maybe pony up for writers instead.
Or maybe pony up for me. Hell I can write poorly for hours if needed.
But if they’re really going to revive it, oh boy do they need to fix this up Let’s address the numerous problems this show has.
Let’s start by discussing the opening game – crossing the moat. For a game on a kid’s show, it’s not the worst. It’s also not remotely good. All six teams line up and they need to cross the moat. The first kid paddles across the moat, and the other crosses via a rope tied by the first kid. The top 4 teams advance to the first round. This here is the problem. Every episode starts with the theme song, a quick camera pan announcing the team names, and then the moat game starts. There’s no introduction of any of the kids. Before we blink, 4 children go home, technically being on TV, but with no real proof. For participating, they receive a prize. The episodes I watched rewarded Laffy Taffy. Not only does that candy suck, I think the four kids had to split one pack. That could only be 2 pieces of shitty taffy. What an honor.
Imagine dreaming of running the temple for years, like most of America and getting eliminated 45 seconds into filming because your partner tried to drink the pool water instead of crossing it. It’s maddening they don’t introduce the kids first. At least that way, they’d get a moment to be awkward and mocked for entirety by internet idiots like me.
Hmm, maybe the Nick producers new what they were doing.
Our second issue takes place throughout the show, and it’s our host. I didn’t bother to look up his name, and you shouldn’t either. He has the personality of a throw pillow and half the charisma. Honestly, I think he watched an hosting instructional video from David Ruprecht and decided to tone down his fiery personality. He sounds both bored and confused, describing the moat action with no vigor. You’d kind of expect these hosts to be energetic since it’s a kid’s show. They should be engaging and a little wacky. Look at Mike O’Malley on Guts. It’s like watching a YMCA pickup game, and then going to see Prime Michael Jordan directly after. I guess there’s a reason the host of Legends never managed to get this own sitcom. At least I hope so. Who knows what CBS is churning out for the Fall of 2020.
Next is the most troubling portion of the show. Instead of taking the remaining four teams and having a second physical challenge, Legend of the Hidden Temple tests the mind. Really, what they test is everyone’s patience. This decision had to be made by some educational governing body that hated fun. In between athletic feats, and I use the term rather loose here, the talking temple god face thing recounts a story related to the artifact in the Temple. A couple of thoughts here:
Firstly, why? Why are we doing this? Look, I’m already out on the moat crossing, and now we’re going to grind the proceedings to a halt to listen to a 2 minute history lesson? I mean, come on. If I wanted education, I’d watch the History Channel and hear how aliens are responsible for the Revolutionary War. And it’s not just the forceful educational segment; it’s that it’s so damn boring. I mean, if I’m a kid, I don’t want to hear the face thing talk. I want to watch kids do things. I spent the whole day at school for more history? Nobody likes history class. Nobody. As an adult, this is somehow worse. It’s tough for me to describe the misery unless you watch an episode, but I’d honestly rather see another State Farm commercial than this segment. Pausing the action for this was a complete miss. This itself is enough to ruin my nostalgia.
Yet somehow, it gets worse. No matter how bad the segment is, if you’re a contestant, you have to pay attention, because there’s a quiz at the end. That’s right, we’re basically in school. The first two teams to answer 3 questions move on. While 2 minutes feels like an eternity, this should go quick. I mean the questions asked by the talking head are multiple choice. It’s not rocket science. Yet the kids regularly get everything wrong, despite being spoon fed answers. I mean, there’s one relevant choice out of the three. But regularly, there’s multiple right answers until some kid swoops in at the end, bravely answering with the only available choice. No wonder our school’s are failing. This is one of the most frustrating parts of the show, but it does make sense for what’s to come later. Maybe there’s a reason we don’t learn much about the contestants – to hide their shame.
After about 35 questions, including a few repeats to get the 6 correct answers needed, the remaining two teams face off in three actual games. These are ho hum at best, but I understand we weren’t getting Guts like competition. I mean, there would be no reason to have both shows. Man, what a shame that would be if one of these shows were cancelled.** 2 The games have loose ties to the artifact the episode covers, in painful detail, but only actual change in name. Each of the three episodes I saw involved climbing up a wall to grab items, collecting items with resistance bands on, and finally another climbing collecting game… The producers really let their creative juices flow. The teams are competing for pendants of life, needed for the temple run. If one team sweeps the events, they get two pendants, all but assuring them victory. If they split the events, they’ll only get one extra life, meaning they will likely lose. Of course, with enough brain power, the temple is a cake walk.
Remember that quiz portion of the show? I told you that would important.
As a kid, I remember the temple seeming to be full of exciting puzzles and suspense of the Temple Guards. But boy was I wrong. This is barely more adventurous than the playpen at a McDonald’s. I mean the “puzzles” are basically hitting a bunch of buttons and plowing through. In fact, you can kind of cheat and just open locked doors as though they are held together by chewing gum.
The most infamous puzzle is the shrine of the silver monkey. This gave dozens of players trouble. Do you know what this really was? A three piece puzzle. I guess kids really don’t know their ass from their elbow, as those were two of the three pieces. So yeah, the whole temple is a shame.
If you’re captured by a guard, you either trade in a pendant to keep going, or you’re out and your teammate tags in. I believe there’s three guards (it might be two) so having multiple pendants should be a free win. There’s really no challenge and a lot of time.
But these kids are really frigging dumb. Like, unbelievably dumb. They lose full minutes staring at the wall in rooms, failing to hit giant, glowing clues as the host reads off a script stated what to do. And time and time again, the kids fail. The only way I could see losing is running out of lives, because you can’t exactly evade guards. But otherwise, losing is a disgrace. I assume all teams that lost were held back at least twice in school and bullied appropriately.
If the kids were like 8, I could see struggling. But these are middle schoolers. there’s no excuse being this stupid at that age. I mean, did they even pay attention during archaeology class?
Verdict : Wack
I’m sure many of you loved this show as a kid. And if you have children and watch old replays of the show, you could do worse. But whether you repped the Red Jaguars, the Blue Barracudas, the Green Monkeys, the orange Iguanas, the Purple Parrots or the Silver Moneys, re-watching will only leave you colored unimpressed.*** 3 This isn’t the best classic Nickelodeon game show. This might not even make the top 3. Seriously, do yourself a favor and eliminate this from your DVR quicker than the poor kids who lost the moat challenge.
