#tbt: Legends of the Hidden Temple

#tbt: Legends of the Hidden Temple

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Welcome to the first installment of #tbt, or Throw Back Thursdays.  Each week our staff of writers will give a glimpse to “back in the day” (which I think was a Wednesday.  Dane Cook call back? anybody? no, okay moving on).  Now before the internet gets in a tiff and starts shouting about the fact that Rembert of Grantland already wrote something about LOTHT, I’ll say two things.  One; we here at Rookerville are big fans of Grantland, and actually read it regularly.  Rembert does take an hilarious posthumous play by play breakdown of an episode, and if you have the time you should head over and read it (http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/72396/rembert-explains-the-90s-legends-of-the-hidden-temple).  Two; if you actually think there can ever be too many articles on LOTHT, then I think we should see other people, maybe take a “break”, and you can switch your relationship status with Rookerville to “its complicated”.  Anyways Rose starts us off explaining his love affair with the show and why he’s most likely wearing his LOTHT shirt as we speak. 

Recently, I applied for an apartment in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood. The kind of neighborhood populated with professors, psychotherapists, and other gentlemen who enjoy wearing corduroy jackets with elbow patches. After receiving a tour of the building and an individual apartment (where I met my potential neighbor, the double-PhD mathematician), I sat down with the landlady in her kitchen to have afternoon tea. It was all sorts of classy. I tried my best to look the part in attempts to actually secure the unit – clean shaven, nice pants, sweater. But hiding underneath that sweater? A cotton tee shirt emblazoned with the logo of the Green Monkeys. All sorts of classy, indeed.

The shirt was a gift from my sister while I was in college, which coincided with the resurgence of Legends of the Hidden Temple via Nickelodeon GAS. It was a truly glorious time to have too many channels and no midday responsibilities. But my love of Legends came long before the reissues of old episodes or the College Humor interviews with its host. It’s mildly nauseating to say this, but this fall will mark TWENTY YEARS since my siblings and I tuned in to those first few episodes. And at the time, as a member of the target demographic for Olmec’s ramblings, I wanted nothing more than to be on that show.

How did I land on Legends as a favorite with the plethora of other options available during the golden age of adolescent gameshow programming? Process of elimination, I guess. For me, it was all about visualizing myself on the show. I couldn’t imagine my mom making it through the Double Dare obstacle course, and you only got to be on Figure It Out if you had been growing a rat tail since birth or possessed some similarly bizarre trait for the panel to guess. Nick Arcade seemed a bit too complicated, and although I enjoyed Guts, there were still a few years to go in my hydrophobic childhood until I would be an adequate enough swimmer to even envision completing any of the pool competitions. [Later in life, my friends and I would very seriously entertain the idea of purchasing a piece of the Aggro Crag but ultimately decide our money was better spent at the bar.] That left Legends of the Hidden Temple, where I could pretend I was Indiana Jones, run through obstacles, and impress the young ladies with my ability to answer questions about the golden stallion of Ali Baba.

Next came the pledging of allegiance to one’s team of choice. You had three routes you could take to make a selection – animal, color, or, if you were THAT kid, alliteration. I eschewed the latter two and went with the mischievous monkey, who I do not think is actually green when found in nature. It didn’t take long for that choice to pay off, as my team finished the inaugural temple run with one second left on the clock and the headdress of Lawrence of Arabia in tow. In fact, depending on what metric you use, they were arguably the most successful temple-running team of them all. Or at least in the top six.

The actual shows were full of character, each one containing an intricate set and a tall tale around which the rest of the episode was based. As for the co-presenters? Mark Summers was a nice guy who was a gameshow host. Mike O’Malley was a loud guy who was a gameshow host. But Kirk Fogg? When he rappelled onto the set wearing hiking boots and cargo shorts, he was announced as our “guide”. And he and that chip-off-the-old-block Olmec had some serious chemistry.

“Are you ready, Olmec?”
“Let’s rock.”

Comedy gold.

The events would always begin with some variation of crossing the moat, mostly designed to weed out the weaklings. Generally the tasks fell into one of two categories: “This is the easiest thing ever, you cannot possibly fail” or “This is the easiest thing ever, and yet you are still failing”. But once four pairs of kids giddily slapped that gong, they were off to the Steps of Knowledge for an exercise in competitive listening comprehension and fact regurgitation. Really, was this not perfect for school-aged children? Exercise AND learning combined into one imaginative half hour? These weren’t the dumb jocks of Guts; they were two purple parrots who possessed both athleticism and brains. If they made it to the bottom of those steps intact, it was off to a head-to-head showdown to acquire some precious Pendants of Life in the just-as-thematic Temple Games. If a team didn’t quite make the cut, they were handsomely rewarded with a case of Nerds or a new VHS release, which were probably actually pretty cool prizes for an eleven year old in 1993.

But let’s be honest – all this jumping around and responding to questions was really just buildup to the main event, the Temple Run. It was set up like a three-dimensional Legend Of Zelda dungeon, full of puzzles to solve and tasks to finish in order to open doors to the rest of the rooms. And once those doors opened, it was a mad dash to the next part of the maze. I can only imagine encountering a guard in there was absolutely terrifying; the more I watch reruns of the show, the more abduct-y those exchanges appear. A partially dressed boogeyman jumping out and pulling me into the darkness of a hidden temple? Yikes. Even when the contestants were fortunate enough to exchange a pendant for their escape, they would still slink off like a dejected Super Mario shrunk down to size, distracted and impaired by their temporary overload in adrenaline.

As exciting as the final round could be, it also had the potential to be the most frustrating three minutes a television viewer could possibly endure. I remember reaching unjustifiable levels of anger as I struggled to watch the incompetence of my peers, assuring myself all the while that I would have run circles around their pathetic attempts to assemble the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. I would scream instructions at them, but my advice would go unnoticed. YOU HAVE TO BREAK THE POTS TO FIND THE KEY. GET OFF THE STUPID LADDER, THAT’S NOT THE DOOR YOU NEED. It all fell on deaf ears. Those kids were going to be stuck in the Pit of Despair forever. Kirk and Olmec must have been on large doses of blood pressure medication and anti-anxiety pills the whole time; I don’t know how else they dealt with the stress. But man, did they deal with it well.

“Don’t worry guys. You’re not going to Space Camp, but at least you’ve got those remote control trucks and your confidence.”
– Kirk Fairbanks Fogg

Thanks, Kirk. I needed that. Deep breaths.

Legends of the Hidden Temple will always hold a special place in my heart, a window to a simpler time when all you needed was an oversized yellow helmet and a color coded tribal shirt to fulfill your dreams. Nickelodeon still exists, but the hours of healthy middle school competition have been replaced with Spongebob marathons and tween dramedies. In the meantime, our generation, whatever we’re called, carries on the tradition of Legends and its peers in semi-veiled grownup form. Every group of friends posting pictures of themselves prancing around Warrior Dashing or Tough Muddering or Color Running is, in a way, channeling their inner Orange Iguana. Don’t call it a throwback; it’s been here for years. Just like Olmec.

Andrew Rose

About Andrew Rose

Andrew Rose is a writer and editor for Rookerville. He also manages a travel blog for his friends and family. His book, “Seizure Salad”, is a work of fiction - not in that it is a tale of fantasy, but in that it does not actually exist.

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