Tuesday night marked the premiere of the much-hyped Fringe on FOX. It's heavy on sci-fi material mixed with a fair amount of action but even with a compelling storyline and intriguing character development during the extended premiere episode, it wasn't the highlight of Tuesday's FOX lineup.

No, the highlight (and by highlight I mean lowlight) was a "competition" show imported from Japan entitled Hole in the Wall. Before you read too much in to the title, it's exactly what it sounds like. Huge styrofoam walls with people-shaped cutouts are unveiled to contestants. These giant walls move towards the contestant or contestants (there are two teams of three) and the player or players have to contort themselves to the shape of the cutout(s) to win points which eventually earn prize money should they win. Sometimes they have to lay down, sometimes they have to bend over and other times (ooh, the excitement is building) they have to jump. It's truly compelling.

If you want to seriously shut your brain off, and I mean total vegetative coma, this would be the choice. It makes me wonder how Japan is as successful as a country as they are when this is at least a portion of the programming which they supposedly watch. Or maybe it's all just a ploy by the Japanese to see what kind of horrile dreck us AMericans will actually watch.

If you are so inclined to watch, check out Hole in the Wall in its normal timeslot Thursdays at 7 PM on FOX and share your thoughts on both it and the same anonymous FOX voice guy who voiced the high-brow late-90s series including both When Buildings Fall and When Ligers Attack.