"Hurl!" Here: Tempest In A Teacup And Sumo Arigato

Posted by Ryan

Well, we’ve mercifully come to the end of G4’s Hurl! Thanks to both of you for sticking this one out with us. We’ll wrap up our coverage of this truly groundbreaking and gut-wrenching series with recaps of the final two episodes, “Tempest in a Teacup” and “Sumo Arigato,” and we’ll never speak of this again.

Tempest In A Teacup

Our contestants today will chow on clam chowder (pronounced “chowda”) then get dizzied up riding the Spinning Teacups.

Let’s meet the five guys mostly responsible for America’s economic downturn: Shane, an accountant and aspiring personal trainer; Gerald, a cable guy; Lindsey, a surfer/drummer/student pilot; Dustin, a construction worker; and Ken, a waiter.

The guys face 17 pounds of clam chowder (Organic? Probably not). These guys are using a ladle to slurp the stuff right out of the big bowl — it’s pretty gross. Clam chowder is gross to begin with, and these guys are making a mess of it. Ken is a chowder dumpster. He’s going to town on it, and he’s staying focused. “I want money,” he says. This is now just grossing the hell out of me. I think I feel a Hurl Warning coming on.

Ken put away four pounds of chowder, and he, Dustin and Lindsey move on to the Teacups. Shane and Gerald are out — they are the lucky ones. The remaining guys have to ride the Teacups that they spin under their own power. Uh, is there some kind of penalty or something for not spinning your Teacup? Ken is having a rough time. He overdid it in the first round of eating. He can’t even spin his Teacup. He lets out a 2-Bucket hurl and the “hairy Armenian” is out of the game. Lindsey and Dustin have to go back for more chowder.

Both Lindsey and Dustin have four minutes of ladling in some more chowder, and both guys survive the second round of eating, so it’s back to the Teacups for four more minutes. Meanwhile, Ken shows off his hurl bucket and its contents. Neither guy succumbs to the Teacups, so now they have to go back for more chowder. These guys are warriors. Not sure that I’d have made it past the first round. All the pieces of clam dangling from their faces are really making me queasy. Lindsey starts feeling it, and he stops eating. He lets out a 3-Bucket hurl into his bowl of chowder, and Dustin prevails. In a classy move, Dustin gives his vanquished foe the bandanna off his head so that he might wipe the hurl from his face. That’s sportsmanship, people.

Sumo Arigato

The series finale of Hurl! takes the contestants on a barge, where they’ll eat a Japanese feast of noodle soup and sushi, then bump bellies with Sumo wrestlers and spin in whirling captain’s chairs.

Let’s meet the five guys who would be considered geniuses in Botswana: Jon Jon, a bagel maker; Josh, a college football player, Ross, a vitamin salesman; Bryan, a pet food salesman who once taste-tested food at a dog food company (I pick him to win); and Ray, a security guard at a bookstore.

Each contestant must place an order with the sushi chefs, but since the menu is in Japanese, they don’t know what they’re ordering (the chefs will prepare their orders for the second round of eating). But first, the contestants have five minutes to eat as many bowls of noodles as they can. Ross is breaking out various distraction techniques, including gagging, belching and farting at his opponents. But this may have backfired on him, as he gets the first Hurl Warning. Bryan seems to have lost the will to eat.

Jon Jon, Josh and Ross eat the most and move on to the captain’s chairs. Bryan and Ray are done. Three Sumo wrestlers (we’re told they’re genuine wrestlers, not just fat Japanese guys), will spin Jon Jon, Josh and Ross in the chairs. Jon Jon seems to be doing well on the chairs, but Josh gets a Hurl Warning, and Ross doesn’t look much better. All three guys move on to the Sumo belly bump. Each guy must do 20 belly bumps with a Sumo wrestler. Seems like it might be rough, but all three guys survive without hurling.

So they’ll go back to the sushi bar, where the chefs have the mystery food that the guys ordered at the start of the show. The chefs will prepare sushi using fresh fish that they slice up at the bar. Apparently not sure what sushi is, Josh says, “I like my sushi cooked.” They’ll eat for four minutes. Ross is having a rough time with his second dish, Japanese-style sweetened scrambled eggs. He takes a bite and gags. But no hurl … that is, until he spews out a 1-Bucket hurl of rice and sushi and is eliminated.

Josh and Jon Jon will go for a spin in the captain’s chairs for a sudden-hurl final. Josh is in really bad shape. He’s grimacing and coughing and white-knuckling it. He’s about to blow at any moment. And he let’s out the biggest hurl of the series, an 11-bucket spew that sprays like a lawn sprinkler all over the place as Sumo wrestlers run for their lives. Jon Jon is the winner. But Josh takes a moral victory in the fact that he didn’t puke on his shoes.

For a victory celebration, Jon Jon eats some sea urchin gonads.

Photo: Credit: G4