ABC's BATTLEBOTS Premiere Is An Old Idea With Nothing New

TV REVIEW: BATTLEBOTS

I had DVR'd ABC's new series, Battlebots. And to be honest I am glad I did DVR'd it.

When I pulled up Battlebots on my DVR, I jacked up the ff'ing mode. Unless I missed something, the one-hour "action" series had three bot fights and a serious amount of back story on how the teams built their bots.


I have seen this show or something like it a few years ago, then there was the giant robot fighting snow on Syfy a few years ago. This is fun, but it is nothing new. In fact this entire set and the poor audience goaded to cheer every action on, looks much like the previous show I watched way back when, on whatever network then.

Three fights, of three minutes each.

A few bots were well designed and defeated their enemies. Other bots had whimsical designs that might look good in a comic book, but performed poorly. The two bots that found themselves turned over lacked the ability to flip themselves back over, and that was their downfall.  There were two bots that had smaller, satellite bots there to "help" out, but only served to distract.
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The best fighting bot was the simplest, with a spinning bar taking out its enemy rather efficiently.

I've seen this premise before, and Battlebots has nothing new with no new angles or twists on the premise. I guess ABC did not have much to offer for summer time Sunday nights.

But if you must, tune in at least once, or DVR it, and then if the background stories bore the shit out of you, you can skip through to the fun stuff, the action.

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