'Wipeout''s spills

The Face Plant
Face meets ball; ball rejects face. ”You see a good handful in every episode. Essentially, all of your momentum is being stopped by your face. Imagine if you were watching The Three Stooges, but one of them wasn’t in on the joke. Imagine if Soupy Sales were using walls instead of pies.”

The Split
One male contestant slipped off Ball No. 1 and splatted into an ugly leg split on No. 2 — before ricocheting back into No. 1 and into the water. ”The marrow within my bones curdled when I watched. If you had a 400-pound block of dry ice, maybe that would address the swelling.”

The Flop
Some timid souls belly flop onto Ball No. 1 and slowly slide into the water. ”It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and watching it peel off. One woman spent a good five minutes up there, terrified to move until she started sliding backward. She got negative Balls. She went into Big Ball debt.”