Floor is Lava, which Netflix first premiered with ten episodes in 2020, returns with a second season of five half-hour episodes built around the same silly premise: can teams hoping for a big cash prize traverse obstacle-filled rooms and avoid booby traps without sinking beneath the lava-drenched floor? It’s not really lava, of course. And watching a few rounds of the pleasantly ridiculous FIL is not really gonna hurt anyone, either.
Opening Shot: A cartoon-y, miniature golf feature-y volcano belches out 90,000 gallons of “hot magma” goop, which courses down a trough and floods into a series of competition rooms.
The Gist: Netflix’s goof of a competition game show returns for a second season with host Rutledge Wood, formerly of the US version of Top Gear and currently of the streamer’s American Barbecue Showdown. In Floor is Lava, three teams of three contestants are tasked with traveling through a room that’s cluttered with obstacles and flooded with gloopy and burbling “lava.” (Its composition is a trade secret, but it’s safe to say losers aren’t being vaporized.) Jumps between implements that look rather simple turn out to be deceiving; add in the likelihood of a wet surface or trick grab handle, and the teams of three can quickly be cut to two or one. In the first episode, a team of young comics – the “Stand-Up Squad” – face off against “Bad Daditude,” or three suburban fathers, and the Virzi triplets, who are hoping to redeem their humiliating season one loss. Later FIL episodes will feature moms versus dads, ballerinas competing against blackbelts, and cast members from Netflix reality offerings like Too Hot to Handle and The Circle.
“You do not taunt the lava!” With Wood’s running commentary falling somewhere between the hosts of TBS’s Wipeout and “Jimmy” from Seinfeld (“Don’t! Touch! Jimmy!”), the initial two teams manage to advance at least most of their number through the room, which in the first episode is “The Garage.” (The Floor is Lava layout is conceived as a mansion full of magma.) Once all the teams have taken their turn tumbling and tackling the garage’s obstacles, two will advance to a final money round, where there are even more leaps and bounds in store.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sure, there’s American Ninja Warrior, which plays up the athletic angle of leaping and tumbling through a series of challenges, and shares a production company with Floor is Lava. But for our money, American Gladiators (1989-1996) remains the gold standard for competition series like this. There was just so much appeal in watching a Gladiator like Malibu or Zap fire the rocket launcher or glitter pistol at the hopeful schmos giving it their all. FIL also echoes the Nickelodeon and Fox favorite Super Sloppy Double Dare with its sticky situations and physical challenges.
Our Take: If a competition game show was going to offer you a ten large grand prize, wouldn’t you leap from the lip of a giant drum cymbal into a floating rubber gondola, paddle to a half-submerged Porsche, scramble into its backseat, shout some bland words of encouragement to your teammates, find your way somewhat impossibly onto the beveled surface of a spinning disc, and desperately hug the sides of a swinging heavy bag as you tried to stick the landing on a surface slick with a sticky substance of indeterminate origin? Wouldn’t you? Because the other ten grand option might be complying with Joe Rogan’s wish that you consume a hamburger made of bugs. Fear Factor is long canceled, but the point is the same: Floor is Lava is so silly and harmless that it wouldn’t be surprising or even offensive if it paid winners in “lava bucks” or “molten money.” Are people really winning hard cash to do something this happily dumb? And are people really watching it?
Netflix certainly thinks so. The streamer has even expanded its offerings in the silly category. Is it Cake? was recently renewed for a second season, proving that its relative success earlier this year wasn’t a fluke, and it’s definitely not a show 30 Rock made up. And there is precedent for something like Floor is Lava, mostly in Japanese television’s long history with oddball physical challenges with either painful or embarrassing outcomes. FIL errs solidly toward the wholesome and non-threatening category. The only thing painful here are Rutledge Wood’s one-liners.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Two out of three teams reach the final round, where each sends two players to face The Volcano. $10,000 is waiting for the team who slop their way to its craggy top, not to mention possession of a Floor is Lava lava lamp, assumed to be for bragging rights.
Sleeper Star: We’ll go with Willie here, who calls himself “the muscle” of the Stand-Up Squad. As he capably attacks the obstacles in The Garage” lava room, you can see him drop the yuks and press his more bumbling teammates to get their heads and feet in the game.
Most Pilot-y Line: Rutledge Wood explains what it’s gonna take for Floor Is Lava competitors to take home ten grand in prize money. “This season, teams will face epic obstacles, super-sized jumps, and risk the wrath of the lava,” he says, though the lava is really just a (non-toxic!) mystery concoction of orangeish bubbly goop.
Our Call: STREAM IT? Floor is Lava isn’t actively, skippably awful. But it’s not exactly appointment television, either. Instead, it’s brief, broad, and harmless, like some kind of side stage act at an American Ninja Warrior Festival.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges
