The Intercept
Russia has featured prominently in the news of late, as evidenced most recently by Sir Donald Drumpf’s rumored impropriety (@Lefko). Inspired by Leif’s fun fact, I sought out the most wabi sabi story I could find to communicate the absurdity of day-to-day life in Russia — the difference here is that this is a true and verifiable story.
The Intercept
There was a game show in Russia in 1997 called The Intercept. The concept was simple — real-life would-be car thieves were given a stolen brand-new Daewoo Espero and a small head start. Minutes later, real-life police officers would set off to catch these thieves. If the bandits could evade the policemen for more than 35 minutes, they got to keep the car. If they didn’t evade them, however… well, this is where the story gets truly Russian. Instead of being jailed or anything that a normal country would do to criminals, the policemen would drag the thieves out of the car and savagely beat them on the street, all on camera. This was not only a part of the show, but a highly anticipated part. This was like Worldstar before we had Worldstar. A perfect Russian combination of Grand Theft Auto and UFC. At its peak, this show was not only somehow on the air, but dominating it. In 1998, there were 60 million people watching this show every night.
Interestingly enough, this show was not concocted during some vodka-induced debauch-fest on the streets of Moscow — it was instead the brainchild of the Russian police force. In the mid 1990s, in the aftermath of the Cold War and downfall of the Soviet Union, crime was spiking like Brian’s blood pressure when he sees someone named “Ashleigh.” Particularly, for some reason, car thefts were becoming a rampant social problem. The authorities were scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas for how to deter the youths from stealing so many cars.
So they had the brilliant idea of making a TV show that depicted just how hard it was to get away with stealing a car, beating and humiliating those that failed, and hopefully convincing Russian tweens that stealing cars was a bad idea.
In classic Russian fashion, this is literally the exact opposite of what happened. The audience loved the criminals in the show, making martyrs of those who took the beatings for their enjoyment, and making cult heroes out of the few that succeeded in their car-swiping attempt. Not only this, but people were inspired by the creative methods that the successful thieves employed, and set out to copy them. Carjackings accelerated in their rapid ascent across Russia. Lol.
Speaking of these creative methods, some of these criminals were amazing. One set of them took the stolen car, drove to the train tracks, drove up a ramp, and got the car inside of a departing railroad car as it was leaving. The police trailed after the train for a while, but obviously couldn’t keep up.
Another great one was a pair that drove the car onto the raft, and floated on the raft into the middle of a lake. The cops surrounded the shore, but couldn’t get to them in the 35 minutes. These fools didn’t get to collect their prize, however, as they had no plan beyond the raft. Eventually, the raft tipped over and the Daewoo Espero met its demise at the bottom of this lake. Idiots.
In the greatest, most inexplicable news I’ve heard all day, somehow this show may be making a comeback. A Moscow newspaper reports that the re-boot rights for The Intercept have been acquired by NTV, and in March they said there are plans to start filming within the year.
Russia Speed Round
To round out this fact, I thought it would be funny to include some multimedia snippets that tell the story of how crazy Russia is. A majority of these are sourced from r/ANormalDayInRussia, which I would highly recommend checking out if you haven’t already.
And, last but not least, one of my favorite comedy jokes about a trip to Russia:
