The Five Spot: A (Very) Brief History Of TV Bounce House Tragedies

Also: An ER sequel scandal and a GIF I made because I couldn't stop thinking about it

The Five Spot is a weekly Friday roundup where I rank and riff on my five favorite things from the week. Most of the entries will be about film and TV, but there might also be ones about weird local news or sandwiches I ate or anything else, really. The whole thing is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to read the top four entries, you can do that by upgrading…

Off we go.

FIVE: This is officially a thing now

There is a new show on Netflix called The Accident. It’s a Spanish-language drama that’s been hovering around the top 10 all week and, look, I’m not going to waste your time on this one: it’s about a bunch of kids dying after they fly off in a bounce house that gets caught in a gust of wind. That is what the accident is on The Accident. I was legitimately shocked when I learned that via this tweet. I don’t think I was alone in assuming they meant “accident” like a car crash. Or maybe even “accident” like “lose control of your bowels in a JC Penney.” I am admittedly joking with this second one but also I still think it makes more sense than a bounce house tragedy. I can’t imagine a scenario where I would call something like that an accident.

YOU: Hey Brian, how did you hurt your arm?

ME: In an accident.

YOU: Oh no. Did another driver hit you?

ME: No. The bounce house I was in floated off into the sky.

See? That just feels weird. Something like The Incident probably works better as a title here. You cannot imagine how much time I have spent thinking about this in the last few days. But anyway, while I would usually not lead off the free section of my paid subscriber exclusive Friday newsletter with an extended run of jokes about a show where a group of children perish, I do need to point out a few things here.

The first is that, I swear, they play this all straight as an arrow. This whole season of television appears to be about the fallout of this bounce house fiasco. Families being torn apart, corrupt officials, secret deals, etc. There is not a single tongue inside a single cheek, which is kind of incredible to me, especially when you consider that this GIF I made is literally what happens at the end of the cold open of the first episode.

This is followed by a very dramatic fade to black and then just crying and chaos, which, I guess, is a fair reaction if we want to play this as straight as they want to. But again, as much as I do not want to minimize the whole “children die in a bounce house that flies away over the horizon in the first 10 minutes of the premiere” of it all, I should note that this is the reaction of one of the people who sees said bounce house fly away in the breeze.

I honestly do not know if this is one of the best shows I have ever seen or one of the worst. What I do know is that it’s almost definitely either one or the other. Or both. There’s really no room for anything in between. I encourage you to go to Netflix yourself and watch this opening scene. It’s kind of incredible in its own way. Good for them.

And speaking of things that are incredible, here is where I point out the other thing this all brought to mind: Somehow, unbelievably, this is not the first bounce house disaster featured on a popular television series. It’s not even the first in the last few years. 9-1-1 had a bounce house emergency back in its first season, the result of an adult hopping in one and shaking the restraints loose and, yes, I do still have the screencaps saved on my laptop.

The only logical conclusion to this trend is for the main villain in the next season of Fargo to die via airborne bounce house in the season finale. Possibly after soiling his trousers. Given what we’ve seen from both that show and the world of television, in general, I don’t see how we can rule it out.

FOUR: Ludacris did not die from drinking glacier water, actually