Yesterday, ABC began the second season of its "Wipeout." Based on Japanese game shows, "Wipeout" has contestants suffering through the world's biggest obstacle course in attempts to win a $50,000 grand prize. But this isn't the average competitive reality show where audiences root for a certain contestant. Au contraire! The "Wipeout" audience watches to see contestants lose-that is get smacked, tumbled and trampled. We don't await the beat-out. We await the wipeout.

Perhaps at first glance, "Wipeout" can seem like television candy for sociopaths. You might wonder why a full prime-time hour needs to be dedicated to watching people get dizzied up and beaten down. Why cater to the maniacal? The truth is that it is perfectly natural to get a slight chuckle from other people's misfortunes.

I speak of schadenfreude. Borrowed from the German lexicon, schadenfreude means "joy from harm." Sociologist Theodor Adorno described it as a "largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial or appropriate." While I would never laugh at a man who has fallen from grace, I'll surely laugh at a man who has fallen off his chair. Or the man who spills split-pea soup on his collared shirt. Ahh-the joys of schadenfreude.

It may seem cruel, but it is a natural reaction. It is present in our every day. Two summers ago, in a Maryland airport, I witnessed a man attempt to walk down the ascending escalator. The gentleman stepped onto the escalator fully prepared to walk forward and descend. Shocked to find that he was rapidly being forced backwards (and up, up and away!), he lost his balance and lunged face forward as his luggage opened in midair. In a matter of seconds, this poor man found himself on his stomach, surrounded by his boxers, socks and toiletries ascending that moving staircase.

He fled the scene-unbruised head to toe. That is-if you don't consider the ego a part of the human anatomy. I, however, was not okay. My sides cramped so tightly from laughter that I thought I was going to need CPR.

Call me sick if you so choose. But, by that standard, we are all sick.

YouTube thrives on schadenfreude with videos featuring a porky child almost falling out of a roller-coaster seat (screaming "Janice! Janice!" to his laughing guardian) or an overzealous newscaster, squashing grapes who then collapses onto the floor (screaming an unintelligible "oughh" while still on air).

Shows like "Wipeout" thrive on schadenfreude. Unlike prime-time dramedies that are conservatively peppered with slapstick, these shows shamelessly embrace our more devilish desires. We all secretly enjoy watching an obese man fall into a foam-pit. "Wipeout" just isn't coy about it.

One of the most memorable moments of the first season of "Wipeout" was when contestant Karla Guy faced the segment of the course intelligently called the "Big Balls." The big balls are essentially a bridge comprised entirely of large, bouncy balls over a mote of murky water. Each contestant is forced to jump from one ball to the next to get to the next side.

Guy, perhaps so excited to make it to that coveted round (named after a highbrow testicle innuendo), bounced face forward into the next ball, fell back and belly-flopped straight into the water. After the laugher died down from audience members and her fellow contestants (the natural laugher-mind you), Guy rose from the mud and bellowed, unable to acknowledge her defeat, "that wasn't supposed to happen!"

Yes, it was, Karla. Yes it was.