ANW is back! Huzzah! I love this show. As I stated in the last ANW thread, I love that I can cheer for everybody.
The hourglass drop was brutal. The lowest number of people successfully passed the course than ever before.
Very happy that Graff got through. I’d really like to see her get through to Mt Midoriyama.
It is always surprising when a top contender goes out, which I think really speaks to the difficulty of the course. It isn’t just enough to be really athletic, you have to have that “perfect run”. The smallest of errors and you are in the water.
I just started watching last summer and was instantly hooked. I only wish there was less of the “human interest story” clips so they could show more of the runs.
That one dude’s knee injury looked nasty. I can’t believe he kept trying to continue his run.
One of the few reality shows I like. I pretty much surf the web during the personal tragedy segments.
I also know that it is very unlikely that anyone in the first half is going to make it to the end.
Too bad about the guy who grabbed the support instead of the board.
I agree, I do wish the personal stories were cut back a bit. I don’t mind hearing about the contestants a bit but they are too long. For example, the fellow who grabbed the support. I would have liked to have seen his entire run. That was a missed dramatic moment. But basically the show is more interesting then the backstories. Oh well… just about every show does it, so I presume it must be appealing for most people.
In real life, yes - because they can see what the others tried (esp. for the new obstacles) . In the later rounds I am fairly sure they go from worst to best that they did in previous rounds.
But I would guess that they don’t air the them in the same order that they compete (at least in the preliminary round). That is why I don’t pay as much attention in the first 30 min.
I take it they don’t get to do any trial runs on the course?
If that’s the case it’s kind of hit or miss on the mini-trampoline if you don’t know what kind of tension the thing has.
Saw this on Reddit a while ago from someone who says he was a contestant for 5 years- No practice of obstacles is allowed during try outs. Only way we can practice obstacles is if we build replicas and train on them through the year. On game day we are read the rules for completing each obstacle and tester shows us how to do it and then it’s up to us after that!
The course has always been tough but this year looks especially brutal!
Glad this is up (wasn’t sure if someone wasn’t going to bring up the old thread). Let me start with a quick runthrough of my positions: Stories wreck the flow of the show, should be put in a pregame. NBC should treat this like an honest sport and show all the runs live in order; endless story-making and finagling is just annoying. Amazing diversity in the contestants, even with the editing; no other sport is even close. Outstanding that there has been next to no sexism or racism, an even greater breath of fresh air after that Gamergate debacle. There should be more than one a year, and there should be a lower-level league. And a last-chance qualifications level. There should be a comprehensive prize structure so Brian Arnold would have won something by now. And for crying out loud, it’s “prelims”, “qualifying”, and THE ACTUAL THING.
Not much else to say so far, except that changing things up seems to be the order of the day. I have no idea why, but NBC actually seems frightened at the prospect of someone going all the way. Rope Maze was the first red flag, and the changing emphasis to tasks which are completely new and which no one has trained for yet is just a tiny bit worrying. Still, I’ll save my worries until I see Stage 1.
Hourglass Drop didn’t look that hard to me. I certainly wouldn’t put it above Doorknob Grasper or Ring Toss or Body Prop. I think it was mostly unfamiliarity with bouncing nearly straight up on the trampoline; usually when you see it, they need to get forward momentum. We should see a better success rate in the “semifinals”.
The first person to obtain Total Victory in Sasuke (the original Japanese show) was in Season 4. Although every season they had somebody make it to the rope climb. I haven’t seen every season of Sasuke but it seems to me that they introduced new obstacles quite often, if not every season.
I will say though that I think the show needs a winner in the next couple of seasons or it might start to struggle. We’ve had people get really close, this might be the year!
Two years ago, Brian Arnold messed up the second-to-last jump of Flying Bar (which replaced the less chancy Slider Bar, which no one ever cleared), and that is the closest anyone has ever come to clearing Stage 3. He managed to get it in USA vs. The World, but that just an unofficial fun romp, like baseball’s All-Star Game. For the most part, Stage 3 is an absolute killer, where the second obstacle routinely takes out very strong competitors. If this is what causes the show’s decline, NBC has no one but themselves to blame; they damn well dug their own graves with this winner-take-all garbage. When you think about it, this is actually a reverse Rock Bottom Plus One (dang, wasn’t expecting to use that one again! ), where it makes absolutely no difference how good you are if you don’t get First American Ninja Warriory, or whatever they’re calling it.
Again: prize structure. Farthest gets something, making it to Stage 3 gets something, qualifying several times in a row gets something, and so on. Reward all their hard work and encourage them to keep going, that’s all that’s needed. For that matter Kevin Bull’s stunt on Cannonball Alley should’ve been worth some cash, maybe even encouraging similar inspiring moves in the future. Oh, and exemptions. There’s no reason someone who’s been to Stage 2 4 times should have to bother with a Little League 6-obstacle run.
If the ratings ever start to slip, we’ll see how NBC copes.
No. Fucking. Way. One of the things that turns me off from other sports is the chest beating and grandstanding. It should be enough to be great at something. One of the best things about American Ninja Warrior is the camaraderie. The competitors cheer for each other to do well; better than anyone, they know how hard these things are to do. The last thing it needs is to give them a reason to show each other up.
That wasn’t “chest beating and grandstanding”, that was someone faced with a really tough challenge and coming up with an incredible solution right on the fly and making it work. The announcers trumped it up way, way more than Bull ever did.
Did I mention the camaraderie and the overall positive attitude enough times? Is it that hard to remember?
Sure, if it’s a better way to get through an obstacle, and it’s within the rules, they should do it. I applaud the creativity in addition to the athleticism. But I don’t think the producers should be offering a financial incentive for it. I don’t want this to become like drifting, more style than substance.
I agree with this. We know, for example, that Brian Arnold quit his job to train to try to make it all the way. Since he failed, he get’s nothing. That discourages people from going all out in training, and certainly to not quit their jobs unless they have another source of income. To some degree a bit of the beauty of the challenge is that it is all amateur, but I still think some kind of prize system would be warranted.
I don’t agree with exemptions. To me that’s one of the things I really like is that the challenge is really hard, and even top competitors can go out unexpectedly. The smallest error is deadly no matter how good you are. Plus Total Victory has to be earned and that means succeeding at every stage.
I enjoy this show, really I do, but I’m entertained by the number of people who apparently dedicate their entire life to an obstacle course… “I quit my job, I live in the trunk of a Honda Civic, I get one meal a day out of the dumpsters behind Panera… but I dominate the salmon ladder!”
We like the show, but, Jesus, please spare me the backstories and just show me the competitors running the course. They’ll spend as much time on the backstory of someone who fails Obstacle 4 as they could have showing the run of a person who actually finishes the course, but they’ll skip the guy whop succeeded. It’s incredibly frustrating.
), where it makes absolutely no difference how good you are if you don’t get First American Ninja Warriory, or whatever they’re calling it.