Okay, I was going to wait until I could see the whole thing, but dangit, I can’t remain silent about this any longer.
This is the season American Ninja Warrior lost its innocence.
Yeah, I know, I never use that term, but it fits here.
Remember how it used to be? You’d have your ex-NFL stars and accountants and nature lovers and parkour guys (whatever happened to them, anyway?) and gymnasts and weekend warriors and hippies and cosplayers and soldiers and firefighters, and they all ran the same course, they all belonged. Yeah, there was a biggish prize, but honestly most of them had a better chance of winning a lottery. It wasn’t about winning, it was about seeing how far they could go, seeing how many buzzers they could hit, and just plain watching and being amazed. When they succeeded, we cheered; when they failed, we cheered anyway. It was, aside from endless commercials and the constant bloviating from those two clowns in the booth, a rollicking great time.
There were no foolish expectations. How could there be? This was so radical and weird no one had the slightest idea what to expect. When someone mishandled Quintuple Steps, it wasn’t disappointing, it was just the nature of the beast (which those two imbeciles in the booth made sure to remind us of ever single flippin’ time it happened).
And now only one woman makes it through City Finals, and what was once a perfectly normal result is a huge, huge letdown. And we have competitors breaking into tears. And family members watching on the sidelines doing the same. And this whole nonsense about “I’m Going To Become The First American Ninja Warrior!”, which was just a bit of good-natured posturing like “Roll Tide” or “Rock Chalk Jayhawk”, get elevated to the level of a goddam blood oath. Culminating, naturally, in Isaac Caldiero’s breathtaking triumph, which should by rights have been a moment of pure, delirious joy (and in past seasons would have been), managing to tick off nearly everybody.
Oh. Crap. Yeah. I mentioned before how I don’t follow football anymore? See, the thing about bigtime sports is that for most issues, there are a number of polarized and completely militant stances. The DH. Interleague play. Deflategate. The Heisman. Tiger Woods. Collegiates getting paid. Usually what happens is that either the sides dig in and no one ever, ever budges a micron, or else one particular stance for some reason wins out and becomes the eternal ironclad absolute truth. The, latter, incidentally, is what happened with the Patriots’ 18-1 season. In days that followed, I was stunned by how quiet the boards were about this, and I later learned was that was because the narratives were carved in stone, cast in bronze, and then wrapped in several tons of titanium sheeting. The championship is the only thing that matters, therefore the ‘72 Dolphins remain the greatest team ever, the fact that they played two fewer games means nothing nothing nothing, the regular season means nothing nothing nothing, there’s no point in attempting to measure the Patriots against any other team, they suck, ESPN is completely right to plaster Mercury Morris’ ugly mug on the present day Dolphins’ website yet again, and no one is allowed to have any problem with this, and no one is allowed to be tired about hearing about the '72 Dolphins. That was it. All this was meekly accepted by the entire NFL fandom. There was no discussion whatsoever. And I hate this. Debate is good. Opposing viewpoints are good. Seeing things from the other person’s POV is good. Having an open mind is good.
When NBC gave Isaac Caldiero a trophy declaring him the First American Ninja Warrior, they made two hard-line declarations: 1. That FANW was not simply posturing, but in fact was a title of monumental importance, a god-maker, 2. and Caldiero was it, end of story. This was also a cold slap in the face to Geoff Britten (even more so due to reality TV’s fanatical insistence on winner-take-all (which is a separate issue which I’ll deal with in another thread). Naturally the pushback was almost immediate, and some of it has taken form in the opposite-end entrenchment anyone who’s been in an argument over the DH can recognize. “I don’t care what those idiots say! Geoff Britten Is The First American Ninja Warrior and the honor is his forever and ever and he is the lord and he is the god RRRRAAAAAAGGHH!!” Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tries to sue over this. And of course the next natural step is to call Caldiero’s decision to go second a catastrophic mortal blunder on par with Leon Lett failing to run up the score on the Bills even further instead of the utterly trivial choice it actually was.
I mean, how messed up is that? Prior to this season no one even finished Stage 3, and now two men have gone the distance, something which was once utterly unthinkable, and instead of shouting and cheering and celebrating we’re sulking and taking bitter hard line stances, and I’m sitting here wondering what the hell happened.
On the plus side, it turns out I was completely on the money about David Rodriguez! 