I find it odd that you go to competitive team sports for your comparison.
American Ninja Warrior is much more akin to something like the Olympics, which is also a “multi-jillion” dollar business, and is chock full of human interest segments.
I normally don’t mind the “while we were away, three more people took to the course…” recaps, but tonight took it to a new level. The spinning log was brutal, but two people took awesome, inspiring, fun to watch alternate approaches to it, and both succeeded. (One simply dove over the log entirely, the other stood on top of it logrolling style.)
Neither of these unusually interesting runs were shown. My only conclusion is that the human interest segment is the only measure for deciding which runs get shown and which get the “while we were away” treatment. Which is doubly annoying because not every run gets a human interest segment. Sure it’s like 95% of them, but not every run.
I wish they would swap their criteria and choose the runs to broadcast based first on how interesting the run itself is, then how interesting the people are, then the human interest segment last.
Which reminds me, they have an annoying habit of not broadcasting longtime fan favorites. Not showing Mark “The Beast” McGrath’s run? The second fastest completion of the night? Seriously?
I was out for a while last night so DVRed it and watched when I got home. FFwding through all the human interest stories made it much more watchable, but yeah I wish they would show more full runs and less fluff.
I was surprised more people weren’t hurt the way they came flying off the rolling log. Its funny that they would allow someone to basically skip over an entire obstacle like the guy who jumped/dived over the log. I’d expect that to be a DQ.
I agree it was a bit weird to not show the two runs where people did crazy things to get past the rolling log in “real time”, although the fact that both of those people then immediately failed would have presumably made them somewhat anticlimactic.
Still, a very entertaining episode. I really like having much tougher obstacles in the qualifying rounds, makes them far more interesting. Weird how no one ever fails the Warped Wall any more.
It was a shame that rock-climbing-robotics-woman didn’t quite make it.
But Flip, O Flip. Why do you take the mask off, Flip? #NotMyFlip
Agreed. I’m hoping she gets a wildcard to Vegas; she has the build and the skillset to do it all.
Akbar Gbajabilamila is my favorite person on TV. He is SO ENTHUSIASTIC. It cracks me up. Meanwhile, my husband keeps saying that the new woman who interviews the athletes after their run “is no Jill Wagner.”
I agree that fewer, shorter background stories would be a big, big improvement.
Who is Jill Wagner?
I do miss Jenn Brown, who did the interviews the past couple seasons. (She was also part of Inside the NFL for its first few years on Showtime.)
Fun things first: a new Sasuke is going to be broadcast on TBS on July 1, and there was a 30th Anniversary DVD box set of the Japanese competitions released May 29 for ¥12,960 (roughly US$105).
The prelims were in mid-May. I found out about it about a week after it actually ran, or I might have gone to try out just for fun. Not that I would have made it. My grip strength is still lower than what I’d need for the more challenging hanging obstacles in Stage 2 or 3, even though I’ve been working on stuff like that with rock-climbing training boards.
TBS has also started an official Sasuke channel on YouTube, so you can see more of the original Japanese competitions. Japanese rights holders are really anal about getting unauthorized content pulled down, so links would quickly disappear from major sharing sites like YouTube.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Sasuke Park was a one-time thing. Nothing up for this year
In Japan, there’s 1 (one) qualifying event. Period. There are some people like the octopus guy and face paint guy who are always in. I don’t know whether there are slots set aside for them or if they always qualify. There are some past competitors who have done well.
They always run 100 contestants. That leaves about 80 open slots for new contestants, 90%+ of which fail to clear Stage 1. The competition takes part over a single day. Stage 1 starts in daylight and the latter stages appear to run pretty late into the night.
Did you actually manage to type that with a straight face?
The US version is already way more competitor-friendly than the Japanese one, probably because they’re trying to run regional competitions. Japan is roughly the size of California, so you can reasonably expect everyone to go to one place on a single day to qualify, and do the same trip for the event. The US is so goddamn big that the logistics don’t work out well for that. Making the roster bigger would mean that they wouldn’t be able to actually run all the competitors through the same course. Any of these things would skew results: different courses, different days, prior exposure to the course obstacles, different competitors.
Golf ≠ excitement. Not a good model for the competition either.
This is more like the Olympics. You qualify, you go, you find out who’s the best. There have been several Olympics where a few of the favorites didn’t even qualify. Remember the Dan & Dave decathlon match-up that was hyped for months before the Barcelona Olympics? And then Dan O’Brien didn’t qualify. Oops.
It’s tough to get there. It’s supposed to be. It’s tough to win. It’s supposed to be. You think losing by 2/100ths of a second is fun? It’s pretty much like dipping your toe in the water on a rope swing in Stage 1.
Nope. Just, no.
Not only is that contrary to the ethos of the event, bu I don’t think the athletes would even want the option. That’s a chicken-shit second-rate consolation prize. “Sorry you fucked up. But all is not lost. You get to dance like a monkey for our entertainment. Dance, monkey-boy, dance!”
Ugh. If this were the wider internet, I might comment: “I am repulsed by your ideas, and would wish to unsubscribe from your newsletter.”
I do appreciate your enthusiasm, but holy shit do we differ on our views of what makes the competition interesting. That doesn’t make you a bad person, but implementing any of these changes would pretty much kill any interest I’d have in watching the resulting event(s).
She played a similar role on Wipeout a few seasons ago. She was pretty good at it.
Since last year I was wondering if Flip Rodriguez would come back and redeem himself. Turns out he did. That’s great because I love redemption. And I liked the new Flip. He seemed more mature. And even though he didn’t go for pure speed like in the past, he did very good on time.
Now I’m hoping that Kacy Catanzaro gets a wildcard spot in the finals.
See, that’s the thing that always irked me about this board. I put up something which has never seemed all that radical to me (choosing dice results in console board games, non-makes-you-want-to-kill-yourself interpretation of Grave of the Fireflies), ask “So, whaddya think?”, and from the response you’d think I was proposing eating puppies. “Oh no, a viewpoint that’s different from own! Gasp, swoon!”
To sum up my position, I just think that ANW needs to grow and adapt if it’s going to survive. Training like hell and then making no money whatsoever from it (let alone the possibility of this happening in literally seconds) my seem like a nifty idea now, but as the years grind on, you’re going to see a fair amount of resentment. For crying out loud, even World’s Strongest Man has a prize structure. I am not the least bit convinced that a purely amateur sport, without the deep traditions and the enforced-at-gunpoint power structures of the NCAA’s various bigtime events, can ever amount to much. And as a matter of basic principle, I just don’t see the point of being all brutal and merciless and hardcore etc. when it just doesn’t make any damn difference in the end. (And again, wild. cards.)
Mostly, I just want NBC to pick a horse and stick with it. If this is a serious sport, make the starting fields huge, have a prize structure, stats, pregames, good and announcers, show the officials and the decisions, show the competition in its entirety, and, oh yeah, NO WIMPY LAME BOGUS WILDCARDS. If this is reality TV, bring on the weirdos and hammy actors and cosplayers and publicity stuns and clowns (y’know, like Sasuke has), and let’s have some variety in the “interesting” stories. If this is amateur sport, get an amateur sanctioning body involved, really push it on a national level, and start young (y’know, like every other amateur sport does). Right now ANW has the superficial look of reality TV while adopting a half-baked professional sport mindset (with wildcards, without prizes) and pitching it as an everyman event while showcasing maybe 12% of the competitors. That’s generally not a formula for long-term success.
Oh, and while Matt Iseman is usually barely tolerable, Akbar Gbajabiamila just irks the crap out of me. It’s like he’s memorized a little list of facts (Arms at 90 degrees! Gotta get a good launch off the tramp! Warped Wall requires you to go from forward to straight up!), and the rest is shrieky cheerleading and moronic catchphrases. Whats worse, this invariably means that anyone and everyone else on the Internet (especially on the SDMB) is going to have absolutely nothing but love and praise for him. It just seems to be like that for the annoying reality TV personalities, for some reason no one dares say an unkind word about them.
Oh, as for Orlando…it seemed about average in terms of difficulty and the familiarity of the obstacles; I think Kacy Catanzaro would’ve had a much better chance here than in Houston. This is just speculation, though, as we never even got to freaking see the majority of the finishers. I was surprised to see that there were 28, I was like, where did that come from? See, that’s the problem with trying to be an everyman contest while being so invested in maudlin stories…because they’re everymen, they don’t have any maudlin stories! And some of the omissions are just mind-boggling…why the hell wasn’t Jeremy “The Beast” McGrath worth a full look?
Eh…sorry if I’m being a downer (again), but this is starting to look like America’s Got Talent in that it doesn’t get good until after the crap part. The way things are going, that could be as late as Stage 1. I hope not.
Really, really hoping Michelle Warnky can catch lightning in a bottle again. Meagan Martin needs some competition, dagnabbit. 
Nobody - “Hoping?” Do you actually believe for a nano-nano-nanosecond that she’s not going to get one? Two issues:
- Why not? She set a huge milestone last year, she’s been hyped to the stars, she’s ridiculously popular, and she’s bringing others into the sport. Any one of these would earn her a free pass. Hell, a five-year exemption, if ANW ever got over its anti-golf prejudice.
- Who the hell else is there? A certain number of wildcards have to go to the women (diversity, yo); so far, who’s looked like she’d have snowball’s chance of besting Stage 1? Jessie Graff looked pretty good, Meagan Martin’s the star (assuming either fails to make it through City Finals, of course), and then…who? I haven’t seen a women’s contingent this bottom-heavy since Steffi Graf. I can see a pity pass given to Breast Cancer Survivor, maybe a joke pass to Goat Warbler, but there aren’t going to be so damn many that Catanzaro is left in the cold.
Well, OK then. Sorry I ever doubted it.
No there doesn’t.
Honestly I know very little about any particular tennis player’s personal life but tennis is interesting to watch. I still remember the Becker-Curran Wimbledon final, which was like 30 years ago, because of the way it was played. I know no personal details about Boris Becker or Kevin Curran but they played one hell of a tennis match. I will find myself fascinated with sporting events without knowing anything about the people involved, for exactly the same reason I enjoyed “Star Wars” without having to know anything about Mark Hamill; the drama is in the presentation.
Hell, I don’t really know anything about the people who play for my favourite sports team, the Toronto Blue Jays. I don’t know Jose Bautista’s family life or anything like that. Couldn’t care less.
My thoughts actually dovetail with DKW’s post. American Ninja Warrior, if it wants to be more than a flash in the pan, needs a lot more ninja warriors - so many of them that you wouldn’t have time to babble about personal things. That requires, as he alludes to, larger fields, payouts, and the like. ANW is a sport that wants to be “American Idol” in its presentation, and it won’t work, because there’s already too many “American Idol” ripoffs and this isn’t a singing competition.
The model for this is, frankly, UFC, which has risen to be a serious sport out of nothing by hitting the grassroots really hard.
But I don’t really think that’s a fair comparison. That’s 2 hours of watching 2 individuals compete head to head. That gives you time to get to know them, and develop your own opinions and thoughts about them. If you turned on ANW and it was a 2-hour competition between Brian Arnold and Joe Marovsky, by the time you’d been watching it for an hour you would already know who these guys were, you would probably have picked a favorite, etc.
That’s very different from “ok, here is Aaron Adams competing… he fell off”. “Here is Brian Brown competing… he made it most of the way”. “Here is Cathy Chambers competing, she fell off”, and so forth, for two hours.
I’m not trying to tell you what you do or not enjoy. Quite possibly, you would enjoy ANW more if it was straight competition with nothing else. But I certainly think that there is a place for SOME amount of background and introduction of competitors. I mentioned earlier that I was sad that the robotics girl fell off. If she’d just been a name, I wouldn’t have been sad, I wouldn’t even remember her.
Does ANW get the balance exactly right? Quite possibly not. But I don’t think the show would be as compelling viewing if it was just competition-competition-competition-competition with nothing else at all.
This is a fair description of your reaction to us disagreeing with you. For example, let’s look at my “you’re idea is akin to eating puppies” response:
But I bet you know (or rather, have forgotten) way more about Olympians, yes? Again, the Olympics is a much better analogy for ANW than any of the sports you’ve compared it to.
I don’t know much about Olympic athletes, no. Yet I watch.
I was thrilled when the Quebecois sisters won gold and silver in the same event. I know nothing about them personally and never will. The thrill was in watching the competition.
It almost seems like you’re being deliberately obtuse.
The Olympics is chock full of human interest segments, very much like ANW is.
Back from a conference, so just catching up on my favorite TV shows.
A good show last week. I was really happy to see the parkour guys slow it down, especially Flip. It is about the perfect run, not the fastest perfect run or worse the fastest failed run.
This is something joyful when a ninja warrior succeeds where they failed before. For that reason I really enjoy Shaun Murray’s run. “I’m coming for you wall!”
Good lord, Gbajabiamila has officially reached “Terry Crews in the Old Spice commercials” territory now. I was afraid he was going to have a freaking stroke. Correction, I hoped he’d have a stroke, because then there’d be a chance that he’d shut the hell up. It’s getting dangerously close to the point where I have to watch qualifying on mute. (Seriously, don’t have a cow whenever a favorite goes down and makes it through to City Finals anyway, you drama queen.)
Here’s the thing about the prelims though…finishing isn’t strictly required, and they often feature challenges that’d be absolutely lethal with any kind of time limit. Seriously, if something like Snake Crossing or Monkey Peg was on Stage 1, nobody would make it to Stage 2. The prelims are a fun romp where the hopeless cases can see what this is all about and the contenders can see how good their chances in Vegas are. Getting through qualifying is NOT a huge achievement. And honestly, I’m getting tired of the notion that it is. In other words, when someone who made it as far as Stage 3 gets up the Warped Wall and hits the buzzer, I don’t want to hear that he’s baaaaaack. He’s nowhere near back. I don’t want to hear how wonderful triumphant it is when Maudlin Story Cover Boy gets up there. Get past Stage 1 and then we can start talking triumph. And while I agree that Meagan Martin beating qualifying is remarkable, let’s keep this in perspective: It’s remarkable because women are getting knocked out left and right. In the land of the buttonless, the lady with one button wields a pretty big scepter, if you catch my drift. In all, I’d much prefer a calmer, lower-key, quieter mood in these less-important early rounds. The NFL preseason manages it, why can’t ANW?
Still seeing way too few successful runs on-screen; 20 this week. Also, this is the second week in a row where only one competitor failed at Warped Wall. Personally, this isn’t a huge deal for me but IMO, if NBC isn’t going to fix anything else, they should at least fix this. The wall is supposed to be the final test, the symbolic charge to glory, and as such enjoys almost legendary status…you figure there has to be a reason for those “Bee daah wah!” chants. (Oh yeah, that’s another thing. Too many goddamed chants.) But nowadays the five obstacles leading up to it are so merciless, anyone who can get by them should have no trouble with the wal. Also, there’s really no way to make it any harder, so they can’t tweak it like they can, say, Curtain Slider or Devil Steps. It may sound sacrilegious, but I think the time has come to find a new finisher, or at least redesign the current wall.
What else…another unfortunate side effect of there being no time limit is all the showboating we have to deal with these days. Bull Bullard is a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, a group that’s all about showmanship; you know how he played to the crowd? He gave a little wave. That’s it. Jumping and shouting and flailing after besting the second flippin’ obstacle strikes me as worst crass and at best a tedious waste of time. Damn, it’s a sad state of affairs when Jamie Rahn is one of the less annoying competitors. (I remember making a similar comment about Nick Cannon re. America’s Got Talent…definitely hope that’s not an ill omen.)
What else…oh, right, Michelle Warnky. Y’know, I was actually kinda afraid that she’d be forgotten admidst the Tiger Woodsian level of hype surrounding Kacy Catanzaro. Good that she’s gotten some recognition. And very good that she’s made it to the second round, which really sets her way, way apart now.
Next week is a special Retired Military episode. Oh boy, that’s going to be a delight. :rolleyes:
(Dang, sorry if I came across as too negative. Again. I really like this show, honest. Well kinda. Basically I just want quallies to be done with so we can start getting to the good stuff.)
[Disclaimer: I hate the worship of our armed forces. I hate the dumb notion that we are defending anything but military-industrial complex profits. I hate that the mainstream media refuses to talk about overmilitarization and the damage our endless warmongering is doing to our national interests. I hate the glossing over the fact that nearly all our ventures since Korea have been failures. I hate that we’ve learned nothing from the Reagan years and are still squandering billions and billions on useless junk like the F-35. I hate that nearly every modernized nation has learned the folly of extravagant invasions of far-off lands, while we continue to squander endless lives and treasure on hopeless cases like Iraq. I do not consider military service inherently worthy of adulation. I’m upset that serious problems like sexual harassment regularly get glossed over, and I’m flabbergasted that it took Garry freaking Trudeau to bring these crimes to light. I’m really, really bitter over the fact that there is seemingly NO GODDAM DISCUSSION ANYMORE, that despite all our failures, boondoggles, quagmires, atrocities, and tragedies, we still turn to going in guns blazing as the first option and condemn anyone who says otherwise as a coward or even a traitor.]
[Uh, yeah…I’ve actually thought all this for a long, long time (since at least Afghanistan, in fact). Just never found the right time to say it.]
[Oh, one more thing…HATE-THE-CHANTS! ALL-OF-THEM! HATE-THE-CHANTS! ALL-OF-THEM!]
Tonight, American Ninja Warrior pays tribute the brave, honorable, selfless defenders of our freedom! 
Unfortunately, I was unable to get any sound (because I muted it), so I only have a basic idea of what happened. I’ll give as accurate a rundown as I can.
Obstacles:
2. Jump Hang - Tougher this time around. There’s a descending section followed by an ascending section to safety, and the lowest point dips very close to the water. Need to switch direction at this point to have any realistic shot.
3. Log Runner - Sort of a milder Spinning Bridge. Five horizontal logs, each about a foot higher than the last.
4. Monkey Pegs - MUCH longer now. As before, the first half pegs are fixed, the second half contains peg holes.
5. I-Beam Cross - Pretty much what it sounds like, a long crossing that looks like a twisted I-Beam. The toughest part will be the roughly 4-foot tall vertical section in the middle.
Somehow, I doubt we’ll be seeing a lot of failures at the Warped Wall this time either. Okay, here goes:
6:30 Kyle Durand - Struggles a bit early, but perseveres. Can’t manage the vertical part of I-Beam Cross and goes down after a lengthy struggle.
14:29 Amanda Graham - Looks okay for a while, but just can’t figure out Monkey Pegs.
19:32 Kenneth Knoop - Ooh, that was a pretty weak jump to the net!
20:39 Keith Knoop - And another! Hey, did you know they’re twin brothers?
While We Were Away #1 - Mike Young completely whiffs the net! Felicia Flake faceplants on the final log! Dean Mosier comes up just short on Monkey Peg! Don’t worry, guys, we still value your service! Kinda!
28:35 Deon Graham - Another victim of I-Beam Cross. Man, that one’s a beast!
3WA #2 - Sara Valdez can’t hang onto the net! Styves Exantus goes astray on the last log! Jason Cantu drops out at the vertical I-Beam section! One of these things is totally not like the others!
38:11 Dustin McKinney - Hey, we actually have a finisher, cool.
3WA #3 - Amy Proctor takes a long time to make a truly feeble net jump, Joshua Stone gets hung up at Monkey Pegs and can’t save it, and Chris Moore came tantalizingly close to conquering the I-Beam. I am not liking the women’s chances this week.
49:53 Kristin Bagby - Log faceplant the second!
52:11 Seth Caskey - GOOOOOOAAALLLLLL!
3WA #4 - Daniel Glenn takes a humiliating fall on the Quintuple Steps, Paul Metzler gets tripped up by the logs, and Natalie Schibell fails to hang onto the net. It’s looking like simply getting to I-Beam cross is going to be enough to ice it.
1:02:04 Chuck Mammay - A 72-year-old. Does exactly as well as you’d expect.
1:04:17 Jeremy Prather - Also can’t go vertical on the I-Beam.
1:13:21 Kevin Jones - A politician. Does exactly as well as you’d expect.
1:15:25 Justin Gielski - He’s on the I-Beam…oooh, so close!
3WA #5 - Scott Redding misses the net, Kristin Dalton takes a VERY painful looking landing on the third log, and Matthew Jensen hits the button…by my count, the third so far, roughly five-eights into the night, other unseen whilists notwithstanding.
1:12:36 Ahmed Toure - And now a grand old NBC tradition, the start-in-the-middle-for-no-godly-reason run! This time we begin at Monkey Pegs. Despite seemingly having a slow go of it, he gets up the Warped Wall on the first crack. Thus far there have been a grand total of ZERO failed attempts at daah waaw.
1:26:36 Hyrum Prince - Damn, I’ve never seen so much log spinning!
1:34:00 Tory Garcia - Gets to Monkey Pegs, and, well, she’s no Katy Catanzaro.
1:38:13 PJ Walsh - Damn, just like that. And he struggled so hard to get across that net, too. Cruel game.
1:46:45 Robin Pietschmann - Aw, geez, they put Hayre’s time up, and guess what happens. I swear, this is becoming more predictable than the WWE.
And at long last we come to Ryan Stratis, who makes a ton of noise, gets hyped to the moon, makes a second ton of noise, and…finishes with the 9th best time of the night. Whatevs, an inch or a mile.
Just ten finishers tonight. The last four qualifiers made it as far Log Runner, i.e. halfway. Memo to NBC: “military” does not mean “superhuman”. I’m actually interested to see if they ease things up for the next round.
Aaaand that’s it for quallies. Onto the sausage factory that is the City Finals. I’m so excited, I might actually play them at normal volume!