I was cracking up at the 72 year old guy:
“He said he wanted to compete, so how could we refuse?”
Very first step: SPLASH!!!
An ok episode last night.
The stories are out of control. OUT-OF-CONTROL! OUT-OF-CONTROL! Come on chant it with me!
Why are we seeing stories for people who are out on the jump and hang, while we don’t get to see people who did a complete run?
ARGH!
I’m not really surprised that there were few who completed the course. The soldiers are just like most of the walk-ons. No real experience with obstacle courses, rock climbing, parkour, etc and so just did well based on their level of fitness but failed.
I don’t think there will be very many moving on the Las Vegas.
I was all ready to hate this episode, but once I was about two minutes in, it seemed just like any other episode. If they had just presented it as a normal episode and not pointed out that everyone was in the military, I would have thought it had maybe a slightly weaker contestant pool than normal, but nothing exceptional.
I loved the 72-year-old guy. Respect, sir.
What a great show. My god the Venice finals is brutal.
As I’ve mentioned before, I love that you can cheer for everybody. I love watching somebody make it further than ever before. The spirit of the show is about exceeding your limits. Just finished watching Jessie Graff. Amazing.
I am so on the Jessie Graff bandwagon I can’t stand it. I could see her making it to stage 3, though no completing it.
Also a big fan of the top finisher, the homeless dumpster-diver guy.
Take a sip any time one of them says “are you kidding me!”
Glad someone finished. I knew the last competitor was in trouble when he switched from alternating arms to using his legs to hop up (ok for maybe 5 feet, but not good for long).
Wonder if Jessie would have gone further if she could have watched others on the clear wall. The dumpster dive guy was super impressive on that.
Brian
You want us to die of alcohol poisoning or sumthin’?
I had to mute Grant McCartney’s run because his dad just got so insufferable. When I saw him distraught at the end, all I could think was, “Damn, I sure hope he pulls it together before Stage 1.”
And while it’s unlikely, I’m kinda hoping that Nicholas Coolridge’s success does not trigger a spate of eating out of dumpsters.
Just for fun, I’m recording the results of the cityfinals this year. And thing that stuck out this week is that NBC really needs to stop making certain qualifying tasks so hard. 11 competitors…with plenty of time to think about it…failed to get past Hourglass drop, and 7 others went out even earlier. Among other things, this wrecks the drama for the later competitors, since they already know all they have to do is get past #5 and they’re home free. I don’t have a problem with only one person clearing it (it’s pretty awesome, in fact), but when clearing 4 of 10 is potentially good enough to make it, something’s gone wrong.
Who else…oh yeah, Jessie Graff! 
Just 'cause I’m curious about this, I’d like to throw this out there. In the show’s intro, she said “It’s not about what woman has gone farthest. It’s about who can get to the top.” I’ve tried really, really hard to parse this, and here’s what I’ve been able to come up with:
- “None of the women never have a prayer, so it’s ridiculous that NBC devotes so much time to them.”
- “I hate the fact that it’s possible to advance to Stage 1 without completing the course, and anyone who makes it in on the ‘farthest the fastest’ is a fraud.”
- “The only thing I care about is the Warped Wall, so if I clear it this time, I’m seriously going to consider dropping out right then and there.”
- “I’m well aware that Meagan Martin has gone a lot farther than me, but because I’m highly insecure and don’t want to acknowledge this fact, I’m going to play the ‘Mount Midoriyama or nothing’ card and claim that she really hasn’t done any better.”
None of the sentiments are the kind of thing NBC would actually broadcast, so I’m kinda stumped here.
Anyway, my greatest hope is that truly exceptional performers like Graff will completely overshadow all the no-hopes and washouts and noisemakers, and NBC will hype up only the good ones. What we need to remember is the thing that made Kacy Catanzaro’s fateful run up the wall so memorable was the fact that she competed on the same playing field as the men. For a woman to be on equal footing was unheard of. It did not, in any way, shape, or form, mean that other women were equipped to compete on equal footing! Once NBC does away with the politics and focuses on individuals, the show’s going to be a lot more bearable.
I don’t think being the first on Clear Climb hurt her. It’s one of those weirdo tasks where you either got it or you don’t. It actually reminds me of a less extreme version of Hang Climb. You ain’t a rock climber, you don’t have much of a prayer.
You’re right, it certainly is ambiguous to some degree. However, under the assumption she is a fan of the show and familiar with Sasuke, I think what she means is that there is only Total Victory and nothing else matters. It isn’t about who got up the wall first or who got the furthest, etc. This is about conquering it all. And what I like is that she doesn’t say it is about “the first” to get to the top. Because in the spirit of Sasuke, first and further don’t matter. Everybody could hypothetically achieve Total Victory, and that’s the thing, it is about personal excellence and not about beating anybody else.
That’s my take anyway. I could be wrong. 
I see this question a lot. Here are some possible reasons, IMHO:
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NBC makes taped pieces with certain contestants they consider interesting. They will air those no matter what, because they already invested time into make the footage. Some of those contestants will fail early. Some of the people without taped pieces will make it really far. It’s a bit of a crap shoot. To satisfy your criticism, they’d need footage for all the successful contestants, which they don’t have. Or they’d have to do taped pieces for everyone, which is prohibitively time-consuming and expensive. This is not NBC’s goal.
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Don’t like the previous answer? Okay, here’s the super-secret real answer (spoilered for those who don’t want to know the truth).
You sure you wanna know?Can you handle the truth?You can’t handle the truth!It’s to lower the perceived success rate and make the challenge seem harder than it is. If you saw a lot of unedited success runs and fewer of the failures, then it seems like anyone and their grandma could finish the course. Just like clicking all the spoiler tags makes this answer seem more interesting and memorable. There you have it!
If this is ever going to be taken seriously as a sport (or even a kinda-serious sports-related contest, like World’s Strongest Man), whoever’s covering it needs to show every run, uncut, unedited, in order. Full stop. Obviously NBC doesn’t have any interest in treating it like a sport. I’d actually like to see ESPN take the reins. For all their hype and noise, they have respect for the game, and they have no qualms about shoving all the human interest arglebargle in a pregame show, where you can disregard if you like.
Of course, NBC and the makers of ANW don’t have any incentive to try to get obstacle-coursing taken seriously as a sport. They have an incentive to try to get ANW itself to have as good ratings as possible. The two are not necessarily the same thing at all.
And given that ANW is still on and still getting good enough ratings and generating discussion, whatever they are doing seems to be working.
Love this show! Yes there are things I’d love to see improved but it is just so awesome. This season is reminding me of Sasuke 5. Although direct comparisons are difficult since Sasuke has no qualifying rounds. Prior to Sasuke 5, there were routinely (always if I remember right) somebody in the final round, by Sasuke 4 more and more people were passing Round 1 and 2. So in Sasuke 5, the difficulty was increased and suddenly the number of competitors in Round 3 plummeted. Basically, the difficulty seems to be increasing in ANW at the qualifying round and in the finals. Finishers at the qualifying round are becoming a bit rarer this year. And that’s a good thing, it makes a finish something to really cheer for!
You know the Body Prop must be hard when it is taking out the likes of Brian Arnold, Paul Kasemir and Isaac Caldiero.
Noah Kaufman. Gone. This is Sasuke. It demands perfection.
“Don’t go downstairs and the answer the lactic acid.” Good grief.
Brendan Couvreaux. Wow. Just wow. Watching his body shaking and he just kept hanging on like his life depended on it. Very impressive!
And then Ian Dory makes it look “easy”. And by easy, I mean holy carp that would be hard.
Meaghan Martin. Oh no! Gone. Done. Too bad.
Lance Pekus. I like his attitude. It isn’t enough to make it to the finals, he wants to earn it. I love when people make it further than before. First time he’s finished, good for you Cowboy Ninja!
“I will be the first cowboy named Gbajabiamila” was pretty funny.
Yes I write this while watching, in case that isn’t obvious.
I’ve never objected to having half the runs glossed over, but it’s starting to bug me that they’re burying the high profile guys in the “while we were away” recaps.
Paul Kasemir is consistently not shown in either of the preliminary heats. I think he might have even gotten the “while we were away” treatment in Vegas. The producers must loathe him, so okay, fine, no Paul yet again.
No Lorin Ball? Come on; he had a top 3 finish!
No Brian Arnold?! Seriously? What the hell?
The City Finals round has definitely become the “silly season” of ANW, the unhappy medium that’s too far along to have all the storylines still in play and not far along enough to be a real contest.
See, the way the show is now, there are two things NBC can hype up: good stories and the top of the leaderboard. Qualifying is absolutely crammed with the first. You have the cancer survivors, the lovable losers, the costumed weirdos, the rookies waiting for their big break, all the strong/inspirational/mighty women, etc. The second gets a bit of short shrift, but that’s not a big deal, as they don’t care that much about quallies anyway and the real competition for them begins on Stage 1. And once its gets to Stage 2, it’s all about who’s good enough to advance. No more glurge, no more sap, the big boys have come out to play.
In City Finals, most of the good stories have hit the bricks, but NBC still has to fill two hours, so you get a product of a broken home mixed in with…a paramedic who likes sailing. Uh, not quite the same thing. And a longer course means runs that can be shown. When you have a city that has a lot of qualifiers, hard cuts have to be made, and if Noah Kaufman doesn’t make it and Brian Arnold does, and both need face time…well, you figure it out.
Speaking of which, I took down every name I saw, and by my count FOUR men moving on to Vegas were not shown AT ALL. (And Lance Pekus probably would’ve been one of them if he didn’t go the distance.)
Too bad about Meagan Martin (a sober reminder of how cruel this game truly is) and Michael Stanger (megahyped or not, he deserves some happiness)…but again, is there any non-psychotic scenario where either of them doesn’t get a wildcard?
Meagan Martin got a wildcard last year; I think it goes to Kacy this year.
Stanger has to get one though, agreed.
I think that they give wildcards to the top woman from each region, in which case they both will.
They certainly used to also randomly give wildcards to just “people whose story we like” or “people we want to be there just because”, but last year it seemed like they switched it to a few more specifically designed categories. Notably, they did NOT give wildcards last year to Brent S, Flip R, or Drew D, all of whom surprisingly failed.
I’ve generally been one to cut them some slack for the editing, but not showing Paul Casemir or Brian Arnold was just ridiculous. That’s 40% of last year’s USA vs. the World team right there!
I did wonder whether the invisible ladder was easier this week than last week… in that last week two top-notch competitors failed on it, and this week everyone who tried it seemed to zoom right up fairly quickly.
It’s part of the tradition. The American version has cut out most of the no chance and joke contestants that the Japanese version had.
Okay, one more time: where the heck is this notion coming from that there are an extremely limited number of wildcard spots and NBC is bound by strict, strict, strict laws on who gets to have them?
Because I’ve watched six seasons, and as far as I can determine, NBC gives them to whoever the hell they want. Occasionally it’s not hard to predict a certain choice…no surprise Ryoga Vee got the nod after his impressive effort, and Brent Steffensen was just too important to leave out…but for the most part, it’s anyone’s guess. Every year, Matt Iseman says point-blank that it’s strictly a matter of opinion. Thus far I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary.
And at the risk of sounding like a broken record (ask your parents, kids), exactly what scenario exists that Kacy Catanzaro and Meagan Martin wouldn’t both get in? Let’s say, extremely conservative estimate here, that they’ve reserved six wildcard spots for women. The only woman left in City Finals is Michelle Warnky; assuming that she doesn’t get through, that’s one, since Jessie Graff already made it. All the other females have ranged from passable to absolute jokes. You’re telling me that the network’s going to be so enamored with Goat Yodeler and Weight Flipper and Second Rate Actress and Ms. Born Again and Perky Gym Instructor etc. etc…to the point where they give four of them free passes and have to pick and choose between the three good ones? This is ANW, not TNA.