American Ninja Warrior

Cafe Society
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It took a while for me to get to this, mainly because it took a long time to adequately sum up my sentiments toward the ending of season 9 (not to mention The Good Place and Gotham are both back on the schedule). I’ve had an unsettling, unpleasant, nasty vibe all season…not on the same level of Dancing With The Stars or The Voice, more like a nagging sense of foreboding, the feeling that this ride has gone to Bad Land and isn’t ever coming back.

In a nut shell, American Ninja Warrior jumped the shark.

It wasn’t sudden, mind you. It was a gradual process that took many years (although the starting point was definitely when Akbar Gbajabiamila replaced Johnny Mosely). But this season, I noticed that a number of unpleasant trends finally reach their awful endpoints:

  • Stories. I’ve expounded on this enough times, so I’m just going to add is that seeing sob stories being trotted out on the last day of competition was the final straw. There’s no safe zone anymore, no respite, the glurge is cradle to grave now.
  • Pacing. Imagine if the NFL had a twelve week preseason and three weeks that counted. Now imagine if the NFL decided to make preseason games two hours long for the first six weeks and five hours long for the second six, and on top of that the networks had the same amount of air time, meaning that a lot of games would have to be shown in part or cut out entirely. That’s how watching ANW feels like to me now.
  • Arms, arms, arms. There was a time when Cityfinals required four good limbs. There were upper body tests like Devil Steps and Ring Toss, of course, but usually only one or two per course and they weren’t back breakers. Now quallies puts monstrosities like Sky Hooks and I-Beam Gap back to back. And don’t even get me started on Stage 3. “Four obstacles in a row without his feet touching the ground” should never be a part of any ANW commentator’s lexicon.
  • “Must make harder! Harder!” Ever since at least Isaac Caldiero and Geoff Britten finally broke through, as soon as anyone has an easy time with an obstacle, it’s gets either ramped up or eliminated entirely. Things like Jump Hang, Doorknob Grasper, and Log Grip used to be staples; we’ll never see any variation on them again. Hell, things that were brutal, like I-Beam Cross, Hang Climb, and even Cannonball Alley were taken out simply because SOMEONE handled them (remember Nicholas Coolridge at the second All-Stars?). The worst part is that there are some quirky ideas that look like they could be a lot of fun, like, say, Area 51, got ditched thanks to All Arm Breakers All The Time.
  • Emphasizing the negative. For all Eyes and Bodge crow about “inspiration” and “showing how it’s done”, there’s an astonishing, some would say disturbing, focus on the competitors not succeeding, not making it to the end, not winning the million dollars. Plastering a big red FAIL beneath the time is bad enough, but the ranking lists, for everyone who didn’t make it to the end (and remember that in the modern Cityfinals, hardly anybody makes it to the end) starts with “Failed on”. Given that the time corresponds to the last obstacle the competitor succeeded on (and it actually was stated that way for the first few seasons), you’d think that would make more sense, but no, have to put FAIL on the screen to show that the competitor FAILED, FAILED, FAILED, FAILED, FAILED!!! And to cap it all off, each episode now ends with “Well, nobody made it to the end this season, but…”. A helpful reminder that the only thing that really matters is Total Victory, and everyone else can jump in a lake, which means, naturally, that everyone can jump in a lake.

And that leads to the 900-pound oni in the room, that this is a reality TV competition that doesn’t respect the reality TV competition format, and that’s just not going to work. How a reality TV competition works is that the storylines are set well in advance, “judges” continually nudge things in the right direction, results are carefully spun to produced desired narrative, and in the end, SOMEONE WINS THE GRAND PRIZE. They can obfuscate, they can manipulate, they can cajole and wheedle and dodge and flip and flop, but in the end there’s a million dollar winner. Doesn’t matter if she wasn’t as good as last year’s winner or even completely unimpressive. It’s like the old joke, “I don’t need to be faster than the bear, I just need to be faster than you.” How NBC is running ANW now is like a quasi-sport replete with Olympic-style feel-good stories and ranking lists, but there are no overarching narratives and no one to keep things juicy (Ice, Bodge, and Lay put together have about as much juice as a cinderblock), and no one ever wins.

But where NBC really painted themselves into a corner is the million-dollar prize. Now, when it comes to competitive reality TV, there are basically two choices when it comes to prizes: A big payoff (America’s Got Talent) and maybe much smaller undisclosed awards to the runners-up (Survivor), or just a pretty trophy (Dancing With The Stars). The former requires careful budgeting but can attract a truly impressive level of talent; the latter is inexpensive and risk-free but draws mostly mediocre-to-awful amateurs. In the beginning G4 was clearly shooting for the latter, not surprising as the show this is based on, Sasuke, is a strictly amateur competition. But then NBC realized that by instituting a prize that was nearly impossible to win, they could continue to attract stronger, deeper fields without spending an extra cent. The idea was to have carrot dangling forever juuuuuust out of reach, until that one-in-a-billion competitor came along who had the strength of a titan and had everything fall just right for him one time. And for a while, it worked. In all honestly, I think they would’ve been fine with Brian Arnold taking it all in 2014; getting another year was just the icing on the cake.

The problem was that it worked too well. Once Quintuple Steps tripped up even veterans; then nobody had any trouble with it. Once Doorknob Arch taxed arms to the limit; then it was nothing special. Once Ultimate Cliffhanger was an impassible monster; then even Meagan Martin found it no trouble. And those stronger athletes NBC sought, who weren’t quite good enough? They got better. And they kept getting better. Worse, they inspired countless other athletes to train hard, get on the course, learn from their mistakes, and get better. NBC was going to get slammed for millions and millions of dollars if they didn’t do something. So they made the existing obstacles tougher. Loose steps on Devil Steps. A longer net for Jump Hang. More doorknobs on Doorknob Arch. But then competitors started building copies of these enhanced tasks, and soon they fell as well. Now, with full-time trainees and dedicated gyms, NBC is now trapped in a brutal arms race: They can’t have winners, and they’ll always have incredibly dedicated athletes focused on winning, so the only choice is to constantly have new obstacles, constantly make things harder, up and up, onward ad infinitum.

And the end result is that ANW has become incredibly…homogenized. You can pretty much predict how things are going to turn out before they even begin. Heck, as StarvingButStrong put it, you can just look at the clock. The stories are all the same, the angles are all the same, and it’s going to be 12 days of suffocating hype followed by a mass slaughter and Stage 3 picking off the remaining hardy survivors, and it’ll be all everyone failed miserably this time but wait 'till next year.

Boring.

Which means that this will probably be the last I’ll ever write about this event. I’m sorry, it’s been fun, but I’ve just about reached my limit, and honestly, I’m not sure there will be anything to write about in season 10. I’ll still have plenty of stuff about Team Ninja Warrior, though. That one’s always a blast.

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Interesting tidbit: a friend just attended a taping in LA of something called “American Ninja Warrior: Ninja vs. Ninja”. We quizzed her about it afterwards (just about the format and the experience, not any results). What we learned:

-Sounds like this is a replacement for Team Ninja Warrior. In fact, it seems nearly identical to Team Ninja Warrior (and, heck, might in fact BE TNW, maybe “Ninja vs. Ninja” is just a working title of some sort). It’s still 3-person teams, still two men and one woman. The main actual difference seems to be that instead of the 2-point anchor run, each heat is worth 1 point, but you need 3 points to win, with up to TWO full-team relays to get to 3. In other words, it’s best-3-out-of-5-rounds, with the 5 rounds being the three individual heats, plus two relays. Sounds way better than the old TNW format to me.

-Our friends were up in the stands, so not where the competitors were hanging out, but they randomly were seated next to someone who was a friend of Brian Arnold, so Brian ended up wandering up and sitting next to them for a half hour, along with his Party Time teammates, Jake Murray and Barclay Stockett. All three of them were reportedly super-nice.

-They tape very late at night. Our friends were at the 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. taping, which was followed by the 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. taping. Apparently the ninjas actually change their sleep schedules so they won’t be zonked for their runs

-During a head-to-head race, when one of the competitors falls, the other one takes long rests between obstacles, towels off, etc (which are presumably edited out for the broadcast). Which suggests that the same thing happens in normal ANW (as we’ve long suspected), particularly things like Stage 3 which are untimed.

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Jessie Graff @ Sasuke 2017. It’s in Japanese, but it really needs no translation.

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Well, that looked impressive to me… how does she compare to the best Japanese women?

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She’s the first woman of any nationality to have made it to Stage 3.

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I actually had a bunch of ideas for making Team Ninja Warrior a fairer contest; just never got around to posting them. I guess it’s moot now that Esquire Network is history and NBC is apparently taking it in a whole new direction, but I’d just like to air out what I felt really needed to change.

The first was that whole “Winners of the first round has the HUGE, MONSTROUS advantage of having a WEAKER team in the round that actually matters” thing, which turned out to be an utterly ridiculous notion given how many of these supposedly weaker teams won. In my view, a win and a loss should count the same as a loss and a win. Here was my proposition: Win two matches, you’re on to the relay. Lose two, you’re out. Go one and one, and the quality of the matches determines who advances. Winning in a sweep would be worth 4 points, a match decided by the anchors 3 points, a tiebreaker after taking the first two heats 2 points, and a tiebreaker after losing the first two heats one point; a loss would deduct the same amount. In case two teams got a split; the one with the higher score advances; if all the teams split, the top two would advance. (There could, of course, be tiebreakers in case two teams had the same score.) This would not only eliminate the stupid, meaningless distinction between the two halves, it would give losing teams incentive to keep fighting hard and make their opponent work for it.

My second change would be to make the “Relay Showdown” a real showdown. It would be best two out of three, and beforehand both teams would have to decide who would do each leg for each run, with the restriction that everyone would have to do a different leg for all three, and the choices would be revealed only after both teams had finished making their choices. Not only would that add an element of strategy, it would eliminate the danger of an unfortunate fall in the early going utterly dooming the team; there’d still be a chance (albeit a small one) of a big come-from-behind win. This is exactly why most championship series are played to seven games, so one fluke result doesn’t ruin the entire contest.

It looks like NBC is actually heading in this direction with the revamped Ninja vs. Ninja, and I have to say, it looks highly promising. While I found Joe Moravsky’s Superman takeover of the 5th prelim riveting, placing an inordinate weight on one team member is rarely a good thing. Furthermore, since this arrangement means that certain teams are a lot more effective in the individual heat stage than the relay showdown (something Daniel Gil can certainly attest to), it’s simply unfair that certain opponents have to face them in the former and others get them in the latter. Now that every match has the potential to go to an albatrosses-get-hanged relay, it should provide much fairer outcomes. Still think its going to need some tweaking in the future (uneven match times are definitely going to be a concern), but for now, NBC seems to be making the right decisions.

Damn, 2018 can’t get here soon enough. As if there weren’t enough reasons to hate December. :slight_smile:

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For those who are interested, the second season of Ultimate Beastmaster is now available on Netflix. I think it’s better than the first… much more consistent skill level among the competitors (more parkour and obstacle course racers, fewer random olympic swimmers, although still some), and generally more sensible rules. The high point is the international rivalry between the announcers.
It’s a bit comical the extent to which the Beastmaster people are pretending ANW doesn’t exist. “This competitor has built a backyard gym he calls the dojo… (cut to someone practicing salmon ladders and pegboards and cannonball alley)”…

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ANW: Ninja vs Ninja premieres March 1
USA vs the World is March 11

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The full lineup went up on www.americanninjawarriornation.com a few days ago. (There’s also a promo, but it didn’t reveal much of anything; just more of the usual NBC noise machine.) There’s going to be a lot to cover on day one, and I’d really like to get something out of the way beforehand, so here are my prospects for each of the teams. Since all runs now count the same, there’s no longer any distinction between “leadoff” and “anchor”, so I’m just going to give the same order the site does.

No Jessie Graff, no Storm Team. I don’t have any explanation. It’s unfortunate.

Team Dark Horse - Lance Pekus, Tammy McClure, Karson Voiles
Two men who could never get past prelims due to getting no help whatsoever from their teammates and by all appearances are joining forces in order to finally have a semblance of a fighting chance. But Pekus just isn’t that good, and Voiles can’t carry the team if things go south. It could be a major longshot to simply make it to .500, much less get to the second round.

Midwest Muscle - Tyler Yamauchi, Kristi Pratt, Ethan Swanson
Pratt, of course, was the woman who pulled off a stunning upset of the seemingly invincible Jessie Graff; look for her to build on that and become a force in her own right. Other than that, all I really got to say is if you’re backing this team, the biggest concern is Yamauchi’s size. Unless he has really fast feet, he could struggle.

LaBreckfast Club - Jesse LaBreck, Jon Alexis Jr., Chris Digangi
Yes, you read that right. LaBreck is sticking with Alexis Jr., who went 1-4 in the last team competition and singlehandedly killed the team’s chances. I remember Geoff Britten sticking with his wife even though she stunk up the joint because, well, she was his wife. I dare not dwell on the fearful implications here.

Team Tarzan - Ben Melick, Emmi Rose, Travis Weinand
The two men are a combined 0-8 and haven’t looked good once. And now they have a complete rookie in the woman spot. Just…just don’t expect too much from them. Please.

Golden Hearts - Neil Craver, Natalie Duran, Grant McCartney
A gutsy squad that last time actually made it to the finals before running out of gas. If they can stay healthy and find a way to win the close ones, a repeat trip isn’t out of the question.

Average JoJo’s - JoJo Bynum, Jessica Clayton, Jimmy Bogle Jr.
At a combined 1-7, the sole win being Bogle outlasting a hapless Rob Moravsky, you can’t like their chances. The name is actually apt: This team is just average, nothing special, no trump card, no big gun. Even if you can relate to them, best not get too attached.

Towers of Power - Nate Burkhalter, Selena Laniel, Dan Polizzi
Exit the completely lackluster Brandon Mears, enter the guy who chickened out against Michelle Warnky. Feeling more sorry than ever for Polizzi. He deserves better than this, dammit.

Three Wishes - Thomas Stillings, Brittany Hanks, Brian Burkhardt
In the previous contest, Stillings got off to a rough start, but he seemed to get better over time and actually would’ve had an outside chance at the final if Melanie Hunt hadn’t dragged him into the abyss. Barring a stroke of hideous luck, expect this team to do better than The Wings’ abysmal 4-9.

The Phoenix Force - Najee Richardson, Cassie Craig, Michael Torres
Still largely an unknown. Could blow up, could make a charge, it all depends.

Think Tank - Dr. Noah Kaufman, Leila Noone, Matt Wilder
Without a doubt, Wilder is one of the best competitors this event has ever seen. He’s the complete package, strong, fast, nimble, tenacious, and confident. But he’s can’t do it alone, and Kaufman, for all his ANW achievements, just doesn’t seem to have the killer instinct a head-to-head competition requires. Unless the new woman can step up, repeating a run to the final seems highly unlikely.

Team TNT - Travis Rosen, Emily Durham, Brett Sims
Twice Rosen’s platoon made an unlikely run to the trophy match only to suffer a horrific collapse at the worst possible moment. Now, in what is likely his last realistic chance, he’s hoping that a change in the woman spot will get him over the hump. Could the third time be the charm?

Team Wolfpack - Ian Dory, Jeri D’Aurelio, Dan Yager
A team that’s had more names than breaks. They have plenty of talent yet always seem to get cut off at the knees in crunch time. With a fairer setup in place, there’s no reason to believe they won’t contend again.

Tre Amigoz - Tremayne Dortch, Meghan Beatty, Andrew Lowes
Strictly an also-ran in their first two contests, and it’s going to take more than a dumb respelling to improve their fortunes. Dortch has to learn to stop beating himself if they’re going to have any chance.

NorCal Ninjas - David Campbell, Anna Shumaker, Brian Kretsch
They caught lightning in a bottle in their inaugural tournament, using Campbell’s refuse-to-lose tenacity and Shumaker’s surprising clutch performances to overcome Kretsch’s inexplicable blunders (seriously, it was a debacle for the leadoff men in TNW2) long enough to replace him with a ringer and sneak into the finals. As Sean Bryan has his own team now and Campbell isn’t getting any younger, reality could hit them hard this time around. They should consider it a triumph simply to make it back to play-ins.

Team Ronin - Flip Rodriguez, Meagan Martin, J.J. Woods
One of those frustrating teams that’s a perennial favorite but always finds a way to faceplant at the worst possible moment. This time they have the services of the Meagan Martin, one of the strongest women but prone to crumbling under pressure. They’ll make some noise again, but Rodriguez is going to have to play over his head if they’re going to have any title hopes.

West Coast Warriors - Alan Connealy, Lindsay Eskildsen, J.B. Douglas
Change your teammates, change your luck? At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if Connealy would try anything.

Beasts from the East - James McGrath, Erica Cook, Dave Cavanagh
Eh, I guess Bam Bam Bigelow’s been out of the spotlight long enough. :slight_smile: McGrath enters with an intimidating 6-0 mark. Granted, that’s at least partly due to inferior competition, but there’s no doubt that he’s a formidable presence. The same can’t be said for Cook, a maddeningly inconsistent performer who can crash and burn at any time. They’ll get their points, but it’s hard to see them hoisting the trophy in the end.

Hashtag Ninjas - Nicholas Coolridge, Larissa Cottle, Jesse LaFlair
In TNW2 the Jessie Graff-lead G-Force looked strong in the first five heats before getting Superman-punched by Jamie Rahn. Coolridge has always been a force in NW’s sideshow events; the only question is if the new lady can even begin to measure up to Graff’s standard.

Iron Grip - Daniel Gil, Tiana Webberley, Mathis Owhadi
The ferocious, hard-charging, fear-inducing Gil again goes with completely new cohorts in the hopes that they’ll succeed where the last duo failed. If nothing else, it should be fun to watch. (Note: In the interest of utterly refusing to mindlessly accept utterly moronic nicknames…I still get woozy whenever I think of “the artist formerly known as Prince”, to put it in perspective…from here on out I will be calling Tiana Webberley “Tweb”. And nothing else. Ever again.)

The InvincAbels - Abel Gonzalez, Mary Beth Wang, Victor Juarez
Gonzales hasn’t been anywhere near as formidable as his team name would suggest. Depending on how good Juarez is, they could have an outside shot as play-ins, but I’d be astonished if they got any further.

The Expendabulls - Kevin Bull, Maggi Thorne, Thaddeus Robeck
Bull was a powerhouse in the first team event but regressed badly in the second, and one has to wonder if all the times he’s had to carry the team on his back is wearing on him. If his new teammates earn their keep, he has an outside shot at the finals, but like Kaufman, this just doesn’t seem to be his game. Don’t expect him to take the ultimate prize.

Superhero Squad - Jamie Rahn, Rachel Goldstein, Sean Darling-Hammond
Which Rahn will show up, the one that swoops in to save the day after his teammates go 0-2 in the money round, or the one that meekly bows out in the Relay Showdown? Will Goldstein and Darling-Hammond get opponents they can actually beat for a change?

Tri Hards - Sean Bryan, Rebekah Bonilla, Adam Rayl
Ugh…I’m thinking they should’ve put a little more thought into the team name. Bryan made a lot of noise when he stepped in for an injured Brian Kretsch and proved to be vastly superior, no doubt prompting a lot of fans to openly question why David Campbell didn’t go with him in the first place. Now he attempts to shed the ringer label by taking command of his own unit. He has plenty of muscle, but does he have the speed or stamina to keep up with the top echelon?

The Hazard Brigade - Mike Bernardo, Grace Sims, Michael Needham
Which Bernardo will show up, the fireball who torched Andrew Lowes or the loose cannon who choked the match away to Real Life Beasts? Will Sims get opponents who are not the best women in the entire goddam sport for a change?

Party Time - Brian Arnold, Barclay Stockett, Jake Murray
They’ve seen the highest highs and the lowest lows, and in just two contests, at that. I’m tempted to say that Arnold’s age will eventually do them in, but only a fool would try to predict where they’ll end up.

Fast Kats - Karsten Williams, Lauren Keen, Kevin Klein
In TNW2 they were the “marijuana team” (oh, look it up ;)), twice dominating the individual heats only to collapse in the Relay Showdown. They were the first team to lose after gaining a 10-second advantage. With the increased emphasis on relays now, it could be a struggle for them. Trivia: Klein is a flagrunner for the Dallas Cowboys! :smiley:

Team Alpha - Brent Steffensen, Sydney Olson, David Yarter
One win, Steffensen. Just one. Please.

Lab Rats - Chris Wilczewski, Michelle Warnky, Brian Wilczewski
I’m more than a little surprised that both Chezzes are still competing, especially given the many setbacks they’ve had over the past couple of years. This team was a dominator in the first contest, finishing with the best record (11-2) and scoring the first ever perfect day, but have lost a step since. The real story is Michelle Warnky, who’s been just about unbeatable. She’ll have to keep up this dominance if this team is going to have any shot at the finals.

The Ballers - Lorin Ball, Paul Kasemir, Meiling Huang
Win or lose, they always put on a show. A strong favorite to make it out of prelims; don’t be expecting much more.

The remaining teams are all first-timers, so I don’t have anything. (Good luck to all of you! :))
Frostbite - Nick Hanson, Zhanique Lovett, Jackson Meyer
The Young Bloods - Tyler Gillett, Bree Widener, Kevin Carbone
The Lizard Kings - Hunter Guerard, Sarah Schoback, Kyler Soderman
Wisco Warriors - Drew Knapp, Andrew Philibeck, Sara Heesen
Brazi Bros - Lucas Gomes, Brittany Reid, Alexio Gomes
All-American Ninjas - Jonathan Horton, April Steiner Bennett, Paul Hamm
Big Dog Ninjas - Jody Avila, Brandi Monteverde, Josh Salinas

Yes, I’m aware that Schoback was in TNW2. I’m not counting her.

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ANWNVN starts tonight!

The little episode blurb mentions Flip Rodriguez and Meagan Martin. It’s on!

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Airtime over here is 9:00 PM, so recaps are going to be Friday…which is a good thing, as I anticipate that I’m going to be spending quite a bit of time on them. For now, just some trivia stuff that you might find a little interesting.

In the first two events, six teams swept the first match and went up 2-0 in the second (Golden Hearts and Think Tank in the 1st prelims, Team Ronin and Lab Rats in the first semis, Labreckfast Club in the second prelims, and The Ballers in the second’s play-in round). Only two of them went on to win the second match Lab Rats after winning the anchor and Think Tank after losing the anchor and winning the tiebreaker. Two-thirds of them bowed out after starting 5-0. Even more remarkable, of the five teams that started 0-5 (Wild Bunch and Rahnaways in the first prelims, Stratis Faction in the first semis, Stratis Faction again in the second prelims, and The Wings in the second’s play-in round), four of them won the anchor round, and two of them won the match, with Wild Bunch being the sold 0-6. There are a number of takeaways you can have from this, but the bottom line is that a team’s fortunes in the first round had remarkably little to do with whether they made the Relay Showdown. I could tell near the end of the TNW2 that even the announcers couldn’t live the lie anymore.

Lissitahs! (You remember what that is, right? :)) Surprisingly even. There were seven in all, Moravsky/Coolridge, Bull/Steffensen, Voiles/Rodriguez, Bull/Arnold, Gil/Chez-2, Moravsky/Douglas, and Kasemir/Alexis. In the first two and last two instances, the winner of the anchor dealt a second smackdown, but the other three saw the defeated competitor even the score. Of course, it doesn’t seem like we’ll see these again, so this is mostly a footnote.

Four “cycle” sweeps, i.e. one finish, one distance, and one speed: Team TNT and Expendabulls in the first prelims, Lab Rats in the first semis, and Mega Crushers in the second prelims.

And finally, four brave men who, through a combination of happenstance and guts, ran four heats in one day. Surprisingly, one one failed to come out on the winning end, Karson Voiles at 2-2. Both Noel Reyes and Jamie Rahn went 3-1, and of course it was Joe Moravsky who had one for the ages, 4-0.

Looking through these numbers again, I really get a sense that the event, while certainly never lacking for thrills and excitement, was going in a direction the powers in charge didn’t want. In short, the anchor spot, intended to prevent runaways and make every heat count, was breaking the sport. Simply too much hinged on one man, and giving one man the power to completely take over the event was detrimental. Worse, with the first match not counting for much of anything, this would eventually encourage sandbagging; i.e. laying off in the first match to be in top shape for the second. If you know anything about organized sports, you know that sandbagging is something, you never, ever, ever want to encourage.

Well, I hope you appreciated this little glimpse of history, and I have no doubt that its new incarnation will provide some intriguing stats of its own. All right, it’s on now, time to start watching!

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I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit. Some thought:

-Meagan Martin was just too good for that poor concrete lady
-Flip is still my emotional favorite, but damn, he needs to work on his consistency
-I like the new format overall, although I do wish that if they got to round 5 (the second relay) they had to pick different spots in the relay for each of their athletes. That would test overall team versatility better
-I definitely like getting rid of the double points for the anchor, and the losers-vs-winners. Now everything is win-or-go-home
-JJ Woods almost coming back from being stuck on a single ring was damn impressive

In the end, the best team definitely won… will my man Flip finally live up to his potential? We’ll see in the playoffs.

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Does anyone know how the teams are picked? Is someone designated a team captain and just picks two people they want to run with, or is there more to it than that?

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It’s more or less the case that the teams pick themselves, as far as we know. Certainly plenty of people who are friendly with each other end up on teams together. Certainly the way they talk about is “oh, he called me up and asked if I wanted to be on a team…” as opposed to “he picked me and I’d never met him before but now I’m excited to be on this team” or whatever.
Maybe the network would have objected if, say, Drew Dreschel, Jessie Graff and Joe Marovsky had decided to form a super team?

But I don’t think we really know.

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Okay thanks for the info.

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Before I get to day 1, I thought I’d put this here so everyone could refer to it as necessary. First, starting with what I know. Things I’m pretty sure of but not absolutely certain are in brackets.

Each prelim is now single elimination between four teams, so every match counts now. The losers of the first two matches are done; the winners face each other to decide the overall winner. The first two matches employ a total of six obstacles. The three designated single matchups happen in order (for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to continue referring to them as “leadoff”, “woman”, and anchor) for the first three heats; the fourth and fifth, if necessary, are relays with each competitor doing two obstacles. [The teams can set whatever order they want for each.] Best three out of five wins, and all runs are worth exactly the same. The final match is handled exactly the same except there are three extra obstacles and each member does three tasks each in the relays. [They must keep the same order for the individual heats that they did in their first match, so it’s leadoff against leadoff and anchor against anchor.]

It’s pretty clear that the producers were making a very big break from Team Ninja Warrior (that’s probably the reason for the name change too, come to think of it) and really pushing to make this more like a legitimate, fair sport. No stealing one after stinking up the first round, no more individual dominance, no more endless matchup finagling and ridiculous head games that almost never accomplish anything anyway. Everyone’s on equal footing, everyone gets (roughly) the same amount of action, everyone has to pull their weight. As of right now, I’m a bit ambivalent over this. On one hand, a big overhaul ABSOLUTELY was needed. TNW was starting to become a joke with the endless tomfoolery, and the unfairness of some of the eliminations was starting to become problematic (one again, lose-then-win /> win-then-lose). On the other hand, this is going to lead to more than a few competitors getting very little screen time (the last thing any ANW side event wants is to carry over the negatives of the main contest), and since NBC still hasn’t had the sense to put in a postgame, that means it’ll be possible to predict some finals simply by how much time is left in the episode. (And as I’m watching on DVR out of necessity, I don’t have the luxury of shutting off the clocks.) Overall it looks like an improvement, but I’m almost certain there’s going to be more tweaking required.

The obstacles:

  1. [Sonic Swing] - No one named this at all in the first episode, so I’m “accepting the null”. The rope swings are considerably shorter this time.
  2. Tick Tock - A jump to a large cylindrical pendulum and a jump to a net.
  3. Criss Cross Ring Toss - Don’t remember when this was in ANW, but it’s a two-sided variation of Ring Toss where the competitors have to go hand-over-hand across peg boards on each side. The boards go slightly downhill, straight, then slightly uphill, and it’s more or less a given that pretty much everyone is going to ignore the latter third. The boards are close enough to each other that the competitors risk clashing against each other.
  4. Floating Tiles - Same as last time, 2-1-2-1 tiles suspended on cables across water.
  5. Flying Shelf Grab - A trampoline jump to a small ledge, a swing to another small ledge, a swing to a horizontal bar (shared by both competitors), and the landing area. Shorter than in TNW1.
  6. Warped Wall - Never mess with a classic!
  7. Salmon Ladder - Same as the “Duelling Salmon Ladders” of the past. A less pretentious team event, or so they want us to think…
  8. Rumbling Dice - Manhandle a box-shaped pipe construct across a flat track, then do it a second time. The “dice” are noticably smaller and easier to handle than in ANW.
  9. Zig Zag Climb - A Spider Climb-esque traverse between two upward-angled panels with a brief drop in the middle.

The biggest change was what happened to the first three; Ring of Fire and Swing Jump are no more and Sonic Swing has been nerfed. I remember a lot of runs that got unexpectedly killed early, and the producers must have decided that this was a bad thing. There’s also less emphasis on the upper body; the four all-arms tasks are short and not especially taxing. In the past you’d see something like Bungee Road or Pole Grasper be a big factor; that’s unlikely to happen now. Even the ultimate obstacle is easier since it’s not vertical and competitors get to use all four limbs. In all, the emphasis is on one thing: SPEED. Someone decided that what this needed were hard charges, bursts, and big lunges. And of course, all the better to produce soooooooo cloooooose finishes. Hmm…on one hand, yeah, I like big efforts and knife’s-edge competition as much as everyone else. On the other hand, I don’t mind the occasional blunder, tumble, or wild fluke. Variety is the spice of life, after all. I do think some of the women’s heats were painfully slow, but not to the point of annoyance. Besides, if the runs are over with too quickly, that just means more downtime wasted on idiotic interviews and announcer banter and other assorted annoying crap. Could go either way, and I’ll just have to watch to the end before deciding.

No idea which obstacles will change from week to week, and no idea how the rest of the contest is going to play out once the nine advancers are set. I’m thinking there pretty much has to be a play-in round now due to the brevity of the action, but how do they get to sixteen or however many are necessary from nine? Will keep everyone posted of any rule clarifications or changes as they happen, of course.

337

All right! New name, new time, new format, new attitude! Let’s rock!

Big intro. Announcer saying that they’re battling each other and acting like this is completely new. J.J. Woods promising that “I’m gonna knock ‘em off the course,” which I’m definitely hoping doesn’t actually happen. Eyes bleating “These guys are flyyyyying!!” and after all these years he can’t think of ONE other word?? Thomas Stillings claiming “This is going be bad, this is going to be furious, this is going to be insane,” none of which sounds a positive quality to me.

Customary slapdash uninformative pregame that doesn’t even reveal half of the goddam starting obstacles. It doesn’t make a dime’s worth of difference whether it’s G4, Esquire, NBC, or USA. It’s not a network problem, it’s a Ninja Warrior problem. The only thing of note is Bodge claiming that it would feature “two great athletes going mano a mano”. Geez…do I really have to be the one who corrects this? Okay, fine. Mano a mano is Spanish for HAND TO HAND. Y’know, boxing, wrestling, knife fighting, that sorta thing? Maybe “side by side” or “head to head” wouldn’t have had as much cool factor, but at least it would’ve been freaking correct. Given that there was no “V” in the black box in the upper-left corner of the screen at the start of the show, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to raise false hopes.

(Good gravy, I’m actually paying attention to those moronic ratings now. What the hell’s happened to me?)

Oh, and Eyes adds that there is no course like the one here. He doesn’t mention that this is because this is built for speed, unlike the old Team Ninja Warrior which was more of a mix of fast and slow, or the regular contest, where the damn qualifiers have become downright Sisyphean (seriously, I-Beam Gap??), but I suspect that this won’t even be in the top 100 sins of omission when all is said and done, so I’ll give it a pass.

“Mitsubishi Motors Matchups”. I’m actually more surprised that Eyes gave the full name of Mitsubishi’s automotive division than that they attached their name to a 15-second name reading. All teams now wear shirts of the same color, which I’ll provide.

Quick rules overview. Winner moves on to “the playoffs”, so I’m guessing there’s another step before the finals.

And…oh, geez. Now each competitor enters in a blast of…some kind of vapor, with music, and then gets a profile. Kind of like WWE chic meets NBC’s-Olympic-coverage-before-they-came-to-their-senses chic. Yeah, I’ll give the gist of the profiles. Didn’t think this “serious contest” would have that much snarkworthy material, but there you go. :slight_smile:

Note: In the interest of keeping my sanity, I’m going to completely ignore any and all ridiculous nicknames ponied up by the announcers…ESPECIALLY you-know-what…and, whenever applicable, provide my own. Which, hopefully, you’ll find slightly less ridiculous.

Little clarification on Criss Cross Ring Toss. The first panels, which slope downward, as well as the upward panels, are wide apart and have four pegs on each side. The level panels are right next to each other, and there’s only one row of pegs on the outside, meaning the competitors have to share them. Also, since nearly all the competitors are going to dismount Criss Cross Ring Toss from the 8th pegs, I’ll call that a “standard” dismount and only mention it if it needs mentioning. I’ll refer to a 7th peg dismount as a “long”. I don’t anticipate anyone being desperate/crazy enough to go for anything longer than that.

NINJA VS. NINJA 1 - PRELIM #1

  • Beasts from the East (cyan) *
    Leadoff - James McGrath: I’ve been doing this for a while. And Eyes gave me a nickname. But what’s really important is that I’m UNDEFEATED! I’m completely invincible, fools! This has absolutely no chance of blowing up in my face!
    Woman - Erica Cook: I made it up Warped Wall and then blew out my knee. And then I spent a lot of time in rehab. And that’s all you need to know. No, really. That’s it, done, kaput, finito!
    Anchor - Dave Cavanagh: I’m a first responder who’s spent a lot of time on the walk-on line! Irony! Irony!

  • Hashtag Ninjas (orange) *
    Leadoff - Nicholas Coolridge: We’re really into social media! Super really! That is noteworthy, dammit!
    Woman - Larissa Cottle: Despite my job involving heavy physical labor, I still have delicate hands when doing my daughter’s hairstyle. No, I’m not pretending that’s something incredible, get off my case, dammit!
    Anchor - Jesse LaFlair: Parkour still matters, dammit!

  • Team Ronin (white) *
    Leadoff - J.J. Woods: [no profile]
    Woman - Meagan Martin: I travel a lot, which makes it sooooo hard to train. Oh, and perfect record, bay-bee! Though not nearly as impressive as the number of profiles I’ve done without revealing a single even mildly interesting fact! (Note: She says that she’s “undefeated in Ninja vs. Ninja”, which…I mean, c’mon, can’t nearly everyone make that claim at this point? I get out-with-the-old, but you don’t have to pretend that this thing called Teem Ninnjuh Worrieurr never existed!)
    Anchor - Flip “David” Rodriguez: I’m taking the cause of fighting sexual assault straight to Washington! Damn, this would’ve been so much less awkward under the last administration…

  • West Coast Warriors (magenta) *
    Leadoff - J.B. Douglas: [no profile]
    Woman - Lindsay Eskildsen: Last year I had the extremely noteworthy distinction of taking one of the two guaranteed women’s spots in Stage 1 for the particular Cityfinal I was competing in! Hey get used to hearing about it; it’s the only accomplishment I’m going to have in this stupid sport for quite some time!
    Anchor - Alan Connealy: I train with a dog! Ha ha ha ha ha, funny, right? That’s really, really funny! That’s so DAMMIT, I’LL DO ANYTHING FOR ANOTHER WIN AT THIS POINT! C’MON, ONE ISN’T TOO MUCH TO ASK, IS IT??

= 1st match: Beasts from the East vs. Hashtag Ninjas =
__L: McGrath vs. Coolridge - It’s a speedy pace at the outset, both men gliding through Sonic Swing and Tick Tock, with McGrath having a slight edge. McGrath is smoother across the pegs and actually goes for a long dismount, and…his legs are in the water, but he managed to get enough of his body on the platform that he’s still alive. But it takes a while for him to extricate himself, allowing Coolridge to make a standard leap and land cleanly on his feet. He skips through Floating Tiles and gets right on Flying Shelf Grab. He actually takes a while to make the second transition, allowing McGrath to briefly catch up, but is on and right off the bar, and, despite being a little clumsy up the wall, manages to grab the top. McGrath makes his final, desperate charge and slips all the way back down, and Coolridge is on the buzzer. Something something wasn’t as good as his record something something that’s really gotta hurt something. He lies on the ramp and looks absolutely dejected. Coolridge/finish 0-1
__W: Cook vs. Cottle - Cottle takes a lot of water on the first swing, and Cook takes a slim lead. She loses a bit of time on Tick Tock but handles the rings much more smoothly, and the lead increases. Now Floating Tiles…where she completely misses the third tile and goes straight down. Didn’t look like it was her knee, she just plain botched it. Cottle is past the rings and almost playfully bounces across the tiles to victory. And…she’s going to finish the course, which she does. As Eyes put it, a little practice never hurt. Cottle/distance 0-2
__A: Cavanagh vs. LaFlair - Both have fast feet, but Cavanagh is noticably better on the rings and has a sizable lead going into Flying Shelf Grab. LaFlair, already almost hopelessly behind, loses the handle and splashes down. Cavanagh is too fired up to stop and gleefully nails the buzzer. Cavanagh/distance 1-2

“So after the head-to-head races, neither team has three wins, which means…we are going to…a relay.” Uh, yeah, Eyes, 1 & 2 both < 3 last time I checked. Was it really necessary to point this out?

Incidentally, the first leg of the six-obstacle relay is the only time a competitor is not faced with an upper-body test. Naturally, I expect the women to be stuck here pretty much all the damn time. I will be thrilled the first time a team puts a woman in the second or third leg, and doubly so if it ends up winning the match.

__R1: Cook/Cavanagh/McGrath vs. Cottle/Coolridge/LaFlair - Cook takes a hard bump off the Tick Tock net, and Cottle makes the tag slightly quicker. Coolridge handles Criss Cross Ring Toss a little better than LaFlair but takes water on the way out, and Cavanagh is the first to the tiles. Coolridge…midhops right past him, and he’s out first! (BTW, what’s up with all these terrible camera angles at Floating Tiles? Seriously, this is XFL crap right here.) LaFlair powers through Flying Shelf Grab, and it’s an easy sprint to victory. Hashtag Ninjas/finish 1-3
HASHTAG NINJAS WINS

The hero of the second All-Star Special makes a choice addition to his highlight reel. After not much success in TNW, he looks like he’s developing into a real force. Meanwhile, it’s going to be a long, cold winter for James McGrath, the once 6-0 star reduced to a blink-and-you-missed-it footnote. Damn.

= 2nd match: Team Ronin vs. West Coast Warriors =
__L: Woods vs. Douglas - They get off to a fast start. Douglas has a slight lead going into the rings but has trouble with them. Woods glides through and makes an impressive long dismount, and despite a stumble going into Floating Tiles, his eventual win is never in doubt. Woods/finish 1-0
__W: Martin vs. Eskildsen - Eskildsen takes water on Tick Tock, and that’s all she wrote for any chance of beating Martin, ultimately spinning to defeat on Flying Shelf Grab. Martin, despite hitting her head on one of the shelves, hangs on, and goes all the way to the buzzer for good measure. Martin/distance 2-0
__A: Rodriguez vs. Connealy - Connealy has a slim lead after a fluid Tick Tock exit but can’t quite handle the rings; David is smooth as fiberglass and makes a pretty one-handed dismount. Connealy knows he has to come up big, so he goes for a long dismount, and his legs are in the water and he drops back from the landing area. David finishes the course nonetheless, because, well, he can, dangit. Rodriguez/distance 3-0
TEAM RONIN WINS

The feudal sellswords make quick work of their first challenge and should give Hashtag Ninjas a very tough match in the final. Meanwhile…geez, you just have to feel sorry for Connealy at this point. He trains hard, he has skills, he takes this very seriously, and somehow he always draws the elephant, the bull, the bear, the tiger, the cheetah, the lion, the wolverine, the rhinoceros, the gorilla, never someone he can actually beat. If I’m a producer, this is the point where I throw him a few bums, damn legitimacy.

= Final: Team Ronin vs. Hashtag Ninjas =
Yes! It’s the EXTENDED COURSE WITH NINE OBSTACLES, AND EACH OF THE COMPETITORS HAS TO DO ALL NINE OBSTACLES and last time I checked distance was still a legitimate way to win, and don’t we get enough of this nonsense in Cityfinals? If we do have competitors reaching the back third, I expect stamina to become a factor, and of course let’s see how many women can do Salmon Ladder and Rumbling Dice in succession. All right, enough cynicism, time to crown a winner…

__L: Woods vs. Coolridge - It’s super-tight through the first two. They continue the ferocious pace on the rings…Woods loses a ring on the 7th peg! So now Coolridge…** loses a ring on the 8th!** No choice but to go for it. Woods finds his courage first…and grabs Coolridge’s ring!! (Wait, that’s allowed?) But he quickly thinks better of it, and Coolridge leaps to safety. Woods is in no man’s land, makes a huge leap…and it’s a clean landing. Coolridge midhops and is first to the shelves, but Woods makes up ground. He makes the final trans…down he goes! His body got too far leaned to the right and he couldn’t hang on! Coolridge lands safely, glances back, and realizes, yeah, he got it. Coolridge/distance 0-1
__W: Martin vs. Cottle - Yeah, Bodge, iiiiice in her veiiiiins, that’s the key. :rolleyes: Pretty much another day at the office for Martin, as Cottle just doesn’t have the speed and keeps falling further behind, the final blow being completely whiffing on the first shelf. Martin goes up the wall but stops because, c’mon, she’s not wearing out her arms for nothing, don’t be silly. Martin/distance 1-1
__A: Rodriguez vs. LaFlair - Cripes, Eyes, “notorious for speed”? Notorious?? Are you just pulling words out of a hat now? :mad: David gets to the 8th first but doesn’t get good forward momentum, and his feet get wet. But LaFlair has a lot of ground to make up…and…sheesh, not again. What David is truly notorious for is dishing up inexplicable clunkers, and he has another one here as he splashes down in the exact same place as Woods. I couldn’t even see what went wrong; his form was good, he got both hands on, and they just came unglued. LaFlair lands safely, and David…damn, he looks downright furious. LaFlair/distance 1-2
Wow, what a surprise, not one individual heat made it to Warped Wall. The back third is having such a gigantic enormous impact. :rolleyes: Seriously, I do think that it will be a factor to some extent, and there almost certainly will be at least one exciting race to the buzzer, but that’s the problem with acting like there being nine obstacles! actually means anything. As long as it’s “persona a persona”, I-don’t-have-to-be-faster-than-the-bear-I-just-have-to-be-faster-than-you is in full effect…exactly like in Cityfinals…and you’re just not going to see a lot of double overtime thrillers.
__R1: Martin/Rodriguez/Woods vs. Cottle/LaFlair/Coolridge - Martin takes the early lead, and Cottle is once again struggling to catch up. On to the rings…where Martin makes an uncharacteristic mistake, getting both rings on the same side! She has to turn completely around to correct one of them, then rotate back forwards. Highly resourceful, but this gives Cottle time to catch up…what the hell is she waiting for, a Twitter verification?? Martin, with both rings on the 8th, takes a couple big swings (which Cottle meekly dodges), and is done. Bodge cries “She’s being too dang nice!” David has a huge lead by the time Cottle finishes up business, and Woods being mistake-free through the back third seals it. Team Ronin/finish 2-2
__R2: Martin/Rodriguez/Woods vs. Cottle/LaFlair/Coolridge - Um…you sure about this, Hashtaggers? I mean, yeah, you don’t know if Cottle can get up the wall, but you know for certain that she’s going to completely capitulate to Martin on the rings. Isn’t it better to go down swinging than to repeat pathetic history? Damn…all right, Elimination Relay, here we go. Both women begin, and not sure why the hell I was expecting anything different. Martin controls both 8ths again, but this time Cottle doesn’t dodge…and…did she just kick Martin? (Seriously, is that allowed?) Martin is taking a while to find the right moment, and she ends up bumping into Cottle. I just had a thought…if this kind of rough play is actually permitted, the smart move for Cottle would be to forget the rings and just grab Martin and pull her down, which would put LaFlair on equal footing with David in the second leg. Hey, whatever it takes to win! :smiley: A second kick misses the mark, and Martin finally makes it official. David gets another big lead. Eyes half-pleads that it’s “smaller than last time”, but it’s moot as Woods is as sharp as ever, while Coolridge appears to be at the end of his rope. Bodge proclaims “There’s no catching J.J.,” and indeed there isn’t. Okay, maybe it’s homerism. Whatever. I’ll take what I can get. Team Ronin/finish 3-2
TEAM RONIN WINS

They didn’t have the best leadoff man or the best anchor; it was the best team that won today. Once it got to relays, their cohesiveness and sound execution spelled doom for their Cottle-albatrossed adversaries. Will this become a trend? I certainly hope it does…and, more to the point, I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t.

Sheesh, is Eyes going to scream “brink of elimination” 50 times every time the first two heats get split? :mad:

Matchup of the day: Martin/Cottle. This was why Team Ronin won and Hashtag Ninjas lost. I get the sense that how the women do will have a real impact on their teams’ chances, and all I gotta say is…about dang time.
MVP: Coolridge. Screw it, I’m giving this to him, he deserves it. He went 2-0 and was clearly the best man out there today; he probably would’ve beaten Woods if he didn’t have to start so far behind. Leave with your head held high, and we’ll see you at the next All-Stars!

(Whew! Do hope to get one of these out by Friday. Will try. No promises.)

338

Same intro as last week? Eh, this thing’s such an enormous financial burden for USA, guess they gotta keep costs down somehow. That was sarcasm.

Before I begin, a couple things. First, no one has used the words “Team Ninja Warrior” even once. The competitors are even referring to that event as Ninja vs. Ninja. Anyone know why? I doubt it’s a trademark issue, as USA hosted TNW2. The other thing is that now that the day longer ends with a single relay, it’s unfortunately become way too easy to predict which run in the final will be the last just by looking at the clock…and, consequently, which team wins whenever it doesn’t go the distance. I will be taking this into account when analyzing these matches. I’m sorry, but I’m just not the kind of person who can shut out the world whenever I feel like (which caused no small amount of misery when every damn teacher I had refused to admit to even the possibility of this, but that’s another thread).

Oh, heads up: New USA vs. The World this Sunday. I mentioned before how the very sight of someone mouthing yoo-ess-ay now makes me feel like retching, but I don’t want to ignore this completely, so it’s going to be results, stats, and nothing else. Easy enough that I might be able to get a decent night’s sleep for a change.

NINJA VS. NINJA 1 - PRELIM #2

3rd obstacle: Pole Grasper - A cluster of poles hanging vertically downward; they can move a considerable distance. (Alex Curry claims that there will be “hand to hand combat” here, and yes, it distresses me that she’s gradually becoming as ridiculous as the screaming heads in the booth.)
5th obstacle: Spin Cycle - Three rotating baskets set at different angles.

Looks like Floating Tiles is going to be permanent and they’re going to rotate the two upper-body challenges. Given the now freakish amount of upper-body obstacles in the regular contest, this is probably a smart idea. Don’t be surprised if Rumbling Dice gets switched out at some point too.

Note: Whenever the announcers saddle someone with a stupid nickname, I will not only utterly refuse to use it under any circumstances, I will invent my own stupid nickname. This may or may not become a thing. I reserve the right to change my mind at any time without notice. :slight_smile:

  • Dark Horse (black) *
    Leadoff - Karson Voiles: Thanks to my disastrous health condition, I have to eat lots of one type of food for reasons completely unrelated to sports superstition!
    Woman - Tammy McClure: I work at a winery. That means that if I ever accomplish anything meaningful in ANW, I can toast to it. No, I’m not holding my breath.
    Anchor - Lance Pekus: I’m a well-travelled outdoorsman now. I spend far more time in the great outdoors than on ANW events. And get paid a lot more for it.

  • Midwest Muscle (orange) *
    Leadoff - Ethan Swanson: Parkour is really dangerous and potentially fatal! Also, YouTube users have a really terrible pack mentality! I believe that these are things that require being pointed out for some reason!
    Woman - Kirsti “Graffbeater” Pratt: I beat Jessie Graff! I! BEAT! JESSIE! GRAFF! Seriously, what more do you need to know?
    Anchor - Tyler Yamauchi: Bunch of super mundane stuff that I’m just going to throw out there and not really give much of a rip whether you think it’s worth your time!

  • Labreckfast Club (cyan) *
    Leadoff - Chris Digangi: [No profile, just a couple trivia tidbits from Eyes: “5-time veteran” and “boyfriend of team captain Jesse Flexlabreck”. Okay, then. Not going to speculate as to which is more unimpressive.]
    Woman - Jesse “Clubhouse” Labreck (Since she’s all “Breakfast Club” and “Breck…House, I figured I’d combine them. And guess what, the result is an acceptable word! Convenient, huh?): Old college credentials! Less impressive ANW credentials! Team competition really suits me; not going to explain why!
    Anchor - Jon Alexis Jr.: [Blah blah really old for a collegiate blah blah fee fai foh fum blah blah afro blah. Swear to god, the first time this show ever reveals anything interesting about him, I’m going to give a flippin’ standing ovation.]

  • Team Tarzan (shirtless) *
    Leadoff - Travis Weinand: I enjoy a variety of things! That is extraordinarily unusual! Y’know what, nowadays maybe it is!
    Woman - Emmi Rose: I apparently believe that it’s weird for an adult woman with no big familial commitments to spend a lot of time on the activities she enjoys! Oh, and I’m going to Hit The Buzzer! Hopefully before my opponent does!
    Anchor - Ben Melick: [No profile. He apparently dresses funny and has been around for a while. Awesome. :rolleyes:]

= 1st match: Dark Horse vs. Midwest Muscle =
__L: Voiles vs. Swanson - Both men are nearly even at the start, simply ducking under the Tick Tock net without grabbing it (as this is certain to become a common move in the future, I’ll simply refer to this as a netless exit). But Swanson gets turned around at Pole Grasper and can’t get a smooth rhythm, while Voiles powers his way through. The rest of Voiles’ run is textbook, and it’s an easy victory. Oh, for crying out loud, don’t shout and pump your first after the first measly run of the day, geez! Voiles/finish 1-0
__W: McClure vs. Pratt - Little more than a training session for Graffbeater as McClure makes an extremely clumsy jump on Tick Tock and goes all the way down. (Pretty much everyone continues to the buzzer now, so from now on I’m only going to mention if someone doesn’t.) Pratt/distance 1-1
__A: Pekus vs. Yamauchi - Ohhhh boyyy, Pekus took his shirt off! Wait, does this mean that’s he’s defected to Team Tarzan? :rolleyes: This one’s effectively decided at Pole Grasper, as Pekus has a clear edge in upper-body muscle. He has a close call on Floating Tiles, falling at the second solo, but saves himself on the cables, and neither of the last two obstacles even slows him down. An impressive win! Pekus/finish 2-1
__R1: McClure/Voiles/Pekus vs. Pratt/Yamauchi/Swanson - Graffbeater opens up a big lead early, and it goes from bad to worse as McClure bungles the Tick Tock exit again, going completely off course. Voiles heroically closes the gap on the poles, but Yamauchi cleanly midhops while Voiles stumbles on the exit. Pekus makes a fight of it, but the deficit is simply too great to overcome. Midwest Muscle/finish 2-2
Before I continue…yes, both teams are going with the exact same order for the money heat. Now, having seen enough of this competition to unravel some of the strategizing, I understand the mindset behind Let’s See You Try That Again (“lissitah” for short)…i.e., we’re better than them. We only lost because of a bad break, a bad decision, a rookie mistake! Flukes don’t happen twice! We know exactly what to expect now! Next time we’ll win for sure! And when it works, it not only helps tremendously in building the team’s confidence but sends a powerful message to the other teams. The problem is that it only works sometimes. Again, 3 for 7 in TNW, far from a robust success rate. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that the current setup isn’t working and make the adjustment. Heck, a big part of nearly all organized sports is adjusting to what the opponent is doing, and stubbornly plowing ahead with what didn’t work the first time is often a recipe for failure.
__R2: McClure/Voiles/Pekus vs. Pratt/Yamauchi/Swanson - It’s a familiar story as Graffbeater has the lead going into Tick…she fails to make the transition! She stays on the pendulum and swings back! Even more incredibly, the third time turns out to be the charm for McClure as she makes a clean transition! Voiles dominates the poles yet again, and that’s the nail in the coffin, Pekus hitting the buzzer before Swanson has even started his leg. Swanson is kind enough to make a suicidal jump to the second basket and miss by a mile, though. Dark Horse/finish 3-2
DARK HORSE WINS

Wow. This was a seesaw battle if ever there was one. Dark Horse actually looked better overall, but it wasn’t until McClure learned to stopped self-destructing that they were able to close the deal. Women MATTER now! :smiley: And give it up for Pekus, who was able to shake off past disappointments and look powerful. As for Graffbeater, she remains a one-hit wonder, but she showed a lot of potential in the short time she was out there. We’ll definitely be seeing a lot more of her.

Hold the phone…the second match has just been announced and we’re already 28 minutes in? Man, talk about some majorly unwelcome foreshadowing…

= 2nd match: Labreckfast Club vs. Team Tarzan =
__L: Digangi vs. Weinand - Another one that’s super-tight until it gets to the poles. Weinand falters near the end, and Digangi makes a decisive (brazen?) pass. Weinand ineffectually shakes a pole Digangi is on in an apparent attempt to shake him off; I’ve seen better hand-to-hand combat in the freaking NBA. It fails miserably, of course, and the writing is on the wall. Incredibly, Weinand nearly catches up on Spin Cycle, but falls on the landing, and that’s one mistake too many to overcome. Digangi/finish 1-0
__W: Labreck vs. Rose - An absolute laugher as Rose never makes it off the damn pendulum. The gap between the female haves and have-nots is still colossal. Labreck/finish 2-0
__A: Alexis Jr. vs. Melick - Alexis puts his long legs to good use, getting off to a fast start, and Melick is struggling to keep up. Alexis makes a big jump to the poles; Melick…takes a big fall into the water. He simply couldn’t hold on, and I continue to be awestruck at how he can continue to have the nickname “Tarzan” when he keeps screwing up tasks like this. Alexis Jr./distance 3-0
LABRECKFAST CLUB WINS

Sweet Georgia Brown, this is just sad now. Melick’s cavalcade of ineptitude continues, Weinand adds a third heartbreak to his record, and all the rookie gets to take away is an embarrassing moment that the YouTube snarks are no doubt going to run into the ground for the next five freaking years. They look like they’re simply not cut out for this event at all. I can’t even speculate on Labreckfast Club’s chances in the final; their opponents were just so overmatched it wasn’t funny.

And just like that, we’re at the final, and I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going to happen. For now, anyway.

Geez, Eyes, they pay you by the title drop or something? :mad:

= Final: Dark Horse vs. Labreckfast Club =
__L: Voiles vs. Digangi - They get off to a fast start, with Digangi taking the early lead, which Voiles takes right back with an impressive leap onto the poles. Voiles handles them better then skips through the tiles, and all of a sudden he’s a full obstacle ahead. Digangi is a bit cautious on both the tiles and baskets and remains far back. Voiles is up the wall…and he’s slowing down! Not coincidentally, Eyes brings up the issue of endurance for the first time. They’re both clean up Salmon Ladder, and Voiles maintains a slim lead. On to Rumbling Dice; Digangi has more left in the tank and catches up, but takes longer to dismount, and Voiles is still in front. But with just Zig Zag Climb left, he looks just about out of it; his hands are on his knees, and he looks like he can barely stand. Digangi dismounts and walks up to the start of his last task, then begins first, and Voiles now has to go, ready or not. They’re moving slowly but steadily, not a slip or stumble from either man. Voiles is slightly quicker…and he pulls ahead again! But the last ascent is just too much, and Digangi closes the gap yet again! They’re at the top…and…and…Voiles lunges for the wrong object! He was so utterly wasted at this point that he slaps a ground-level blue light instead of the buzzer! Digangi stays on his feet, taps the buzzer, and wins an absolutely epic leadoff battle. Match of the day, folks, and if this doesn’t end up on the YouTube channel, something is ROYALLY messed up! Digangi/finish 0-1
__W: McClure vs. Labreck - Clubhouse has the lead through Sonic Swing, but McClure gets a much better dismount on Tick Tock this time, so much so that she actually pulls in front! Both struggle through Pole Grasper; McClure actually looks like she has a better handle on this, but Clubhouse makes a nimble dismount and retakes the lead. And…uh oh. McClure isn’t so hot with balance obstacles; she lets Clubhouse go first and takes her time getting through, and the lead is getting big. Clubhouse has no trouble with the baskets or wall, takes a look back, and seems surprised by how big a lead she has. McClure lands hard off Spin Cycle and needs to rest before attempting the wall; after a strong start, her chances are now just about toast. Clubhouse methodically goes up the ladder and is on Rumbling Dice by the time McClure reaches the back third, not showing any sign of weakness or fatigue. Seven obstacles proves to be one too many for McClure, who quickly takes a dive off the ladder. Clubhouse had completed Rumbling Dice and was pondering Zig Zag Climb, but simply raises her hands in victory after seeing McClure’s fall. Hey, she beed daah waw, don’t be an ingrate! :slight_smile: Labreck/distance 0-2

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand guess what, my DVR is showing “0:57”, which means I already know for certain that Alexis is going to complete the sweep. So no sense even pretending. Eh…ehhh, I made it this far, I can take this one home…

__A: Pekus vs. Alexis Jr. - Alexis has a slight lead after two obstacles, and they both make a big jump to the poles. Alexis’ armspan serves him well as muscles his way across, and despite a slight slip near the end, he’s the first out. Pekus struggles badly and is behind by an indeterminate large amount by the time he’s out (Split…oh, screw it. Didn’t even bother to show Alexis on Spin Cycle, for chrissake.). Pekus makes an awkward landing off the baskets, landing nearly backwards, and the deficit just keeps growing. Now it’s on to the upper body duo. Alexis powers up the ladder, but appears to be slowing down, while Pekus still looks energetic. One left. Can Alexis, who’s been such a disappointment…oh, right, I already know he’s going to win. :stuck_out_tongue: Okay, rephrase: How is the big disappointment of TNW2 going to prevail? He stands up, he tugs at his shirt, he rubs his hands…and…he… does. No, seriously, he just plain executes, hitting the buzzer while Pekus is still two steps from the platform. Alexis Jr./finish 0-3
LABRECKFAST CLUB WINS

It took way too long, but the slightly-above-average-height-man finally, FINALLY wins when it matters. He did exactly what he had to, use his size advantage to open an early lead, then not choke when his opponent made a charge at the end and finish the job. A perfect example of “bend, don’t break” in action. I really gotta give credit to Clubhouse for seeing the potential in her big man (I sure as hell didn’t!) and keeping the faith. Sometimes loyalty really is rewarded.

Labreckfast Club scores the first perfect day of the competition and only the second overall since Lab Rats pulled off a golden sweep in TNW1. And you know what’s the scariest thing about them? They don’t have a big weapon, an obvious strength; they just have incredibly solid fundamentals. They don’t beat themselves, they don’t let their opponents back in it. I never thought I’d say this, but with both Storm Team and Jessie Graff out, I now honestly have to consider them a solid favorite.

Matchup of the day: Voiles/Digangi. This is the type of heat you use to promote the sport. This is the type of contest that shows up on highlight reels and best-of compilations for 50 years. The powers in charge couldn’t have scripted this any better. And of course it’s Voiles/Swanson that gets on the YouTube channel…so close and yet so far…and the Pekus/Alexis that gets the Mitsubishi Motors Drive of the Night. Ah, well, it’s not like I didn’t know that something was royally messed up about ANW for, like, several years now.
MVP: Everyone on the winning team was a factor, but I have to give this one to Labreck. That win over McClure put the fear into a lot of women tonight. She proved that the punishing task of nine obstacles was no problem for her whatsoever. If you save your energy and hope she falls at some point, she will beat you. If you can’t do the upper-body tasks quickly, she will beat you. If you don’t get up Warped Wall on the first crack, she will beat you. If you take too long to get ready for Salmon Ladder or Zig Zag Climb, she will beat you. She is going to be a tough, tough matchup for everyone she faces, and given how much impact the women’s contingent has now, that could very well be what propels her team to the championship.

Whew! Yeah, this is definitely going to be a Saturday thing! I was up to past 3:00 and I couldn’t finish it. Well, technically, that’s Saturday already, so, yeah. BTW, here’s the new YouTube link.

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USA VS. The World 4

Four teams. 2 heats each on stage 1 & 2. 3 points for a win, 2 points for second, one for third. Lowest scorer gets knocked out right there. Then they have two more heats stage 3, 2 points for a win and 1 for a second, and the lowest is knocked out again. And finally a head-to-head Stage 4 climb to decide the champion. Hmm…interesting. This looks like a classic “last man standing” format (no doubt a time-saving measure). Now if they keep the scores from round to…hah, yeah, right, this is reality TV, it’ll never happen.

‘Kay, let’s do this…

Stage 1: Snake Run, Propeller Bar, Double Dipper, Jumping Spider, Parkour Run, Warped Wall, Domino Pipes, Flying Squirrel
-1st heat-

  1. USA / Joe Moravsky - Warped Wall 0:44 [2nd]
  2. Europe / Ossur Eiriksfoss - Double Dipper 0:19 [3rd]
  3. Asia / Thuc Le - Propeller Bar 0:10 [4th]
  4. Latin America / Karl Fow - Finished, time not shown [1st]
    Latin America 3, USA 2, Europe 1, Asia 0

-2nd heat-

  1. Asia / Tomohiro Kawaguchi - Warped Wall 1:47 [4th]
  2. Latin America / Danee Marmolejo - Finished 2:53.16 [3rd]
  3. Europe / Sergio Verdasco - Finished 2:02.21 [2nd]
  4. USA / Drew Dreschel - Finished 1:48.44 [1st]
    **USA 5, Latin America 4, Europe 3, Asia 0 **

Stage 2: Giant Ring Swing, Criss Cross Salmon Ladder, Wave Runner, Swing Surfer, Wingnut Alley, Wall Flip
-1st heat-

  1. Europe / Alexander Mars - Criss Cross Salmon Ladder 0:38 [4th]
  2. USA / Sean Bryan - Swing Surfer 2:28.21 [1st]
  3. Asia / Yusuke Morimoto - Wave Runner 1:03 [2nd]
  4. Latin America / Marco Jubes - Wave Runner 1:23 [3rd]
    USA 8, Latin America 5, Europe 3, Asia 2 - USA guaranteed to advance

-2nd heat-

  1. Asia / Yosula Zalukhu - Criss Cross Salmon Ladder 1:52.40 [3rd]
  2. Latin America / Sebastian Prieto - Giant Ring Swing 1:13 [4th]
  3. USA / Najee Richardson - Finished 3:59.03 [2nd]
  4. Europe / Sean McColl - Finished 3:22.80 [1st]
    USA 10, Europe 6, Latin America 5, Asia 3
    ASIA ELIMINATED - AND IT’S A CLEEEEEEAN SLAAAAATE FOR STAGE 3. REALTIY TV, BAY-BEE!!! :rolleyes:

Stage 3: Floating Boards, Key Lock Hang, Nail Clipper, Ultimate Cliffhanger, Curved Body Prop, Peg Cloud, Time Bomb, Flying Bar
-1st heat-

  1. Latin America / Marco Jubes - No-result [3rd]
  2. USA / Drew Dreschel - Nail Clipper 1:58.44 [2nd]
  3. Europe / Sergio Verdasco - Nail Clipper 1:42? [1st]
    Europe 2, USA 1, Latin America 0

-2nd heat-

  1. Europe / Alexander Mars - Nail Clipper 1:53.60 [2nd]
  2. Latin America / Sebastian Prieto - Nail Clipper 2:16 [3rd]
  3. USA / Joe Moravsky - Nail Clipper - Nail Clipper 1:46 [1st]
    Europe 3, USA 3, Latin America 0
    LATIN AMERICA ELIMINATED.

(Boy, such a treat seeing athletes from around the world take on all these Stage 3 obstacles, huh? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:)

Stage 4: Sean McColl (25.93) def. Sean Bryan (26.79)
EUROPE WINS

All right, cool, don’t want anyone thinking this contest is rigged or anything. :rolleyes: I’m outta here…

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I thought this format was generally superior to previous ones:
-3 points for winning stage 3 heats compared to 1 and 2 in the past just made stage 3 dominantly important
-4 teams seems like the perfect number

My two major quibbles:
(1) please PLEASE let all the competitors get a few practice runs on all the stages. It’s a gargantuan advantage for the USA team to have competed on this precise course. (Or if they do in fact do so off camera, at least let us know)
(2) Stage 4 should only be a tiebreaker. It just reduces everything down to one skill, a skill that almost never comes up in actual ninja competition. I’d say if you end up with two teams, do a full-course relay race, where both teams start someone at beginning of stage 1, they both go, when they hit the buzzer on stage 1 that “tags” their teammate in to start stage 2, etc. Then some formula for falls. So if I’m racing against you on stage 1, and I fall with 3 obstacles remaining, you can then go as slow as you want, and you’re guaranteed a 15 second head start (3 times 5). Something along those lines.
(I think we’ve discussed it before, but I continue not to understand why you’re so dead set against wiping scores clean between rounds. That’s just how sports work. Once you get to the NBA playoffs, one team doesn’t start up 2 games in a best-of-seven series because they had a better regular season record…)