Stage 1, day 2! Hopefully with more of the good kind of drama!
0:01 Another replay of Danell Leyva’s un-freaking-believable save which, you’ll remember, still wasn’t enough to actually get him to the buzzer. I’m still not entirely sold on the idea of using spectacular moves which NBC will replay ad nauseum to garner publicity for their gym/business/commune/denomination/whatever in lieu of making one red cent in this contest (oh, BTW, confirmed numbers or there are no prizes for siffies), but whatever keeps them off the streets, I guess.
Quick rundown of the obstacles, then Sandy Zimmerman clears one lousy obstacle… Diving Boards this time…and gets a fist pump from Zuri Hall for her trouble. I never thought I’d say this, but this is even more pathetic than when Jake Murray did it.
And…wow, that is a big “2:30 TIME LIMIT” logo! And just to add insult to injury, Hall helpfully informs us that the contestants have…wait for it…only two minutes and thirty seconds! Can you say :rolleyes:, everyone? I mean, shoehorning in “only” in a feeble attempt to pretend that something far too massive, tall, or long really isn’t is bad enough, but she expects everyone to conveniently forget that half the field has already gone and only two freaking contestants timed out. Furthermore, one of them got hopelessly hung up at Warped Wall, which I don’t think should even count. Seriously, the clock is about as much of a threat in 2019 as Osama Bin Laden. I will note, however, that on the converse, Hall has proven to be remarkably adept in cramming an astounding amount of BS into a short amount of time, as I’m already pushing 300 words and still haven’t gotten past the second freaking minute. Regrettably, I can almost guarantee you that this is not the last time this will happen tonight.
Huh. Had no idea Nick Hanson and Grant McCartney were buds. Worlds apart, in more ways than one.
0:03 Caleb Bergstrom takes the course and does…something with sister Caitlyn. I think it’s their reach-the-upper-cupboard maneuver. In the profile, we learn that Caleb…has a baby face. Seriously, that’s what they’re going with. Ooh, better avoid Sem Garay, he’s going to mess you up! :rolleyes: Caitlyn meanwhile, is known for…her…hair. That’s right, a young woman having long, curly hair is considered noteworthy now. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: This country is beyond hopeless.
Caleb goes first, and in keeping with the depressing predictability of this show, does not hit the buzzer. A misstep at the end of Diving Boards seals his fate.
0:07 Profile of Nick Hanson. The big honkin’ deal with him is that he timed out on Stage 1 twice. Of course, that was when time mattered; now literally the only way it can happen is if the contestant gets horribly hung up somewhere (in all likelihood Warped Wall, and again, I consider that a plain ‘ol failure).
Eyes and Bodge are holding a container full of “akutaq”, a.k.a. “Eskimo ice cream”, which is made of… :eek: OH, COME ON!! Well, Eric Middleton introduced us to horrifying so-called food that war refugees would politely refuse, and David Wright taught us the joys of endless gorging oneself on empty calories, so I guess something that’s in the middle was the next logical step! :mad: Swear to Okina, the first contestant who puts the spotlight on tasty, wholesome vegetarian dishes has me as a fan for life.
As for the run itself, Hanson actually did pretty good up to Diving Boards. He still has 50 seconds left when he goes for it, and…oh. Remember that “horribly hung up” thing I mentioned? He nearly falls on the last board, barely manages to save it…and takes a while to get moving again. And then he sees the clock ticking, and despite not getting settled on the second spinner, he has to go for it…and it’s a long way down to the cold water. “So claings!” he moans, whatever that means.
Eyes and Bodge try one spoonful of akutaq and immediately decide that’s plenty enough, and it’s to Hanson’s credit that he never raises a stink about this. The way this show’s been going lately, I was half expecting him to forcibly cram the entire bowl down their throats.
0:13 Taylor Amann…<sigh> :). What’s not to love. Drop-dead gorgeous, cheerful, fantastic shape, terrific attitude. Got her inspiration from Jessie Graff and may very well be supplanting her soon. Run is nothing special (gets too far forward on the Jumping Spider trampoline and splashes), but there’s still good news, as she was able to parlay her ANW fame into fitness modelling gigs. Run with it, champ. Run it with until you can’t run any more. To hell with the naysayers. You’ll get infinitely more out of it than you ever will from ANW, that’s for sure. (Four more seasons, tops; no siffies or Stage 1 clears. You heard it here first.)
0:16 Casey Suchoki, ANW’s designated “See? Not everything about Alabama sucks!” entrant. (Oh look, wife! :smack:) Unimpressive run but still hits the buzzer with 4.34 left. I’ve never said “Stage 2 cannon fodder” before, but I’m thinking that I should start.
0:25 3WA: Garrett Lam (Spin Your Wheels), Caitlyn Bergstrom (Double Dipper), and Scott Behrends (Tire Run). Archer Steps remains scalpless. We really need to bring back Timbers.
0:26 Tiana “Tweb” Webberley. Y’know, upon further consideration, she looks more like something out of Tekken. Her mom’s about to get a kidney transplant, but that’s not quite the level of an Acceptable Story, so no weepy profile, just a front-row seat with the camera about three inches from her face, and it’s a testament to her remarkable restraint that she’s content to cheer at a reasonable volume. Out on Warped Wall, just the second so far.
0:29 Seth Rogers. Gee, it must really suck that you can only hype up “19-year-old” once, huh, Eyes? :rolleyes: Nicknamed “Big Red”, which is neither completely moronic (he’s a redhead) nor suffocatingly omnipresent, so I’ll let it go. Clears with 7.40 left.
0:37 3WA: Matt Dolce (Spin Your Wheels), Julius Ferguson (Jumping Spider), and Dustin Rocho (Twist And Fly). Much like Sasuke, the one trick ponies are never long for Stage 1.
0:39 Brian Burk. Another unremarkable run (couldn’t stick the landing at Double Dipper and fell back in), but I’d just like to state for the record that “Burkinator” is the lamest nickname I have ever heard ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, so effective immediately, he is “BB”. Y’know, how Neil Craver is “CC”.
0:41 Sean “Church” Bryan! 
Much like Suchoki is the non-repulsive Alabaman, Church is the non-infuriating Catholic. He’s been on a tear lately; let’s see if that…no. On Jumping Spider, after what looked like a perfectly good jump, he immediately takes his right hand off and shakes his arm. A few seconds later, he works his way off the obstacle. It’s a dislocated right shoulder, and just like that, his season is over.
0:47 We get to see an on-site doctor work on Church (guess NBC finally figured out that they can’t expect Noah Kaufman to keep bailing them out). He’s fine now, but that’s the only good news for him tonight. Damn, how are we having so many injuries nowadays?
0:48 Ooh, it’s Karsten Williams’ “best season ever”! No way is he going out on Stage 1 a sixth year in a row! And…he…makes it! How about that? Okay, we all know he’s going to get destroyed in Stage 2, which will be so crushing that it’ll probably end his ANW career right there (he’s 38, so that’d hardly be a tragedy), but there’s still some good news, i.e. Eyes and Bodge can stop this “curse” crap once and for all. Guys…an elite baseball team rolling snake eyes 85 straight years was a curse. This isn’t anywhere close. Williams was cursed in Stage 1 the same way Jeff Tarrango was cursed at Wimbledon.
0:58 3WA: Mady Howard (Double Dipper), Anthony DeFranco (timed out), and Dave Cavanagh (finished, time not given).
0:59 Drew Dreschel, always focused, always powerful, and now has to be considered a prohibitive favorite now that Church has bitten the dust. But never mind that…what’s really important is that he’s about to HAVE A BABY! Because no matter what you accomplish on the course, you’re not a real man until you’ve contributed to overpopulation! :mad: Actual quote: “Potty training? Yikes.” Yeah, he’s totally ready for this! :rolleyes: On to the course, and, oh dear, that was a bad leap to the second hoop on Tire Run, and he’s in the water. Luckily, thanks to his Safety Pass (as part of that stunning trifecta he pulled off), he gets to go again, and we should be in no way concerned that he blew his do-over in Stage 1 and will have extra mental baggage in Stage 2.
1:08 Highlight of Alyssa Beird’s Stage 1 triumph in ’17. One of the problems with the…Sasuke-ness of this contest is that with so few highlights to choose from, they have to show the same ladies’ triumphs over and over and over. Can you even imagine a highlight package that showcased only the Chicago Bulls’ first championship or Phil Mickelson’s first major?
And here she is, and what a crowd there is to support her! Sure hope there isn’t…aaaaand, there is. She gets to the moving wheel on Tire Run, shuffles forward, then, when the wheel stops, she shuffles backward, and continues moving backward until she’s in the water. The safest way to take this, assuming you can’t make a perfect dead-center landing and then one-time it to the second hoop, is to take a couple steps forward, hang on until the wheel reaches its farthest-back position, then climb up and make the jump to the hoop. Playing log-roll doesn’t make any sense; it just increases the chance of a blunder, which of course is exactly what happened. She’ll be second-guessing that one for a while.
1:11 Ben Udy, who goes by “Chad Flexington” in whatever wresting league he’s a part of (Seriously, does anyone have any idea?), or “Chaff”, as I call him because I still think four syllables is excessive. And he gets a yoo-ess-ay chant, and there isn’t anything that doesn’t make better! :rolleyes::mad::smack::mad::rolleyes::mad::mad::mad:. Out on Double Dipper, and I honest-to-god didn’t know that was a wig.
1:18 3WA: Verdale Benson (Double Dipper), Tyler Smith (finished, time not given), and Joe Moravsky (finished, time not given). Geez, they just blew over Moravsky? It’s not like he’s fallen off like Brent Steffensen.
1:20 (Sheesh, that was a long 3WA…) Jody Avila, the “Big Dog Ninja”. According to his profile, he used to be afraid of dogs, but he visited dogs in a kennel, and now he’s all about the dogs. Now even though he’s not a dog person, he doggedly dogs the dogs of dogs dogs and dogs dogs dogs dogs. (On a related note, here’s my second favorite Baha Men song! :D) Anyway, he gets overextended on the moving wheel and falls.
1:23 Ethan Swanson steps up, and the entire crowd starts doing that moronic arm flapping…
OKAY, TIME OUT: Folks, I’ve railed on about things like elevating Kevin Carbone to a god and cutting to a dozen instant replays in the middle of the run. But these are annoyances. Aggravating but ultimately harmless. This arm-flapping thing not only has the potential to utterly screw Swanson, it may be what very well drives him out of the event. See, NBC loves to foist “things” onto the contestants and some fans; it’s a common reality TV practice, it makes them easier to remember, and it’s just plain fun. But a lot of people don’t like being pigeonholed, and especially if said pigeonholing requires them to do a certain thing they might not want to do over and over, endlessly. Remember that cute boy who danced on the sidelines during his mother’s runs? And that became the whole purpose of his existence? Well, guess what, turns out he was just copying something he saw on TV, or practicing for a competition, or staying in shape, or trying to keep warm, or trying to impress his friends, or just goofing around like young boys are wont to, and he is not a prancing monkey who provides entertainment on demand anytime someone points a camera at him. He was tired of being The Sideline Dancer. Now, what happens when Swanson gets tired of being The Arm-Flapping Ninja? Because I tell you right now, corny body movements is the sort of thing that gets very old very fast, and the fact that it’s based on a corny pun will only accelerate the process. And that’s when he finds out there’s no way out. The arm-flapping, having been ingrained into his profile and every single one of his highlights, has become completely inescapable. It’s just like the tomahawk chop; it’s irritating as hell and everyone knows it, but it absolutely refuses to ever, ever, ever die. If he speaks up, even something as plain and humble as “Please, enough,” how massive will the backlash be? If he refuses to continue, will NBC drop him like a bad habit? Here’s hoping like hell.
Run, good, strong, finishes, better than Gil’s time, for whatever it’s worth, which is absolutely nothing, which means that Eyes has to pretend that it’s something. Whatever, I’m used to it.
1:30 3WA: Alex Blick (finished), Josh Salinas (finished), Hunter Guerard (finished), and Tyler Gillett (finished). Ah, the NBC Doesn’t Give A Crap About Them So You Shouldn’t Either Brigade, right on schedule. :rolleyes: (Yeah, I’d like Salinas to fire a unibeam at Eyes…)
1:32 Grant McCartney, who somehow has become this show’s whipping boy. I honestly don’t get it. Sure, the dancing is annoying, but that’s more a function of Bodge going “DANCE, YOUNG MAN, DANCE, DANCE, DANCE, DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNCE!!!” than anything McCartney did. For the love of Sanae, have you seen some of the crap we’ve had to put up with??? And now the buzz on YouTube is how he “barrrrellllerrrulllyyyyyeeeeyyiiieieieieieieiee” made it to Stage 1, thereby implying that 1. This matters one Marvin The Martin subatomic particle worth of a damn, and 2. siffies are not outrageously ridiculous crapshoots with completely bizarre, random results, which is the only reason he didn’t make it last year to freaking begin with. In any event, I’m going to be rooting pretty hard for him to clear the stage, mainly because it’ll make his siffies results completely irrelevant for all time. It’s just like that in legit sports; win one championship at the pro level and all your college failures become ancient history…just ask Shaquille O’Neal. (I would say “shut everyone up”, but that’s a lost cause…just look at Lebron James, where the goalposts are on roughly their 25th trip around the planet by now.)
Plus that local boy thing I mentioned earlier.
Okay…burns up a lot of time on Spin Your Wheels, but the clock means crap, so who cares…didn’t see no stinkin’ “karate kick”…still good…moving wheel, does exactly what I recommended earlier, stays alive (:))…still good…no trouble with Warped Wall…rock-solid across the boards…26 seconds left to finish…still good…
…and he hits the buzzer with 6.56 left! Welcome to the club, champ!
1:42 3WA: Jeff Harris (Double Dipper), Ben Wales (finished), and Michael Torres (finished). Harris came out in a garbage suit, perfectly encapsulating both the direction ANW is headed and his chances of getting past Stage 1.
1:43 The last female competitor remaining, Jessie Graff. She’s one of those eternally vexing stars who achieves greatness and just can never repeat it, and also gets repeatedly royally shafted by the system for no discernible reason. Kind of like the Seattle Seahawks. On top of that, she’s 35 and has a real job now, and I’m getting a pretty strong impression that she has better things to do with her life than cornball obstacle courses that pay zilch. Is it starting to sink in that she could’ve had a real career in a real sport, one where one teensy little mental error doesn’t wreck her whole year?
On to the course where…damn. Out on Double Dipper. Replay is no help in explaining how she missed the transition. In a nutshell, she was rusty and it showed. She had the look of someone who did not have anywhere near adequate time to practice. She tried to put a good face on it, but folks, we’ve seen the beginning of the end, and the end of the end could be coming up quickly.
1:47 Drew Dreschel’s do-over, and I agree with the guys on Primetimer, he’s had a lot of airtime tonight…so much that it’s suspicious. He finishes this time, of course…he’s not going to flub Stage 1 twice in a row…but I have the sinking feeling that all this overcompensation means that he’s not long for Stage 2.
1:55 Mathis “Cougar” Owhadi! Nope, still don’t give a damn about who gets the top time on Stage 1, nor understand why anyone else should!
1:59 Hold the phone…“THIS YEAR THE WINNER WILL TAKE HOME $1,000,000”. Note that it didn’t say anything about “Mount Midoriyama” or “The 6th Buzzer” or “Total Victory”. Does this means that…the lance is now worth a million? That…damn, that would be a huge development. If it’s true, of course. Never know with NBC.
Whew, that went on longer than I expected. Oh, hey, if there’s anything I said that you need clarifying, just ask. And yes, you can get up all at once. 
Ellis Dee - I don’t truck in vague rumors with zero evidence. Pics or it didn’t happen. As for Caldiero, the most likely scenario is that he took flack for “not really being the first American Ninja Warrior” and, in the heat of the moment, shot back. I probably would’ve done the same. It never led to anything, so I’m past the point of caring.
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