Yeah, I’ve noticed that as well. But, eh, whatever. The ones that are good, are still good, and the ones that fall, still fall. And to a certain extent it’s nice, in that if there was someone I particularly enjoyed seeing in a qualifier, I’m more likely to remember them in the city finals or at Mt. Midoriyama if they are “the ninja rabbi” as opposed to “fred smith”.
Quite a bit to unpack about “qualifying”, and I’m not presently in the state of mind to do it (it’s been a pretty rough stretch at work). For now, just a few comments on the last episode.
I had some concerns about Wall Drop, but it turned out to be not especially brutal, just…weird. It almost looked like two ideas the producers decided to squeeze together for some reason. I didn’t like the way Rolling Thunder was set up. Yes, this contest was designed to be merciless and it really needs a harsh test, but prelims is not the time for that. IMO if it were two thirds as long and didn’t have those blocked segments, it would’ve been a fair challenge. If it turns out to be too easy, then crank it up a notch for Cityfinals. They’ve done this before, and it’s always better to err on the side of caution.
Ideally, every obstacle should matter to some extent. My big problem with That One Obstacle (and that holds just as true for Cityfinals) is that it really shrinks the course. All of a sudden it’s not how far they can go, it’s about how fast they can get to a certain point.
Re. Michelle Warnky…eh. She did about as well as could be expected. It’s become abundantly clear that while she’s one of the best women, her chances of making it to Stage 1 without a wildcard are microscopic, nor is she going to do much once she gets there. This makes her strictly a First Round Happy Smiley Story competitor, and given what she’s capable of, it’s hard to imagine she’ll be happy with that. I wouldn’t be surprised if she quits competition and becomes a trainer full time within three years. (BTW, what’s with that tongue thing she does all the time? News flash: you are not in the same galaxy as Michael Jordan. 
)
Call me cynical, but after what guys like John Stewart have accomplished, I refuse to scream and jump and do cartwheels over John Loobey not falling flat on his face. In fact, I’m getting more than a little tired of NBC expecting me to make a huge ginormous deal out of achievements we’ve already seen many, many times. Yes, a man with a prosthesis can make it about halfway through. Yes, a 55-year-old can get up the wall. Yes, someone who tore up his ACL two years ago can recover and come back as strong as ever. We’ve seen it. We know it’s doable. Stop acting like it’s the Second Coming every damn time, all right?
tenacious j - I don’t really mind the self-aggrandizement. It’s a bit much, granted, but as long as it ain’t my time or money, whatever. What I do have a problem with is cutting to the peanut gallery AFTER EVERY GODDAM OBSTACLE, as if we’ll forget they exist if we don’t see them every 15 seconds. This, to me, just further illustrates why NBC needs a pregame show, so they can fulfill their quotas of good down home fluffy syrupy treacly story hype, so when the competition begins they can focus on the freaking competition.
The announcers have always been that annoying.
All right, time for some cold, hard numbers. (This is the only year I’ll do this, promise.)
Of all the competitors shown, 85 had the full run shown. That works out a shade over 7 minutes per complete run, pretty slow especially considering all the jump cuts (and there were a lot). 84 were given a 3WA snippet, and 4 were picked up in the middle of the run, apparently as part of a truly bizarre compromise. All were strange choices, BTW: One was a no-name who went out on the 4th obstacle (Clifton Graves), one was one of NBC’s biggest sentimental favorites (Jon Stewart), one had the best freaking time of the night (Thomas Stillings), and one was one of the “historical Philadelphia four” (Alyssa Beird). Los Angeles had the fewest complete runs with 14, while Atlanta had the most with 20. Looking back, this was probably an editing decision more than anything. Atlanta was a faster course overall, but not enormously; it’s because NBC insisted on showing the time-consuming inspirational and feel-good and powerful etc. cases, the ones you’d expect to take a while with I-Beam Cross, that they had to limit their coverage.
Of the 150 who qualified, 41 runs were shown, 33 were 3WA’d, 3 were shown in part, and 73…that’s right, seventy three of one hundred fifty…weren’t shown or talked about at all. If you include the 3WA’s and partials, that works out to a whopping 72.67% of qualifiers…the ones who matter, the ones we’re going to see in the near future (maybe)…who didn’t get their due. Indianapolis had it the worst, with 16 no-shows and 8 3WA’s, while Philadelphia was the…least egregious: 13 no-shows, 3 3WA’s, and 1 partial. In this case it was probably a time issue more than anything. Indy had Spinning Log, Fly Wheels, and Swinging Spikes, all time-consuming, as well as Disk Runner, easily the second trickiest balance task ever after Snake Crossing. Philly only had one lengthy obstacle, Rolling Thunder, which most of them failed anyway.
So…what does this all mean? Well, if you ask me, it drives home the point more than ever that having the aces and big favorites run side-by-side with the likes of Allison Topperwein benefits no one. There are just too many stories and not enough time. Of course, this being the wild 'n wacky prelims, it was always inevitable that some would be left in the cold, but 72.67% is not “some”, it’s a damn mass purge.
That said, one of the bitter truths about reality TV is that there are certain things that never, never, EVER change. I’ve mentioned anuddah-wun-bite-da-dus before, right? Eliminate one at a time, every episode, never more, never zero. Hell, it’s so deeply ingrained that Bear Grylls shoehorned it into a show THAT DIDN’T EVEN HAVE SCHEDULED ELIMINATIONS! And of course, what differentiates this from a real last man standing format is that everything is reset to zero at the start of the next episode and nothing ever carries over. In a golf shootout, if you have the second worst cumulative result at the end of the round, you are in serious trouble. American Idol? Not a scratch. For crying out loud, look how long it took them to institute the damn judges’ save, which the third season should’ve…
…um, what was I talking about? Oh yeah…sorry, still a bit raw over this. An-y-way: I’m almost certain that ANW is never going to have any kind of bye system, even though it’s become plainly obvious that NBC cares as little for the likes of Brian Arnold and David Campbell as they do for the little boys’ course. So you know what should happen? There should be a lesser event for the not-so-great athletes. Then NBC can have all the feel-good stories and amazing efforts they want, and the true ninjas can get the respect they deserve in the original contest. (One of the nice things about it is that they can bring back obstacles that have become too easy for the normal contest.) Heck, I’ve railed for ages that this thing has gotten way too big to be confined to one dinky tournament a year. Things like Team Ninja Warrior and skills challenges area good start, but now, I feel, is the time to become truly grand. So give the women and the weekend warriors and the amputees their own event, relax the rules enough that they can really fight and struggle for total victory, and if they do triumph, then welcome into the big leagues with open arms. Hey, So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation seems to be doing fine, why wouldn’t this?
Seriously, unless NBC implements something like that, I am so totally done with first round qualifying. It’s became so much of a patchwork mishmash that I honestly can’t see any point to watching. The bulk of the competitors who have a prayer in second round qualifying won’t show up at all, a woman or senior citizen making it through is been-there-done-that territory, and if I ever hear Iseman or Gbajabiamila crow about how someone is baaaaaaaaaack after achieving the equivalent of winning the Makushita yusho, it’ll be too soon.
Please make it through, Graff. Please make it through, Graff. Please make it through, Graff.
And that’s about it. See you all in two days!
DKW: I appreciate your passion about one of my favorite shows. That said, I think the issue is that ANW is not a sport. It is not a league. It is not a tournament. It is a TV show.
The people who make the show, who decide what ends up on screen, are not stupid. They almost certainly have market research and focus groups and whatnot which tell them what ratio of competition to sob stories is ideal.
Of course, in the age of the internet, there are solutions available that would have made no sense in the past. For instance, they could release a full raw recording of all runs on youtube, or something like that. But I very much doubt that the clearly successful format of the show itself is going to change.
The first guy was an amputee in the thigh, above the knee. He took off his prosthesis. That’s definitely harder, even if he kept it on.
Artis Thompson III has a lower leg amputation, below the knee. He retains a lot more flexibility and normalcy of motion. Yeah, he doesn’t have an ankle joint and less sense awareness from that side, but I think he still has a chance at the jumping spider, especially if he does training to practice how to land.
More to the point, it’s an exhibition. In other words, it’s based on a sport-like activity but is not itself a sport. Similar to the NFL preseason or soccer friendlies.
There are a couple giant blinking neon clues that ANW is not an actual sport:
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There is prize money to the winner, and ONLY the winner. This is not how sports work. Ignoring team sports, individual sports award prize money for tournament play, and generally speaking, most participants (or all participants) win money.
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There is no guaranteed winner. Is there any actual sport on the face of the earth where there is not a guaranteed winner?
Based on the way Graff utterly demolished the warped wall tonight, she needs no further training and I stand very corrected. The shorter run-up to the wall should be irrelevant for her, and I don’t even think time would be much of an issue. Graff could definitely complete stage 1, and possibly even stage 2 if those wall dead-lifts at the end of stage 2 aren’t too heavy for her.
Well, if there objective was to make the courses harder now that someone has beaten Mt. Midoriyama, they’re off to a good start.
The wedge was really interesting. When we first saw it, I thought “wow that looks brutal”. Then first guy got to it, grabbed the stick, casually hopped along and flubbed the dismount, and I thought “oh, wow, that’s actually really easy”. I had been envisioning that the hard part would be keeping the stick level (although a few people did fail it that way, like Kevin Bull). But in fact, the hard part was swinging and dismounting, for reasons that I admit I still don’t quite really grok.
But it was hard enough to take out a ton of top athletes, including my man Flip Rodriguez (and kudos to him for talking openly about being a survivor of sexual abuse) and the entirely overexposed Grant McCartney.
The two who beat the wedge are the real deal. Jessie Graff establishes herself as the unquestioned top female competitor of all time. Yes, Kacy beat a city finals course, but it was far easier. Ending in second place on the leaderboard is a way more impressive achievement. But I don’t think Jessie had it in her to finish the course. She was gassed, and even if she’d somehow made it to the invisible ladder, she didn’t have a prayer on it. But, I do think she can beat stage one in Vegas.
Drew Levin vaults into the rank of absolute top competitors. I will be disappointed if he doesn’t make it to stage 3. And of course the absolute cream of the ninja crop recently have almost all been rock climbers…
I agree Jessie Graff is the absolute real deal and the top female contender. Finishing 2nd on the leaderboard says a lot. I think she can hypothetically beat stage 2. I don’t think she can beat stage 3 this year, but maybe next year. She needs more grip strength in my view. Time to hit the rock wall Jessie! She is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, competitors. She embodies what is great about Ninja Warrior.
The Wedge was crazy hard. It seems that the designers may have put the dismount area about 1 foot too far as I think they probably intended the hard part to be keeping the bar level and not the dismount. It will be interesting to see if it returns next season.
Also, yes, kudos to Flip for taking about his past. Good for him!
Speaking of the wedge, I think the difficulty of the dismount was due to the bar rolling as you swing, basically making grip somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible.
I’m surprised nobody else tried Graff’s simple solution to that issue: reversing grip on one of your hands. That technique has a name, at least when it’s used for the salmon ladder, but I don’t remember it offhand.
The stats ended up being something like 1-10 when using standard grip, 1-0 when using reverse grip.
To recap: I never claimed for a second that ANW wasn’t a legitimate sport. Heck, I wouldn’t call Sasuke a legitimate sport, and it’s a helluva lot closer to it than ANW. I’m saying that it could be handled better, run better, bigger, wider, grander. I feel much the same way about Dancing With The Stars, and its bogusness was blindingly obvious from almost day one.
Oh, and it’s Tiana Webberley. Why do I keep saying Jennifer Tavernier.
Before I get into the first Cityfinal, just for fun I’d like to recap all the stories NBC foisted upon us. As I’ve mentioned before, this is an awkward time for them, being after first quallies and before the wildcards, meaning they have absolutely no say in who’s competing. This, as you might imagine, leads to some prety-ty big reaches, and tonight was no exception. In order:
Ben Antoine - He has a day job! And wears Clark Kent glasses, whatever the hell that means! Boy, he’s not like Isaac Caldiero at all!
Alan Connealy - He’s “funny” in his submission videos! And he waxed his chest! Which is kinda ironic since in ANW you want to avoid swimming! I’m pretty sure that was supposed to be funny!
Scott Wilson - He teaches chess! Which is a lot like ANW because…um…uhhhh…it has words that get repeated over and over.
Natalie Duran - 1. A YouTube sensation 2. really disappointed she didn’t beeh daah waww 3. and trained in Europe for a bit. All of which adds up to…something, dammit.
Adam Rayl - He has a day job! And ate lots of peebeeanjay while waiting in the walk-on line! Maybe if he also had Pom Wonderful it would’ve been a more balanced diet?
Brian Kretch - Owww! (Oh, side note, was I the only one a little disturbed by Akbar Gbajabiamila’s really tasteless comment about him possibly getting injured again? This isn’t the first time, either.)
Chris Workman - His family moved to Las Vegas, so he wants to do well enough to make it to Vegas. So his family can watch him. Um…yay?
Grant McCartney - He opened a skate park in India! (Okay, I admit that’s pretty cool, but did we really need a whole profile segment just for that?)
Jessie Graff - Glad she’s getting her due (and man, those are some killer abs!), but they still haven’t done the story I really want to hear…the injury that kept her out of 2014 and allowed Kacy Catanzaro to be the first woman to complete a Cityfinals, and her long struggle to overtake her. C’mon, a legitimate rivalry between two of the stars of the show, how could anyone miss that?
Gabe Hurtado - “Because my family lost everything in a fire, I’ve decided to enter a competition where I’ll have next to no chance of making a damn cent!”
David “Flip” Rodriguez - Ugh…definite mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, it takes real guts to bare one’s soul about such a horrifying past. On the other hand…there’s next to no chance that there will ever be any justice, which is more than a bit disheartening. And of course, count on the usual conspiracy nut BS about how he’s just making it up and he’s a drama queen blah blah blah etc. This is one of those heavy subjects that I really feel would be better handled in a special episode; I don’t like thinking about the depths the dregs of humanity can sink to when I’m watching what’s supposed to be an exciting contest. (Also, what does this have to do with masks?)
Josh Levin - This is where NBC hit the jackpot. A legit star, a very powerful athlete, possibly an outright favorite…and he has a sick mentor to jerk those tears. The fact that he finished the course meant that they could cram even more gratuitous cutaways than they normally would have.
Kevin Bull - “Damn you, Invisible Ladder! Damn you to Hell!”
Not exactly the Olympics, is it? I did get a sense that one of the motivations for leaving so many competitors in the cold during first quallies was that they were saving their stories for this round, but even then there were always going to be slim pickings.
As for the actual Cityfinal. I was actually a little surprised in how it turned out. I thought that tweaking Tick Tock, Escalator, and Ring Jump would cause problems, but only 5 went out that early. I knew The Wedge would be tricky, but I didn’t expect it to become the be-all end-all course killer that Cannonball Alley was. To reiterate, I do not like this. The entire course should matter to some extent; putting in one killer task changes the paradigm from “finish” to “get as fast as you can to a certain point”. This does not generally lead to an exciting contest. The worst part is that we don’t get to see just how brutal the later tasks really are. Helix Hang had the potential to be a harsh, merciless test, and now we’ll never know. And hey, do you really want almost no one to reach Invisible Ladder and deny the chance for Iseman and Gbajabiamila to scream their heads off for ten minutes?
As for why the Wedge was so painful, I think it was one of those obstacles that just wasn’t tested enough. The instability of the bar or the length to the landing platform weren’t especially murderous, but put them together and you have an absolute monster. The crew have erred on the side of too safe a few times (I remember that one Denver qually where something like 38 competitors finished the course), and now it looks like the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Will be interesting to see if this happens in other Cityfinals. I hope not.
And because I need some positive note…man, did Jessie Graff kick butt or what? 
Please not that her time through Salmon Ladder was well behind Ben Melick (4:44.16), meaning she had to clear an obstacle that TEN MEN before her had failed miserably on. And. She. Did. One of the most clutch performances I have ever seen from anyone on this show, male or female. It’s a damn shame that the difficulty of Cityfinals ramped up so much just as she was coming back from injury, and there’s no realistic chance of her ever hitting a buzzer, but being able to rock a city and an event like this has to be the next best thing. Now all she has to do is get farther than Meagan Martin in Stage 1 and she will definitely be the #1 woman in ANW!
If I remember correctly, Martin got as far as the warped wall. The thing is, Martin seems to run stage 1 with the sole intent of getting as far as she can, as opposed to actually moving on to stage 2. When she got to the wall she was already almost out of time.
Both Martin and Graff have gotten to the warped wall on stage 1. I think Martin has done it two years in a row, Graff has done it only once. Neither has gotten past it.
I predict Jessie gets by it this year. I really believe it. She’s seems to be on the right track of continual improvement.
I’ll certainly be cheering for her!
Go Jessie!!!
Finally a Travis Rosen sighting, woohoo!
Hoo boy, if last weeks stories were a thin gruel, tonight’s offerings were a handful of breadcrumbs.
Joseph Greene II - His nephew was in foster care. Aaaaand…that’s about it.
Brent Ruffin - Bow hunting! Driving through mud! Throwing a wheel! Yeeee-haw!
Chad Hohn - He was cut last year! Blood! AIIIEEEEEE!
Tyler Martin - His mom died, so he took up parkour. Uh-huh.
Lucas Gomes - Brah-zee-brohz! Brah-zee-brohz! Brah-zee-brohz! Brah-zee-brohz! Ree-lee ah-noi-eeng! Ree-lee ah-noi-eeng!
Casey Suchoki - Waited three weeks in the walk-on line for his grandpa to show up. Or something.
Travis Rosen - I’ll just quote his wife here. “Having three kids definitely helps Travis in knowing how to overcome different obstacle. As a parent, you never know what’s gonna come around the corner.” Okay, then!
Brett Sims - He’s a newlywed! And his wife competes too, meaning that NBC is finally free from hyping up Brent Steffensen and Kacy Katanzaro! (I looked it up…Grace Jones was in Team Ninja Warrior, where her greatest achievement was not flubbing as quickly as Cassandra Dortch.)
Caleb Watson - Dairy farming is so supposed to be a ginormous detriment to getting a fast time in quallies!
James “The Beast” McGrath - New hairstyle! Hey, that was a big deal for Andre Agassi, wasn’t it?
Drew Dreschel - He owns a gym, so if he stinks up the joint, he doesn’t eat! Presumably. Maybe. Because students apparently do have the memories of goldfish. Hey, work with it, all right?
Not a lot to say besides. Flying Monkey Peg was a challenge, but not the be-all end-all The Wedge was, which was comforting. A little surprised there were four finishers in an era where we’ve come very close to having none more than a few times. It looks like Atlanta was simply blessed with stars this year. Joseph Greene II went out at Warped Wall, making this the first time in forever that someone failed the Wall in both rounds of qualifying (Rodolfo Burgos failed in the first). And Caleb Watson should serve as a harsh warning against grossly overhyping the utterly meaningless prelims results.
Does anyone have anything on Yuri Force? He wasn’t shown at all last time or this, and he was 11th in Cityfinals. Any reason for leaving him completely in the cold like this?
I thought this was a fairly uninteresting episode. Three of the four finishers were the three by-far best known ninjas. None of the inspirational stories were all that inspirational.
I do like how hard the city finals courses all seem. Finishing them is more of an achievement these days than finishing stage 1 at Mt. Midoriyama, it seems. The two new obstacles were both at least somewhat exciting and fun to watch.
I watched last night and I have some questions. First, when was this filmed? It’s July in Atlanta and they had people wearing heavy coats. Trust me, with highs in the mid-90’s, no one’s wearing a coat.
How long can they stop between obstacles? It seems that it would be good to let your arms regain some strength, since it seems all upper-body. I know it’s timed, but it’s better to go farther than faster.
Is there a monetary prize?
StG
Unfortunately, NBC is incredibly tight-lipped when it comes to…well, anything.
I can tell you that all the recording is done in advance, and this “while we were away” business is utterly bogus. There isn’t time during a commercial break for two or three runs, and it gets especially ridiculous when you consider that some go the 6th or 7th obstacle. It’s like the tryouts of a show like America’s Got Talent, The Voice, or So You Think You Can Dance. There isn’t time to show everyone, so they’re going to show who they think are important. The difference is that in ANW the “tryouts” go all the way up to flippin’ Stage 1. It’s literally the last show of the season that you get to see everyone.
So all this was shot some time ago. How long, who the hell knows. Do they have to sign Survivor-esque contracts? Possibly.
Presumably they’re allowed to take as much time as they want to get started in the qualifying rounds. I’ve seen some very long finishing times. The only place I could see excessive stalling being an issue is Stage 3, which is untimed, and at least one source said that they have a limited time to get going on any one task. How limited? Who knows.
The winner gets 1 million dollars. Note that even if more than one contestant clears Stage 4, there is only one winner (which resulted in no small amount of headaches last season). Someone here said there’s a prize for the fastest time in qualifying and for being awarded the “Pom Wonderful Run of the Night”. How much? I have no idea.
It’s reality TV. If we knew too much, it wouldn’t be as compelling, now, would it?