All right, this show is just plain wearing me out now; not in the mood for a lot of unpacking anymore. Just responses:
Ellis - Yes, Rolling Thunder was definitely easier. It had to be, because someone had to make it to the back half. What you saw were two talking heads who were given a company line and told to hold to it no matter what. Everything has to get constantly harder, harder, harder, so that’s what Iseman and Gbajabiamia tell us happened to Rolling Thunder.
Frankly, I find this troubling. Not only because nothing good ever happens with reality TV starts creating its own reality, but because it points to a certain obligation to actually make things harder, harder, harder, and then it might reach the point where nobody has any chance of winning this.
Remember, the competitors on Saskue are amateurs. They have day jobs. They have obligations other than some exhibition obstacle course and don’t have the means to build their own courses (assuming they could even find the space) or train full time. Because of this, the bar doesn’t have to be so high. Remember the first one, where Stage 3 had only three obstacles and four competitors made it to Stage 4? They could do that. ANW, you have rock climbers and former gymnasts and weightlifters, and some of them are full time trainers, for which “ninja” is the job. So the bar has to be a lot higher, and, as I’ve mentioned before regarding video games, it’s really, really difficult to make something that’s very hard but not impossible. It’s a fine line, and if we keep seeing breakouts like Jesse Labreck, and Michael Torres, I can easily see NBC shooting right over it.
joe - The most sensible solution (and therefore one which will never, ever be implemented) is to impose a time limit on Cityfinals. As it is, competitors are (as far as anyone can tell) strongly encouraged to get a move on, but there’s no way to actually force their hands. Kind of like Joe McCarthy in the early UFCs: he could yell “C’mon, work!” all day, but if the fighters didn’t cooperate, he was simply out of luck.
As for Moravsky, I think he was just being respectful to the competitors who had yet to go on. And it’s not like he needed to finish, anyway.
Max - All right, let’s get one thing straight. I grew up overweight, absolutely terrible at sports, not particularly attractive, fond of books, not finding the humor in offensive jokes, not from a privileged bloodline (my father arrived in Hawaii with a single-digit English vocabulary and the clothes on his back), not able to come up with blistering witty retorts in an instant, and sadly ignorant of the hillion jillion bazillion quillion unwritten requirements for gaining any level of respect. If I ever harbored one tiny soupcon of dickishness, I would not have survived to adulthood. For a child of my station, keeping my nose clean and being polite and respectful didn’t get me a shiny motor scooter or an Eagle Scout badge, it was the bare minimum to have a home, have food to eat, and be able to walk down the street without getting beaten to a pulp.
And I don’t care if NBC gets preachy. I can fast forward past that junk. What I don’t like is having THAT FACE shoved in my face…constantly, continuously, endlessly…when the spotlight should be on someone else. Note that I didn’t say that she didn’t have the right to have a face, or that she’s somehow inferior, or that I hate her as a person, or that she should be discriminated against. No, of course not, never. Discrimination was utterly vile when it was against me, and I’m not going to start finding it peachy-keen when it’s against poor black men, homosexuals, transsexuals, Muslims, or anyone. They have every right to exist. But they do not have to exist on my TV, when I’m trying to watch someone else. Imagine if, when Simone Biles was doing one of her gold medal routines, the camera cut to her mother every six seconds. Imagine if during the NFC Championship, the camera cut to the third-string quarterback on the bench in the middle of every play. That’s what I felt I was going through.
Which would be barely tolerable if I had some assurance that this was a one-time and LaBreck would be front and center for Stage 1. But you know NBC. They can never leave well enough alone. Heck, how many times did they replay the competitor who blew out his knee on Halfpipe Attack? Two years after the fact, they kept replaying it.
I stand by my words. I don’t care how “bad job” anyone thinks it is. (Good lord, if that’s your benchmark, some of my peers have already done enough “bad job” for twenty lifetimes.
Oh, and I don’t hate stories. I hate boring stories. I hate pointless stories. I (really) hate trite stories. So much untapped potential. How good is Warnky really? How do you keep going with no income? What do your conventional-sports jocks think of what you’re doing? How much would finishing really mean to you? For that matter, why limit it to the competitors? What to the crew have to say, about the obstacles, about how much harder it’s gotten, about injuries, about hoping everything goes off without a hitch? Or, I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, but how about some candid, no-BS, off-the-cuff commentary from Iseman and Gbajabiamila? Get them away from the crowd and pull the swords from their backs and let them get brutal. Any of this would be way more compelling than some guy waiting for his grandpa to show up.
