Reality TV season finale thread

Cafe Society
21

The Challenge: USA season 2 finale - CBS, 1 hour, 10/19/23

It happened! :man_shrugging:

I dunno…I’ve seen CBS’ other offerings, as well as the original MTV version of this show (which I’ll never watch again because my cable package is a lot more limited now, plus I hate it), and this seems to be the one property that just cannot stick the landing. Either it’s a chancy, confusing morass, a chancy dreary slog, or a chancy…chancefest. The four players on the bottom all were doomed by one inopportune blunder, complete anathema for a contest where contestants are supposed to be able to come back from setbacks. Besides that, there really wasn’t anything to the final other than remembering the order of the eliminations (which any finallist with any sense gets down cold before even hitting the course). Contrast that to the first season where the winner had to do tricky puzzles in rain and freezing cold. This one, even with a tough climb, wasn’t in the same echelon. Chris and Desi were nice feel-good winners (and yes, it’s awesome that Desi got to triumph on her own after the terrible injustice of getting chained to an anvil in the inaugural season), but there were so many dumb twists and reversals and breaks that I can’t be in any way assured that they were the best. Especially with that hopper, of which I’ll only say that any and all comparisons to the NBA lottery are totally valid.

If you’re a fan of any of the shows these contestants came from, you’ll enjoy this. Me, there simply isn’t anything that’ll keep me going for another season. I don’t like tedious drama, I don’t like machinations that get undone by some ridiculous out-of-nowhere twist, I don’t like getting the right contest at the right time playing such a factor, I don’t like that stupid hopper, I never like the soulless anudda-wun-bi-da-dus machine, and I really don’t like contestants being forced to eat hideous crap. And I’m not interested in seeing Bananas’ slow, painful decline. Ray Billings was hard enough, thank you.

(Man, why can’t Come Dance With Me have another shot? That one has potential.)

22

All right…Buddy Games. As you can tell by when this is coming out, it took me a while to decide whether I even wanted to recap this, and you’ll soon see why.

It started with 6 teams of 4 members each, but apparently that was too vast a number to keep track of in the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing else to do but play this contest, so every episode someone…on a show built around tight-knit friendships, mind you…would have to get bounced :-1:, thereby badly weakening the team and making it far more likely that it would lose a second “Loser’s Last Stand” :-1:, which knocked the whole team out of the competition :-1:. Plus there were “Curve Balls” whereupon one team would earn the “privilege” of handicapping another team in the Buddy Game, thereby giving it the ENORMOUS ADVANTAGE of cheesing off the other teams and painting a gigantic target on its back :-1:. This, of course, also implemented an “alliance” mechanic, apparently because every CBS reality show is now required to rip off some aspect of Survivor :-1:. Outside of competition, the competitors that haven’t yet been sent packing do stuff that I don’t remember being very salacious. Or exciting. Or interesting.

The three teams in the final day:
Team OK (Oklahoma) - Won the first Curve Ball and helped take out a Philly Forever member; lost a member on day 2 but haven’t been threatened since been threatened. Strong overall.
Chicago’s Finest (Cops) - The unkillable team; have been in four Loser’s Last Stands and won them all. The most powerful and complete team physically but prone to mental errors.
Team Pride (Gay/Trans) - Did very nicely to win the second Curve Ball; afterward mostly got by on scheming and sneakiness and piggybacked Chicago’s Finest into the final. Not expected to win.

And the three teams NOT in the final day:
Pageant Queens (pageants) - Ran into some internal friction by day 3 and never recovered; bounced on two consecutive Loser’s Last Stand drubbings.
Derby Squad (roller derby) - Notable for being the team that took its clothes off twice on CBS, thereby revealing less than if they stopped at their underwear, goddammit. :roll_eyes: Never a factor; crashed and burned in dismal fashion when one member was too terrified to jump into water.
Philly Forever (Philadelphia) - Very nearly got sent packing on the second day; managed to hang by their fingernails for a while but just ran out of gas at the end.

[deep breath] And we’re off.

Buddy Games season finale - CBS, 1 hour, 11/9/23

0 Intro, clips, recap. The grand prize is $200,000, but don’t worry if you missed this very basic fact either here or any of the dozens of times it was mentioned earlier; there will be vastly more than adequate reminders over the course of the next 59 minutes :-1:.

2 When we last left off, host Josh Duhamel (The best thing that can be said about him is that he’s so generic and lifeless that he can’t make the effort to be irritating.) was taking the whatever-something champions of the three teams to a mysterious place. Lots of idle speculation from said champions as to what the heck’s going on. They end up blindfolded in a dank underground bunker. This is the final Curve Ball, but since this is the finale, instead of giving a handicap privilege, the winner goes directly to the final, while the losers compete to see which will be the last team to get a giant boot up their rear ends, which CBS decided was a thing that need to happen on the final goddam day :-1:.

3 Pride and OK’s champions react negatively to being in a dank underground bunker.

4 Chicago’s Finest’s champion compares this to a police…search…oh, crap. See, what we have here is the Lucky Contest, where the required task PURELY BY CHANCE happens to jive with what one particular contestant is really good at or does on a regular basis, turning what was supposed to be a close contest into an absolute runaway, which of course is exactly what happens here :-1:.

Oh, and back at the ranch, the other team members give Ford Prefect a serious workout. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

13 Moving on to the next thing that’s not just repeating stuff I’ve already heard a dozen times already…the contestants are terrified of Duhamel for some weird reason. :expressionless:

15 A royally dumb puppet act with an inflatable giraffe which is apparently supposed to compensate for the lack of human interaction caused by jettisoning over half the freaking contestants. :angry:

21 The last Loser’s Last Stand, which involves one part with heavy weights and tall obstacles and a second part with a block puzzle which everyone horribly struggles with and renders the first part completely meaningless. :man_facepalming: Team Pride ends up hopelessly lost in the fog, allowing Team OK to squeak out the most insanely boring contest of the entire fricking season. :-1:

33 Geez, anytime someone actually says “The other goal was to win,” you know it’s bad.

34 Clips of Team Pride. Not a lot to work with.

36 Usually after the Loser’s Last Stand there’s tense politicking, but not this time, because there’s just the one final contest, plus everyone’s freaking gone and there’s nobody to cut a deal with. :angry:

38 All right, here’s how the final plays out: 1. Little ride in a wagon; basic kickoff stuff that’s not going to affect anything. 2. Pull one member in the wagon down the road, pick up puzzle pieces, and navigate hay bales. 3. Take the pieces to the beach and assemble them into a shack “fort”. :roll_eyes: 4. Ride a kayak to the tower. 5. Climb the tower and retrieve the victory beer bucket. With a 4-3 advantage and a lot more muscle, this looks like Chicago’s Finest’s to lose. At this point I’m just hoping for a tight, hard-fought contest.

46 Chicago’s Finest immediately jumps to a big lead but loses it when they run into the first big hay bale, while Team OK just has to go through he cleared wreckage. Ah, so this race has bunch-up points. :weary: (Are we going to see one actually good idea cribbed from another CBS show? Like, ever?)

47 Team OK is unable to capitalize on their break; one member is really struggling to untie one of the knots holding a puzzle bag…and worse, they’re succumbing to fatigue. Chicago’s Finest has a huge lead; they’re already at the fort task while Team OK still has one bag to go. Oh geez, once they get this down, the kayak is going to amount to a victory lap.

49 Chicago’s Finest is having a little trouble with their fort. Team OK is at the beach.

50 Chicago’s Finest is having some trouble with their fort. Team OK has a really good plan and are catching up fast.

51 Chicago’s Finest is having a lot of trouble with their fort. It’s all knotted up now.

54 Chicago’s Finest is in a world of trouble with their fort. :slightly_frowning_face: Duhamel pulls out…oh gods…the horse race narrative. :skull:

55 It’s over. Team OK finishes their fort while their enemies are still buried in the abyss, and they can enjoy a relaxing cruise all the way to the tower. Man, there were so many times they could’ve been toast after being the second team to lose a member, and they hung tough, avoided every dagger aimed their way, and pulled through when it counted. Nice one. :clap:

57 And of course the absolutely obligatory closing shot, a member of the losing team realizing that 2nd place is the first barrage of bullets to the skull and she worked her tail off from start to finish and went the distance only to take home exactly as much as those Pageant Queens schmucks and bursting into tears, which is exactly the kind of image you want for your carefree fun-in-the-sun buddies-messing-around show. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

I’ll just spell it out: This is the kind of show where you need people. People goofing around, people doing wild stunts, people scheming, people dressing up, people making drunk toasts, people airing out their wild fantasies, people rubbing each other the wrong way and getting into arguments and stomping off in a huff, people there, doing things. Having any kind of elimination absolutely kills it. One of the most entertaining moments of the show was seeing Pageant Queens’ breakdown, and when that got wiped out when they were, that completely took the wind out of the sails. (Oh, bonus points for the all-women teams being the first two out; that’ll really encourage more to sign up in the future. :rage:) This is not supposed to be a hardcore skills competition, and if you try to make it one, well, what you saw in the final is the usual result. (Cf. Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge, The Titan Games, American Ninja Warrior…) There is no reason to have eliminations here. None.

On top of that, the whole sabotage mechanic was a boneheaded idea. What’s the point of creating artificial friction and recriminations in a contest about friendship? There’s nothing wrong with giving advantages or imposing penalties, but putting the onus on the team…and making sandbagging a viable strategy, as if this there wasn’t enough BS here…is just pointlessly mean-spirited.

So there you have it! The Buddy Games! I gave it a chance and now I’m done with it! (Man, it’s pretty slim pickings right now…)

23

That’s it for season 2 of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. There’s a reunion video here where they talk a bit about what they went through. Also good for remembering their names, which I certainly couldn’t worth a damn.

It seems that this has found a following, and for the life of me I have no idea why. There’s a reason all the other “rah rah bleed red white and blue real man get tough raaaaghhh” military-themed shows (most recently Stars Earn Stripes) have been one-offs. Once the point of “the armed forces is soooooo tough, you’re soooooo lucky you don’t” :weary: etc., has been made, what’s the point of watching the rest of the season? And the overwhelming majority who like to see other people being treated like crap want to be the ones treating others like crap; there’s no pleasure in watching someone else have all the fun. And yes, I’m going to be the guy who says this: On a visceral level, this is people in drab matching uniforms doing grueling exercises in bleak locations with other people in drab matching uniforms yelling at them. Survivor has a conquer-the-environment aspect, but is set in lush, vibrant locations. Hell’s Kitchen has Gordon Ramsay in raging drill sergeant mode and near-constant backbiting among the contestants, but there’s a wide variety of dishes and sometimes they pull together and make truly excellent dishes. What exactly does SFWTT have going for it?

I did think it was cool that Erin Jackson made it to the end (with the usual caveat that being “selected” means absolutely nothing other than making the YouTube cretins shut up for about three seconds). For some reason black women usually get completely clobbered on reality TV, yet she was one of the three who made it to the finish line. On the other hand, man, reality TV has just been cruel to her. This is a rising star pop singer who turned to a natural outlet to get some publicity, and not only did she got victory snatched away from her at the last millisecond twice, she was forced to wear hideously ugly clothing 98% of the time. If she went on The Masked Singer, I bet her costume would be “Pile of Garbage”, and to add insult to injury everyone in the damn studio would instantly know it was her.

And punishing conditions is one thing, but I’m sorry, I cannot watch people being treated horribly anymore. I don’t care how “realistic” it is. There’s always been far too much cruelty in the world, and I have no desire to see it glorified on TV for a second. Also, the instant I hear a baby crying, it’s the mute button. No exceptions. :angry:

And yet…and yet, and yet, and yet… no matter how ugly it is, no matter how contrived, or unpleasant, or miserable, or utterly pointless, this show manages to get one thing right.

No anudda wun bi da dus.

As long as their bodies hold out, they’re in it for as long as they want to be in it. Until the very end, absolutely nothing can “eliminate” anyone. (I was surprised as Todd Sandoval to learn that he got bounced.) Not failing. Not screwing up. Not having a bad attitude. Not bursting into tears. They can set whatever goals or benchmarks they want. Take the money and run on day 1? That’s fine. Get tired of the grind after three days? That’s fine. Go the distance but draw the line at torture? That’s also fine. However long they want to be a part of this, that’s how long they will be.

And that makes things unpredictable. Nobody could go one day, then two the next, or three, or four. The final day could have ten people or none at all. A slow starter could gradually pick up steam and go the distance; an early front-runner could suddenly crash and burn. One day there’s what looks to be a huge brewing catfight betwen two hotheads, the next hothead #1 is out and hothead #2 is too sore to feud with anyone.

And that’s why I can’t give this up.

Goddammit.

24

Er, Jojo Siwa was the rising pop star I mentioned in the last post. Got lost in all the editing and re-editing. Hopefully you could figure it out. :slightly_smiling_face:

There was a Masterchef Junior holiday special that ran in December that I don’t feel like recapping, but I want to mention it because it points to what’s might be a new trend which I’m definitely seeing in the current side project going on, AGT Fantasy League. Now, because the holiday special had a sizable field (12, if memory serves) and ran a mere 4 episodes, you’d think that anudda wun bi da dus wouldn’t work here and we’d get a reprieve from it, right? Hah. Instead of throwing 1 kid into the dumpster each episode, we got to see 3 go every time! Because when you’re theming your contest around a holiday season built around love and warmth and cheer and family, you should make as many contestants fricking cry as inhumanly possible! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: And…yeah.

AGT Fantasy League (aside from some ultraamateurish The Voice-style judge bickery) is also built around this mass extermination format. There are 10 acts from past seasons per episode, and on each episode 5 of them get shown the door. Then the 20 semifinallists get cut down to 10, and then the usual. The decisions are in-studio only; no call-in or online votes. (I presume that the production team meticulously educated these “superfans” on exactly what their roles.are and have means of dealing with, ahem, rogue agents.) I suppose the advantage to this is that they can take out all the terrible acts right away instead of having to endure at least one of them for 4 more weeks, but that begs the question: If making sure they don’t overstay their welcome is so dang important, why not just not invite them in the first place? To see someone like Hans, who’s clearly in way over his head, strut and boast about how they’re never getting rid of him, and they get rid of him the same episode, well, that sends some seriously confusing messages.

At any rate, hope to see some actually decent acts this season. There might be a good chance of that, actually.

25

Just a small update on AGT Fantasy League. First off, trying to stay positive here (because despite everything I always prefer that a a TV show I’m watching make me feel good and not bad): The judges weren’t nearly as obnoxious as I feared (Howie actually acknowledged multiple times that their opinions don’t matter squat), the crowd was a little more polite than usual, and all the terrible acts got shown the door in short order. I was honest-to-Shion quaking at the prospect of them bringing in Ben Lapidus and giving him all the time and attention in the fricking galaxy and giving him a free pass to the final, and nothing close to that has happened. Everyone involved is serious about making this as good a contest as possible

I should also point out that having no call-in vote makes things a lot fairer. On the regular show acts that need to be seen and experience always have the massive disadvantage of the camera goddam cutting away every five goddam seconds, which of course also gives the musical acts a big unfair advantage. Limiting the voting to the lucky in-house crowd that gets to see 100% of everything takes that away.

Of course, the system is still far from perfect, given the fact that Kristy Sellars wasn’t just bounced in semis, she didn’t even make 2nd or 3rd. It all goes back to an unsettling trend I’ve noticed over the past few seasons which blossomed into harsh, undeniable ugly reality with Brandon Leake and Dustin Tavella’s triumphs: it’s not about how good the act is, it’s how good the story is. If you don’t have a lovable/sick/dearly departed mum, a cute kid, a cute pet, a disease of the week, a long-term condition, tragedy, inspiration, courage blarrggg etc., you don’t have a prayer. As much as I disliked Drake Milligan’s involvement in this, based on his ability he should’ve been a shoo-in for semis, and he was roadkill. I’m pretty certain Aiden Bryant would’ve been too if he hadn’t gotten a Golden Buzzer. I’m tempted to compare it to American Ninja Warrior, but this is actually a much worse situation, as ANW’s pity passes, however annoying, have no effect on who actually advances to the next round.

Well, as I’m pretty much given up hope of the eventual winner being at all satisfying, here’s just hoping something entertaining crops in the remaining two weeks. That’s actually a pretty safe bet given the overall quality of the fields, but I’m not putting money on it.

26

Show actually ended some time ago, but I kept finding greater priorities. All right, here’s the final 10 for the inaugural season of America’s Got Talent Fantasy League (NBC, February 12, 2 hours :slightly_smiling_face:):

Aside: To everyone who still watches cable, have you noticed that the songs are always the same wherever you go? I Want To Dance With Somebody. Total Eclipse of the Heart. We Built This City. The Final Countdown. The Eye of the Tiger. We Are The Champions. I’m well aware that Generation X is the most gleefully dumped-on demographic, well, ever, but the Millenials, the first group that had any real power since the Boomers, are getting phased out and I’m still hearing the same tiny handful of songs over and over! Keep that in mind, it’s going to become relevant.

The Pack Drumline (drumming, dancing, shouting, some minor acrobatics, setting stuff on fire) - “It’s like Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!” Yeah, no. It’s a slightly tryhard halftime show. I mean, that’s fine, but there’s a reason that stuff only works for fifteen minutes. They strike me as an opening act or part of a greater show, not a Vegas-worthy performance in its own right.

Sofie Dossi (contortions) - Refer to past comments about the judges going totally nutsoid about stuff they’ve seen many, many times before. Final effort was underwhelming: aside from the usual back- and legwork, all she did was balance by her hands on a rotating wheel. If I didn’t know better I’d think this was some kind of American Ninja Warrior tie-in.

Kodi Lee (piano & singing) - Bohemian Rhapsody? Sure, why not? I mean, it is The Greatest Rock Song Of All Time, and totally not horribly overrated and overplayed for literally my entire goddam life! And don’t worry about butchering an over six minute song to within an inch of its life to fit within the time you’re allowed, that’s acceptable now! :rage::rage::rage:

V.Unbeatable (group acrobatics) - Yeah, still got it. Reminds me of competitive cheerleading without all the annoying yelling.

Ramadhani Brothers (head balancing) - Still a one-trick pony, and no matter how many twists they try to put on it, they can only do the same damn thing so many times before the unfriendly murmurs begin. Should be part of a variety show, not a headliner.

Musa Motha (single leg & crutch dancing) - He has no left leg, so he uses crutches (sometimes one, sometimes two) to get around and perform. It’s a nice story, but I just never saw anything impressive about any of his routines. I suppose they’re good for teaching the principle of “get up as many times as you go down”, but that’s about it. If there were a Paralympics-style competition for handicapped performers, he’d have a good shot at winning that (He’s very nimble!), but he’s out of his depth here.

Aiden Bryant (hoop acrobatics) - He was one of the most impressive solo acts the first two times he competed, and if anything he’s become even stronger. Just looks completely at home spinning like a dervish two stories up. On paper, a prohibitive favorite. (Given that he already has a successful Vegas act, one wonders why he’s even here at all. Old times’ sake, I guess.)

Shadow Ace (shadow puppetry) - Let’s get one thing clear. There is exactly one reason he made it this far, and it’s so the audience can act like complete spazzes. Every season there has to be the one contestant that allows the crowd to leave the human race and go completely berserk with the infantile brainless hyena howling. As an act, this is goddam Amateur Nite. Shadow puppetry! Kee-rist! What next, pig calls? :angry:

Billy and Emily England (pair…acrobatics? dance? freestyle?) - Swing your partner ‘round and ‘round…and round…and round…and…round…and… :sleeping: No, even the gratuitous flame bursts couldn’t make this exciting for me. It was like the world’s most unimaginative figure skating routine.

Sainted (choir) - Ooh, Like A Prayer! A religion-themed song with a choir part, making it about as bold a move as picking the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl! That’s totally going to rock the vote! :roll_eyes:

Did I mention that 8 of them were Golden Buzzer recipients? 80%! 4 in prelims, another 4 in semis. If this had any effect other than cheapening Golden Buzzers to the level of title shots in the waning days of WCW, I’m unaware of it.

I’ve mentioned before how the producers, by taking out call-in voting, are making a very concerted effort to not crown the “wrong” winner, and this lineup confirmed it. As much as the advertising has pitched this as “the best of the best” and as inordinate an amount of attention it gives to clearly inferior novelty acts like Tape Face and Hans (not to mention He Who Shall Never Be Named In This Thread :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:), the audience definitely has a mandate to shoot down anything too different or too spectacular. How else to explain how Kristy Sellars and that sand painter flamed out in semis? (And the latter had an Acceptable Story, for crying out loud!) I’m also seeing it in the judges (who are still completely abysmal, thanks for asking). Remember when this show rotated them pretty frequently? It seems like we’ve been stuck with this current foursome for a generation. I seriously think it’s reached the point where they flat-out refuse to ever do anything else anymore. Conformity is the name of the game, and if you don’t fit what the producers, judges, and viewers decided in advance what they’re looking for, you don’t have a hope. It’s a bit unsettling to see a talent show that’s not only resoundingly humdrum, everyone involved seems determined to make it as humdrum as possible.

Based on all that: Aiden Bryant, Kodi Lee, and V.Unbeatable would normally be powerful favorites, but they’ve won before and nobody wants a repeat winner. The Pack Drumline and the England couple just aren’t spectacular enough to win without some kind of Acceptable Story, which neither has. Sofie Dossi is nothing special, and I’m fairly certain most of the country is just tired of the Ramadhani Brothers at this point. And as much as the fundies always pretend otherwise, this isn’t a “Judeo-Christian nation”, so Sainted is coming up short. Which makes it a toss up between Musa Motha and Shadow Ace, all depending on whether the underdog-overcame-so-much-what’s-your-excuse factor or you-will-laugh-everyone-laughs-laugh-goddammit factor is stronger.

Welp, that’s another one in the can. American Idol is on again soon, which of course I will be excitedly ignoring.

27

So Deal or No Deal Island (NBC, Mondays, 1 hour) has been underway for some time. I was deciding for a while whether I actually wanted to cover this one, and now it’s day 5 of my annual April vacation, and I’m like, shoot.

The premise is that the contestants have been sent to the “Banker’s Island”, set in an unknown location in an obvious attempt to make the viewership speculate breathlessly over where it is, which, for the record, is totally not working for me. At the start of the day the contestants get up, discuss strategy, have face time confessionals, relax, socialize, and otherwise try to prepare for the upcoming contest.

Sometime during the day the host (I haven’t gotten his name down yet, but it’s not Howie Mandell) leads them through the contest of the day; these range from about 60/40 luck and skill to about 100/0 luck and skill (the order of these events being about 50/50 lunacy and bullcrap :roll_eyes:). Whatever the specific contest, the basic objective is to gain one or cases containing high amounts of cash, most of then in 7 figures (the highest I’ve seen so far is 4.5 million), with the occasional 6-figurer. That’s where all the hype over “Over 200 million dollars on the island!!!” comes from, even though, in true Million Dollar Money Drop fashion (remember that one?), it’s a total illusion and an enormous chunk of that will never reach anyone’s pocket, but more on that later. :angry:

The winner or winners of the contest gain immunity, while the loser has to face…pardon, FEHHSS DUUHHH BEENNNKKEEUEUEGHGHG in a contest reminiscent of the original game show. The objective is to either accept a deal that’s higher than the amount in the dreaded Your Case or go the distance and have a higher value in the Your Case (swapping isn’t permitted) than the banker’s final offer. Fail and the unlucky challenger is out; succeed and (s)he gets to choose which non-immune contestant takes a hike. You might be asking, “But given that the Deal or No Deal game is pure luck…which makes all the strategizing that’s supposed to be the whole appeal of a Survivor-like show in the first place kind of pointless, but never mind that…isn’t this just a huge time-wasting coin flip?” And I’d respond, “No, it’s a huge time-wasting coin flip stuffed with mountains of paint-drying drama. Just like the original show!” :weary:

Oh yeah, “Boston” Rob Mariano is here, and he’s the very obvious prohibitive favorite to win it all. Given the nature of the contest, I’d say there’s a 50% chance of him winning and a 10% chance of someone else winning. I’ll probably revise these figures somewhat once the finale rolls around.

So how do I like it so far? Let’s just say that I’m glad to have DVR. The island is quite beautiful, the host is perfectly tolerable, seeing ordinary Americans struggle through an intense, frustrating physical contest is never not entertaining, and no show with a pretty lady in a swimsuit is ever a waste of time. But the politicking is just confusing, and since I already know that the degenerative forces of anudda wun bi da dus are ultimately going to render all deals and alliances completely meaningless, it’s impossible for me to care. And the DOND contests are as insufferable as the original game show was and take up way too much time. It’s all coming down to how the show wraps things up, and depending on what exactly is in store, I might have to do the two final episodes. We’ll see.

28

One more update before the Deal or No Deal Island finale. First off, a little update on all the shows I covered here:

Cancelled/not renewed - The Real Dirty Dancing, America’s Got Talent Extreme, American Song Contest, Domino Masters, Dancing With Myself, Come Dance With Me, The Real Love Boat, Hot Wheels Ultimate Challenge
Season wrapping up, likely to be renewed - Next Level Chef, American Idol, Masterchef Junior, So You Think You Can Dance
New season confirmed - Wipeout, America’s Got Talent, The Challenge, Masterchef
Unknown - America’s Got Talent All-Stars, America’s Got Talent Fantasy League (my gut says NBC picks one or the other), The Challenge USA, Special Forces World’s Toughest Test, Buddy Games

As for DONDI, the finale is actually the last two episodes, the first of which already aired. As it stands, I’m not 100% certain I even want to give a comprehensive recap. Not so much because being down to four contestants kills all the drama and the glaring differences in their abilities is going to make a big chunk of the contest really boring (I already knew that going in), but because the road here seemed so…well…scripted. Oh, look, a clueless out-of-shape woman who’s the obvious choice to get sent packing early, and of course she gets all the breaks and of course she coasts-slithers into the final. Oh, look, Boston Rob, a scheming villain who’s going to gobble everyone else alive if they don’t band together to take him out right away, and of course they get distracted by a hundred other things and of course they drop like flies and he high-steps into the final without a scratch. It’s been eleven episodes and I have yet to see one genuinely shocking moment. There have honest-to-FSM been Washington Generals games less predictable than this show. It’s reached the point where I’m not asking whether the game is rigged but how many people are in on it. Which puts me in a rather awkward position, namely, I need to see proof that the final is worth talking about before I’ll commit to talking about it, which means I’m putting part one on the shelf for now.

Oh yeah, Gordon Ramsay is going to have a new show called Food Stars out later this month. He’s by far the biggest superstar in reality TV (and has been for some time), so I’m definitely checking this one out.

29

After watching what didn’t bore me to death of the last two episodes of Deal or No Deal Island, I’ve decided that there is no need for me or anyone else on the planet to do a running commentary of the second to last episode. Quick recap: The 4 finallists are Rob and a trio who formed a clique whose thing is making high-pitched owl sounds at random times (I’ll just leave this here: :scream::face_with_symbols_over_mouth:), including the completely-out-of-her-depth Amy. Buncha shooting the breeze before the final 2-part contest. First part is to open a lock in a lectern to release a map, the combination being the total number of cases that have been added to the Final Case (essentially a progressive jackpot that’s been building all season). Once they have the map, they need to use it to find a key clearing at the opposite end of the maze, find an unlock a case by memory, and return. The last person to return is out, as well as the lowest remaining case of the remaining three. The higher value cases are harder to retrieve, so there’s a calculated risk in going for the gold. Shots of Rob’s thought process accompanied by a brief highlight reel. Amy gets it first. Rob, who’s been bulletproof up to this point, makes the incredible blunder of illegally looking at Amy’s podium, which means he has to enter last with a big time penalty…aaaaand, cue horse race narrative! :roll_eyes: Episode ends with Amy struggling and Rob hustling.

Deal or No Deal Island season finale (part 2) - NBC, 1 hour, 5/13/24

0 Recap.

1 Final moments of part F-1. Amy returns first. Host Joe Manganiello (definitely one of the best reality TV hosts from what I’ve seen, although I did zap past all the extremely long boring parts so I don’t know for sure) delivers the bad news to Rob. So the legendary Boston Bastard went the distance but didn’t enrage half the country by winning (and it goes without saying that this contest has exactly one winner and twelve groin-kickees). Oh yeah, mighty convenient how it just happened to work out like that.

You know what, the hell with conspiracy theories, I’m going a step further and saying that NBC not only clearly rigged the game, they would’ve been flaming idiots not to. There’s no accountability in reality TV, no audits, no disclosure, no oversight. Hell, has anyone ever even threatened a lawsuit? If you bring someone on to be the star bad guy, you damn well make sure he’s completely untouchable…up to the finale. Once he’s gone the distance, he’s served his purpose and is henceforth fair game, so the rulesmakers are absolutely giving him no favors. His slip-up at the lecterns was actually the best-case scenario, allowing them to milk his doomed final run without him having any realistic shot at playing for the grand prize…no one actually wants the bad guy to win, after all. So yeah, sometimes the system works. Sorry, that’s just reality. TV. :man_shrugging:

4 Now the second moment of truth, the amounts in the three cases, the lowest of which is out. Jordan got 3.5 mil. Stephanie got 3 mil. Amy got 3.75 mil. Stephanie takes the walk of shame.

7 F-2 proper begins with the final contest. The contestants start at the bottom of ladders at the opposite ends of a tightrope. Once on the rope, they must make their way to the center (they have vertical ropes hanging from above for balance so this doesn’t turn into one of those The Challenge neverending torturefests). Fall and they have to start from scratch. First to retrieve the golden case hanging over the center wins and will head to the ultimate Deal or No Deal game. Amy falls. Amy gets back up. Amy falls. She made it maybe a twelfth of the way to the goal. Jordan falls but recovers quickly and is making good progress on her second attempt. Amy bounces on the rope in an attempt to dislodge Jordan, apparently forgetting that she’s on the opposite end of the rope. :woman_facepalming: It’s for naught; Jordan wins in a rout. Amy made it this far through the generosity of fools and white knights and bleeding hearts and moronic “strategizing” and alliances and finagling and plain ‘ol dumb luck. The instant it came down to a straight woman-to-woman physical contest, she was dead. To her credit, she had no illusions about having a prayer and remains friendly in defeat, wishing Jordan the best of luck.

17 Jordan opens the golden case…the highest amount retrieved from the maze, which is added to the Final Case, in other words following the exact same procedure as the preceding 11 days. Yay consistency? :woman_shrugging: The final value of the FC is $13,857,000, which is by far the largest ever TV show prize that no one is ever going come within an ultramarathon of winning. :angry: Seriously, aren’t shows that constantly tease enormous payouts and never actually pony up the most irritating thing? Remember that execrable Million Dollar Money Drop?

18 One last order of business, finally learning the Banker’s identity. It’s… gasp!.. choke!.. Howie Mandell, which I think half of Primetimer called by about week 2 and is about as shocking a revelation as learning that the Cybertruck is a piece of crap designed by a delusional moron. (Aside: Doesn’t this mean that, officially, it was him throwing all those insults and making garbage offers in the original show and Silhouette Guy was a just a random nobody he pretended to talk to on that “phone”? I mean, yeah, anyone with a functioning brain figured that out, but it’s still pretty wild for NBC to come clean and say it to our faces.) Jordan provides some analysis: “This is not host Howie, the two-faced scumbag who pretended to be all sweet and nice while continually mocking the contestants and pulling a truly lame ‘Charles’-esque blame shift on some meaningless patsy and hoping we’d all buy it. This is the misanthropic Howie who’s become a total albatross for America’s Got Talent.” Or something.

23 The defeated contestants are the audience for the ultimate Deal or No Deal game. Being powerless to do anything other than watch someone else win the top prize has to be frustrating, but at least they get seen in the final. Life is full of compromises. Some of them compliment Jordan’s victory. Mandell makes his entrance and shoots the breeze with Jordan. The amount of the FC goes up on the screen.

26 It all comes down to this! All right, how the DOND games have been working on this island is that the big-money cases the contestants have retrieved take up the right side of the board, with “The Banker’s” much smaller preset amounts taking up the left. This makes getting a good case a coin flip, which makes getting a better deal with either the Your Case or the Banker’s offer also an even proposition. (It’s actually much more generous than the original show, where the median was something like $750, making it much harder to win even a decent amount.) However, since there was no retrieval mechanism this time, all the cases except the FC are presets. On the left is .01, 1, 25, 50, 75, 100, 300, 500, 750, and 1,000; on the right is 1M, 1M, 1.5M, 1.5M, 3M, 3.5M, 4.5M, 5M, 5M, 6M, and the ultimate prize of 13,857,000.

Now, keep in mind that the FC represents the cumulative efforts of all the contestants over the past 11 rounds. It’s the carrot, the crown jewel, the wizard award, the whole reason they decided to be on this show in the first place. Which means that the only positive outcomes to the season are one of the following:

  1. Jordan chooses the FC and no other to be her Your Case (remember, swapping isn’t allowed anymore), a 1 in 22 (4.55%) shot, and goes the distance, along the way turning down what are sure to be at least a couple very tempting offers.
  2. Jordan doesn’t choose the FC, avoids ever opening it, lasts long enough to get a really good offer, and takes it.
    If at any point she opens the FC, everyone’s efforts were completely for naught. The whole season could literally go into the toilet in an instant. Additionally, there’s a very real chance that Jordan could, like the unfortunates on the old show, knock out all the good cases and walk away with a meager amount, which means that everyone, INCLUDING her, gets completely hosed. That’s how much pressure she has riding on this.

All right, imma just skip ahead a tad…

50 Case #18 opens, and…yeah. :cry:

56 Offer of 1,230,000 on the board, and after a long deliberation, Jordan accepts. Thankfully they’re not doing the whole what-WOOHHUUUDD-you have picked cosmic bullcrap that was the ruination of game shows in the aughts (if I didn’t start a Pit thread about that loathsome practice, I should have), but Mandell still insists on opening the Your Case to find out if he gets to laugh in her face for ten solid minutes. Thankfully that’s a no, as it’s a measly $1,000. (There were 4 lows and 2 highs remaining at that point, so this isn’t a surprise.)

58 Five months later, Jordan is happily gestating the first of what is certain to be far too many children. :expressionless:

Final verdict? If you’re into contests with dumb stupid idiotic moronic brainless luck playing way too much a factor, brazen manipulation, nonsensical strategies, and completely illusory big payouts, this is the show for you! Oh, or if you just enjoy people doing things in a beautiful tropical background. I admit that I really enjoyed the action parts (the divebombing contest was probably my favorite), and seeing ordinary people have to plan and make decisions on the fly is just as entertaining here as in Survivor. It’s all the dumb, predictable, and MEGA BORING stuff I can’t tolerate. It’s kind of like the Dead or Alive Xtreme games. Of course I dig busty chicks playing beach volleyball while wearing next to nothing, it’s all the crap about relationships and gifts and limited time events and money and LUCK LUCK LUCK LUUUUUUUCCCKKKK that make it unplayable.

So there you have it. Deal or No Deal Meets Survivor, and it’s pretty much what you should’ve expected. For better or worse. (More the latter, IMO, but you can decide for yourself.)

30

Masterchef Junior season finale - Fox, 1 hour, 5/20/24

Dear Michael,

It’s been several months since that fateful night you received the biggest gut punch of your young life, and after seeing it on television with the rest of us, I imagine it still doesn’t seem real. That was your trophy, dammit. Your money. Your triumph. You had it all, confidence, mettle, creativity, drive, focus, nerves, smarts, and, most importantly, consistency. Everyone else had a screwup. You didn’t. You earned this.

And at this point it’s also dawned on you that Gordon cheerfully announcing your runner-up status was in fact not the honor he made it sound like but a monumental insult. No doubt you waited for something, anything good to arrive…money, a cooking show appearance, apprenticeship offers, free food, heck, less homework. Time passed, and it slowly dawned you what 2nd place was worth…nothing, nothing at all, absolutely nothing, nothing, NOTHING. You literally got as much as the first kid eliminated, heck, a kid who got rejected, heck, a kid who never applied at all.

And don’t get you wrong, Bryson was really good, and he definitely proved he belonged in the final, but there was no way he deserved it more than you. He had a few major slipups along the way, including the follow-Gordon challenge in which he barely got rock-bottom-plus-one honors, and at times he looked overwhelmed and on the verge of collapsing on the floor crying. It was great that he was able to overcome his limitations and overachieve his heart out, but we’re not supposed to be giving handicaps here! And that might very well be the dark thought running through your head…that because he was this awkward chubby geek, the judges considered every moment he didn’t wet himself or stick a spatula in his nose a triumph. Which meant that he had fifty points on you from day one and you never had a prayer.

I am here to tell you…yeah, pretty much. :man_shrugging: You’re going to learn a lot more about this confusing, vexing phenomenon known as reality television in the coming years, but in brief, it’s grossly unfair and nonsensical and that’s how its makers like it. The good news, however, is that real reality isn’t like that. You’re not judged solely by how you did the last 0.1% of some arbitrary time period, very few places hire, promote, or reward based on misguided sympathy, you don’t have to be the absolute best of the best in your field to get any compensation whatsoever, and no one is “eliminated”.

So don’t let this get you down. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep listening to the people who know more than you, and the opportunities will arrive. And when you make head chef or open your own successful restaurant, getting snubbed in some rigged competition will be just another silly story for the kids. Perhaps even on a future Masterchef Junior. They’re fond of poetic stuff like that.

----DKW

31

Wow, has it really been over two years? I honestly thought that by now I’d have lost interest and started talking about, I dunno, competitive axe throwing or Pat McAfee or something. Just a quick look at three shows that have recently started new seasons:

Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars - This is the actually the second season, although I don’t remember the first being announced. It’s another cooking-themed competition but focuses more on the business aspect than the actual dishes or beverages. The two teams (led by Ramsay and a handpicked opponent, this season Lisa Vanderpump) are placed in an existing food service location and compete to make more profit than the other. Key word, profit, not just the most customers or dishes. I…don’t know, pretty much. I’m not a fan of the team aspect to begin with, and what happens when one side gets too depleted to compete or even runs out of people altogether? (Oh yeah, anudda wun bi da dus is here, as if you needed to ask. :roll_eyes::angry:) On the plus side, the contestants are well-adjusted…none of the cranks or crazies you see on Hell’s Kitchen…and everyone involved seems to be making a real effort. If I ever get this, I actually think the season finale has the potential to be really good.

America’s Got Talent - I’m going to say it right now: All the obvious no-hope acts that generate irritating buzzers and make the audience go “BBUUUEEHHEHEHOOOOWWWWOOOWOWOWOWOOOOO” should have their own segment at the start of the show so they can be done with right away, and, better yet, everyone can just fast forward past all that irritating useless time-wasting crap. :rage: Other than that, auditions are what auditions always are. The response on Primetimer seems mostly positive (at least compared to recent seasons), so I’ll definitely have my eyes on this one. Later. :grin:

American Ninja Warrior - No one’s said a word about the new season, curious. I was serious when I said I hated it, but the other people in my home are fans, so I still have to listen to this over dinner. I will say that the pacing has improved considerably and the runoffs have been much more competitive. Whatever NBC is doing, it’s working, so if you were turned off by the recent changes, it might be worth another chance. As long as someone other than Vance Walker wins the million, I’ll be satisfied.

32

On July vacation now (Well, strictly speaking, it doesn’t actually start until Monday, but dangit, I need good news in my life, I say it’s on! :grin:), which gives me time to update on a few shows.

I didn’t mention Masterchef earlier because I needed more time to hash it out, and…ooh. The big gimmick for this season is generations, as 5 handpicked members each of, from oldest to youngest, the Baby Boomers, Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation Z, were put into teams. Presently the best dish each week wins immunity for the whole team and grants a certain…privilege for the following episode’s contest (more on this in a bit :angry:). The worst dish of the three non-immune teams is out. So lessee, 4 times 5, second elimination on July 10, and of course anudda wun bi da dus is as hegemonic as ever, which means they should be crowning a champion by about, oh, the same week the Arizona Cardinals are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. Seriously, unless there’s going to be like 10 people in the final or something (which I’d be perfectly fine with!), we are in for a long haul. I’m a little concerned that a couple of the Baby Boomers are eventually going to drop out due to sheer exhaustion, which would be a pretty lame way to go.

But that’s a concern for the future. My immediate concern is that Ramsay and company, apparently tired of running one of the most respectable, fair, honest reality TV shows, has decided to start incorporating brain-dead gimmicks. Case in point, July 10, where the winner of the first immunity got to…rrrgrrglll…introduce, halfway through the 60-minute cook, a new ingredient which one of the teams (she chose Gen-X) had to incorporate into the dish. No warning, no time to prepare. They had to come up with a completely new idea with the completely new ingredient, right then and there, on the fly, real time, under the gun. This… :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: Why? Why does anyone do this??? I remember this moronic stipulation from Lego Masters and Domino Masters, and it made a mockery of the builds. And bad enough when it involves arranging bits of plastic, but when the mechanics on Hot Wheels Ultimate Challenge have to radically alter the build of the very specifically designed MOTOR VEHICLE they’re working on, there was no way it was ever going to end any way but horribly. No wonder that show’s sole legacy was flashbacks to the Homermobile episode. I’ll admit that the eventual eliminatee messed up pretty badly, but lots of contestants mess up and squeak though (heck, the most recent Masterchef Junior winner did in semis!), and without this disgusting sabotage BS she would’ve at least had a chance, dammit.

Which eerily mirrors my concerns over Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars. As someone at Primetimer pointed out, the contestants are being called upon to perform tasks in a 24-hour timeframe which would normally take a whole food service company weeks or even months. Yeah, they went in with their eyes open, but you have to keep demands reasonable! Right now I’m just plain not digging this; it’s coming across more like a parody of a reality show than a product of one of the top personalities in the business. I’ll see if the finale can spice things up, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll still care.

And then there’s American Ninja Warrior (and I again stress that I’m not the one in the household who’s still a fan of that), for which I decided that I would not grumble about the hideous BS unless it was something I’d never before seen on the show, and guess what happened. :angry: At the 33-minute mark, Kyle Soderman finished the course in 1:23.42, which, given that this fell short of the limit of 1:20 for attempting the Mega Wall, worth $20,000 this season (not a lot, but way better than what at least 99.9% of contestants get, which is NOTHING), meant that he couldn’t go for it (he was pretty upset by this, BTW). And under normal, non-diabolically sadistic circumstances, that would’ve been the end of it. But then…Matt Iseman…“let him take a shot for…‘’’’fun’’’’.” :scream::scream::scream::scream::face_with_symbols_over_mouth: That’s right, he pulled the WAAATT-WOOOOHHHUUUDUDUDU-YOOO-HABBBB-DUUHHHNNN trope. Damn, every time you think he can’t possibly sink any over, he tells you to hold his beer and then throws it into your face. For those of you who didn’t follow game shows around the aughts, this occurred anytime a contestant ended the game before going for the ultimate prize (which invariably entailed a huge risk, so playing it safe was a perfectly natural response). It first came into major prominence with Deal or No Deal, where whenever the game didn’t go the distance, i.e. the contestant accepted a deal, Howie Long…dammit, as if there weren’t already enough reasons to loathe the man…would ask which cases the contestant !!!WOULD!!! have picked. If you’re thinking “But the contest is over, so what’s even the point of this?” What indeed. :rage: If the cases the contestant picked had small amounts…which, as I recall, happened a freaking lot :rage:…Long would gleefully recite the ever-burgeoning offers the “banker” “would have made” (without having to talk to “him” on that “phone”, of course. :roll_eyes::man_facepalming:). Seriously, he was practically gloating every time he did this. Oh, and if by some miracle the contestant “would” have knocked out a high-value case and thus was completely vindicated in taking the deal, the reward was…nothing. The amount won was exactly the same. So basically the contestant was risking massive public humiliation and a lifetime of trauma (one couple reportedly freaking separated over this crap) for a shot at absolutely nothing. If you’re now thinking that whoever invented this utter insanity had to be either brain damaged or at a genocidal dictator level of evil and are wondering how this could ever become standard practice among game shows in the aughts, well, I’m sure as hell not going to be any more help now than I was two decades ago. Anyway, Soderman made it up the Mega Wall (pretty easily, too!), which earned him [insert your 250 favorite terms for “nothing”]. (And yes, he could’ve refused, but NBC controls every second that goes on the air, and plenty of top contenders are excised for time as it is. The boss tells you to dance, if you don’t want to spend the season reduced to a Twitter footnote, you dance.) I’ve mentioned on the ANW thread how joyous…downright ecstatic, honestly…the people in charge of this show are in taking enormous amounts of money out of the pockets of its biggest stars. Any sports league that did to its athletes what ANW did to Geoff Britten, Sean Bryan, Joe Moravsky, Daniel Gil, and now Kyle Soderman would be hounded into bankruptcy in a season. Using the most despicable, disgusting, vile, unspeakable game show trope ever just proved that ANW has no bottom. Normally this is the part where I dread what’s coming next, but at this point it’s not fear so much as depressed resignation, knowing that it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets even worse.

Hahh. Well, America’s Got Talent is almost at the more tolerable part, so there’s something to look forward to.

33

I agree that the challenges are ridiculous. What was it last week, three hours for your team to come up with demonstrations of five different food gadgets? Though I will point out the guy “demonstrating” the 3-in-one knife had to set the all time low.

For those who didn’t watch, it was a butter knife with a series of holes along one edge that you were supposed to use to make thing curls of butter, so you could spread the butter on your toast right away even though the butter was very cold. Uh, the second thing I guess was spreading butter? No idea what the third feature was supposed to be.

Anyway, all the demonstrator did was 1) cut a normal pat of butter and set it on the bread. 2) take a big bite through the butter pat announcing something like, Some people like to spread their butter thin, I like a big glob. And that was it. One of the audience actually asked What was the point of that, how was that gadget anything past a regular knife??

Mostly the contestants seem hard at work NOT standing out if at all possible. The idea that the same person will be good at designing logos, coming up with slogans, a theme song!, packaging, performing in commercials… It’s just ridiculous. I’ll keep watching of course.

34

Actually, I’m not that concerned about that one as a contest. If both teams have impossible expectations (and of course in true reality TV fashion, “team” means “two or three absolutely worthless goldbricks who manage to last far longer than they should by hiding behind actual contenders” :roll_eyes:), it’s a level playing field. My concern is, what happens when the relentless, invincible anudda wun bi da dus machine renders the cast too small to accomplish anything? When you’re attempting tasks of the scope and complexity on Hell’s Kitchen, much less Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars, you need people! Even more so given how much time is given to arguments, conflicts, spats, weepy confessionals, etc. This, you’ll recall, is the exact same beef I had with The Buddy Games, which if you ask me is a pretty big cause for concern.

Now this is the second season, which means he’s had some experience in wrapping a contest like this up. But I still think it’s going to be a weird experience.

Oh yeah, thanks for responding! Wasn’t sure there was anyone out there! :+1:

35

All right, turns out Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars actually ended before the Olympics, and I just never noticed. My final verdict…eh. Okay, I get that the contestants really are trying to make it in food service, and the “customers” know exactly why they were brought there, and even though the expectations are unrealistic everyone’s making an honest effort. My problem is that…well…there doesn’t seem to be any entertainment here. People talk, they make plans, they put plans into motion, stuff gets designed, stuff gets sold, Ramsey shows someone the door at the end, all very…staid, for lack of a better word. The season finale didn’t look appreciably different from any other episode, which really surprised. I mean, I don’t like raging hatefests like Hell’s Kitchen, but there’s gotta be something interesting happening. Think Shark Tank, which is a very straitlaced show in a lot of ways but has corny stunts, colorful costumes, personality clashes, gutsy moves, and big turnarounds. Even though it doesn’t always work, it makes each episode different and worth watching. I seriously have no idea who I’d recommend GRFS to. Maybe if you’re taking a business course and want to unwind or something.

Other than that, I’d like to give a little update on Masterchef. As you may recall, it started with 20 contestants, meaning that we’re looking at a super long season, especially with the two week layoff due to the Olympics. Apparently Ramsay was concerned about that, as in the comeback double episode he knocked out two contestants in the first hour (and one more in the second). In a particularly cruel irony, one of them actually cited rock bottom plus one. (“My cake maybe could’ve been a little better in certain areas, but Anna’s didn’t look too good. At least mine is not leaning, and so maybe I can squeeze on by.”) The other contestants were completely gobsmacked to hear a second name called; given how young some of them are, this may very well be the first time they’ve witnessed something like this in their lives. And then, just to add a touch of sheer lunacy, Ramsey justified his decision with “It’s simply not fair just to send one of you home tonight”, to which I must respond, since when the freak has THAT ever stopped you? Not-the-absolute-worst contestants have been getting lucky bastard passes for literally this show’s entire existence. Aundda wun bi da dus may as well be carved into the brick walls with how inviolable it is. I tell you, something is up. I refuse to believe that a reality TV icon like him would go into the season knowing exactly how many contestants he was going to have and exactly how many cooking challenges he was going to have and completely out of the blue decide to drop a whole episode because he wanted to send a message. All the :roll_eyes: at that. My guess is that he had a fixed number of elective double knockouts to use during the season whenever he felt the need (given the number of contestants, I imagine he was anticipating more stinkers than usual), and any unused ones would be stuck in just before the finale.

Anyway, Gen Z still unscathed, but marathon not sprint. Rest assured that I’ll be there at the end. Whenever that is.

36

Before I do the American Ninja Warrior season 15 finale, here’s a quick overview for those of you unfamiliar with the show.

American Ninja Warrior is an obstacle course competition featuring fanatical diehards who train on specially-designed high quality obstacles costing thousands of dollars (not including upkeep and replacement costs, or the cost of the space to hold them) that have no application to any other sport, several hours a day, every day, all year long. New applicants must be in superb physical shape and have a minimum of several months of obstacle practice to be considered for entry. Ideally the rookie should have not yet graduated from high school, have started training in early childhood, and pursued ninja-specific obstacle course racing with singleminded purpose for his or her entire life up to that point. Old athletes (above 28 or so) are permitted if they’ve competed for many years, have distinguished themselves, and have some compelling story, but they’re increasingly rare and could die out in a few years. Additionally, no one funny, quirky, unusual, or colorful is allowed to participate. Only bland, safe personalities need apply. (LGBTQ are acceptable so long as they don’t have scary tattoos or anything.)

The obstacles on the show fall into several categories: balance, speed, arms, challenging arms, advanced arms, grueling arms, nimble arms, quick arms, flexible arms, mighty arms, arms and arms, and arms and arms and arms and arms and arms and arms. Imagine men’s gymnastics with no floor exercise or vault and a much higher chance of serious injury. The show is hosted by Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbajabiamila, two obnoxiously loud and irritating windbags who, being reality TV fixtures, are as immovable as the Himalayas.

Once the contestants are chosen, they’re split up into six qualifiers. Placement is done at random to ensure gross imbalances in each of the groups and ensure that numerous good contestants will be shafted and a roughly equal number of (relative) scrubs will make it through. Touching water or anything outside the course ends the run and any and all participation and hence visibility in ANW for the entire year, unless the contestant qualifies for one of the special events, which are extremely limited and have microscopically few slots. The qualifying round is unique in that there is a Mega Wall at the end, which is the only chance the overwhelming majority of contestants will have to pretend they have a prayer of ever making a penny on this show. How it works is that the contestant must complete the 5 obstacles up to this point in a lightning fast time, and if he succeeds he gets one attempt at getting up a ridiculously high wall with a cut-off runup. If he doesn’t make it there in time, he may still attempt the wall out of “fun”, defined as Iseman taunting him that it was a nice effort but it earned diddly-squat and he’s leaving empty-handed, and it’s truly amazing that no one’s punched him in the face yet.

Of course, because the large number of runs makes it impractical to show them all, NBC said the hell with it and shows only a microscopic fraction, also severely truncating most of them. There is no hard and fast formula for getting on the air, but having a good story is mandatory about 99.9% of the time (conservative estimate). Also, do everything Iseman and Gbajabiamila tell you to no matter how stupid, embarrassing, aggravating, or disgusting, or you may as well be Godot.

After qualifying is the head-to-head round, instituted because everyone badmouths Ninja vs. Ninja despite being the only ANW event that even vaguely resembles an actual sport. Women compete in a separate subdivision with the winners automatically making it through because NBC wants gender diversity even though nearly all the women get bounced in Stage 1 which is the halfway point of the season, and they’re completely fine with that. The survivors of Stage 1 have another head-to-head round in Stage 2 because NBC wants lots of contestants on Stage 3 because that’s how it’s supposed to work. Those who complete that stage (either 5 or a number very close to 5) take on stage 4, the rope climb.

Other than the essentially impossible Mega Wall, the only person who wins any money whatsoever is the best finisher. If he gets up the rope in under 30 seconds, he wins $1,000,000; otherwise it’s $100,000, for, I remind you, absolute singleminded constant year-round hard training. Second place gets jack bupkis, which is the perfect ideal according to lots of blowhards who’ve never competed in professional sports in their lives. Throughout the season Iseman and Gbajabiamila will cite numerous milestones or records with the implication being that they’re worth something, but they’re not. In fact, it’s possible to get up the rope in under 30 seconds (known as “Total Victory”) and still win nothing, nothing, nothing, NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING because someone else that season happened to get up faster, which happened twice before and this season HAPPENED A THIRD TIME ARRGRG! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth::face_with_symbols_over_mouth: Sorry, getting ahead of myself. The importance of being the one top finisher and winning the million is emphasized by the comments made by the top competitors in the intros, many of whom desperately need cash now or in the near future, including the robbed robbed robbed screwed screwed screwed screwed Daniel Gil, who’s starting a family, and Joe Moravsky, who’s strained his relationship with his wife to the breaking point because he’s pursuing a sport which gobbles up nearly all his time and pays NOTHING!! NOTHING!! NOTHING!! and he was SOOOO CLOOOSE to completing Stage 3, and this show is so unbelievably messed up and is going to ruin so many lives grgragragrag. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

And that’s the basic gist of it. On to the recap!

American Ninja Warrior season 15 finale - 2 hours, NBC, 9/9/24

What the hell did you think happened? Vance Walker, who sold his soul to the sport to a degree that Alex Rodriguez would find excessive…seriously, that he made “took extra coursework to graduate from high school a year early” a BAD thing is mind-blowing…and won it all last year by jamming a concrete telephone pole up Daniel Gil’s nether regions (not his fault, of course, but gut-wrenching all the same) did the same to Caleb Bergstrom. The capper, of course, was Iseman announcing the losing time to Bergstrom and saying “YOU WERE SOOOO CLOOOOSSE!!”, and there is no Hell hot enough. :scream::fu: So now Walker’s going to take home a million every year even though with the kind of physical talents and dedication he has, he could be pulling in 10 to 20 times as much in a real sport. Hell, nowadays 1M is barely more than the league minimums of some professional sports! And we’re never going to hear the end of it. You know how years after he accomplished anything, diehard fans constantly inject Michael Jordan into every single goddam basketball conversation and fawn endlessly about how he was the greatest great great that ever great? Hell, there were like three of them on the NBA playoffs thread this year. That’s what we have to look forward to.

The worst part is that because ANW requires so much singleminded dedication, personality-wise he’s going to be slightly more interesting than a department store mannequin. Even the most dedicated athletes in real sports get to be human in the offseason. They go clubbing, they throw parties, they watch movies, they do TV interviews, they get into politics, they tear up the local dragstrip, they shop for fancy clothes, they write blog posts, and sometimes they just hang and chill. Walker has no such luxury; if he doesn’t continue training, daily, nonstop, someone’s going to surpass him, and there goes his ENTIRE annual income. Meanwhile, all the other contestants who sacrificed their lives for this show are going to have the futility of their existence hammered home with increasingly devastating potency with each passing day.

Hey, you know what the funny thing is? I was ready to give up the show forever after last season, but somehow I got the idea that someone else in the household was a big fan, so I allowed it to play over dinner for her sake. What a surprise when I learned that she only wanted to watch because she thought I was a big fan! (“My dog? I thought it was your dog!”) :man_facepalming: Well, suffice to say that this misunderstanding has been completely cleared up, and I’ve deleted every last trace of this execrable exercise in injustice and obnoxious behavior from both my DVRs, and I have now started the difficult but necessary process of forgetting this crazy show ever existed.

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Except for two small little details.

First, you have to remember that Vance Walker’s two wins were literally - and I mean literally in every sense of the word - taped back-to-back. They taped the last two seasons at once. I am not sure why; my theory is, they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to get the Vegas location back this year because of the whole Las Vegas Athletics stadium situation.

Second, they are changing the format; there will be no more million dollar winners - at least, that is the plan. There was a letter sent out to the competitors detailing how next season will work. First, it will be taped this Septemner/October, as opposed to the normal Spring timeframe. Second, the format is changing; they are going back to individual run semi-finals with a “traditional” city finals / semi-final course, presumably with the Salmon Ladder as obstacle #7 and Spider Trap (the plexiglass tower with the three sets of doors) as obstacle #10 again, and the finals will be strictly head-to-head races, in part because that may be how it will appear in the modern pentathlon at the 2028 Olympics (although it could also be because somebody noticed that the teenagers have a huge advantage with the current system); I can’t remember if the winner’s prize will be $100,000 or $250,000.

Oh, and don’t shed too many tears over anybody who has never won money on the show; most of the stars run their own “ninja gyms,” and if they didn’t make money hand over fist from that, the whole sport would have crashed and burned years ago, the way, say, inline roller skating did.

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First off, thank you for setting the record straight on a couple things. I always welcome being corrected as long as it’s with hard facts. That said, 2 million in one year but no more big paydays? That’s even worse for Walker! The heck with the NFL or MLB’s minimums, he could be scrabbling for WNBA money in a couple years.

And now there’s another wholesale revamp, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was happening for the very reason you mentioned…which would be pretty galling considering that NBC not only created these young stars in ANW Junior, they lowered the age limit specifically so that those kids wouldn’t have to spend five years out of the spotlight (and possibly move on to another sport)! Every long-running reality show needs to adapt, of course, but seeing ANW constantly fight against itself is jarring.

I’m also curious as to why, given the enormous amounts of hard data we have for player salaries in all mainstream sports, there’s never been any accounting of how much ninja trainers, gym owners, mentors, etc. actually make. Why not? That alone wouldn’t be enough to bring me back, but it would go a long way toward putting my mind at ease about what I can’t help but view as a royal injustice.

(Was inline skating ever a big sport? All I know is that hockey players were using them to practice in the offseason, and they caught on for a while.)

Masterchef wrapping up this Wednesday. I know, that fast. I’ll definitely be there; this looks like the most intriguing finale in a while.

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We don’t have information on what, e.g., Ninja gym owners make because they are private businesses, and not salaries paid for by a professional league.

Inline skating got to the point where there was a professional inline hockey league for at least one season, and it was a serious part of the X Games. There was even talk of adding it to the Olympics, but I think that was only the four-wheel skates version.

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Masterchef is going to take a while, so in the meantime I thought I’d cover the one episode of America’s Got Talent every season I can be bothered to watch. Actually, I picked up bits and bobs of the previous episodes on the off chance that I’d stumble across something really good that didn’t go the distance. Not much luck, but can’t fault a guy for trying. :slightly_smiling_face:

America’s Got Talent final performances - 2 hours, NBC, 9/19/24

Hakuna Matata Acrobats (dangerous balance acrobatics) - I’m going to say it right now: I’d much rather watch a completely safe routine that’s energetic, vibrant, and beautiful than a super-dangerous routine that takes ages to set up and moves like a Congressional hearing. From start to finish, all I could think of was that there were much better things this Tanzanian quartet could be doing with their iron courage. The major mistake at the beginning didn’t help either.

Dee Dee Simon (belty gospel-style singing) - Song: Take Me to Church. Dammit, is it that impossible to find an appropriate song in your own gender now? Besides that, I was never was a fan of this bombastic singing style, and I’m not convinced America is huge on it either.

Sebastian & Sonya (midair acrobatics) - So if you don’t win, you’re just going to City Hall, right? :wink: Sonya badly injured her right arm in a previous round and couldn’t even do the first half of the routine. Pretty good effort in the second half, all things considered, but it was a tough watch. Besides that, I’ve seen this artistry done before and considerably better; even fully healthy I wouldn’t put this couple in the same league as Aiden Bryant.

Brent Street (group dance with props) - I like this one. It’s not as spectacular or high-flying as V.Unbeatable, but there’s a lot of energy, everything flows smoothly, everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing, and the overall presentation looks really professional. They use some big props, things like staircases and cubicles, and it’s great how the prop handlers can place them so accurately while still dancing. This is one of those acts where I want to see a full show with all the moves and tools and transitions. Good stuff! :slightly_smiling_face:

Solange Kardinaly (quick change & magic) - In all the previous episodes I numbly blasted through, she was the one who held my attention from start to finish. She never received a golden buzzer, which I can only assume was because everyone involved in the show wanted to see as much of her as possible. Good call! :+1: What can I say, you can never go wrong with gorgeous, colorful, and luscious. I actually put her a step above Kristy Sellars because there’s more to her act and it flows absolutely seamlessly. Again, I don’t see quick change working as a Vegas act because of the effort-to-results ratio, but whatever show she ends up doing, I’d pay good money for it. (DVDs still exist, right? :wink:)

Learnmore Jonasi (comedy) - Quota. NEXT! :weary:

Air Footworks (jungle gym-like structure dance) - Obvious parallels to men’s gymnastics and parkour. This is a dance style that wows not with energy and passion and big leaps and tosses, but with precision and controlled power. You can imagine the countless hours of training they needed just to get the physical abilities to attempt this, much less iron out all those razor-sharp moves. The crisp visuals and energetic music are a perfect complement. A highly entertaining experience all around! It was so excellent they only cut to one pointless judge reaction! :grin:

Richard Yula (pop rock singing) - Don’t get me wrong, he’s GOOD. I’m not denying that. But he’s radio good, PBS concert good. Not sold-out arena, headlining-with-Taylor-Swift good. He should not win this.

Ronnie Segee and Rhythm (dog stuff) - Oh Reimu, not another frigging animal act. Run, jump, run, spin, run some more, blah de blah. I really do not like the idea of a performer getting the same accolades for vastly inferior work just because it’s inherently far less capable. Vegas does not judge on a curve, dammit.

Sky Elements (drone light show) - Haaaaahh…okay, let me just get this out of the way: It is outstanding for what it is. Think of sand painting but on a larger scale, in 3D, and with colors; that’s how impressed I was. All those precision machines flying in perfect formation, never a misstep, never a collision, is a marvel of technical expertise that could not exist even a few years ago and is a real testament to the amazing world we live in today. It’d be right at home at an airshow, a big football game, a national holiday, graduation, or an election. I’d even endorse it as a more economical substitute for fireworks. Now, here’s my 900-megaton problem with it being on this show…where’s the flipping PERFORMANCE?? Every single move is carefully dialed in (over several hours, I’d presume) well before the sun goes down, and when it’s time to go someone pushes a button, and the magic happens completely on autopilot. The entire crew does literally nothing the whole time! I mean, Kardinaly has a lot of prep work, but she can’t just sit back and let the props do everything! There’s no risk of a mistake, no risk of getting nervous or tired, no risk of getting hurt…no risk at all! That’s just a monumental unfair advantage, and it’d be a goddam travesty if this were to win. NBC really needs to take a serious look at repurposing one of their AGT spinoffs for preset acts like this, because it has no place here.

As always, the smart money is for someone completely undeserving to win, which means that if you’re curious you’ll just have to catch the finale yourself, which is one week after this show because NBC apparently thinks it’s big enough for that again now. :woman_facepalming: Whatever.