Sunday nights. If you like competitive reality show like Survivor or The Amazing Race, you might like this.
The premise is that three teams of two have to escape from a tricky location, avoid guards, complete a puzzle, and find the host. First team to find the host wins $100,000. Each episode is its own complete challenge - the next week three new teams compete in a new location.
Good things: The challenges (four each episode) are actually mentally and physically challenging.
The locations are great - so far they have been Alcatraz, an aircraft carrier, an abandoned asylum, and a missile silo.
The best team has won all four episodes so far.
As mentioned above, each episode is a complete challenge, with no carryover week to week. That means there is no need to devote 20 minutes of air time at the end to voting or judging.
The teams are mostly free of drama.
Bad things: The host is Rich Eisen of the NFL Network, formerly of ESPN. WTF?
The “guards”, who, if they spot a team, returns them to the beginning (although the teams don’t have to repeat the challenges while getting back to where they were) are sort of a random element. Teams will be screaming at each other with a guard 30 feet away, but the guard will remain oblivious if they hide behind a truck tire.
Sometimes when a team misreads a clue, say as tonight when a team failed to get an electric drill meant to open a canister, someone chucks it against a wall in frustration and it breaks open. That shouldn’t happen.
Basic reality show truisms apply to this show - “Read the fucking clue (map)” and pay attention to your surroundings.
Not great, but better than most shows that try to follow in the footsteps of TAR and Survivor.