I very much enjoyed the finale. I thought it was great. The paladins were really interacting with the other characters and the script. It was a lot of fun to watch. I loved that the One True Hero re-summoned the banished paladins. It was very hero worthy. A great show, a great finale, too bad the ratings were pretty poor so it won’t be back.
I think the winner was the One True Hero in many ways (of the final three). Shondo struck me as more a warrior than a hero. And Andrew was too impatient. Lena persevered and won.
I loved it. Other than The Amazing Race, it’s the only competition show I watch that I really, really want to be on. It must have been so much fun.
Y’all are right — bringing the losers back and actually having them do something was brilliant. Making the Vizier the traitor was way too obvious, and worse, it served no real purpose (other than to set up Season 2, about which who knows).
They’ve emphasized that they preserved the reality of the story for the players, who actually live in the castle and don’t see any cameras or people in modern dress. Clearly, though, they broke it for the finale, choreographing the paladins’ fights and telling Lena to just stand there and point the javelin at Vernal Equinox or whatever his name was. But that’s okay — the climax was exciting and fun.
Something strange happened. I have been watching this show from the beginning and liking it but when I sat down to watch this, the last episode, it was like a switch was flipped in my head and I suddenly thought, “This is all pretty dumb.”
It reminded me how I could play a computer game for literally dozens of hours and love it and one day just say “I never want to play it again.” I ended up fast forwarding through big chunks to just watch the competitions and how it ended. I honestly don’t know why.
Not quite the way I suggested in an earlier post, but nice that they did it.
In a show with a geeky theme (and presumably fanbase), an opportunity for lampshading can be an end unto itself. I’m sure most, if not all, of the players immediately pegged the Vizier as a probable bad guy, with the metagame question being whether the producers were playing the trope straight or subverting it.
Okay, I finally managed to watch the last two (double) episodes, so not it’s time to catch up.
First off, I enjoyed it. I liked how they integrated the challenges into storyline tasks and not just totally challenges for challenges sake. They made a good effort to make it entertaining while still fitting the requirement to whittle down to the One True Hero.
As far as the challenges go, I do have some comments. With regards to the flags and messages, I think as a challenge it was a pretty good idea. Having 2 different messages meant they couldn’t copy each other. Using a large number of flags that have some similar patterns makes it a challenge to get it all exactly right, and having the flag code book in the tower meant splitting the team to the message interpreter and the ones hanging the flags. And it showed the weakness. This was totally a challenge where the man/woman division of teams did not put either at a disadvantage. The girls just made mistakes, the guys (primarily Patrick) solved theirs faster.
In particular, the ladies were reviewing the flags and for some reason didn’t seem to recheck the one flag that was the problem. Sure, Bonnie said “pentagon” and not “five sides”, but neither of the other two did either. And they heard her say “pentagon”, looked at the hexagon, and heard her say “that’s correct” - one even said “didn’t she say pentagon?” That would have been me saying “Wait, this is a hexagon, is it right or do you mean a pentagon?” Because Bonnie contradicted herself.
And the other was when reviewing the message, swapping the person in the tower. That gives fresh eyes to the code book, and moves him down to look at the flags up close - two opportunities to spot the problem. So good on Patrick.
I do have to question, however, the actual effectiveness of the flag tower system as a means of communication. I’m assuming it was modeled after the flag system used on military sailing vessels for communicating at sea. My complaint, though, is about visibility. Just how far can one readily discern the variations in some of those flag patterns (gray V on upper left and lower right, not green V)? 100 yards? 200 yards? I would think 100 yards would be about the farthest. Remember they don’t have any kind of telescope or binoculars like the 18th and 19th century sailing vessels did.
Okay, so think about the system. You compose your message, you order the flags on the pole and raise the pole. The person in the tower 100 yards away sees the message, decodes it, then repeats it. Maybe there’s a tag at the front that tells them quickly the recipient so they know how far to relay without actually decoding the whole message? How fast can that message travel, and can it outpace a rider on a horse?
And, assuming that system makes sense in principle, how effective is it when the tower is smack in the middle of a forest, and visibility is limited by freaking trees everywhere? :dubious:
And when Sir Ansgar directs them to create a shelter, they might need it later, I went “they’re going to need it later”. Have them do something now when there’s time to aid the story flow later.
Anyway, the Fates’ challenge was also theoretically a practical challenge: monitor the path and memorize the details about the enemy. Number of soldiers, types of weapons, horses, etc. Wasn’t it convenient that the enemy leader chose that moment to pause and review his troops?
The trouble is in order to grade them, Sir Ansgar already had the answers. Still, arguably measuring their skills rather than gaining useful info.
The dragon was awesome - light show? Video played how? Then they went to the village, and had to go close the gates.
I’m a little confused - it looked like the gates were supported by a stand, but apparently that was the chain that had to pull them down. Otherwise the easy thing would just be kick the stands out. So I guess the gates were counterweighted to sit open?
The challenge was to get gear parts and assemble a mechanism to crank the chain and lower the gate. Lina really messed up here - only grabbing two of her bags? Not good. Bonnie struggled, thinking like a puzzle, whereas the mechanically inclined would have it easier. I think I would have rocked that one.
The dragon egg was likewise a cool way to make the challenge something useful. “We found these eggs, and have to get them out of the holes.” I’m wondering what would have happened if someone tried a different approach? Say, drop the net to the bottom, load the net, and use it to lift out of the hole? They were instructed to use what is in the hole, so that would have violated the instructions.
Lina worked hard on that challenge, and only lost by the narrowest margin of dropping at the top, then had to redo it all the way up by herself. Which was better than Bonnie.
Patrick in that voting kinda misrepresented things. He made it seem like Bonnie did really well and didn’t point out that Lina got it all the way to the top by herself and almost beat him, whereas Bonnie struggled more. Oh well, that worked out.
Then they were taken prisoner by the Rana. Notice how the paladins didn’t have swords, I’m sure by design - less risk of them trying to fight. So they are put in cages. My immediate reaction was to be trying to think of how to break out, not sit around moping until Crio told them to. Meh. Good on Andrew for succeeding.
Then then ran and hid in the woods in their previously build hideout.
For the Banshee challenge, it was somewhat of a gimmick in that they had to use a wooden plate to carry three eggs at a time, and couldn’t do something more effective like wrapping them in their shirttail like a pouch. Anyway, Lina was making great progress while the others were rushing, until she hit her first bad point. But then she really effed up and dropped the wooden plate, and when she got back to the front, she didn’t have it and only then realized she still needed it. :smack: It didn’t matter, because that’s when Shondo won, but still, that would have been a good reason to pick her to be the one sent home.
This is a case where it looks like Andrew gamed the decision, rather than picking the tougher competitor, he picked the one that seemed more likely to let him have a better chance to succeed. Yes, I know he had kinda formed a partnership and loyalty is important, but that tie breaker was a heartbreaker. Fitting that comes back to bite him.
The final challenge was a 4 part skills test. Wait, what did she say? Oh, three steeds. Her accent made that hard to parse. The maps in the vines thing was a bit of luck, who found what when. Shondo had been a really strong competitor all along, never getting sent to the Fates, always doing well. He finally met his match in the balance test. 6 items of varying sizes and weights have to be placed to exactly balance. He was far ahead of the others getting started, but got just trounced by this challenge. I’m assuming the packages were different enough he couldn’t have just copied the others? Lina got hers in short order, with a smart approach, and then went on. Andrew struggled a bit before following her. But then he made two glaring errors of not thinking. First, not seeing the chain and thinking he missed it somewhere rather than taking a close look at the challenge area. In all previous tasks, all parts were in their respective locations. Then he raced through feeding the chain through eyelets but didn’t follow the instructions about crisscrossing the doors. Doh!
Lina read carefully and did it right, and that put her well ahead for the final task, the archery for the bridge. Shondo finally got his balance to work out, but was so far behind he just couldn’t catch Andrew, even with all his errors. So Shondo went out all because of the balance task.
Finally, it gets to the archery, and Lina had to fire a bazillion arrows, but managed to hit the target before Andrew got in place. So congrats to her for sticking in there, and showing up the boys.
I liked that they brought everyone back to participate in the final battle. A great way for everyone to enjoy the ending. I was a little confused why then sent Lina with the Sunspear by herself back through the tunnels while everyone else went to retake the castle gates and force their way in, only to then reunite with her. Um, so why split up?
Sir Ansgar got to knock people off the walls - no fair. Also, the final bit with Lina, it would surely have been tempting to take that giant spear and ram it into Verlox’s chest. How did she know to just point it?
Which brings up another question, just what did they witness real time versus what we saw on TV? There were several points this could play out, including the smoke from Queen Raina’s mouth when she was cured of the poison, to when Verlox took the castle, to the dragon attacking the village, and finally the use of the Sunspear. I would think that the Verlox thing could be accomplished by digital projector, but not so sure about the dragon. And the thing with the spear - “Okay, stand there and point the spear at him… hold it… hold it…, and cut. Good job, Verlox has been vanquished.”
So, does Lina get to keep the Sunspear as a giant souvenir? Or give it back to the Fates?
Anyway, I was entertained, and wouldn’t mind another season, though I really find the voting to be trying. At least most of the contestants tried to play to the game’s standard rather than the lowest common denominator.
Yes, and I would have done it precisely for that.
I’m confident that was just the players recognizing the same things we saw, how creepy he was, and how he was around when the Queen was poisoned, and all that. It didn’t take much to make him seem suspicious. Which is why I was hoping they were going to “Snape” him, but they didn’t.
Yes, despite thinking he came off cocky, I liked his attitude and his approach to voting - pick the best.
Yep, I felt that way, too.
Well, that was what kept me watching. Too much vote gaming would have driven me away. I don’t watch Survivor precisely because of that.
Nobody says you have to watch it.
There were points that I can’t imagine they didn’t have a cameraman visible, like when they were going through the tunnels. There just wasn’t any apparatus for the camera.
