teo47

They definitely need either less teams or more episodes in the season - for one of the winning teams (Stephen and English) we didn't see any of what went on for the middle 3 weeks of their 28 days. Unless it was completely boring, which I doubt since they still had to be moving around, this creates quite a sense of discontinuity in the show and when you do see them, it's usually to show the hunters randomly guessing something correct out of nowhere about where they are or who might be helping them. I think the show would be better if we did see more of the hunters doing stuff that was way off track, like interviewing friends/family in South Carolina when the team is actually in Florida.

The only problem with this is that it would be easy for teams to manipulate the rule - get a couple thousand dollars in cash before the game and give it to a friend, then pick the cash up from the friend after the game has started and you're all set. I kind of like the ATM rule because while like many other aspects of the game it isn't completely realistic, it requires the teams to plan and use good strategy in order to withdraw money without being caught.

I am thinking you're right, and the hunters were really never anywhere close to catching either of the two winning teams. It does pose a bit of a challenge to the editing team to make it look dramatic when there wasn't really any drama there. My guess is that the whole bank/run/plane scenes at the end were totally fabricated and filmed after the game had ended in order to add more excitement for TV. I saw a photo on Twitter of Lee & Hilmar posing with the hunter Griff (all wearing their clothes from the finale episode) that would appear to confirm this.

It would be interesting to see if Season 2 teams are a bit more smart about the game having watched Season 1. The two things I don't think the Season 1 teams paid enough attention to were the license plate readers for cars, and the ability of the hunters to use geolocation to track cell phones even if they weren't being used to make calls. So to combat this, teams should do a better job of staying off major highways and making sure that when a helper drives them somewhere, the helper's phone is either left at home or better yet, driven in the opposite direction by a second helper to throw the hunters off track. That said, I agree about the necessary changes to the show and I doubt that a Season 2 is going to be coming unless there are folks out there who really did buy that completely staged finale episode.

Yeah, I just assumed all along that they were going to be captured since they were introduced so late and were barely shown until all of a sudden they were on Day 26. Weird choice by the show's producers and editors, or maybe they were just trying to throw the viewer off somehow by showing David & Emiley so much and relegating a winning team to the background.

The show website could have been such a great addition to the show, but unfortunately what CBS put up there looks like it was thrown together in an afternoon by an intern or something, and lacks very little additional information about the show or its rules. It also willingly volunteers information about the misleading editing the show used, such as this quote from an interview with Emiley: Emiley: Oh, the calendar. The calendar was 100-percent a ruse. We actually have a picture a friend took of us filling it out with fake addresses. So, I'll just say that. Yet on the show, the hunters repeatedly use the calendar to track their movements and are shown getting the exact address of the cabin they were in from it.

One more idea for improvement: Don't introduce a ridiculous new rule for the first time during the last episode that wouldn't even be realistic or safe to do in the real game (let's have our players run several miles down busy streets carrying clear plastic bags full of $250,000 in cash - great idea!). This new rule accompanied by footage that was entirely filmed after the fact (confirmed by Twitter with posed photo of team with hunter in the outfits they were wearing on the finale) and totally staged drama of the hunters arriving at the airport just as the plane is taking off (yeah right). Show some respect for the intelligence of your viewers and don't just make stuff up for what you think is 'good TV' but is actually just crap.

People who want to get their 15 minutes of fame on a TV show!

What a ridiculous faux-dramatic finale episode (hey guys, what about these two locations I randomly picked out of this 30,000+ square mile circle that turn out to be the exact two airports the teams are heading towards!) No doubt in my mind that the entire final bank/run/plane scenes were filmed after the fact - there's no way they'd have had people actually running down the road for several miles carrying clear plastic bags full of cash unless it were a controlled filming environment (see the police car in the bank parking lot one of the teams went to and flashing police car lights in the background of one of the running scenes). I wouldn't be surprised if the teams never really had to do the airplane thing, but the producers added it in after the fact to create extra drama compared to having to show the teams winning while hiding out in someone's house with the hunters nowhere nearby. I'll probably watch a Season 2 in the unlikely event there is one, because I really like the concept of the show. But if it doesn't improve with a clearer statement of the rules the teams and hunters are required to play the game by, I won't stick around for the whole thing.

First and foremost, I completely agree that the rules need to be stated more clearly to the audience - use the first segment or two of the first episode to go over the rules about things like how the investigators request and receive their information, money usage rules, required movement of teams, and requirement of helpers to assist investigators, etc. That way more of the teams' actions might make sense, particularly leaving a safe hiding place to travel elsewhere. As a new rule, I think it would be interesting if teams were allowed to decide to split up, forfeiting the chance for the full $250,000 prize for a smaller prize (say $50,000 or $100,000) if one member of the team made it to the 28 day mark without being captured. This rule would lead to some interesting decisions that would have to be made if a team felt threatened or that capture was imminent. Also, I think if there is a second season they should either reduce the number of teams or increase the number of episodes in the season. There have been a lot of huge time jumps forward (all of a sudden a team is on Day 16 after they just started Day 1 the last time we saw them) and so much jumping back and forth from team to team that there wasn't really a sense of continuity or flow with the exception of David and Emiley, who were the most heavily featured team all season. Finally, I'd love to see more added as an online component to the show. It would be great if there were a map on the show website for each team, tracking their path through the hunt zone over the 28 days with clickable links on the map to video clips showing significant events where they happened. This would be updated after each episode to show the 'current' location of the teams and also a historical record of how they got there.

I am thinking the best thing for them to have done would have been to get off the highway as soon as they noticed the hunters and drive randomly around for as long as they could trying to lose them - maybe the hunters would eventually get stuck at a red light or behind slow moving traffic and they could have gotten away or ditched the car and escaped on foot. The keep going to Alabama and head into a deserted sports park strategy was doomed to fail, although as always with this show we don't know how much of what was shown on TV was what actually happened, and how much was filmed afterwards to replicate the chase and capture for TV to make it look good.

I like the splitting up aspect of the game if there is a Season 2 of this show - maybe if you choose to split up and only one member of the team makes it to the end or the team doesn't reunite before the end of the 28 days, the team would win a reduced prize amount. It appears to me as though the key to success in this game is to never ever ask for help from someone the hunters expect you to ask - so no social media connections, no family, nobody the hunters can find out about in advance. Stick to friends of friends, or acquaintances with whom you have no connection online. Spend as much time as you can 'off the grid' in the woods/hiking/camping, and when driving stay off interstate highways and main roads that will have license plate readers.

They seemed pretty concerned about the hunters possibly catching on to the flight, so I am not surprised that they didn't fly somewhere themselves even if it is within the rules. I don't think the hunters have any clue where these two are going and they will win without much drama at all, unless the producers can manufacture some with their 'some parts of the show are replicated' editing.

Of the many rules we don't hear about, I doubt that one of them is that the teams aren't allowed to change their plans once the game has begun. Some of the teams don't really appear to have had a plan, and forcing players to walk into a trap they know is there doesn't exactly make for good TV. My predictions: Next week, Stephen & English are captured due to contact with a family member who is under surveillance, and Lee & Hilmar win the game without the hunters ever coming close to finding them. In the last episode, David & Emiley win (hunch since they have been the most heavily featured team all along) and Aarif & Immad are sadly captured near the end of the 28 days.

I think this is correct - the show was advertised as having 8 episodes, meaning there should be two hours left if you count each hour of the 2-hour episode separately. "The Final Escape" suggests to me that we see Lee & Hilmar win next week - it doesn't seem like the hunters really have any idea where they are (aside from the unnecessary taunting) and it could be a pretty anticlimactic end of the game for them. I bet Stephen & English also get caught next week, leaving the finale to focus on the more featured teams of David & Emiley and Aarif & Immad.