S08.E07: Atlanta Finals

[OnceSane]

The top 30 competitors from the Atlanta qualifier tackle an even more challenging course that features 10 obstacles, including the Salmon Ladder, Floating Monkey Bars, Clacker and Invisible Ladder.

[slf]

What a brutal course; that clacker is nuts. But still, with three finishers tonight that's more than what most finals produce. 

Travis Rosen was the one that impressed me most, especially with how he handled the clacker. I don't really care one way or another about him but I do like how even though he clearly cares about this and wants to do well it's not everything to him.

Unlike Drew Dreschel, who apparently must win or the Earth will stop spinning. Methinks he needs to take a break, do something else next year. The answer to "what happens if you don't win this game show" should never be "everything in my life will implode and become awful." Yikes.

Enjoyed the footage of Kacy braiding McGrath's hair; that was surprisingly cute.

[holly4755]

I just watch each show and can't believe anyone really does this stuff - it is all CGI!!! Well, I have to say,I don't go in cheering for one person over another , I don't listen to their stories, and cheer for everyone that can actually do the impossible. of all the amazing things, anything requiring finger tip strength awes me the most, especially if they have to leap from their finger tips. . 

[Quilt Fairy]

I think that the Big Dipper might actually be easier without the cargo net, a straight shot off the slide with nothing in the way. The net is an obstacle in it's own right, and apparently dicey to grab onto under the best of circumstances.

[MelinaBallerina]

I was watching and was thinking, hey!  Where's the amazing woman to be featured?  Then I remembered that this was Kacy's city, and she was a wipe out, again.  

That Clacker really favored long arms, didn't it?  I did like that all of the top 15 were veterans.  Even though it is fun to see amazing rookies, its weird to see a finals course that only rookies finish.  

Does anyone else mentally think "your life is calling" every time JoJo comes on? <g>

[Lantern7]

I feel bad for Caleb the Farmer Ninja. He completed the first course, got all sorts of hype going into his run . . . and he bites it on the second obstacle. Wouldn't be surprised if he gets a wild card.

Because the show didn't mention it: Spartan wraps up on Thursday. In addition to Kevin Bull and Lance Pekus, another team with two ninjas made it to the finale, and one of them is Neil Craver, who got the WWWA treatment last night.

[Chaos Theory]

Despite Kacy doing awful in the qualifying she comes off as a nice person with a lot of friends. Braiding McGraths hair was cute.  I always enjoy her reaction shots of others running.  I think she shows up because she genuinely loves the sport.  And I think most like her.

I didn't recognize too many "names" this time and I was kinda bored.  I liked LA better.  Even with the almost impossible wedge it was more entertaining.  Plus it had some of my favorites.

I did like the invisible monkey bars though.  I thought it was a cool obstical.  I think this was my least favorite of the group.  Next week should be better...I think 

[backgroundnoise]

Quote

What a brutal course; that clacker is nuts.

Not as brutal as having to listen to Akbar repeating, "Clack on, clack off" 8,256 times.

I actually thought it was a cool obstacle, but not if I have to hear that every time it's used.

[fivestone]

8 hours ago, MelinaBallerina said:

I was watching and was thinking, hey!  Where's the amazing woman to be featured?  Then I remembered that this was Kacy's city, and she was a wipe out, again.  

 

I don't think this was Kacy's city, I think she competed in Oklahoma City or Indianapolis. But no "big name" women ran the Atlanta course, plus, it was one of the more difficult for even the men to finish, so I'm not surprised that no women advanced to the Atlanta finals.

[VartanFan]

So happy to see Travis finish the course.  

I know it's not the same thing (I go to Zumba 3 times a week) but I'm turning 40 next week and get pretty annoyed when they practically put Travis Rosen in the grave.  And they've been talking about his age for years now.  

[mlp]

10 minutes ago, VartanFan said:

I'm turning 40 next week and get pretty annoyed when they practically put Travis Rosen in the grave.

LOL  I totally agree.  Travis is younger than my kids so I can't see him as a senior anything.  He is, however, one of my very favorites so I was on the edge of my seat watching him run the course.  I had no idea he'd broken his wrist during Team Ninja Warrior.  He must have done it when he fell off the platform at the end because he was fine before that.  

[Guest]

On 7/18/2016 at 7:10 PM, slf said:

Unlike Drew Dreschel, who apparently must win or the Earth will stop spinning. Methinks he needs to take a break, do something else next year. The answer to "what happens if you don't win this game show" should never be "everything in my life will implode and become awful." Yikes.

Enjoyed the footage of Kacy braiding McGrath's hair; that was surprisingly cute.

I wondered if the subtext of Drew's "if I blow this my gym suffers" thing was that Kacy's gym is.  

[slf]

54 minutes ago, Winston9-DT3 said:

I wondered if the subtext of Drew's "if I blow this my gym suffers" thing was that Kacy's gym is.  

Oh, is Kacy and Brett's gym suffering? Too bad, if so, but hardly surprising.

When it comes to "the veterans", we're talking about people who've been competing on this show for at least five years, some of them seven, and none of them has won. "HE JUST KILLED THIS COURSE!" Not to sound mean or dismissive but...I'd certainly hope so. When you've trained in ninja gyms and on replica courses for more than half a decade I'd hope you could at least kill the qualifiers and the city finals that some rookies are blowing through. Advancing to Stage 1 or 2 should be a given after a certain point, as well. (There's also a certain point where it might be in your interest to accept it isn't going to happen; the only people I think can afford to keep competing are the ones who don't arrange their lives around this. If you've opened/run a gym, quit any job not connected to this, etc., then you either need to win or move on.) When they say "this contestant has competed on every course!" or something like that I'm not sure what my response is supposed to be, when only two people have 'won' and one of them did so during his second season. For the ones competing because they think it's fun, then great, but there are a whole lot of people on this show who've gotten too wrapped up in this.

I hope Kacy gets away from the gym because I don't see those lasting very long.

Edited July 20, 2016 by slf

[simplyme]

37 minutes ago, slf said:

When you've trained in ninja gyms and on replica courses for more than half a decade I'd hope you could at least kill the qualifiers and the city finals that some rookies are blowing through. Advancing to Stage 1 or 2 should be a given after a certain point, as well. (There's also a certain point where it might be in your interest to accept it isn't going to happen; the only people I think can afford to keep competing are the ones who don't arrange their lives around this. If you've opened/run a gym, quit any job not connected to this, etc., then you either need to win or move on.)

I think the problem is that it only takes one slip, one loss of balance at the wrong place and you're done. Think how often gymnasts at the Olympics fall, and they're considered the best in the world and are only dealing with a single apparatus at a time (albeit they're essentially performing multiple moves over a period of time on that apparatus.)  Stringing together a series of obstacles, at least one of which in each qualifier has never been done before, makes it more likely for a contestant to have that one slip-up... and biff the obstacle. Obviously veterans are much more experienced, but they're still human. They also generally have a lot more pressure on them than rookies to do well.

I don't know that people necessarily need to win or move on, but I think competitors planning to live off it need to realize it's still a limited market and they're presumably competing with each other for that market.  Hopefully they will figure out other markets to tap into or additional income sources if it isn't going as well as they hoped.

Admittedly, if someone's plan comes across as "quit my job for ANW and live off my spouse," I tend to have a knee jerk negative reaction. :P

[Guest]

1 hour ago, slf said:

Oh, is Kacy and Brett's gym suffering? Too bad, if so, but hardly surprising.

I have no idea, I just wondered if maybe that was the info Drew had at the time of that comment.  I wouldn't expect that a ninja-course-only gym would attract a lot of people, but who knows.  I don't know anyone into it, and it seems like it's pretty tough stuff that most of us can't even sort of do, unlike say Crossfit that is (in theory) scalable for beginners.  

Since it seems like almost no one really wins anything (though they must get some union scale appearance money, at a minimum, if their run gets shown), it seems like it could be an expensive hobby if you build a course to practice on and pay your way to these competitions.  

I just started watching this, though, so I could be all wrong.  

[Fukui San]

34 minutes ago, simplyme said:

I think the problem is that it only takes one slip, one loss of balance at the wrong place and you're done. Think how often gymnasts at the Olympics fall, and they're considered the best in the world and are only dealing with a single apparatus at a time (albeit they're essentially performing multiple moves over a period of time on that apparatus.)  Stringing together a series of obstacles, at least one of which in each qualifier has never been done before, makes it more likely for a contestant to have that one slip-up... and biff the obstacle. Obviously veterans are much more experienced, but they're still human. They also generally have a lot more pressure on them than rookies to do well.

This is so true and something we all have to keep in mind. If you run this challenge with the same field enough time people will have wide variance in how they do.  In the Japanese version around tournament #12 they anointed a half-dozen of the most talented and diligent competitors the "All-Stars".  They were the most likely to succeed at that point in time. Over the course of the next 20 tournaments I believe that all of them failed the first obstacle of the course at one point or another though all of them regularly cleared the first stage and made their way deep into the Third Stage, one even making the final stage four times, winning it all on his fourth try.  (The Japanese version consists of what we'd call the Vegas Finals here.)

No one is immune to mistakes, slumps, and happenstance.  If you were to choose right now your group of U.S. All-Stars and kept track of their results for over a decade, probably all of them will have their share of flame-outs to go with their successes.

[VartanFan]

3 hours ago, simplyme said:

Admittedly, if someone's plan comes across as "quit my job for ANW and live off my spouse," I tend to have a knee jerk negative reaction. :P

Why, I can't imagine to whom you're referring!  :)  

I have no problem with these athletes trying to make $$ off of this because NBC is gobbling them up. Admittedly, I do like when the contestants look at this as a fun personal goal.  The newlywed guy from last night may have done many/most of the previous seasons but he seemed like he was having fun, was humble, and had ANW in perspective regarding his life.  

[slf]

6 hours ago, simplyme said:

I don't know that people necessarily need to win or move on, but I think competitors planning to live off it need to realize it's still a limited market and they're presumably competing with each other for that market.  Hopefully they will figure out other markets to tap into or additional income sources if it isn't going as well as they hoped.

Admittedly, if someone's plan comes across as "quit my job for ANW and live off my spouse," I tend to have a knee jerk negative reaction. :P

Brian Arnold, if I recall correctly, lol? I remember thinking "Wow, and what happens if you don't win? Y'know, now that you've quit your steady job?" I have no idea what he did/does for a living but I hope it's the sort of profession where you can quit to compete on a game show and then come back later!

I'm not trying to hate on anyone, though; this is my favorite summer show, I look forward to each new episode, and I really respect the effort they put into competing. Some of my favorites have been competing since early into the show's run (like Flip and Ryan Stratis, who's been competing since the beginning of the series). I think Drew Drechsel's low-key desperation just really made me cringe and think about all of the contestants who seem to be putting so much emphasis on this in their life and who are getting frustrated by it. Like you said, it's a limited market, and some of them are really struggling with that. 

Does anyone understand how this show connects to Sasuke? I was under the impression they are two separate shows (with ANW being a spin-off of sorts) but when I was reading the bio for one of the contestants it said he qualified to compete in Sasuke twentysomething because of how he did on ANW. Do the ANW contestants get to compete on Sasuke too?

[Fukui San]

First there was Sasuke. And it held two or so tournaments a year. The occasional American would show up. 

Then G4 started showing half hour rerun shows as Ninja Warrior, reediting the three hour specials into multiple 30 minute shows. This happened for a while. 

Then G4 ran a contest to send a Ninja Warrior US fan to compete in Japan. There was fan voting, makeshift courses, and two guys ended up competing. Then a few more next year.

Then they started a separate reality show in which the prize was to go to Japan to compete.  This they started calling American Ninja Warrior. It grew until they sent 10 guys to Japan and packaged just their runs as a separate show  They incidentally started matching or outperforming the Japanese field.

Then G4 became Esquire, and NBC started running some of G4's ANW shows, and it morphed to what we have now, with Sasuke's support. A few Americans compete in Japan upon invite.

ETA: At this point the Japanese version has run 30+ tournaments, and it has been beaten 4 times by 3 Japanese competitors. It's an open question at this point after each tournament whether they will run another one as the concept has kind of run it's course. It could be that licensing by the US version and other international versions is keeping it afloat.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Fukui San

[slf]

@Fukui San thanks for the explanation! Now I'm interested to see how the American contestants did on the Japanese course...

[AuntieDiane6]

Quote

Admittedly, if someone's plan comes across as "quit my job for ANW and live off my spouse," I tend to have a knee jerk negative reaction. :P

Brian Arnold, if I recall correctly, lol? I remember thinking "Wow, and what happens if you don't win? Y'know, now that you've quit your steady job?"

And he's living off his "girlfriend" and mother of his 3 children.  I want to see him win just to see how long it takes him to dump her.  

[slf]

On 7/25/2016 at 1:24 PM, AuntieDiane6 said:

And he's living off his "girlfriend" and mother of his 3 children.

Oh they aren't married? For some reason I thought they were. I don't know what his girlfriend does for a living but I hope she makes good money.

[simplyme]

I thought they were married, too. I'm pretty sure he's the father to the youngest and stepfather to the other two. I thought someone said he now had a job again, but I could be confused. (I don't really follow ninja's personal lives. If it gets said on ANW or here, I might remember it.)

[SmithW6079]

On 7/25/2016 at 2:24 PM, AuntieDiane6 said:

And he's living off his "girlfriend" and mother of his 3 children.  I want to see him win just to see how long it takes him to dump her.  

Wow. What a double standard. If a woman doesn't work, but her husband does, is she just "living off" him, you know, like a mooch?

[AuntieDiane6]

Quote

   ON JULY 25, 2016 AT 2:24 PM,  AUNTIEDIANE6 SAID: 

And he's living off his "girlfriend" and mother of his 3 children.  I want to see him win just to see how long it takes him to dump her.  

Wow. What a double standard. If a woman doesn't work, but her husband does, is she just "living off" him, you know, like a mooch?

If she's not MARRIED to him, she's just a ... baby mama, IMHO.  

[SmithW6079]

9 hours ago, AuntieDiane6 said:

If she's not MARRIED to him, she's just a ... baby mama, IMHO.  

Way to dismiss relationships that don't fit your definition of acceptable level of commitment. 

[AuntieDiane6]

Yup.  If he really loved her, he'd put a ring on it.  I mean, THREE kids.  And given the ages of those kids, I can't believe they don't want them married--heck, even Brad and Angelina got married at the request of their kids.  Other than him, though, most of the other participants seem to be in pretty traditional relationships (or partnered/married if gay) regardless of race, age, red or blue state.  Nice to see.  

[SmithW6079]

On 9/19/2016 at 2:29 PM, AuntieDiane6 said:

Yup.  If he really loved her, he'd put a ring on it.  I mean, THREE kids.  And given the ages of those kids, I can't believe they don't want them married--heck, even Brad and Angelina got married at the request of their kids.  Other than him, though, most of the other participants seem to be in pretty traditional relationships (or partnered/married if gay) regardless of race, age, red or blue state.  Nice to see.  

Nope. Unless you're their nanny or have personal acquaintance with them, it's not your place to tell them how to define their relationship.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are divorcing, so so much for "till death do us part," even at the request of their children. By all accounts, it's going to be an ugly, ugly divorce that has already dragged the kids into it.

[simplyme]

On 9/19/2016 at 2:29 PM, AuntieDiane6 said:

heck, even Brad and Angelina got married at the request of their kids.

OMG, you Curse of Akbared Brangelina!