All-Star Cast Analysis: Season 1

It's been a long off season, but it's time to get back to work. The premiere date is set for Wednesday, May 29. The cast has been announced, and Colby has returned to Twitter. The only question left is: What's going to happen? What exactly does the All-Star Season have in store? From the few promos I've watched, it certainly looks interesting, especially since everyone seems to be wearing green jerseys. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start simple by taking a look at the cast. Over the next couple of days I'll break down the cast by the season they hail from. I'll take a look at their strengths, weaknesses and overall likability. I'm still planning out where to go from there, but if you have any suggestions let me know. 

Season 1

Kelly Bachand
Of the whole crop of Season 1 contestants, Kelly is the person I am most excited to see get another shot in this competition. Now, if you've been following the intermittent posts I've been putting up since Season 4 ended, Kelly's involvement in the All-Star season shouldn't come as much of a shock. That being said, Kelly is an awesome competitor and skilled shooter. He has a likable personality that lends itself to the show's skill over strategy style of play. Kelly was also pretty young when he first came on the show, and it'll be interesting to see how he has matured.

Adam Benson
Eliminated in the same challenge as Kelly, Adam is on the older end of the contestant spectrum, and as he says in his video, the physicality of some of the challenges can throw off his game. That seems to be a recurring factor in Top Shot and one that can ultimately be more difficult than hitting the target.

Chris Cerino
It's true what they say, no one remembers second place. Season 1 is going back a ways for me to remember, and while my friend Tony helped me get a little refresher last year, I no longer have the luxury of watching old episodes on Netflix. The good thing is, with a runner-up in the mix, the show is definitely putting its best foot forward trying to get the cream of the crop to duke it out.

Blake Miguez
While I'm not necessarily excited to see Blake return, I'm not indifferent either. Blake was a strong competitor, finishing behind Kelly and Adam in Season 1. He returned in Season 2 as a expert to show off the 2011 Razorcat race gun, one of the coolest weapons to ever be featured on the show. After watching his video for Season 5, History really seems to be playing up the Louisiana angle to tap into its Swamp People audience, which is weird since I don't really remember that being emphasized during his first go around. 

Peter Palma
Peter has a very teddy bear-like quality to him, which makes him a bit of a mystery to me. At first glance he might seem a little soft, but the man is a marine and finished fourth in Season 1 going up against three very tough shooters. Look for him to be the wild card this season. I don't want to make any bets, but I could see him going pretty far.

I would rather see 
J.J. Racaza and Tara Paremba instead of Blake and Adam (no offense to those guys). I would also include Iain Harrison, but I'll get to him in another post. J.J. was a more memorable number three than Chris was as a number two, and the guy is simply an amazing shooter. Tara was never fairly eliminated from the contest, and I believe could very easily have made it into the top eight. 

What do you think? Are you happy with the Season 1 All-Stars, or is History missing someone who deserved a spot? Hit the comments and let me know. 

Going to be a busy weekend for me, so I won't make any promises about when I'm posting next. Come back and take a look on Sunday afternoon or follow me on Twitter @cswiets for the latest posts.

Top Shot Recap: S4 E8 "The Mad Minute"

Speed.

It can make or break a Top Shot competition, and it's the subject of tonight's Word.

No, wait, that's the wrong show. Sorry, I'm still reeling from the outcome of last night's episode.

The show opened with William Bethards reentering the house and red team expressing their confusion over why blue decided to send him in the first place. They felt that despite Bethards performance in the trick shooting challenge, he was still one of the best shooters on blue team.

On the range Colby introduced the shooters to the Webley Mark VI revolver, and also introduced them to the day's expert, Season 1 winner Iain Harrison. It was difficult to gauge how each team was doing coming out of practice. Chris Cheng discussed practicing loading the revolver because it's mechanics were not the same as most revolvers. While many revolvers have the chamber pop out the side to enable a reload, the Webly has to be cracked open. The editing for this part of the episode was a little shaky because there weren't many close ups of the targets to show how close the shooters were to the mark.

The team challenge was a straight shoot-off, not much unlike this season's first team challenge. There were five rows of six jars. The first team to hit all thirty of their targets would win. While the challenge looked like a fairly simple stationary target, Colby and the Top Shot team threw the contestants a curve ball by putting the structures holding the targets on a track that moved at a good pace from right to left.

Chee Kwan finally got a chance to shoot when blue team decided to change up it's strategy and sit Gabby (a move to be discussed in the analysis). This marked the first time in four seasons that a female contestant has been benched. Kwan was anxious to get back to shooting going first for the red team against Terry Vaughan. While Vaughan was faster on the trigger, Kwan's slow and steady pace resulted in more targets hit. According to Kyle Sumpter, this was red team's strategy for the challenge, and it was one that paid off in the end. Mark this one down as another blowout by the red team who hit all 30 targets to blue team's 18.

The graphic that popped up on screen after the commercial break, broke down how each blue team shot during the challenge.Vaughan was the only blue team member to make it to the the third round of shooting going 6 for 18 on his run. Greg Littlejohn went 5 for 12, Bethards 4 for 12 and Augie Malekovich brought up the rear with 3 for 12.

The blue team meeting was mess with Vaughan being the only one owning up to their mistake, which some might argue wasn't the biggest mistake of the challenge. He rationalized that by not having a strong start he set the pace for the rest of the match. Littlejohn proved he wasn't paying that close attention to the match by claiming Malekovich had had the best day and Bethards had had the worst, when in reality Malekovich had had the worst and Littlejohn had the best. Malekovich took issue with how long it took Bethards to take his shots, especially since this challenge was supposed to focus on speed. (There are a disgusting amount of "had" 's in that paragraph, I apologize)

The episode then took a short detour to focus on the red team gloating over the win and how good they were as the team.  Sumpter was doing most of the talking, taking pride in the fact that his team was not picking apart each others performances in the challenge, as he assumed blue team was. It was an odd route for the show to take, since they usually leave out what happens with the winning team while the losing team has their meeting.

At the elimination range it was Vaughan and Littlejohn once again heading to elimination with two votes each.

The practice session brought back Harrison, this time to instruct the competitors on another British weapon, the Lee-Enfield Mark III rifle. Littlejohn went first and Harrison showed of some truly amazing skills with his manipulation of the rifle.(Seriously, how good is that guy?) He showed Littlejohn and Vaughan the three different ways in which the could hold the rifle and work the bolt. The practice session looked pretty even, but Littlejohn seemed more comfortable coming out of it than Vaughan.

The challenge featured a special military twist. The competitors would have only one minute to take as many shots as possible at a target 200 yards down range, a challenge the British military reffer to as "the mad minute" (don't you love it when they say the title of the episode is in the episode?). Littlejohn went first, and, while inconsistent throughout his time with the weapon, managed to get six hits on the target. Vaughan was up next, and while he was able to get on target more quickly than Littlejohn, he struggled to get back on target after his first reload. That combined with a small struggle manipulating the bolt, kept Vaughan's score at six as well. This being Top Shot, the tie went to the man who had fired less shots, and once again, that man was Littlejohn.

There might be something ironic about the Brit getting beat by his own weapons, but I'm too upset to see it.

What did you think of last night's episode? Did the right man go home, or are you as upset as I am that Vaughan was sent packing? Or, third option, are you also like me, upset that Littlejohn keeps barely winning these elimination challenges?

Hit the comments and let me know. By the way, I changed the settings on commenting, so now pretty much anyone should be able to do comment without having to put in as much information as before.

Analysis is in progress, and believe me, there is a lot to analyze. Look for it tomorrow.

One more thing, Colby was not live tweeting last nights episode, so that is why there were no Top Tweets.

Follow @cswiets

Tony's Take: Top Shot Season 1

I asked Tony to begin his journey by posting his thoughts on Season 1 of Top Shot. He decided to write a short novel instead.

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Howdy Doo TCG readers!  In this installment of “Tony kills time between Tuesdays” I’ll be sharing my thoughts from Season 1 of the show.  If you’re looking for a thorough recap for each episode, I apologize in advance for ruining your Friday.  That’s not what you’re getting.  I don’t even think I’m going to mention the names of each contestant.  Luckily for you, the bios are still up on History’s website.  If you have Netflix, I’d be mowing through this season.  Seriously, it’s like exercise.  There’s time for it, no matter how busy you claim to be.  What are you doing still reading this?  Go watch the season.  It was more entertaining than I’ll ever be.

Instead of a show by show run-down I’m just going to give major recognition to the guys (and potentially lady… read on to find out) who I cheered for the hardest.

My 3 Heroes

Kelly Bachand stood out right away as a guy I was going to attach my skis to.  Who is this kid?  A 22 year old college student?  What am I?  I’m something similar!  The major difference between us is that I can’t shoot feathers off a peacock from the other side of town, but screw it I’ll overlook that because that’s just how we roll here at TCG headquarters.  The first episode Kelly was thrown to the lions in a rifle competition (his specialty).  His red team lost and the only people who competed for the team were Mike Seeklander and Andre Robinson.  Mike was billed as being one of his team’s best shooters, but his underwhelming performance sent him to the elimination challenge against Kelly.  I’ll give the red team the benefit of the doubt here because Andre didn’t perform poorly, Mike wanted to face Kelly (respectfully viewing him as the best rifle competitor) and it is only natural to make the youngest competitor prove his worth to the team.  However, after Kelly absolutely smoked Mike (I spit at your crosswinds!) that should have been it.  He should have been considered a worthy competitor just like everybody else.  Unfortunately, he was immediately treated like a child by Bill (parenthetical sidenote: I have to believe the editing had a lot to do with the portrayal of Kelly as a mild-mannered, thoughtful, well-spoken young man.  He apparently told an insurmountable insult to Bill off-camera, and Pete mentioned Kelly has talked himself into more eliminations than anyone.  So the question of the season to me: Was Kelly actually a jerk?) and sent to elimination two more times despite being one of the most consistent performers with every weapon on the red team.  He was met with another elimination scenario when he and Blake were the final two in the first green-jersey competition.  There was just something endearing about a mild-mannered kid knocking off all these world-class giants, then going home and reading a book.  By the end of his run I couldn’t tell if I was cheering for him or simply living vicariously through him.  Whatever magical thing it was that he did, good job by you Kelly.

Blake Miguez was another immediate favorite of mine.  The unfortunate subplot with the red team losing almost every week was that we got to know the red team’s members a lot better than the blue team’s.  For example, did you know Blake is also an attorney and has experience as the executive of an offshore marine transportation company?  This is something I did not learn in the nine weeks he was in the competition, but I learned it from reading a one-paragraph bio online.  There were several reasons why Blake was one of my favorites.  The most obvious reason being his nickname “The Blazin Cajun.”  The other reason is basically every moment of the infamous “Rat Fink” episode.  The entire blue team is scheming in a bedroom, but what were Blake and J.J. doing?  Playing darts and lifting weights like champions.  That was just an awesome moment, and I can’t explain why I found it as funny as I did.  When Blake and Kelly were going head to head in the Shortest Fuse competition, I was legitimately stunned and a little bit hurt that Blake was eliminated.  I was really looking forward to Blake at least getting some more airtime in the later episodes, but he just never made it.  Like all great artists Blake left us right when the world was excited to see him unleash some pistol magic on the world.  Cheers Blake, we hardly knew ye.

J.J. Racaza was the third guy I found myself cheering for every episode.  Searching for a trend, I apparently love young competitors who have impressive competition resumes.  I normally love an underdog, and J.J. seemed to be the most feared competitor from week 1.  However, J.J. also provided a lot more to the show than just great shooting.  He had the coolest name out of all the competitors in the three seasons I’ve watched (Racaza?  Awesome.  Also I just found out his real first name is Simon.  I don’t know where the “J.J.” comes from, but I always appreciate when people go by unexplainable initials).  Secondly, I just liked his attitude.  Other competitors might have thought he was the guy to beat, but he never really gave off that impression.  He just seemed like he was happy to be there, even though he was clearly there to win it all.  As seen with Kelly, I really enjoyed how J.J. was able to pick anything up and immediately be one of the best with it.  Longbow?  No problem.  Throwing knives?  Enjoy the elimination challenge red team.  I also grouped him in with Blake as the guys that seemed to be the most fun to be around.  Yes, this is entirely related to the 4 second clip where they’re just having a good time outside while the blue team tries to stab them both in the back.  Needless to say, I was pretty giddy when he and Blake were experts for Season 2’s pistol shooting contest.

Iain Harrison would have made the list if I expanded it to four.  Yes, it is almost entirely because he’s British on a show overwhelmed by Americans.  Okay, he’s a really likeable guy as well, but being British definitely adds bonus points.  Unfortunately Iain couldn’t beat out the other three gents on my list.  Cheer up though Iain, you’ve got $100,000 and a Top Shot trophy that nobody else has from that season.  Did you get a trophy?  I don’t remember a trophy.  I have to assume there’s a trophy though.  If there wasn’t you can take 50 bucks from your winnings and go to a trophy manufacturing person and build your own Top Shot trophy and customize it with your design and make it the perfect size to fit your mantle… Do you have a mantle?

3 Zany Moments That Made Me Wonder "What The Hell’s Going On During This Episode?"

Rat Fink: This was the most confused I’ve been in a while.  I’ve already mentioned that my three favorite contestants were three guys who directly or indirectly pushed the action in this episode.  First of all, is it common language to use the phrase “Rat Fink?”  I know that if I was upset I wouldn’t be that creative in my insults.  I’d probably have just used a bunch of words that are apparently going to get edited out of this segment.  Nouns, adjectives, maybe even an adverb or two.  But I wouldn’t have come up with “Rat Fink.”

Second of all, Adam, is that really the way things were in the Marines?  Like would you be planning which of your buddies to stab in the back because you were worried they’d get the position that you, and three others wanted?  It’s a legitimate question, I’ve never been in the military.  I like to believe it’s a little bit different, just as I like to believe that Caleb telling J.J. and Blake that others were plotting against them was a lot more courageous than what Adam did… even if Caleb was only in the coast guard.  So many things about Adam’s actions in this episode befuddled me.  I understand scheming against strong competition, but why bring up military experience in the talking head?  And why write out messages on the pool table?  And is “Act your size” really the comeback you’re going to go with when somebody says you’re being immature?  Has the whole world gone mad, or is it just me?  Whatever the case, I really enjoyed this episode.  It was the turning point for me where I started cheering a lot more vehemently for J.J. and Blake.

Ex-Wife: What the hell did Kelly say?  What was the context of “Was she really that bad?”  Was she really that bad?  When Bill started hating Kelly I was very legitimately confused by it.  It led me to believe that Bill would hate me if I was a contestant.  Then I realized I didn’t do anything wrong, and I got mad at Bill for hating me even though he’s never met me.  Then I remembered he probably doesn’t hate me, and I’m not actually Kelly even though I’m living through him.  This was just a strange episode.  I couldn’t tell if the anger was really that palpable between the two, or if it was just manufactured to spice the show up a little bit.  They even edited out the farewell handshake between these two, so that means it was either water under the bridge, or they got into a fistfight and had to be separated while Kelly was yelling crude obscenities at Bill.  We may never know.  I do believe a blurb on the last episode claimed Kelly had been a guest on Bill’s radio show after the season, so they must have cleared the air.  Then again, I didn’t hear that episode of the radio show, so Bill might have invited Kelly on to yell angrily at him.  I’m ready to move on if you are.

Iain Nearly Eliminated Himself?:  A forgotten about story early on in the season was Iain volunteering to go to the elimination challenge against Jim in the first challenge the Blue Team lost.  The season was four episodes in, so Iain was a known commodity as an excellent shooter, and the blue team seemed to have no problem with what they were doing, despite ragging on the red team for eliminating their best shooter the first week.  Luckily Iain had a perfect run in the elimination challenge, and Jim got unlucky with two swinging plates that were seemingly swinging in unison.  Jim hit both plates and got eliminated, but he shot the plate he was aiming for.  If he’d have had a luckier draw, he would have forced a tiebreaker which either man could have won.  I didn’t believe at the time Iain had done anything to merit going to the elimination round, and I didn’t feel the blue team explained their strategy.  They simply made it sound like Iain wanted more practice.  Obviously you win the Top Shot competition by beating the other 15 competitors, but there isn’t a shooter in the world who could eliminate every member in every event, and I think the contestants have to be smart enough to know that.  I was confused, and still find it interesting.  The closest Iain came to being eliminated was by being the first member of his team eliminated.  It could have changed the tide of the entire show, and perhaps swung a little more power to the red team.  Alas, here we are and Iain is $100,000 richer than I am, so I probably shouldn’t question his strategy. 

That’s pretty much it for me.  I’d be remiss not to mention my hopes that Tara is recovering wonderfully from the tragic loss of her father.  I was going to mention it above in the polarizing moments of the season, but I’m too corny of a writer to make any long condolences sound sincere.  So I’ll tiptoe around a sensitive area while just saying I’m a big fan of Tara Poremba as a shooter and a person.

I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on Season 2, so start watching that season immediately after you finish Season 1. 

Godspeed fellow Top Shot fans.  Godspeed.

Follow Tony on Twitter @thREALtonybader

Tony's Take: Meeting the Man Himself

Be prepared, because this blog is about to get a whole lot more interesting. My friend Tony has decided to contribute a few of his thoughts after watching Top Shot. I'll be posting his takes over the next couple of days, and hopefully he'll join us for the rest of Season 4. As you'll soon find out, Tony has a bit of a different writing style than I do, but diversity is the spice of life. (Please don't be offended)

Greetorials fellow internauts!  For those who read this blog frequently, you know me as Chris’s friend Tony.  He introduced me earlier as a guy who did not watch the show, then later mentioned me in a post as a guy who used to not watch the show, but now watches the show.  As soon as I watched the first episode of the first season I was hooked.  I plowed through seasons 1 and 2 in about five days on Netflix, and I caught up on Season 4 in one night.  I still haven’t seen season 3, so don’t spoil it for me.   

Seriously… don’t. 

I don’t know much about guns or hatchets, but I do know one thing: A person who knows their way around a firing range is automatically the bee’s knees as far as I’m concerned.

You may be wondering “Hey Tony, if you don’t know anything about guns, why do you like watching Top Shot?”   

Well, kind anonymous reader, it’s a very simple answer.  You don’t need to know about guns to know about competitive chaos, and that’s what this show thrives on (with doses of welcomed comedy sprinkled throughout).  The characters are almost always entertaining, and for whatever inexplicable reason, I automatically latch on to the hopes and dreams of certain contestants from the first time I see them talking.  These are all reasons that have nothing to do with the elite levels of shooting skill that are displayed (you don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to know that the center of the target is better than the hill in the background). 

I don’t know if Chris has mentioned it on this blog, but he’s the editor of our school’s newspaper.  I’ve been begging him to give me 500 words to unleash an unedited fury upon the world.  He always responds with dumb answers like “Fill out an application,” or “No.” 

Luckily (for me, not you my fair readers) Chris has given me an opportunity to contribute to this blog almost completely unedited.  So I’ll start by immediately testing the boundaries:

F---.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, Chris wants me to give my thoughts on seasons one and two, followed by season four up to this point.  From that point we’ll see what happens.  Maybe I become a recurring character on this blog.  Maybe I disappear.  Maybe I change Chris’s password, take it for myself and ride this tweetmobile to superstardom in the blogosphere.  Who knows? All I know is you won’t want to miss it.   

Check back tomorrow for a super-rewind as I share my thoughts from season one.

Follow Tony on Twitter @thREALtonybader

How to get your friends to watch Top Shot

You may recall I mentioned my friend Tony at the end of my last Top Tweets post. He told me if I mentioned him on the blog he would start watching. Well last night at around 12:30 a.m. we fired up Netflix and watched the first episode of Season 1. I then went to bed. He messaged me on Facebook at 3:30 p.m this afternoon telling me he had finished the first season and was starting in on the second!

Colby has been tweeting that Top Shot needs more viewers to stay alive for a fifth season. Get your friends together and start watching. There are plenty of different way to do it. Netflix has the first two seasons available for instant streaming, as does the Top Shot website on History. The Top Shot website also has all of Season 4 as does Hulu (as of this writing). Not sure where to find Season 3 right now, but if anyone knows hit the comments. So get a friend to sit down with you and watch one episode, the rest should take care of itself.

Hopefully, I can convince Tony to do a little guest post on how he has enjoyed the show as a first time viewer, and I'll keep you updated if he starts watching along for the rest of Season 4.

Follow me on Twitter @cswiets