Tony's Take: Top Shot Season 2

Tony continues to work his way through Top Shot on Netflix, this time sharing his thoughts on Season 2.

What it is, yo?  I’d first like to wish the happiest of Mondays to TCG’s legions of readers around the globe.  Then I’d like to bring four hours of pain to your early-afternoon reading time. I’ve never been a believer in Monday being a hard day. Monday Night Raw is on Mondays. Monday Night Football is on Mondays. Domino’s has that sweet three-topping carryout deal for $8 on Mondays. On top of that it’s easy to carry on a conversation without giving a crap just by asking what that person did over their weekend. It’s the easiest day of the week in my book. However, since I started watching Season 4 of Top Shot I’ve noticed my left eye starts twitching and I interject nervous laughter and panic screams into conversation by about 3 p.m. on Mondays. I’ve got a Top Shot jones worse than Charles Barkley in Space Jam. I have to assume I’m not the only one who feels that way, so here’s hoping this post will calm your symptoms a little bit so you can be a functional member of society for another 24 hours.

Similar to my critically acclaimed Season 1 recap, this Season 2 recap just goes over my favorite contestants and what I viewed to be the key moments of the season.

My 3 Heroes

Jay Lim seemed to be the star of Season 2 immediately. On first impression everything about him made me want to cheer for him in this competition. The competitors all seemed to be elite military shooters (who ended up dominating the season… spoiler alert) or elite competitive shooters. Then in walks Jay Lim – golf instructor. It wasn’t until later on in the season that I realized he was also an Olympic qualifier as an archer. However, by that point he seemed to be already established as the underdog. This season essentially boiled down to military vs. civilians, and the perceived tension between Jay and George seemed to be the most tangible example of the chasm. It is very clear that Jay is an instructor, as he gave willing advice on nearly every weapon whenever his team was practicing. Unfortunately that seemed to rub people in the house the wrong way, leading to an exceptionally entertaining conversation between Jay and the Red Team’s Chris Reed (“You just tried to tell Gunny how to butter his toast”). It seemed like Jay was always on the chopping block for one reason or another, but he showed his versatility coming through time and time again. He ended up being the last civilian remaining amongst a cast filled with highly trained military members. I still haven’t seen Season 3 yet, but of Seasons 1, 2 and 4 Jay has to be the most intriguing (and polarizing) character of the bunch.  He was the face of Season 2, and even though he finished 7 out of 16, there is no way the season would have been as entertaining without him.

George Reinas was the contestant that appeared to get the short end of the stick when the show’s editing came into play. He is definitely the most outspoken contestant I’ve seen, and his willingness to put his opinions bluntly gave the show some talking heads that may have rubbed fans the wrong way. Despite George seemingly trying to play the role of the villain on the show it was apparent that he got along with most of the house members, and especially his teammates. For some weird reason I always am intrigued by the characters’ farewells to their teammates when they get eliminated from the show. The interaction between one member who just suffered a humbling blow to their ego and another member who is one step closer to victory is some real-life drama that is best left unscripted. While most characters shake hands softly and exchange two word pleasantries, George seemed to master the 5-second bear hug despite never having to even consider what life would be like after elimination. There was just something interesting about the sympathy he showed the other members of the household, and that finally shone through when he blew the shot to let Chris Reed stay alive in the competition. On top of that all, if you don’t think that hitting the first shot from 1,000 yards away is the most bad-ass thing caught on camera then you can shut up.

Chris Reed is everything right with the competition, and everything wrong with the show. There’s something inspiring about a guy winning when he seems like he just climbed out of a deer stand and wandered onto the show. There’s something heart-warming about the $100,000 prize going toward his daughter’s education. However, we never heard that Chris Reed required brain surgery not too long ago.  Even after hearing it I’m still a little hazy towards the details of his situation. That seems like a detail that might be important enough to mention sometime in the first 10 episodes. If the producers of the show knew Chris Reed won before the first episode aired, perhaps it’s a wise idea to involve his activities in the house in some aspect over the course of the season so the fans can start rooting for him before the last episode. I understood he was a calm, likable presence in the house but it wasn’t really until George threw away his chance at victory just so Chris would win that we realized how beloved Chris is. He was largely ignored during the season. This leads to the biggest problem I have with the show. When half the show is dedicated to the losing team’s process for choosing who they eliminate, the characters who are the early fan-favorites are inherently going to be eliminated within the first five episodes.  The same thing occurred during Season 4. The blue team seemed to have my favorite personalities, but after Terry and Dylan were eliminated I’m down to about two shooters who I’m cheering for to win just because the red team is such a mystery to me. I don’t know how to fix this problem, but I guess the point is that Chris Reed was an amazing contestant and Top Shot blew their ability to have him receive the most exposure.

3 Zany Moments That Made Me Wonder What The Hell’s Going On?

Tommy Gun: This moment wasn’t necessarily important in terms of the progress of the season. It was an early challenge between two contestants whom I never really believed had any chance at winning the competition. However the imagery of Athena holding that huge frickin’ gun was worth the price of admission. It was also something of a sad practice. There’s no way she could handle that thing. There’s no way I could handle that thing. This world class shooter looked like a child when shooting that ridiculous thing. I’ve cheered every season for the women to compete valiantly, but it’s challenges like this one that just make the competition seem to be unfairly skewed against women. The gun looked to be about half her size, and it was apparent that she’d be eliminated when she struggled to simply grip the gun. While it was extremely entertaining watching her spray all over the course and pray to precisely hit the target in a perfect line, it was also sort of painful to watch. It was apparent that for a female contestant to perform admirably in that challenge she’d have to be built like Chyna from Degeneration X in the 1990s. (second pro wrestling reference of the day. Note it!)

The Entirety of the Third Episode: I wouldn’t question a person’s toughness for dropping out or forfeiting based on injury for any sport. I especially wouldn’t do it when talking about people who can shoot a gun sufficiently. However, I was really confused when John quit the way that he did. He put his team at a huge disadvantage by walking away before the competition. I understand he wouldn’t be able to move the way History Channel wanted him to (which leads me to believe there was some outside pressure for him to formally quit rather than sabotage the competition), but if I’m in his shoes why not just talk with the team and basically plan on losing. He could have walked through the competition, and missed his shots in the elimination challenge to make sure he was the only red member eliminated. Instead he put a teammate at risk by quitting before, putting the team at a disadvantage.   The team would have certainly lost too if Jermaine didn’t do the most boneheaded thing I’ve seen in the show’s history.

Jermaine’s gaffe really deserves its own paragraph. I’ve done a lot of really dumb things in my life. I’m not going to claim to be intelligent. I just don’t understand how Jermaine could have done it twice in a matter of minutes. Jermaine was supposed to wait with the gun after hitting the target in order for his teammates to take the gun from him and go to the next station.  Instead he ran off with the gun himself. He couldn’t hear his teammates yelling at him to come back, so he wasted what seemed to be 20 seconds just running with the gun on his own. That would be understandable if he didn’t do it again 5 minutes later. My memory is a little hazy, but if I recall correctly he wasn’t even involved in the action the second time it happened. One of the stupidest sports moments in NFL history is when Jim Marshall returned a fumble to the wrong endzone for a safety for the other team. Jermaine made a mistake of similar magnitude the first time around, but the second time would have been like if Jim Marshall ran off the sidelines to intercept a pass and return it to the wrong endzone in the next quarter. He wasted near a minute of time total, and considering the competition came down to the wire at the end there is almost no doubt the blue team would have won without that mistake. It would have changed the course of the show. Blue team would have been up seven contestants to five, which means the blue team would have had to rattle off five straight victories in order to have the same resulting individual competitors. Because Jermaine was one of the stronger shooters in the competition, it seems unlikely that the red team would have achieved that. In an alternate universe Jay Lim may well have been the most unlikely winner of Top Shot ever, and the only difference could have been Jermaine’s critical error on this episode

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GEORGE PULLED THE SHOT: This was the most shocking moment of the entire series to me. I don’t even know what to say about it anymore, so I’ll just keep it short. I knew George was a good guy, but I’d have never thought he would do something that drastic. He was the strongest shooter all season and with his long distance skill he had a very clear advantage when it got to the final seven-station challenge. Instead he chose to just punt it so Chris would win. Bravo to George for making a huge decision based on what he thought was right, but it seemed insane at the time and the shock still hasn’t worn off.

Season 2 was my favorite so far, and I left out a lot of really good action and really good contestants. In the time it took to read this blog post you probably could have just watched the entire season on Netflix. Oh well, some people require words to learn I guess. I don’t really know any concluding sentiments to end this post with, so I’m just going to stop typing and hope it’s sufficient.

And so it is, follow Tony on Twitter @thREALtonybader

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