Top Tweets Vol. 10: Ch-Ch-Ch-Chenger!

Wow, can you say behind the ball much? Sorry for the delay here, I'm already behind, graduating from college is apparently a lot of work.

A pretty good finale (Best ever? Debate in the comments until I put up my analysis) and thankfully another stellar winner to add to the likes of Iain Harrison, Chris Reed, and Dustin Ellerman. Chris Cheng continues the pattern of having a red team member named Chris win the even numbered seasons of Top Shot, and I couldn't be more pleased.

However, let's get to the real reason I'm here, to tell you what Mr. Colby Donaldson had to say about last night's finale:

• Colby is big fan of the Winchester '73 rifle

•  Gary Shank made his shot against Littlejohn in their first face-off on the dueling trees by 1/100 of second. This was one of the few times they have needed to use the super slo-mo cameras to determine whether or not a shot counted.

•  Colby was apparently at the Home Depot this past Saturday. Which one? I'll never tell. (mostly because I don't know)

•  The names in the ammo box are printed on shells from the Hummer shotgun challenge in Season 2. Top Shot is a green show.

•  Colby's suggestion for the shooters during the saloon challenge "Shotgun and barn door at 10 feet"

•  Colby believes he might have broken a record for the number of times he said "All tied up!" in a single episode. 

• And Colby promised to let everyone know about Season 5 as soon as he did (and then I will in turn also inform you).

That's all we got. I need to keep rolling so I can get my recap up tonight and find some time for my analysis.

What did you think of the finale? And what would you like from Season 5 of Top Shot (if there is one)? Hit the comments and let me know.

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It all comes down to this...

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what it is all about.

Tonight it all comes down to four shooters and three high stakes challenges to win the title, the money and the contract.

Tonight's season finale is sure to be an intense episode. We have four contestants left. Two from red team, and two from blue, a testament to what I've been saying all season: This has been one of the most evenly matched seasons ever.

Two of these contestants, Chris Cheng and Greg Littlejohn, have, for better or worse, been pretty prominently featured this season. The other two, Augie Malekovich and Gary Shank, are still a little bit of a mystery. So the real question is who will win?

I hate to disappoint, but I'm not going to make any guesses, I just want to enjoy the ride. I'm pulling for the Chenger, but if Top Shot's Facebook page is to be believed, the final challenge will come down to the final seconds, so don't expect a blow out like Season 3.

What I do want to write about is my posting schedule for the week. Just because the show is going to be over doesn't mean this blog is going to stop. Here's what I have in store for the next week or two:

• The Final Top Tweets post will be up tonight after Behind the Bullet
• Finale recap will be up tomorrow
• Finale analysis will be up Thursday
• Behind the Bullet recap/analysis will be up Friday
• My Season 4 All-star picks will be up on Monday
• My full analysis of Season 4 will be up next Tuesday
• And a post about what I want from Season 5 will be up somewhere between next Wednesday and Friday 

That's my plan and I will try and stick to it as best I can. Follow along with Colby tonight on Twitter @Colby_Donaldson to see his reaction and remember to stick around for "Behind the Bullet" airing right after the finale.

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Top Shot Analysis: S4 E11 "Have Machine Gun Will Travel"

After I made several complaints about lackluster challenges last week, Top Shot bounced back, kind of. It is an episode that I sure left a lot of viewers with conflicted feelings, so call me Dr. Swietlik as I sort through the issues at hand.

The Challenges
I won't spend too much time talking about the individual challenge. I think we can all agree it was pretty good. A good weapon on a good course with a good twist. Not to mention it forced contestants to work on ammo conservation as well as hitting moving targets. I also liked that this challenge had grouped exploding targets; I could be wrong, but that might be a Top Shot first.

So let's talk elimination. How important is memory in a shooting challenge? Colby mentioned during his live tweet of this episode that the individual challenge wanted to discourage contestants from spraying and praying, and I believe a similar idea was at work here. By making the contestants focus on specific targets they had to make their shots count, especially if they didn't want any deductions on their scores.

(Quick thought, is it feasible to think that they could have shot all 30 targets in the time alotted? Because then they would have had the same score and it would have come down to who used fewer bullets.)

Like I said I'm conflicted about this challenge. I like the rope part, I'm always a fan of some good rope climbing, but memorization seemed a little gimmicky, even for this show. It was like someone just took a bunch of different ideas for a challenge and threw them in a blender.

The one thing I really liked about this challenge was the shaving cream target. How the hell has it taken four seasons for someone to think of that? I mean that was maybe my favorite part of the night because not only was the camera work cool, but you could see shaving cream on all the other targets too.

Now one of the reason's for this challenge (and other seemingly lackluster ones this season) may be the tight production schedule of the show. We have to remember that Season 3 and Season 4 were filmed back to back. This could put a pretty big strain not only on the budget of the show, but on the creative team that designs the challenges. So, if there is a Season 5, the challenge engineers will have had a nice long break to recharge their creative juices.

The Contestants
Did you ever think it would come to this? Because I certainly didn't. Greg Littlejohn has made it into the final four of the competition. I'm going to be very upset if he ends up winning this thing, and right now, I would put him and Chris Cheng in the final two.

Augie Malekovich finally got to shine a little in this episode. Augie has had some great moments this season, but none that have had any real impact on the game. That was, until this episode. His showed there was some unresolved tension between him and the rest of the red team. This is how the game should be played, especially at this stage of the competition. It's important to shake things up to keep the contestants on guard. Malekovich becoming a wild card  is a great new strategy to implement at this stage of the game.

Think of it this way, anyone who is too out of control in the beginning of the season paints a target on their back. There needs to be a certain amount of line towing in those early stages to establish some camaraderie. However at this point, where the bottom three performers are already picked out, the wild card can shoot whoever they want without feeling guilty about it.

Plus it's always fun to see someone do something on this show just for the hell of it.

That's really all I have this week. Kyle's gone, I'm happy. Now if we could just solve this Littlejohn problem...

What did you think of the challenges? And who do you think will take it all in next week's finale?

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Top Shot Recap: S4 E11 "Have Machine Gun Will Travel"

Sorry if it seems like I'm slacking on my posting schedule here, but school keeps getting in the way.

Let's skip the pleasantries and dive right in.

On the practice range (nothing interesting happened in the opening two minutes, so I'm skipping straight to the shooting) Colby stood in front of the contestants with a big grin and big tarp. Under the tarp was a M1919 Browning machine gun, a classic weapon of WWII. It was a weapon that none of the contestants had shot before, though Greg Littlejohn had the advantage of previous experience with belt fed machine guns due to his time in the military. With the help and welcome return of Craig "The Sawman" Sawyer, the rest of the group worked on trying to figure out the gun and playing with the trigger without spending too much ammo.

At the challenge the contestants were faced with...nothing, just the bench, which meant they were in for a surprise. That was when an M2A1 Halftrack came barreling down the road with the Browning strapped to its back.  Contestants would jump on the Halftrack and have the opportunity to shoot at 15 different targets as they went down the road. The catch, they only had 100 bullets. The top two shooters were safe while the bottom three were up for elimination.

Gary Shank was up first (and isn't he always?) and quickly found out how little time it takes to go through 100 bullets, hitting only four targets. Littlejohn was up next and his experience shined through, hitting eight out of the 15 and ending up with the best score of the night. He was followed by Kyle Sumpter who struggled, but did better than Shank, hitting five targets. Chris Cheng continued to show he had the ability to master anything Colby puts in his hands, hitting six targets, for the second best score of the night (spoiler alert if you can do the math and didn't watch last night). Augie Malekovich was last to go, and after a strong start lost his rhythm, tying Sumpter with five targets.

I'm not really sure why, but the contestants keep having team meeting despite not being a team. There has been more team meeting footage this season than any other I would hazard to guess. It sounded like it was going to be Malekovich and Shank duking it out, but once again, things didn't go according to plan on the range.

Littlejohn hit Shank's target and all three remaining red team members hit Malekovich's. Then it was Malekovich's turn, and it turns out ole Augie had a little bone to pick with the red team. He decided he was going to hit Kyle's target because if he was going to go to elimination, he was going to throw a little chaos at the red team. So with a tie for the second contestant to go to elimination, Shank and Sumpter had to go to a shoot-off. Shank went first, hitting just below the bullseye to the left. Sumpter got up to shoot and clipped Shank's mark, but was just outside.

Sumpter and Malekovich would face off using the FN PS90 carbine. In perhaps the oddest twist of the season, this challenge was not so much focused on shooting as it was on memory....and rope climbing. Apparently this was a recreation of some kind of Marine exercise, but it was still a little odd (more on this tomorrow). Each contestant would have a box filled with ten items. They needed to open the box look at the items, close the box, climb across 20 feet of rope, then pick up the PS90 and shoot the 10 targets in their box without hitting the other twenty they were set amongst (I'll admit, that was pretty poorly worded). They had to to all of that in 75 seconds. They could go back as often as they wanted to look at the box, but with only 75 seconds, they would need to budget their time. This was a hard challenge to follow as it required the viewer to also memorize the items in the box to figure out who was winning. As it always is in Top Shot, points were awarded for proper hits, and points were deducted for decoy hits.

When the contest was over, Sumpter had clearly hit more objects than Malekovich but it all came down to the final count. Malekovich had hit five targets from his box, while Kyle had hit three. Malekovich hit only one decoy bringing his count down to four but securing the win. (Sumpter hit four decoys bringing his score down to negative one)

So one part of my prayers have been answered as Sumpter is sent packing and I can look forward to one Sumpter free episode this episode.

What did you think of last night's challenges? Are you glad that Papa Bear was sent back to his cave, or did you think he still had some fight left in him? Hit the comments and let me know.

Come back tomorrow for my analysis of tonight's episode.

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Top Tweets Vol. 9: This Is What Dreams Are Made Of

After being noticeably absent from last week's proceedings (and letting me waste a perfectly good post title) Colby returned to the tweet waves for the second to last episode of the (series?) season. Colby was clearly more reserved than he has been all season. He restricted most of his comments to thanks you's for people welcoming him back, and small insights into what was happening in the episode. I'm not sure whether to take that as a good sign or a bad sign, so we'll just have to take it as it is and cross our fingers.

Here's the best of what Colby had to offer tonight:

• Colby apparently really enjoys being able to reveal the guns to shooters by pulling off a tarp, and, well, who can blame him?

• This episode marked a rare time on Top Shot where the shooters were allowed to see their competition practice (although no reason was given as to why).

• He mentions that his fluorescent shirt this evening was to make sure he didn't catch a stray round from one of the contestants.

• Shooters were only allowed 100 rounds for this challenge because they wanted to avoid the shooters relying on "spraying and praying."

• The house is less than two miles from the shooting field.

• If anyone ever wondered why Colby is always shouting during the challenges, it is so he doesn't have to do as much voice over work in post.

• The slo-mo cams shoot at 40,000 frames per second. Just to give you a little perspective on how ridiculous that is: A movie is shot at 26 frames per-second and Peter Jackson is shooting his new "Hobbit" film at 48 frames per second.

• The exploding targets are 100 percent designed and constructed by the show's pyrotechnic team.

• The closest Colby gets to commenting on another season is when he answers a question saying that thousands of people apply to Top Shot every season.

That will do for tonight. We are closing in the the finish line, and I can only be grateful for two things: that Chris Cheng is still in the competition and that the season ends before my finals exams.

Hit the comments and let me know your initial reaction to  tonight's episode.

Come back tomorrow for my recap and Thursday for my analysis. I might even throw up a post on Friday looking at the final four.

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Top Shot Analysis: S4 E10 "SWAT Throwdown"

Here are some fun facts about 1995:

• Busiest hurricane season on record
• Denver International Airport opened
• Mississippi becomes the last state to ratify the 13th amendment (seriously)
• Salt Lake City selected to host the 2002 Winter Olympics
• The final original Calvin and Hobbes comic strip is published
• And most importantly, this was the last time Augie Malekovich had done any rappelling before this week's challenge.

Now, I have, already, unfortunately, admitted in the recap that I did not pay as close attention to this episode as I may have liked, but I persevere.

The Challenges
I think we are coming to an unfortunate realization as we head towards the conclusion of this season. The challenges this season have been a little lame. They don't look so bad on their own, and the shotgun episode will remain one of my all time favorites, but compared to previous seasons there just isn't as much imagination at play.

Take for instance the second team challenge, the traditional obstacle course. The contestants run under some barbed wire, then get into a ditch and start shooting. This is a steep decline from Season 1 which involved four different shooting stations with two different rifles going through four different sets of obstacles. Part of this could be blamed on the physically demanding Season 2, which took out a couple of contestants simply because their bodies couldn't handle it.

But think of what else has been missing from this season that has been a staple in season's past. There has been no challenges involving a zipline, an element involved in some form or another in each of the three previous seasons. There was also no carnival style shootout with a revolver and no upside down shooting.

Now is some of that gimmicky? Yes, certainly, but that's why I like the show, because it really does test these contestants under a wide range of conditions. (Even if they are not always practical)

Getting back to this week. The rappelling challenge was fine, but hyped up more than I think it deserved to be. My real issue was with the elimination challenge. First of all the Mossberg "Chainsaw" Shotgun is my least favorite weapon because it fails to live up to its own name. A chainsaw shotgun sounds like something out of a zombie video game, and I would expect it to be awesome. However, the only reason this thing is called "Chainsaw" is because of its handle on the barrel, which could possibly be the worst reason for naming something ever.

Also I want to compare this challenge to Season 3's similarly SWAT inspired episode which featured the Cornershot in the elimination challenge. I bring this up to illustrate how uninspired this challenge was. If I want to see contestants shooting at doors, I want to see them blowing them down, not nicking the side to enter the room. This challenge was so simplistic, open the door shoot the targets, repeat two times. While the Season 3 challenge just had shooters utilizing the Cornershot at a variety of stations, the fact they had to orient themselves at each one by using the camera added a great dimension of tension that this challenge seemed to lack.

The Contestants
No big blow ups this week on the contestant front, drama was kept to a minimum now that Greg Littlejohn seems to be the only real ego left in the house, here are just a few snippets then:

Already hit on Malekovich's 1995 comment, so I'll skip that.

Chee Kwan Hat Watch: No hat this week as I mentioned in my recap, but he did get to wear a helmet, so that was fun.

Last week I mentioned how I was delighted that Kyle Sumpter was kept at bay for ten whole minutes before getting any screen time. Guess who didn't even need to wait ten seconds before having their voice heard this week?

Chris Cheng is pretty much this season's Dustin Ellerman, there I said it.

Finally, the one thing I did want to comment on a little was Kwan being sent home by Gary Shank. Tony and I were watching this and we both were rooting for Kwan to win. Nothing against Shank, but the show just has not done a good job familiarizing him with the audience. He and Augie are still a bit of a mystery to me. I still like Shank, and think he's certainly proved he has some serious skills; however, what I am trying to say is that while I did not want see either men leave -

[Quick break, why is it, whenever they have an even number of shooters, and an even number of contestants, that they never seem to try and distribute the vote evenly? I just don't get why they didn't put two bullets in each person's target, then go to a shoot off. This is really my roundabout way of saying I wish Littlejohn had gone home.]

- but I would have been less sad to see Shank go than I was to see Kwan go.

Final fun fact, while I was writing this post History Channel started following me on Twitter, which is either A) Good or B) Bad. If I get sued I'll let you know, unless they issue a cease and desist, in which case I won't. I'll take it as an endorsement(ish) for now.

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Top Shot Recap: S4 E10 "SWAT Throwdown"

Ok a few things before diving in here.
1. I am incredibly distracted at the moment, papers, tests, girlfriend, job hunting, and graduation are all culminating in a perfect storm, so I apologize in advance for being late and missing a few details (also I don't mean to make my problems your problems, so double apology there).
2. No Top Tweets again, but this time an explanation. Colby gave one tweet on Tuesday, informing his followers (the one problem with Twitter is how cult-y I have to sound when I refer to it) that he was not allowed to participate because of comments he made the previous week. I'm not precisely sure what could have gotten him into trouble, most of his tweets were simply about trying to help save the show and were in no way critical of History as far as I could tell.
3. I was very disappointed I was unable to do a Top Tweets because I had a very good title (Top Tweets Vol. 9: Last time I did this, it was 1995).

Anyway...
Chris Cheng nails up William Bethards target (did anyone else notice how they finally made the targets green for the contestants who make it to individual stage of the competition? Also, did I talk about this already?) and Greg Littlejohn talks about how he was surprised Cheng was able to take him down.

This week's theme was Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) and the individual challenge would feature the FN Five-seven pistol, which holds a twenty round clip. This would be the first challenge this season where contestants would have to holster the pistol. Much of the practice was spent working on drawing the pistol out of the holster smoothy and working on firing quickly without forsaking accuracy.

The challenge was the biggest this season in terms of staging (I am convinced they had their budget significantly reduced for this season just by looking at some rather simplistic challenges). Contestants would climb to the top of a faux three-story building and rappel down one level at a time. At each level there were two windows. Contestants would take the pistol out of the holster and fire at three jars down range. Once hitting all three they would re-holster the pistol, move to the next window, unholster and fire at another three targets. Once hitting all six targets on the level, the could proceed to the next one. The top three shooters who completed the challenge in the fastest time were safe, while the bottom three were up for nomination.

This week, as a special treat, I actually have the correct order and times for each contestant. Littlejohn went first, shooting his targets in 1 minute 32 seconds. He was followed by Chee Kwan (sans hat), who had a brief panic attack and tried to recover, shooting in 1 minute 42 seconds. Kyle Sumpter proved himself to be a skilled lawman, taking out his targets in 1 minute 21 seconds. Gary Shank was up next, falling between Kwan and Littlejohn at 1 minute 36 seconds. Cheng, who said in practice he had never used this weapon before, smoked the course in an astounding 1 minute 17 seconds (Bias much? Yes, yes I am). Augie Malekovich was the last to go, hitting his marks in a respectable 1 minute 23 seconds, and keeping him out of elimination.

A brief pow-wow at the house revealed that performance based Sumpter might be having a change of heart, telling Augie he would have a hard time shooting either of his fellow red team members. Kwan made it known that he was still looking for another opportunity to prove himself after having the worst time on the course.

At the nomination range Chee and Shank split the votes as Sumpter decided that, after talking with Chee, he would shoot his target.

The elimination challenge would carry on with the SWAT theme, and also be the second challenge this season to feature two different weapons in the same challenge: the Mossberg 500 "Chainsaw" Shotgun and the FN FS2000 rifle. At the practice range contestants also were made aware that for this challenge they would be outfitted with protective tactical gear.

The elimination challenge was a three stage course. Contestants would begin by using the Mossberg to breach a door, then take the FS2000 and shoot three targets. There were three doors to breach and three groups of targets to shoot at progressively farther distances. Shank took the charge and blasted through the course in an amazing 56 seconds. Kwan followed but did not have an aggressive start, and his failure to breach the final door on his first attempt left him the dust, completing the course in 1 minute 13 seconds.

Shank proves he is just as lethal with old guns as he is with modern ones, while Kwan goes off to the other side of the hill to (hopefully) find Gabby Franco...

What did you think of this week's episode? How much trouble do you think Colby is really in? And who do think will win now that we are down to the final five?

Fingers crossed that the analysis will be up Thursday afternoon, if not Friday for sure.

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