American Ninja Warrior

                After both Isaac Caldiero and Geoff Britten reached the top of Mount Midoriyama last year, I wasn’t sure if I would have much interest in this season of American Ninja Warrior.  Now, with the season almost over, I find myself more hooked than ever.  That is because the women are doing incredibly well.  In the past there has been a female competitor here and there that has had success, but this year there is an entire group of them.  With so many women still competing this far into the competition, I eagerly await each episode to see how far they will go.

                If you haven’t seen American Ninja Warrior, probably the best way to describe it is as an obstacle course competition.  The competitors try their best at very physical obstacles that can only be described as insane.  I really don’t know where the creators come up with some of the stuff the competitors have to do.  The creators come up with a lot of it too, because each course in the Qualifying and City Finals rounds are different.  Set up in six different cities across the country, the qualifying courses all start and end with the same obstacles, the floating stairs and the warped wall.  The four obstacles in between change from city to city.  Once everyone has had their chance at the course, the top thirty finishers (determined by either completing the course or who got farthest the fastest) move on to the city finals where the course will be familiar but not altogether the same.

                The City Finals courses start with the same six obstacles seen in Qualifying.  Some of them are made a little harder making it not a given that if you made it through the course the first time that you will make it through the second.  After the warped well, the competitors have four more obstacles to face.  Again, the first and last are the same in each city: the salmon ladder and the invisible ladder.  The two obstacles in between change at each city.  After this stage of challenges, the top fifteen competitors move on to the finals in Las Vegas and get the chance to defeat Mount Midoriyama.      

Each of the four courses in the finals is very different.  With the first two the contestants must complete all the obstacles successfully in a certain amount of time or else they will not be able to move on.  The third is different as there is not a time limit, but it has the most obstacles to deal with.  If a contestant manages to get through that, then they are on to the final challenge and the chance to win the monetary prize.  All they have to do is climb a giant rope to the top of Mount Midoriyama in a set amount of time.  This may seem like an easy task, but after all the other obstacles that have been faced and conquered, climbing a rope can be exhausting.

                With all that these competitors have to face, it’s not surprising that only two have ever gotten to the fourth stage.  Both made it up the rope in the time allotted, but only Isaac Caldiero won the money because he was faster.  This year, with everyone knowing Mount Midoriyama can be defeated, there seems to be a heightened confidence from everyone that they will be the next person to reach the top.  Not in a cocky way, but in a “this doesn’t seem so impossible” way.  This seems to be especially true with the women as they continue to succeed and conquer in ways that some of the men can only dream.

                   Despite the increased confidence from all the competitors, the show still keeps one part that I hate to watch.  That is the crashes that happen when contestants fail at an obstacle.  Nearly every obstacle has water underneath it, so when the contestant falls there it isn’t so bad.  What I’m talking about is when the contestants leap towards the landing mats and crash into them so hard I don’t know how they don’t get hurt.  Far too many times I have worried when I’ve seen a contestant do this.  They are desperately trying to make it to the next obstacle and as a result do something the makes me wonder how in the world they did not break their neck.  Then there was the year someone actually broke an obstacle.  If it had not been for a safety wire, there could have been a serious injury.  Thankfully, instead of getting hurt, the competitor ended up finishing the course.  All the competitors do train for these events.  Maybe that’s how they keep themselves in solid, unharmed shape even when the crashes happen. 

                  The very real chance of hurting myself is a big reason as to why I would not want to compete on American Ninja Warrior. I would, however, love to at least try out the obstacles, one at a time, without a timeclock. Something else I would like to see is the two commentators, Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, give the courses a try. They always have something to say as the competitors run the courses, but I don’t believe they have ever tried the courses themselves. It would be interesting to see once they did how their commentary would change. The puns would stay, I’m sure, but other comments may be altered. Whether having them run the course will ever happen or not, I don’t know. While I wait for the answer, I’ll be at home watching each episode seeing how far each competitor gets. I know who I would love to see win, but in the end it doesn’t really matter if anybody does. With so many returning competitors each season, it is clear that for nearly everyone, no matter how well or how badly they do, there is always next year.