FanPost

Baltimore Finals: Quoth the Angry Birds, Nevermore

William Gray/NBC

Warning: The following post may contain profanity, raging, and varying amounts of insanity. Viewer discretion is advised.

I haven't done any reviews on individual episodes of American Ninja Warrior (partly because I just started getting involved on ANWNation and will review them collectively as one full review post). But by golly, Baltimore finals was historical. And not exactly for all the right reasons. Now, in all honesty, this isn't really a review on the episode, per say, but more of a rant about the unfair piece of crap obstacle we call Angry Birds!

The Design

First off, out of all the license-based obstacles ANW has, this has got to be the most ridiculous, unfaithful to source material obstacle that they have ever created! Here's some of the previous licensed based obstacles that have been on the show:

  • Ninjago Roll- Rolling cylinder among an inclined trail. Very similar to the Rolling Thunder, and due to that and the low amount of attempts on it, it was more forgettable than anything. But at least it was faithful to Ninjago and functioned like a rolling obstacle, like what you'd expect from a ninja.
  • Fallout- Again, nothing to write home about here. But the odd ledges and spinning circles does contribute a little to the spy-themed genre of Mission Impossible: Fallout.
  • Jeep Run- Now this is one of the more memorable license-based obstacles. The wheel-shaped platforms make it tricky to balance and gain momentum on the obstacle. I'm so glad it was brought back under the name Tire Run (although since Fallout was brought back in ANW 11 and its not promoting the Mission Impossible film, why was it still named "Fallout"? Why not something like "Spy Mission" or something like that?). Let's not forget, it pays faithful homage to the fact that it is advertising a vehicle.

Now look at Angry Birds: eight tilting boards that look like landscape rocks which competitors must hang and transfer on. I literally pulled a Sergeant Hartmann on this obstacle, "WHAT IS THIS MICKEY MOUSE S***?!" (if ANW decides to make an obstacle to promote a Disney movie, I'll for sure use that same line...) Really, just really. That's supposed to represent Angry Birds?! When I think of an Angry Birds themed obstacle, I think maybe a harder version of the Slingshot (I mean, the Angry Birds are launched by a Slingshot, so why not?) from Cincinnati. Even if its more focused on the Angry Birds 2 movie, these tilty rock things hardly even represent anything that the movie is supposed to be. The setup looked cool, but that was just background, not the actual obstacle. Just, WTF.

How It Played Out

But that's just scratching the surface. The Angry Birds has one of, if not the most dickish and unfair obstacle designs in American Ninja Warrior history. And it's all because of the stupid blind grab leap! It's like Leaps of Faith from Los Angeles, another obstacle I really hate, where competitors have to grab a blind leap handhold or plummet into the pool below. Before even getting to the blind leap jump, the rocky boards tilt on an axis, so competitors already have to maintain their upper-body balance and avoid shifting their body weight too far away from the other. But now comes the blind grab, which just slams a big fat middle finger to the face. Honestly, this obstacle is the equivalent of doing the Wave Runner blindfolded. Remember when Amos Rendao completed the Quintuple Steps blindfolded in ANW 5's Denver Finals? Imagine him doing that on the Wave Runner from season 8&9. Congratulations, you just created Angry Birds.

In every article I've seen on ANWNation, I have never seen Nikki Lee (the awesome editor of this site, shoutout to her!) so upset and aghast before. That is saying something when even the official editor has gone mad thinking about this obstacle. I'm going to pull an Angry Video Game Nerd here, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For Fred F***s sake, was ATS on crack when they created this obstacle? (nothing against ATS, they are awesome, but the obstacle is just so awful) Never before has the eighth obstacle had a 0% completion rate. We have seen instances where no one has completed a city finals course, but this is crossing the line. There's a difference between being extremely intense and being outright unfair. The Baltimore finals is the latter.

As for the fans and viewers, if you're not miffed and confused as to why on earth this obstacle even existed, than you're at least disappointed and somewhat bored at the constant eliminations of people on the Angry Birds. I've mentioned before that I actually like harder qualifying and city finals courses. But as I said before, there's a difference between being extremely intense and being outright unfair. Just as important, however, it was this ONE OBSTACLE that was destroying everyone's runs. In Tacoma, Kansas City and Philadelphia, there were variances as to which obstacle each competitor fell on. But here, 22 out of 34 city finalists fell on Angry Birds. That is nearly 65% of the entire field, mind you NOT the rate of how many cleared/attempted it. Part of the excitement of ANW is seeing what'll happen on the fly when competitors run the course: anything can go wrong. But when nearly everybody fails the same obstacle, it adds up to a sense of boredom at best, confusion and frustration at worst.

Lesson of the Day

Please, if any ATS members are reading this, stop making blind-grab obstacles. These types of obstacles do not test the competitors' physical and/or mental skill to begin with, they instead test their patience and sanity.

One Last Thing I Should Mention...

Apparently in the Baltimore Finals, they were showcasing the game American Ninja Warrior Challenge, which looks nothing more than a shabby Wipeout video game knock-off with cheap graphics, stiff controls, and mediocre-at-best presentation. We saw competitors like Joe Moravsky claim that running the real life course is easier than playing the video game (I mean, they used footage of his Ninja character constantly failing the virtual Floating Steps). I could only imagine what would happen if they put the Angry Birds obstacle in that game. Oh goodness... Imagine throwing the Angry Birds obstacle in that awful game and having the Bad Piggies Laughing sound clip play every time you fail the obstacle. Now that would be a move only a bunch of laughing joking numbnuts would dare to create. >_<

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of American Ninja Warrior Nation's writers or editors, or of NBC.

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