American Ninja Warrior

I'm continually disappointed with each season as they get worse and worse. I watched the new season 12 and in the first 25 mins they have shown 5 competitors with a course time of about 1.5 minutes and a back story of about 3 minutes and the rest is replays, coming up ahead, and the announcers talking it up. It's amazing how they can have a good thing and totally ruin it with over the top sob stories, fake drama, autism, school teachers and what else you might want to thrown in in order to be socially woke.

They still haven't fixed the main issue with ANW, and that is all the events are grip based and upper body. Hanging, climbing and a few agility obstacles made for a rock climbers body. Heavier body builders, and other athletes don't have nearly the same chance of succeeding as a 120 pound agile nerd. And women mostly have zero chance of finishing. I don't recall any obstacle ever using the legs besides the warped wall.

I think Netflix's Ultimate Beastmaster shows what this should could have been if it was actually executed correctly. They endlessly rehash events and skip the actually interesting runs in favor of showing "sob stories" that no body cares about. I am sorry but if you can't complete the course then I do not care at all about your back story. And even if you can complete the course I still don't care enough about your back story to watch it for 5 minuets instead of watching other competitors compete. Just simply say "this guy makes pizza" or "this person is dealing with autism and there is his mom supporting him" and show a few shots of them doing something cool-- not their home life or them in the hospital, that is not why people watch this show-- know your audience! Also, the obstacles are way too focused on upper body strength. Make it more diverse like Beastmaster, but don't lower the bar for the woman like you are doing. If you want to give more screen time to woman, make a woman's set and a men's set like the Olympics.

AJW has started down the path of America's Got Talent by adding a sob story to most every contestant. Please NBC don't ruin another show for me. Let the contestants compete.

When this show started, it was great!!! I enjoy quite a bit the episodes circa 2012 (and thereabouts) with hosts Jonny Moseley, Angela Sun, and Iseman. That's lean meat, no fat.

The producers and et al wanted this show to gain popularity. This show has gotten obnoxious as a result of their efforts.

I tune in to watch athletes do crazy stunts and wow me with their athleticism. THAT'S WHY I WATCH. Nowadays, half the show is sappy backstories. There are 4 minute long back stories of each athlete. It's about the athlete working with mentally disabled people, losing family members by death, doing the ninja course for cancer, et cetera.

If these lame stories were 20 seconds long, it'd be tolerable. But no, they are literally at least four minutes each. Then on top of that, lots of commercials.

This show was a 9 out of 10, before it got ruined. I give it 4 out of 10.

Here's a thought: 1) Cut the lengthy video montages for a special few and dedicate that time to the sport itself.

2) Post a leaderboard online showing all the competitors, their stats, their background and any videos (emotional and/or competitive), if applicable.

3) Once the playing field is down to a handful, THEN run the video montage of what they had to conquer (physically, emotionally, whatever) to get this far. At this point viewers should recognize the competitors and have picked favorites. This is the appropriate time to dedicate a minute to each player's backstory.

Again, it's just a slap in the face to those who have trained so hard just to get on the course only to be granted a 2 second recap after commercial because the producers chose to air long background videos on competitors who ended up disqualifying themselves on the first challenge.

I wish I could get access to the original Sasuke competitions.