Watching Next on Fox....though they haven't aired any episodes for 3 weeks and the series was already cancelled.
Another episode airs tomorrow...this is why I hate network tv.
I'm not sure there's a good reason for the connection, but this post reminded me of American Ninja Warrior. Anyone else watch that show?
For anyone who doesn't know, American Ninja Warrior is a a competition where the competitors try to complete obstacle courses that range in difficulty from pretty damn hard to "are you fucking kidding me?!" It's based on a Japanese show called
Sasuke. ANW has been around for just over ten years. Competitors start at regional competitions and then progress to regional finals and national finals, which, except for this year and the first couple seasons, have been held in Las Vegas. The national finals is divided into four stages, and only those who finish a stage move on to the next one. In the show's history, only three competitors have finished stage 4, two in 2015 and one in 2019. The guy who won in 2019 is named Drew Drechsel.
Because of COVID, the 2020 season had a changed format, with all of the preliminary and finals stages being held in a "bubble" (in St. Louis), and the format was changed significantly.
The reason I'm writing about this is because, in August -- two weeks
after completing the taping of the 2020 season -- Drechsel was arrested on suspicion of a bunch of icky child sex charges. My wife and I didn't know about this until most of the way through the 2020 season. We wondered why we weren't seeing Drechsel compete and though it may have had something to do with COVID or him taking a year off after winning last year. Even more strange than him not competing was the fact that he wasn't even mentioned in the broadcast. Nor was he shown on screens rooting for some of his competitor friends (just about everyone had friends and fellow "ninjas" shown on screens rooting for them remotely). So...we looked it up...
I just thought it was REALLY odd that he competed (and apparently did fairly well) but NBC just completely erased his participation from history. NBC did issue a press release about cutting ties and condemning what he's alleged to have done (blah...blah...political correctness), but to pretend that he didn't compete just doesn't sit well with me.