Think about the people who appear in your average reality television show (competitive or not) like Jersey Shore, The Real World, or Survivor and then ask yourself: would you trust any of those people with a firearm? Any sort of weapon? How about the real housewives of wherever? Reality television is often populated by emotionally erratic individuals and those who are just straight up batshit insane. Then you have competition-based shows like Project Runway or Top Chef, where the tiresome personal drama still exists, but there’s enough going on in the competition of actual skill that the footage of conniving, backstabbing contestants doesn’t land front and center. Top Shot, HISTORY’s new reality television show based on finding the next jack of all weapons, falls more in line with Top Chef or Project Runway except with challenges based on the ability to hit targets with a variety of projectiles and it’s more of a title than it is a potential career starter.
To the show’s benefit, though more thanks to the participants than the show’s actual design, the programming stays focused on the competition aspect more often than the personal drama that comes from tensions and pressure derived from forcing random people to live in close quarters. Not until a few episodes in does personal strife really start to appear in front of the camera, and once it does it never really leaves. Vendettas begin popping up left and right as conflicts among some of the more irritating competitors arise, but the people worth cheering for, the ones who seem to be genuinely talented and likable, never really fall into this crowd. The one’s who feed off the drama also seem to be the ones who have little hope of taking home the title of Top Shot.
The challenges prove interesting to watch every time, though they’re often overshadowed by the cooler tasks assigned in elimination rounds when two players of the same team have to compete to see which one of them gets to stay after their team loses the episode’s big challenge. The show relies predominantly on pistols and rifles, but it occasionally changes things up with throwing knives, longbows, slingshots, and others. The challenges are varied and keep things entertaining and the spirit of competition tense, however its efforts are ultimately sabotaged by uneven teams. From the outset team blue proves itself to be superior with a team made up of seasoned veterans from the armed forces and the competitive shooting circuit. The red team has a few skilled shooters, like an up and comer marksman, but he’s incredibly young by comparison and often gets the short end of the stick when his teammates are making decisions. The red team takes loss after loss, but it’s to be expected since the blue team demonstrates over and over again that they have some of the most naturally gifted shooters in their ranks, whereas team red has one or two with hobbyists filling out the rest.
Not one for reality television myself, I found Top Shot compelling enough to watch in 3 or 4 episode stints. The drama remains taut throughout – even with the teams so hideously slanted in one direction. Not surprisingly, it’s the most levelheaded contestants who make it to the final three, with the most immature folks getting knocked out courtesy of politics and freezing under pressure. Top Shot marks HISTORY’s best foray yet into the land of competition-based reality programming and should serve as the template for similar endeavors from here on out.
DVD Bonus Features
The three extras in the set are fairly standard with lots of additional footage including some of the drama I’m glad they edited out, more practice footage, and bits and pieces of competitions (namely all the less than memorable challenge attempts that were skipped through in the episodes to save on time). Then the set closes with contestant bios and extended interviews with players after elimination rounds have concluded. Ultimately, what I would have liked to see was a reel or a segment on the slow motion shots of bullets hitting their targets and leaving the barrels of the gun. These shots really added a cool aspect to the proceedings (they showed slow motion replays of projectiles hitting their targets during competitions) and it would have been nice to have a feature on them here.
"Top Shot: Season One" is on sale January 11, 2011 and is not rated. Reality. Starring Colby Donaldson.
