What happens when the contestants on a reality show about finding the top marksman stop being polite and start being real? The entire point of the show becomes moot. In its first season, Top Shot had its share of social drama but it still managed to stay on focus and keep its best shooters in the running until the end. The second season couldn’t even do that. In fact, it strays so far that the winner of the competition is verifiably not the best competitor, and many of the show’s best contestants get booted as part of an agenda enacted by four marines in the bunch. Instead of putting safeguards into place to protect against the best of their subjects being kicked off the show and thus nullifying its entire premise, Top Shot milks the Semper Fi drama leaving us with a final four composed of one douchebag, one nice guy, and two old-timers riding on their coattails. Top Shot: Reloaded gives us plenty of ballistic fun but in the end it doesn’t mean anything because the best shooter didn’t win.
The basic idea behind Top Shot is that you can find the best shooter in the world (really the US) by pitting marksmen against one another in a series of challenges that test their accuracy, precision, and composure with various weapons in high tension situations. That system seems to work for most major firearm competitions, so Top Shot took it, increased the variety of weapons and expectations, and gave its winners a $100,000 incentive to go along with its “Top Shot” title.
The choice of weapons ranges from those as simple as blowguns and tomahawks to one of the most impressive sniper rifles ever conceived. In any given contest they might have to run from one base to the next or climb into a harness, rise up a couple hundred feet above the ground, and then plummet towards their targets, gun ablaze. The creativity of the challenges has always been one of the series’ best factors and, while the second season never feels quite as impressive as the first in terms of what the contestants have to do in any given episode, it’s still quite fun to watch. It’s compelling enough that it actually makes you long to try a few of the weapons yourself.
That’s where the fun ends. The first season saw plenty of conflict within the house where the competitors lived during the show, but it never overpowered the idea that the core purpose of the proceedings was to find the best of the best. Some great marksmen went home before their time, sure, but the best always stayed at the front of the pack. In the second season, all of that changed.
To start off each season, the 16 competitors are divided into two teams, the red and the blue. The talented blue team, led by a golf instructor who also happens to be a damned good marksman, pushes through the challenges, but more often than not they end up at the elimination round with two of their teammates vying for one spot to stay, while the other goes home. Though they lost, and hard, the red team was devoted to the idea of finding the best in their ranks and judging by merit.
The blue team, by contrast, is divided from day one between four Marines (current and former) and the rest of the group. As they comprised half of their team, they had an instant stranglehold on their team’s politicking and set about eliminating all the non-Marine competitors, with a particular bloodlust for a Naval officer who time and time again proved his mettle in the face of their scheming. Their plan resulted in the untimely elimination of at least three shooters who were easily better than at least two, if not three, of the Marines. Doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of Top Shot? Since when is the quality of a marksman determined by whether or not they have three buddies who served in the same arm of the military to back them up? Never. What’s worse? When it came down to the final three, perhaps the best of the Marines intentionally flubbed a shot so one of his lesser compatriots could go ahead and win the cash. Noble? Sure, but in line with the objective of the series? Not at all.
Top Shot took a major blow thanks to the Marine morons, and consequently the second season barely merits viewing.
DVD Bonus Features
The extras for set offer a decent amount of punch for a 12-episode season, and focus on the weapons used in the challenges and the shots they’re used to pull-off. The biggest and best featurette is “The Top Shot Experience” which gives audiences a much better understanding of all the stuff that happens off camera and amount of practice and camaraderie the series really involves. Finally, there’s an extended take on the team selection process from the first episode of the season.
"Top Shot: Reloaded - Season 2" is on sale October 18, 2011 and is not rated. Reality. Directed by Adam Vetri. Written by John McLaughlin. Starring Colby Donaldson.
