My Review of "American Ninja Warrior: Couples Championship 2024"

American Ninja Warrior: Couples Championship 2024 has finished. Again I'm late to the game. It was another entertaining episode but I kind of remember why these are somewhat forgettable but fun episodes. There's highs and lows to this but it also feels like a whole season all wrapped up into one episode.

This season we have a whole slew of competitors that I didn't not recognize. Though there were some familiar faces in there as well. I was just shocked that there were a lot of couples that I didn't really recognize this year. Some of these people I didn't recognize because they didn't get a lot of air time on TV in previous ANW episodes. They do remind us what they did in previous episodes though.

The funny thing about this is that some of these couples are pretty much newbies and when they step onto the obstacle course they actually fall on the first obstacle. This happened quite a number of times and I thought it was weird because you just had the women's championship. In the women's championship we had the elite of elite of women and they were doing great. Here we have absolute newbies trying this thing and it feels sort of out of place that they qualified for the competition in the first place.

It gets even funnier when you see the time that spent on their vignettes and promos for these failed couples. This very situation was written on a Saturday Night Live sketch where Drake was the host. I distinctly remember that sketch because I thought it could fit into reality. Then I saw this championship episode and it became true. Two of these couples had the TV hosts gushing over the physiques of their bodies and how good they looked. I couldn't help but laugh when they dropped into the water so anticlimactically. I know I shouldn't be laughing because it's a very positive vibe show but it was pretty funny.

Once we got to the elimination competition of couple versus couple that's when things really started to roll. I thought the last few couples that we got were pretty elite. Again, just like the women's competition it was the young competitors that were really showing off in these final sets. Some of these competitors were absolute beasts. Age definitely had a huge advantage in this episode much like I feel is going to happen with the rest of the regular season this year.

It's really sad to see the older veterans losing so badly this year with this competition. I hope that they don't lose their spirit and continue to strive forward because they truly are inspirations to us older fogeys trying to do new things. Though this year might be the year that some of the older folks will start to decide to retire from the competitive scene. They'll probably continue to do obstacle courses but in the background. It feels like the next generation is really understanding the obstacles and just have the body awareness and ability to crush these things.

I didn't really see a crazy lot of innovation this year from last year's competition. This version of the competition might need an overhaul in terms of grandeur of the obstacles. Though, if they continue to admit amateur ninja's to this competition they might have their hands tied. They have to simplify the course so that the amateurs can complete them.

Overall, I had an okay time with this but I think the women's competition really outshined this couples competition. I really don't think amateur couples should be in an all in one episode for this type of championship. Then again this is more of a light hearted competition and if that's the case they should lighten the mood with more fun games and antics throughout the show. As a competition I would give this a 6.5 out of 10. I think they need to revamp this a bit.