---
title: 'Beast Games 2 Strong/Smart: an Exhaustive Review'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=2ubYGdMCQTA'
video_id: '2ubYGdMCQTA'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 0
---

# Beast Games 2 Strong/Smart: an Exhaustive Review

> Source: [Beast Games 2 Strong/Smart: an Exhaustive Review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=2ubYGdMCQTA)

## Summary



## Transcript

Welcome to the Beast Games quarantine.
This is intended to be something of an
appendix to the mainline Mr. Beast video
and so we'd recommend you watch that
video before watching this. If you
don't, it might feel a bit like you're
walking into a room midway through a
rant, but also this is probably pretty
entertaining on its own and the context
is not that hard to grasp.
The original plan for the mainline video
was to keep discussion of Beast Games
itself to an absolute minimum. But as
the project developed, we found
ourselves in need of more examples of
Team Beast's
creative instincts. And Beast Games was
a petri dish for Team Beast's worst
creative instincts. So, we quickly found
ourselves overwhelmed with examples and
minor grievances that we just we just
need to exercise. Exorcise. That's like
like like the exorcist. We we need a
priest.
There's really no better way to attack
this than in linear order. So, let's
start with literally the first thing we
see. This opening CG shot is another
example of a post hawk editing decision.
>> Did you already know that the beginning
was going to be that VFX shot or did you
have that idea afterwards?
>> So, this whole mic coming down, me
grabbing it, this was definitely a thing
we did afterwards. You could make the
argument the reality TV ought to be shot
with soft eyes open to spontaneity, but
does that argument really play for the
very first shot of the show? If any
moment could be scripted and shot with
intention, it's this. But as we drilled
into you during the video, Team Beast is
making this up as they go along.
We covered this in the main video, but
the opening strong challenge was
conceived and shot entirely for
spectacle. But spectacle was seemingly
the only thing given any real thought.
And to be fair, it is visually
interesting. In the various
behind-the-scenes bits, Jimmy is clearly
proud of the concept and the spectacle
of this thing, but like it was just too
hard. The sandbag that they needed to
carry back up the rope was onethird of
the contestants body weight, which
sounds like it evens the odds, but
that's not how mass works. All the
dancers, swimmers, and cyclists finished
really fast because they all have a
really high lift to body mass ratio
while everyone else struggled. It's
basically the rocket equation. Building
muscle makes you stronger, but stronger
muscles are heavier, which creates
diminishing returns when those muscles
need to lift themselves. A 105lb
ballerina needs to lift a 31.5 lb
sandbag for a total lift of 136.5 lb. A
240lb bodybuilder needs to lift a 72lb
sandbag for a total lift of 312 lbs.
>> 41 and through.
>> Wow, we're not going to get there.
>> Who would have thought that despite
having 100 of these giant mammoth people
that over half of them didn't even
complete it.
>> So yeah, the majority of the Strongs
actually fell off and the remaining
slots were filled with a tiebreaker
round of push-ups.
>> Do you worry that this may not be the
most interesting content? like this
isn't the most visual after going from
that to this.
>> This will never make the show.
>> The narrative presented in the show ends
up being highly misrepresentative of the
reality of the game. And as you'll see
the further we go into season 2, the
more this stuff will crop up. It really
needs to be stressed that this is a
massive undertaking. This strong
challenge is probably the one game that
really delivers on the promise of Beast
Games as unparalleled spectacle, but
that only makes the abject failure of
the game all the more embarrassing. This
goes back to the lack of intent and the
seeming lack of actual testing. Like I
think the flaw in this game is apparent
from the whiteboard. These numbers alone
communicate the issue. But even if we
accept that the laws of gravity are too
nuanced for Chandler and the boys to
comprehend, surely any good faith
testing would have involved a jacked
dude having a hard time. There's just no
version of this where Beast Games comes
out looking good because either they
tested it properly and understood the
dynamics at play and still chose to go
ahead with it or they didn't test it and
made this enormous investment based on
vibes. For whatever it's worth, the
show's director, Tyler Conklin, is
adamant that they did in fact do loads
of testing and it was literally just a
skill issue on the contestants part.
Sure thing, brother. As a bridge subject
here, between the strong and smart
challenge, we're met with a recurring
gripe that will haunt the show until the
very end. Block stacking puzzles. It's
so vestigial that it's not even worth
mentioning most of the time, but the
strong challenge had a block stacking
puzzle as the capstone task before
contestants could push the button. I
guess the boys figured that the
competition would be such a nailbiter
that they needed one last task to slow
contestants down long enough for the
cameras to react. But, you know,
>> everybody in push-up positions.
>> That brings us to Oops. All block
stacking, the smart challenge. As
discussed in the main video, the smart
challenge involved playing Simon with
colored blocks replicating Jimmy's
pattern. In order to properly talk about
the smart challenge, we need to
distinguish between the game as
presented in the show and the reality of
the production. First, the fiction of
the show. The game was easy and
overhyped to an insulting degree.
literal rocket scientists enrolled in a
game show framing itself as a test of
intelligence only to be greeted with a
literal children's game, but that ended
up being irrelevant because there wasn't
even an attempt to stop players from
just copying off each other. It wasn't
much more than a test of procedure and
of mass hysteria. The narrative, as it
is shown to us in the show, is
incoherent. We're shown three rounds of
Simon. Round one involves six blocks
with a 60-second timer with failure
leading to elimination. In round two,
it's 10 blocks in 30 seconds, but only
22 make it through. No eliminations.
Round three involves 16 blocks, no time
limit, and with the first 28 to complete
the puzzle successfully making it
through to the city. This is all shown
to us in a delirious 5-minute sequence.
So, you can be forgiven for just letting
it all wash over you, even as I describe
it. In reality, they started with four
block stacks, which eliminated no one,
and incrementally ratcheted up the
difficulty until they landed on the
final format.
>> We'll be doing this over and over again,
adding more and more blocks until 50 of
you are eliminated.
>> In reality, they were making these
people stack blocks all night.
>> Look outside. Like, it is like 6:00 a.m.
>> They were tuning the difficulty of their
game as they were filming it. And then
Jimmy was like, "This is too easy." I
don't know why we did it. That
eliminated more people than we needed.
Like, it was a disaster.
>> This moment as a whole is also a great
example of something that will plague
the entire show. So much so that we
won't even bother to call attention to
it most of the time. But there is so
much Jimmy voice over that has been
added to make it look like this was all
according to plan. Like round one
eliminating zero players was an intended
outcome. As I expected from a room full
of geniuses, you all got that pattern
correct.
>> Like so much of Beast Games, this
foreshadowed a persistent issue. The
creators have no idea how to produce a
game show for smart people.
>> I don't have a degree in memory.
>> The premise of the season is strong
versus smart. It's nerds versus jocks.
Fine. The problem is that what it means
to be smart is incredibly elastic.
>> 100 of the smartest people on the entire
planet. Are we talking about academics?
If so, what field? Surely we want some
NASA folk. How much emphasis are we
putting on personality? Is it enough to
just be a stereotypical nerd of medium
intellect? Whatever definition we might
come up with, Jimmy walks straight past
it. We have the usual suspects of smart
people, but we also have contestants
labeled as Rubik's cube savant, street
smart, media mogul, AI prodigy, top 1%
board gamer, Guinness World Record
gamer, stay-at-home dad, sweepstakes
champion, billiondoll problem solver,
young investor, top 1% national public
speaker, high school grad at 17 while
raising children. I mean, very
commendable. That's not smartest person
in the world territory. We should note
that players had these labels imposed on
them. Jack didn't scribble child genius
into his application form. Some dork at
team beast gave him that title.
Essentially, anyone can be smuggled onto
the smart team with the right framing.
Susi, a finalist from a recent season of
Survivor, is a smart contestant. In
fact, this season as a whole is marked
by a notable uptick in professional
reality TV personalities.
So, what is a smart challenge for this
cohort? No, seriously, that isn't a
trick question. Answer in the comments.
What are we supposed to do? Are we
making them sit the Harvard entrance
exam? Maybe an egg drop? This is a
really difficult problem at a baseline,
and Beast Game simply has no idea how to
solve it. Beast Game season 2 does not
have a credited game designer. It's
pretty much an open secret that Jimmy
and the boys come up with the games, and
they don't seem to be particularly big
into QI or Jeopardy. Beast Games
conceives of smart people from the
perspectives of a group of guys who
never went to college and think high
school is obsolete, trying to pander to
an audience of 9-year-olds. I mean, for
God's sake, when introducing Beast City,
the Strongs get a functional and
well-rounded gym, while the smarts get a
child's chemistry playset and a shelf
full of the cheap public domain books
real estate agents used to dress show
homes. If there was an answer to this
smart challenge conundrum, these guys
were not going to be the ones to solve
it. Across the entire show, there are
extremely few instances of pure smart
coded games, and they are universally
memorization games for children. It's
stacking blocks and memorizing a path
through a grid. And like the strong
contestants aren't Sims. They don't have
an ability score aotment. They're adult
humans with adult human intelligence and
experiences. They can both get yolked
and solve block puzzles. And since that
is the ceiling on smart challenges,
smart people have no actual function in
this game.
>> There's a lot of strategy in it. You
know, I'm excited to see the smart
people maybe like grab the strong and
kind of point them in a direction. Hey,
listen. You can go super fast, but if
you fall, our whole game's over. So slow
and steady, you might win the race.
>> There is enormous asymmetry that
advantages strong contestants. A strong
contestant can survive and win a smart
challenge. But if a smart wants a shot
at the private island, they will need to
win get a grip. Predictably, this
filters out and neutralizes pretty much
all smart contestants. There's a
perception that strong people have that
competitive dog in them that the smart
people simply don't. But what that means
in practice is simply that certain
strong people have a willingness to be
rude that the smart people don't know
how to deal with. From the very first
game until the last remaining smart,
we're going to see what amounts to
outright schoolyard bullying of them by
strong contestants. Smarts are
systematically eliminated with almost
scientific efficiency. There's something
almost mlonist in the way that Jimmy has
made a children's game show nominally
for adults and immediately the adults
start acting like children. So far, not
a single smart person has been picked
yet.
>> Jim's new nickname is backpack boy cuz
his girlfriend is carrying him through
the finish line.
>> Those few smarts who do go on a deep run
ultimately make it through because
they're non-threatening, just lingering
at the margins. A free space that one of
the real contenders can cash in at the
right time, which they absolutely do.
There is an almost ritualistic moment
where seemingly everyone agrees that the
two token smarts have outlived their
value and now get thrown into the
volcano. It's so intense and immediate
that both of them start crying. Beast
Game season 2 is ultimately tailored for
a very specific kind of archetype, and
by the end of the show, we have three
identical dudes slapping each other on
the back for making it here. So, you can
look forward to that.
So, I'm five pages into the script and
we're only 20 minutes into episode 1.
That's a great sign. The contestants
arrive at B City and I'm sorry, but this
place sucks. The scale of the space is
big enough that everything needs to be
cheap to fit the budget, but it's small
enough that there isn't much of note for
people to do, especially people who
aren't gym rats. Also, the production
does basically nothing to maintain
kayfabe and frequently include wide
shots that show the bare dirt
construction site that surrounds the
build. The show tries not to draw
attention to it, but contestants are
sleeping in what are essentially
barracks with zero privacy. The pitch
being that don't worry, we'll filter it
down pretty quickly and so you'll get a
barracks to yourself soon. The city is
built for 100 people, but by episode 3,
we're already down to the top 25, so the
city feels empty almost immediately.
That trope plays well in Survivor when
it gets to the last few contestants.
It's a meaningful absence the show can
explicitly draw attention to, but that
doesn't work here. There are only two
episodes where the scale even remotely
matches the actual population. I'm
loathed to give suggestions here, but
here's one for free. If you want to keep
your big stupid spectacle 10,000
contestant opening, then do what
American Idol does and end episode 1
with 20 people left who get to go and do
the actual game show. Moving on, in the
scope of things, this gripe is perhaps
more forgivable, but the edit has a big
problem of overemphasizing contestants
who end up going deep into the show.
Overwhelmingly, these players are top 10
to 15. This gives the show a weird
energy because Beast Games has an army's
worth of contestants, but you keep
seeing the same dozen or so faces over
and over again. On the first viewing,
this was noticeable, but on rewatch,
it's unbearable. It's not a subtle
leaning towards contestants in the top
10. It's the Nick, Jack, and Monica show
with other contestants sprinkled in for
plausible deniability. During episode
one, while blitzing through the entire
setup of the show, the edit takes 50
full precious seconds to give Jack the
Child Genius a full introduction, doing
what can only be described as gesture
maxing to pander to a group of strong
contestants.
>> I mean, listen, the right to bear arms
is right here.
>> It's not interesting, but Jack is making
it to the top six, so you'll be seeing a
lot of him. So, he gets an introduction.
He's the closest thing we have to a
smart protagonist, clearly because he
went all in on embedding himself into
the strong clique. Jim and Monica also
get a 70-second introduction during
episode 1. As already mentioned in the
other video, they both go on a deep run
and end up getting married during
production. I I don't know, fake
married. It wasn't legally binding, but
who cares? Many reality shows have a
protagonist couple, and these two are
essentially that. Even in the
behind-the-scenes stuff, they're given a
lot of emphasis. Considering how much
time will be spent focusing on these
people in the back half of the show, the
amount of time they get in the front
half is simply outrageous. This is Team
Beast overcorrecting in response to
season 1 criticisms. It was said that
they didn't spend enough time with
contestants or build character. So,
they're ramming these people down our
throats until we choke. But the effect
of all this is that the majority of the
contestants feel like NPCs in these
people's game. Again, all of this would
be fixed by simply making these people
the ones who actually do the show. You
clearly have your protagonists, your
chop 20.
Just chuck everyone else. You don't need
them. They could they can go sooner.
Episode 1 ends with six minutes of setup
for the next game, which we'll call OG
Bribe. 10 players from season 1 were
selected to have a chance to compete in
season 2. So, this game involves them
bribing contestants to swap places with
them for 100 grand. This premise is sort
of take it or leave it. There's
arguments for and against bringing back
notable contestants from season 1, but
whatever those arguments may be, this
isn't one of them.
>> You can't just snap your fingers and
make 100 million people or however many
people end up watching season 2
instantly care about people. So, the
best way to do it without rushing it and
give it time to breathe was just to
bring back the people they already knew
from season 1.
>> Our whole idea for bringing back the 10
contestants from season 1 was from the
criticisms, which is kind of funny.
Like, they said that we couldn't tell
stories. We couldn't build characters.
And what better way to do it in season 2
than bring back the people that we've
already fully built.
They thought they were cheating the
system. They thought they were sticking
it to the haters by bringing back these
fully formed individuals. The fact that
this even crossed their minds once again
highlights that they can't build
character. The fact they think reheated
leftovers are a viable substitute just
proves that they really aren't cut out
for storytelling. I'm sorry. Anyway,
episode one cliffhangs on a contestant
stepping forward to take the bribe. It's
not an effective cliffhanger. We don't
know who this guy is, nor do we care,
but it does parse as a cliffhanger. Like
it's a dramatic beat that carries
momentum even if you feel nothing. So
whatever. The episode has to end so we
may as well end here. But does it need
to end here? Because the only reason
this moment is available as an end point
is due to the odd pacing of the episode
overall. The episode is 43 minutes long,
38 minutes once you lop off the teaser
and credits. Despite being the launching
pad for the season, it's the shortest
episode in the whole thing. In that
brief 38 minute runtime, we introduce
the show and its premise, introduce the
first 200 contestants, set up and
complete the strong challenge, set up
and complete the smart challenge,
introduce and screw around in B city,
and set up the OG bribe challenge to
serve as a cliffhanger. 38 minutes. To
say it runs at a breakneck pace is an
understatement. The natural end point
would have been the arrival at Beast
City, possibly with some preamble about
the city itself to build some hype
leading into the teaser of what is to
come, but there simply isn't 40 to 60
minutes of content in the first two
challenges, even before they had to be
gutted in the edit. And of course, we've
got to have that cliffhanger ending. So,
we get the setup of the OG bribe on this
side of the episode. and that
effectively pads it to just long enough
to call it a full episode. Already we're
seeing weird structural decisions.
Episode 1 is just as much of a parade of
segments as episode 7. You're just
inclined to forgive it on the first
watch.
Okay, so episode two, we spend 7 minutes
resolving OG bribe. All the season 1
contestants make it in. Cool. Then we
get the premise of this episode. Players
can choose one of four games to
participate in where each game will
eliminate half its contestants. This
will be a problem.
All the games try to leverage this
massive video floor that I'm told was
accidentally a world record.
>> I mean, we weren't going for a Guinness
World Record, but we got one.
>> Dodgeball is the only game that really
requires the screen as designed. And
really, it only serves to complicate
matters and introduce problems, but it
is a core part of the game. It's
dodgeball where teams are dynamically
split based on these lines on the floor.
This is meant to produce even groups and
break up clicks. But in this, the first
real game we see, players immediately
disobey the rules of the game as
designed. The best way to survive is to
be on the side with the most people. So
rather than spreading out evenly like
this pretty graphic suggests, people
would hoard into the one slice and it
becomes a question of who the stragglers
will be. And in cases where a popular
person was stuck, people would just
throw their ball away. So, who are we
eliminating? The answer may not surprise
you.
>> I'm falling back towards you. Okay.
Okay. Cuz there's smarts in front of us.
>> Yes, I know exactly what we need to do.
>> You say we're going for smarts, right?
>> Yeah. Yep. I got you. I heard you.
>> So, yeah, we get Patrick with Predator
eyes staring down smarts like it's
middle school gym. That's all there
really is to say about this game. It's
It's dodgeball.
The next game was Balance, which I'd
argue is the best game of the show. And
director Tyler agrees with me.
Contestants are split into pairs and
have to vibe check the weight of this
heart and stack rocks on the other side
of a scale. The goal is to avoid placing
the rock that tilts the scale and breaks
the heart. Because it's reasonably well
balanced and works fine, there's not a
ton to say about it. The next game was
Bluff, which was a complete disaster. We
covered it in the main video, so we
won't dwell on it here. It was a game
premised on contestants lying to each
other with no incentive to lie. No one
lied and contestants were eliminated by
drawing names from a box. If this worked
in play testing, it was play tested
wrong. Everyone who signed off on this
should lose their job.
Finally, we have the blocks game, which
I'll call big blocks to distinguish it
from the previous block game. Seemingly,
because the first block game was so
easy, people gravitated towards big
blocks as their choice of game. 40 of
the 100 contestants chose big blocks,
which kind of broke the whole game. Big
blocks involve stacking a bunch of large
foam blocks to reach a flag. Each team
has a designated guy on top of the pile
stacking them up, and they're limited to
one runner at a time who retrieves the
blocks from a pile. So, there are 18
people on each team without a specific
role to fill. They try and form a
committee of engineers to help plan the
build, but it's a stack of blocks. It
doesn't require a civil engineer to
figure it out. In fact, that ends up
being another dagger in the heart of the
smart campaign. The producers use the
fastest completion of the Strong and
Smart games from episode 1 to ordain the
strongest and smartest players as team
captains, and they draft the players
into their teams. Again, like middle
school PE. So Corey, the Navy veteran,
drafts all the biggest bloss he can see,
while Johnny, the pro Pokemon player,
spends his precious first round draft
pick on Dino for experience. The teams
drafted ended up being split almost
entirely along the strong and smart
divide. Johnny's team is composed of 15
smart people, four OGs from season 1,
and one strong contestant, a bare
knuckle fighter. And as it turns out,
running and lifting giant foam blocks is
physically intensive. And given that the
game didn't just take all night, but ran
almost until noon, it was unbelievably
physically intensive.
>> Yo, it's going to get hard getting those
up. By the way, there you go, buddy. Dig
deep.
>> So, while Cory's team was able to rotate
between gigachads to lift these blocks,
Johnny's team had Gage from season 1,
who eventually subbed out for Johnny
himself. While it took all night to play
out, the smart team was never going to
win this. I don't know how to say this
politely, but this ended up being an
enormous brain drain for the whole show.
15 of the 50 smart contestants. Over a
third of the total pool of smarts were
eliminated from this one game. And
Johnny picked all the well, he picked
all the actual smart people. the MIT
researcher, the PhD candidate, the civil
engineer, the NASA data scientist.
Johnny picked them all for this suicide
mission. And so, the smart people who
survived this challenge were the ones
just filling up the numbers on Cory's
team. Going forward, most of the smart
people you'll see will be people like
Luke, the crypto content creator,
Sophie, the licensed attorney, and
Katie, the reptile breeder. Anyway, the
show drags this out over 11 minutes and
ends on the cliffhanger of Jimmy egging
Johnny on to attempt a 9- foot hail mary
of a jump. A basketball hoop is 10 ft
off the ground. Johnny is being asked to
make an NBA caliber leap while standing
on like 40 ft worth of precarious foam
blocks.
But anyway, spoilers for Beast Game
season 2. But Johnny misses the jump and
the strong team wins because Mitch is so
close. He just needs to work up the grit
to stand up. They milk that for an
additional 3 and 1/2 minutes. Seven more
minutes of milling around B city and we
get the obstacle course.
This is perhaps the most overhyped thing
on the show. They say it's the craziest
obstacle course we've ever seen, but gun
to my head, I could not tell you what
separates it from any other obstacle
course on Wipeout or Ninja Warrior. Like
Ninja Warrior is tuned for top tier
athletes who are expected to do monkey
bars with a single bar, while this was
literally beta tested by Jimmy's rando
buddy in their backyard for a main
channel Mr. Beast video. The only thing
of note that stands out is this Y shape
at the end of the course. It brings the
contestants together and raises the
possibility of some honest to god
violence going down. That would at least
be a unique spin on a classic formula
and really fit the whole Beast Games
vibe. But no, it turns out they didn't
even notice this element until they had
already built the damn course
>> because we have a Y and then we have a
path that both of you share and he stood
on the path and we're like, "Oh, there's
like interaction there."
>> I was surprised like I wasn't rammed off
the platform there.
>> If somebody's standing there and $5
million is at stake, I'm going through
you. We can't have that. Somebody's
going to get hurt.
>> So, no, no blood sport. There was a
whole set of rules against violence that
the audience is never told about.
>> You'll see the right arm of White.
>> Here it is.
>> Grabs the side. Now goes for the head.
>> Oh, that's where it gets the illegal
move.
>> And he's out no matter what.
>> It's not that I'm pro Blood Sport, but
it's just they really built this thing
before noticing the players could
hypothetically crash into each other.
And now we're going frame by frame
through this footage as if Mike, who
speaks four languages, has been flagged
for holding. Players are each split into
teams of five and go against each other.
But each round has a different theme
sort of. They keep changing the rules,
but nothing materially changes because
for three of the five races, anyone
failing to complete the course
eliminates their whole team, which
happens very quickly in all three of
those rounds. It's another bizarre
decision that leads to a huge portion of
players not getting a chance to
participate. The obstacle course
involved 50 contestants and by our count
28 players didn't get the chance to
participate at all and 16 of those
players were eliminated. This is
seemingly another byproduct of bad
production. The details are a bit fuzzy,
but as we understand it, production gave
themselves one night to film the
obstacle course, Captain Bribe, and The
Cannonball Find. before everyone would
need to fly out for the Survivor collab.
Then you had the big block game run over
and into the morning of that same day.
So four games would need to be shot on
that day to stay on schedule. A huge
thunderstorm rolled in that night and
they gave themselves no other option
than to brute force through it.
>> We had such a tight turnaround.
Basically were under the impression if
we didn't film all of the games, which
seemed impossible at the time. We
weren't going to be able to go to the
Survivor Island and film that entire
episode. We could have missed that. We
were stuck.
>> We've just been sitting here on lockdown
for the past 3 hours.
>> The bigger thing is the next steps of
what we're going to do to salvage the
episode. Just be on standby. We are
going to get this thing done. So, thank
you guys. Thanks for uh sticking it out.
>> We're just going to try to get as many
runthroughs of contestants going through
this obstacle course as possible before
we have to shelter in place.
>> So, we would speculate that the decision
to be so cutthroat was part of their
attempt to salvage the episode.
ruthlessly cutting production time when
the opportunity presented itself, even
if it meant almost a full third of
contestants were eliminated from a game
without being given the opportunity to
participate. On top of that, a wet
course is a significant increase in
difficulty. So, a bunch of contestants
get to sit there and be eliminated as
their single runner slips off the wet
rubber within seconds of leaving the
platform.
Anyway, let's move on to Captain Bribe.
The same teams from the obstacle course
are kept together for this game. A
player is nominated to serve as captain
and they're well, they're bribed. It's
it's all there in the name. This is a
recycled game from season 1. The
captains are offered an increasing
amount of money that they can take at
the cost of eliminating their team. And
this feels incredibly fast, right? Like
there has been one cooperative challenge
so far, the obstacle course, which we
already pointed out was not really a
cooperative challenge since a majority
of people didn't run it. only one team
really had a clutch moment that
suggested there was any cohesion or
camaraderie between them. So, the
challenge sort of plays it both ways. In
some cases, the obstacle course teams
reflect pre-existing alliances and so
there is implied off- camerara rapport
between them, but at the same time, some
people were forced onto certain teams
and so there's distrust of other
members. And they work both of those
angles, but it's just not compelling.
The bribe caps out at $1 million. As we
said in the video, the calculus is
obvious here. You take the money. As a
top 25 contestant, you have a 4% chance
of winning the 5 million, and you're
being offered a 100% chance at 20% of
the prize pool. You would be a fool to
turn down those odds. And so, the only
justification to turn down the bribe is
if you value your integrity that much in
a game show all about debasing yourself
for money. So yeah, we get another
rugpull cliffhanger with the show
pretending Nick took the money when he
hoverhanded the button, but plot twist,
he was too slow and JT took the money.
It's better than season 1.
Episode 4 then opens with four full
agonizing minutes trying to put the
screws to JT. Jimmy hands him a
microphone to explain himself. JT says
he has nothing to say, hands the mic
back to Jimmy, who promptly hands it
back to JT again and presses him to
address his team. And it's just it it's
not good television. It's uncomfortable
and awkward because JT just won a
million dollars and is being made to
feain guilt for the camera. He is in
fact happy to be a millionaire.
>> I think that when I leave here, I could
live with myself knowing that I got that
million dollars. And then we get the
most insane line in the show.
>> Greed is idolatry.
>> Imagine saying that on your second
appearance on Beast Games. With that
cliffhanger resolved, we can move on to
the main hook of the episode, which is a
crossover episode with Survivor.
For whatever reason, the Survivor
segment only includes 10 of the 20
remaining contestants. So, to punch
their ticket to Survivor Island,
contestants need to find cannonballs
hidden around the city. It's the only
instance of them actually using the city
as a play space. And I'm surprised they
didn't do it more, probably because it
would involve reusing an asset.
>> And in traditional TV, they'll run like
20 seasons on one site. Not us. That
would be boring. Who wants to watch the
same thing over and over again? Not me.
>> Because the production crew had to film
three challenges in one night, there's a
noticeable lack of coverage in this
segment. Just to pick one moment that
stood out on rewatch, we see Katie find
a cannonball in this wide shot. It then
cuts to a closeup of her holding the
cannonball in PPE from elsewhere at the
cannons. It then cuts back to the sand
pit and we see Katie still there digging
all in a 5-second span. But anyway, I
find the pyrochnics bit very irritating
because it's just a pointless waste of
money. It reeks of insecurity. This is
the sort of thing you do for the
contestants and yourself, not to make
good TV. Anyway, Jack is the only smart
person who doesn't find a cannonball,
and so he cries ugly tears to camera
while the winners, who aren't idiot
nerds, hop in a stretch hummer to go win
a private island.
The Survivor crossover is fine, and not
like a limp fine. It's actually fine.
It's Btier Survivor, which makes it S
tier beast games, but for our purposes,
that makes it very boring to talk about.
The Survivor team did everything, and
Team Beast just had to turn up, which,
as we saw, they barely managed that. We
partnered with one of the largest shows
ever programmed on television in order
to create the most insane television
crossover the world has ever seen, Beast
Games and Survivor, FUSED INTO ONE
single groundbreaking episode. The
precise way that Jimmy Hard sells his
content has become really irritating to
me. It's the way he talks as if he's
trying to get you to invest in the show
itself. It's not enough for you to want
to watch it. You have to believe in the
content's value and believe in Jimmy's
value for making it. This is the kind of
language you use when talking to
investors. The survivor segment lasts
about 45 minutes and features one team
game followed by Get a Grip and finally
tribal council. No one is eliminated in
the segment, but the winner gets a
private island valued at 1.8 million,
which they're allowed to cash out. The
tribal council segment takes about half
the episode, which isn't great because
Ian and JC are both very unlikable
people, and watching them both gravel
and plead for votes to win the island
sucks. Because the Survivor episode is
entirely self-contained, it wres havoc
on the overall pacing of the season and
skews the screen time towards a select
few people. Ian wins the island, but
we're shown in a postredits bit that he
cashes out because yeah, a normal person
does not need a private island. Like it
it's actively a liability to own. As a
consolation prize, JT wins the coin, a
mcguffin that gives the holder an
opportunity to flip the coin and
potentially double the prize pool if
they make it to the top six. It's meant
to act as a hostage that protects the
holder as they move through the show.
But again, the game theory is weird
because for some reason, the person who
flips the coin risks elimination if they
call it wrong. So, if you make it to the
top six, you have a 17ish% chance to win
$5 million, and the coin represents an
8ish% chance at $10 million instead. The
absolute odds balance out, but the
relative odds do not. $5 million is
life-changing money. $10 million is
life-changing money plus X. Flipping the
coin strictly benefits the opposition.
Either you flip the coin and double the
prize pool or you fail and get
eliminated, increasing their odds of
winning to a clean 20%. So, in that
sense, the coin is a cursed idol that
grants protection early on but requires
a blood sacrifice down the road. Maybe
that's interesting, but this little
subplot costs Jimmy $5 million in season
1. So, he spends all of season 2 trying
to bribe the holder to sell it to him,
which they eventually do. Really, season
1 played out more or less the ideal way
that this device could. The holder gets
a buy through several rounds because of
it and then calls it doubling the pot.
But in a hypothetical 20 seasons of
Beast Games universe, I suspect this is
how it would go. Hold the coin with no
intention to flip it and cash it out in
the late game. It would then lose its
mystique and the protection that comes
with it.
Moving on to episode 5, the gang returns
from the island just in time for a full
10 minutes yapping over the outcome of
the island. Most of the chatter is based
on the false premise that the island has
permanently shaken up alliances.
>> Island people are going to stick for
island people.
>> That ends up going nowhere because the
island was an adversarial exercise. They
were competing against each other. In
that same sound bite, JC says he feels
isolated because people voted against
him. That is the real tone of the
aftermath. People are either lukewarm on
the whole thing or harboring new petty
grievances. Jimmy eventually gathers
everyone together under the pretext of
offering JC 50 grand for the coin. JC
predictably rejects that. And so we move
on to Cubes, Beast Games most notorious
challenge.
Cubes is the only Beast Game challenge
that really breaks away from the strict
children's game theme. This game was
featured in season one of Beast Games
and was popular enough that Jimmy has
reused it elsewhere, most recently on
Kevin Hart and other mid-tier
celebrities with bad agents. The
decision to run it back with cubes is so
hack that one team assumed there must be
a twist to it and started destroying the
room looking for clues.
>> I hate to break it to you, there is no
twist. Cubes involves two or three
individuals entering a room and one
individual needing to elect to
self-eliminate from the game so the
others can leave and continue in the
game. Players are given freedom to use
whatever method they want to determine
who should be eliminated and each room
has a phone that calls out to Chandler
and Code to order explicitly whatever
they want to reach a verdict. The whole
pitch of the challenge is that the show
goes hands off and lets the contestants
figure it out on their own terms. The
problem emerges when this concept comes
into contact with Jimmy's love of
deception and dishonesty. Beast Games is
not just unconcerned with players
reneggging on their agreements. Jimmy
actively encourages it.
>> Yeah, you've given them your word, but
you don't technically have to.
>> In season 1, there were 80 different
cubes running and so several rooms
devolved into these antics.
>> Yeah, I'm out.
>> Are we fair?
>> Yep.
>> Are you sure?
>> Yeah. Actually, no. I lied. And bam,
we're all gone.
>> Are you serious?
>> Yeah, I'm dead ass.
>> The most notable instance of this
featured the Habibi brothers. A pair of
brothers were paired with a woman. One
of the brothers simply refused to
participate in any game, and so the
three spend several hours sitting in an
empty room with the brothers badgering
her to agree to let that brother sit out
their game, increasing her odds of being
eliminated in any game of chance. She
eventually capitulates to the game,
loses, and is left to sit alone in the
room chained to the wall. It's this
scene that gives the game its reputation
for being torturous. And that is why
here in season 2, Katie immediately
starts crying and reaching out for other
women the moment the cubes are revealed.
>> Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
>> Most people go on game shows because
they're fun. If this is how your
contestants react to the dramatic reveal
of your signature game, it might be
worth interrogating why that is. The
incident with the Habibi brothers is
another example of a major failure in
Beast Games, one that shouldn't have
even made it to air, but the creators
are explicitly quite proud of the game
they've built. And so the habibi footage
is shown to us like three times in
season 2. The good news is that the
cubes game in season 2 is a lot less
dramatic. Rather than 242 players
needing to pair up, season 2 only needs
to deal with the top 20. So basically
everyone knows each other and mostly has
their clique. The gimmick with the
phones is that their stated purpose is
to bring contestants things like a deck
of cards or Jenga or whatever to elect a
sacrifice. But the boys will bring them
literally anything. So in season 1, you
had some rooms partying with a tattoo
artist and other rooms sitting in an
empty void with nothing but a pack of
cards and some Door Dash. In season two,
everyone's in on the joke. Season 1 had
a firm time limit of 5 hours to reach a
verdict, or else everyone was
eliminated. This led to mutually assured
destruction being regularly invoked.
>> And bam, we're all gone.
>> In season 2, the crew prepared for the
game to last all night. So, while there
is an implicit deadline, it's not
hanging over the contestants heads. They
seem to have been encouraged to screw
around with the phones and party on
Amazon's dime. As a result, the season 2
cubes go off without much incident. In
terms of manipulation, Vance was
convinced to agree to a popularity
contest. And given that he was the least
popular person in the competition, yeah,
that was a mistake.
>> Less than 10% of people voted for Vance.
>> When Sue was eliminated from a card game
because the child genius, Jack, swapped
in a loaded deck. That is the only thing
Jack does in the whole show, and Jimmy
has milked it to death in the aftermath.
You got to GIVE HIM A HUG.
JI'S ELIMINATION is just funny because
he wants to be a ruthless operator and
make Jimmy proud, but just doesn't have
it in him. He's paired with Jim and
Monica, the maybe possibly married
couple with Lego wedding rings. JC and
Jim agree to let Monica sit out the
elimination because chivalry isn't dead
just yet. And so, the two guys play a
card game. JC loses and rather than
honoring the game, tries to bribe Jim to
self-eliminate by offering to give the
coin to Monica. And so that is our big
cliffhanger for the episode. Will Jim
take the bribe?
Rather than episode 6 continuing with
this exchange, the episode opens outside
the cubes and we get the big reveal of
who survived and it's Jim. The decision
to shift perspectives is an odd creative
choice until you see that like the
actual conversation was not the least
bit dramatic. Jim refuses the bribe. JC
says, "Oh, well, Monica can have the
coin anyway." And that was that. And so
that is stretched into a threeinut
sequence. There's a few more minutes of
decompression before we get episode 6's
challenge. Hearts will be smashed.
That's what the wiki calls it. That's
the name. We're stuck with it. The goal
here is to decisively crown the
strongest and smartest contestants in
the city through a smart challenge and a
strong challenge. These challenges don't
eliminate anyone, but the two winners
get to decide collectively which three
contestants to eliminate. This had a
curious impact on the game theory at
play because players only valued the win
if they felt like they were at risk of
elimination. But almost everyone was
entirely confident that they were safe
from getting voted off. Also, you know,
no one wants to try too hard to be safe
and signal that they feel like they're
unsafe. It produces an odd lack of
tension given the circumstances.
First up, we have the strong challenge,
which is another spin on Get a Grip.
This is the third of what will
ultimately be four strong challenges
involving hanging from a pole. All
tailored for a very specific kind of
athlete. So, shock, horror, the gymnast
wins. I will just say though, Team Beast
got really lucky that August didn't
collide with the platform during this
fall.
The Smart Challenge is yet another
children's memory game. Contestants need
to memorize the path through a grid. A
staple of game shows produced for
literal children. Three, M2,
M1, and Andrew's away. Runway, slip
away, takeaway, and causeway.
>> That 30-year-old clip from the
Australian cult classic children's game
show Time Masters is arguably more
complex than the one here in Beast
Masters. The time master's game is timed
and the board is just a single element,
a path they need to cross to answer a
trivia question on the other side. A
thing that never happens once in Beast
Game season 2. Have I mentioned that
yet? A game show purporting to challenge
the smartest minds in the world and they
have absolutely zero trivia. Well, I
mean, okay, maybe that's a good thing
given the tier of trivia they managed to
pull out for season 1. What is the
biggest animal on our planet? Blue
whale, Indian rhinoceros, or spiny lump
sucker?
>> Anyway, this game is another spectacular
failure because again, no one in the
room thinks they're at risk of getting
eliminated. And so this game that was
conceived of as an individual
adversarial one where each contestant
needs to find their zen and focus
through a cacophony of conflicting
directions is instead handled
collaboratively from beginning to end.
Contestants were happy to volunteer to
attempt the maze guided by other players
who felt safe to guide basically anyone
through the maze because they didn't
believe the maze runner would eliminate
them.
>> Y'all better help me out though cuz I
really don't remember anything. So, the
entire player pool split up to memorize
individual portions of the maze, worked
together to get someone through it, and
the player crowned the smartest person
in the city was Nick the wrestler. Jimmy
tries to lampshade this whole thing, but
it's another catastrophic failure of a
game. This wasn't Nick shocking everyone
by winning a quiz. He won because
players engaged with the game in a
fundamentally different way than was
intended. So, the last 14 minutes of the
episode are spent milling around
pondering who will get eliminated. Small
Tyler and Bryley are the obvious
candidates. So, after Big Nick
eliminates Small Tyler with a
sledgehammer, we get our cliffhanger. As
we covered in the main video, the third
elimine is veiled in the edit, but the
show signals with equal bluntness that
Brett will be the third pick.
>> Alliances are crumbling. I don't know if
I can trust you.
>> I just don't open up. I struggle with
that.
>> I know you told me that you don't open
up to people very easily and you don't
trust people very easily. It's about
having people who, you know, we both
fully trust here.
>> The language of the edit couldn't be
more clear. Not only is Monica
referencing a conversation we see with
Brett, we literally see that visual and
Brett's reaction. The language of filmm
is telling us that this isn't even a
real cliffhanger because it's so clearly
Brett.
And so then episode 7 continues to hide
the elimin for another 90 agonizing
seconds where we finally learn that it
is Katie. Before we poke at that, I want
to point out that the reveal occurs
precisely at the 90 secondond mark,
almost to the frame, by the way. 89
seconds would have felt rush, but 91
would have been too indulgent. But yeah,
Katie, this is an attempted twist, but
ends up being simply a rugpull. We had
no reason to expect Katie to be
eliminated. Katie had no reason to
expect Katie to be eliminated. Rather
than paying off a narrative beat, this
dramatic moment is undercut simply by
Monica and Nick needing to explain
themselves and justify this decision.
They rattle off a list of minor
grievances and social fowls that
ultimately emerge from Katie wanting to
form an all girls coalition in response
to the obvious boys club that was
forming. But there you have it. We have
our top 10 contestants and so we can
continue with the worst reviewed episode
of all of Beast Games.
After Katie's elimination, essentially
nothing of relevance happens. Each
sequence has a practical purpose that
makes sense on paper. The existence of
the cliffhanger makes sense. The
decision to bring the families in for a
Last Supper makes sense. Using the
cemetery as a highlight reel for the
show makes sense. And perhaps even
setting up a buried alive in advance
makes sense. But in practice, it's all
just vapor. It's pointless padding. The
30-something military guys have young
kids. The young athletes all have
parents who are so proud of them. The
cemetery scene is even more of a waste
of time. It's meant to be a recap of the
show's most pivotal moments, a chance to
reflect on how far we've come now that
200 players have become 10. But
literally half the highlights Jimmy
rattles off are from Cubes, which was
barely an hour ago. This sequence is
meant to remind us how much has
happened, but it only serves to
highlight how little has actually
happened. The whole sequence is another
example of pointless excess. Like the
cannonball sequence, I'm sure it made
for an impressive sight on set, but it
does not translate to good television.
>> 210 players entered Beast Games, and 200
have already fallen.
>> All of this is ultimately just set
dressing for the next game, Buried
Alive. In this game, players each get a
turn taking a cut of a million-dollar
pile of cash. It's build is a test of
greed and integrity. Will everyone take
their fair share or will contestants put
themselves first? The order of players
is determined via the nomination of a
team captain. Essentially, Nick put his
hand up and his team, who call
themselves the Ultra Avengers or
something, are by this point a strict
boys club. The women and Jim weren't
cool with the dynamic forming and so
voted against the Mega Avengers. That
left Cory and Brett, who are a bit older
and don't really fit with the Turbo
Avengers, but they are Nick's boys, just
not his boys, right? So, Brett and Corey
ultimately side with the boys. Nick
wins, and the order of players that Nick
goes with just transparently reflects
their loyalty to him. These four are the
last four to get dug up. But let's not
get ahead of ourselves. We have another
cliffhanger to ensure. After five
minutes of sitting on the pile of money,
wafting on how much to take, we get this
sequence heavily implying that Nick
takes all the money.
>> You have a 1 million opportunity. The
only question is,
are you going to take it?
>> Yeah.
Episode 8 then totally rug bulls this.
Nick doesn't take a million, he takes
250,000.
So, the cliffhanger isn't just a rug
pull that feels gross and distracting.
It actively works against the show by
inverting the expectations. Beast Games
has force-fed us clips of Nick
proclaiming his integrity and his
immunity to bribes. He's so forward
about it that as Brett will point out,
it would be hypocritical for Nick to
take even $1 over a fair split.
>> If you took even a dollar more, if you
took $100,1
you're a villain.
>> That is how you frame this development.
That is the point that you drive. The
quantity Nick took is a distant second
to the rhetoric he pushed. The need to
backtrack makes the segment more garbled
and confusing. But more crucially, the
show leads us to believe Nick took the
entire pot. So when we learn he only
took a quarter of the pot, it has a
mitigating effect on the betrayal rather
than an emphasizing one. The cliffhanger
makes the moment less impactful. So
we're off to an awful start, but
ultimately episode 8 is probably the
best episode that isn't just Survivor.
Basically, every Beast Games challenge
directs the contestants to behave like
children.
>> I'm falling back towards you. Okay.
Okay. Because there's some arts in front
of us.
>> Yes, I know.
>> And while this was probably an accident,
this challenge has the contestants
holding each other to the standards of
an adult. And while I stand by our
statement that Beast Games doesn't
unveil anything about the true nature of
Nick and company, I will admit that I am
not above passing judgment on the
simulacrims put before us for the
purpose of entertainment. For example,
Nick took a quarter of the pot instead
of his onetenth share. This pissed
everyone off and all but guaranteed his
immediate exit from the game. So, at
that point, should he have just taken
the whole pot? I don't know. Discuss in
the comments. Another example, once
people saw that Nick took too much money
and the 100k split was out the window,
basically every player defaulted to
taking an even split of the remaining
pot. In doing so, those players took on
some burden from stolen money. By
contrast, Tyler did what he said he was
going to do and took 100,000, an even
split in absolute terms, but kicking the
Nick problem down the chain for others
to inherit. So, is it okay for Tyler to
take 100 grand, or should he have paid
the Nick tax like August did? I don't
know. Discuss in the comments. Beyond
that, the only notable bits are Brett
and Monica. Brett follows Nick's lead
and also takes 250K. Notably, it took
him several hours to reach this
decision. The crew was apparently
legitimately furious with him for
single-handedly dragging this challenge
into the late morning again. Also, for
some reason, the cubes are are green
now. Also, if you think I went too hard
on the boys in the main video, here's a
taste of Chandler trying to do his job
as a co-host.
>> You have the whole pie in your hands
right now. You're about to set the
standard whether each pie is going to be
equal or different based on what you do
right here. utterly incompetent. But
Monica's bit is, or rather could have
been, the most interesting. Monica is
left towards the back of the queue, and
she finds $188,000 to split four ways,
less than half the fair value. It's at
this point that Jimmy rolls out a half
million bribe for the coin, but it
includes a unique caveat. She could sell
the coin in secret. This presents her
with the opportunity to make a bunch of
money and do a solid for the people
behind her in Q without losing the
protection of holding the coin. That's
how Monica wanted it to go and that's
perhaps how it would have gone if the
production hadn't spilled the beans. It
seems the whole sellin secret component
was an emergent element the production
wasn't prepared for. So, the cat was out
of the bag almost immediately. The boys
need to feain ignorance for the camera
and pretend that they only suspect that
she sold, but they do know for a fact
that Monica sold the coin.
>> So, when Monica revealed the 500K, was
everyone kind of just like, "Oh, well,
we knew like or we had this decision."
Okay,
>> that's exactly how that played out. We
already
We already knew.
>> Anyway, after Jim gets his go with the
money, the show gets bored and
unceremoniously starts wrapping the game
up. Hannah and Katie are dug up
simultaneously and their segments are
blitzed in a combined 45 seconds. Just
the raw disrespect this show has for
women who aren't Monica. I swear to God.
So after this, we get about 10 full
minutes of yap about the fallout of the
game. Though again, this is the only
game that really felt like it could
warrant that. If anything, I wanted to
hear maybe a bit more of it or I wanted
there to actually be Fallout. Like
there's this tantalizing bit where Brett
admits that his hope was for Corey to
empty the pot and leave nothing for Jim
and the women.
>> I don't regret what I did. I was hoping
that you would take the whole thing as
well. I really wanted to give you that
opportunity to take that if you wanted
to.
>> And yeah, I did want to see Cory put the
screws to Brett for that statement and
point out how crappy it is to think that
way. Tragically, Corey is too much of an
adult and too invested in his alliances
to give us a proper crash out, but
there's enough there to justify its
runtime. All of this is followed by a
big announcement from Jimmy where he
declares that there's only two episodes
left.
>> First, there are only two episodes
remaining until one of you wins
generational wealth.
>> What?
>> Two.
>> What?
>> One of the most consistently funny bits
of this show is when the contestants
foresee the show's problems in real
time. in this case. Yeah, August, the
pacing of the eliminations is about to
get really weird. Anyway, Jimmy declares
that they're all leaving the city to do
the finale elsewhere, which leads us to
the worst segment in the show, the trip
to Riad.
>> That is so sick.
>> Let's get it.
>> Yo, let's go.
Go, dude. Lock in.
>> The decision to shoot in Riad adds
nothing of value to the production. It's
like how the opening episode was shot in
Las Vegas. I didn't mention that at the
time because it's irrelevant. The show
isn't set in Vegas, Greenville, Riad, or
Toronto. It's set in a sound stage. It's
just another manifestation of the show's
conflict with the optics of the
production. Building a set on a
construction site in Vegas is more
prestigious than building on a
construction site in North Carolina. The
same goes for shooting in Saudi Arabia.
But moving on, we get the setup for the
episode 9 game here in episode 8. It's
called Telephone Game, even though it
has no connection to the actual
children's game of telephone. And the
literal telephones in this game are
superficial elements that get discarded
very early on. The game involves several
rounds of voting where players vote on
who ought to make it through to the
final six. The catch being that
contestants are able to bribe each other
with the money earned from Buried Alive.
We'll talk more about the game on the
other side of the cliffhanger, which
once again goes absolutely nowhere.
August gets on the phone and attempts to
blackmail Monica with his knowledge that
she sold the coin.
>> I have some unfortunate news for you.
Yeah. What is that?
>> I do know that you sold the coin.
>> Beast Games has two kinds of cliffhers.
Cliffhers that put forward an entirely
fictitious version of events and
cliffhers that tease a decision or
action that is immediately revealed as
immaterial. Episode 8's cliffhanger is
the latter. It tries to sell August
blackmail as a big deal. But once we get
into episode 9, nothing comes of it.
Neither that specific phone call nor the
narrative thread broadly. And I'm like,
dude, what if I use this as blackmail?
And looking back, because obviously it
doesn't really work. August never
announces it to the group, and we never
so much as see a single person upset
over the possibility that the coin has
been sold. This is the closest we get to
a payoff for August's attempted
blackmail.
>> It's a theory, though. I don't know.
>> Yet, the coin's not here. That
conversation featured August trying to
convince Katie to accept a larger bribe
from him for her vote, but it's unclear
if the whole coin thing influenced Katie
at all. The plot thread is simply a
bust. The kind of thing an editor would
normally excise from the show entirely
if they didn't need a cliffhanger.
Anyway, the telephone game itself is
weird.
>> This is definitely by far the worst game
that we've played so far.
>> Yeah,
>> it's designed to be a bidding war. Jimmy
wants people spending big to buy each
other's votes. And he wants people
double crossing each other and
additionally being perceived as double
crossing each other. The whole gimmick
with the phone and boos is about opening
the game up for subtrafuge and paranoia.
Like if Tyler paid Nick to vote for him,
but Tyler sees Nick on the phone to
Hannah, Tyler is supposed to get anxious
about whether Nick is going to double
cross him for Hannah. In the end though,
it just makes the process less efficient
and difficult to edit because a series
of rotary telephones are a sub-optimal
means of complex negotiation within a
group. Round one was an hour long to
account for that. Jimmy has this
throwaway line that I think captures
what he's trying to do. He thinks it's
easier to lie over the phone than to lie
to someone's face. And I guess that's
true. But is that such a compelling
observation to warrant building this
entire game around it? I don't know.
answers in the comments. Nothing like
that ever really happens. The more
interesting dynamic is the game theory
around the voting. If a player is
successfully voted through a round,
they're gone from the pool. So that
means if you vote for an ally, they're
absent from subsequent rounds to vote
for you. In essence, it's much easier to
get through the early rounds when you
have friends you can leverage compared
to later rounds when a single vote can
determine the outcome. And almost
inevitably, someone in an alliance is
going to be left holding the bag and the
bag. The game kind of plays out that
way, but the texture is strange. Part of
this is once again a product of the
edit. Once again, this episode took all
night to film, and so hours completely
vanish in the edit, and complex
negotiations need to be flattened into
singular ideas.
>> Actually, the rounds were even longer
than that. They were like they started
out at like an hour long and then they
kind of broke it down further and
farther. So, it's kind of like Yeah, it
was uh as you guys know all these
challenges with filming and everything,
it just it takes forever.
>> Well, and they don't show this, but I
think my conversation with Monica was
like 20 minutes.
>> The other major issue is that this
process pushes the eliminations to the
back end. And so, the tension in the
early rounds is very abstract. Monica
spends almost the whole game trying to
buy her way through, but ends up letting
herself get pushed to the back of the
line. But maybe that's fine because
ultimately there were only seven
contestants truly vying for a spot in
the top six. We knew going into this
too, Nick was not going to spend his
money. Um, he's just not.
>> Nick was never a realistic contender to
move on and was happy to cash in and
cash out. Jim was maneuvering to get
Monica through. And Katie wanted to make
a push for the top six, but quickly
found herself drowned out and never
ended up making a play. I just felt
really bad for Katie, honestly. It was
And it's kind of portrayed like in the
episode and stuff like that. Just uh
people saying things that they shouldn't
have said, and I felt really bad for
her. She was crying. I understood the
stress she was under, the pressure. It
was just it was unbearable.
>> The first round featured an hour of
negotiation only for Tyler to get eight
of the 10 votes without bribing anyone.
People just agreed to vote for him
because they think he's neat.
>> Do you know who you're voting for?
>> Um,
would you be cool with me?
>> I mean, I would be okay with that if
everybody's on the same page.
>> I would vote for you.
>> Our group of people agree to vote Tyler.
>> Hannah and August empty their accounts
to get through. Jack is able to leverage
the Hyper Avengers to get through with a
30K contribution to Jim and Monica's
honeymoon to seal the deal. This makes
Jack overconfident. I have been waiting
waiting for a game like that where I can
use my intelligence to its fullest
power.
>> Cory makes the novel decision to bribe
for votes around in advance. This is a
terrible decision because it gives the
other contestants last mover advantage.
Brett, Jim, Monica, and even Katie will
have 30 minutes to talk themselves and
everyone else into a different course of
action. Cory is betting at it all on his
peers ability to remain disciplined in
the face of prolonged peer pressure.
It's a bad strategy. But because the
show is worse than his strategy, several
contestants declared that they're firm
on voting for Cory this round and Jimmy
just offers to let everyone skip the
negotiation phase altogether, which
everyone agrees to do.
>> All right, this round is over.
I was like
>> cuz we were already there for a long
time as it was. So everybody was already
getting tired and just like, "Hey, let's
go to the next round."
>> So Cory managed to accidentally turn
everyone's last mover advantage into his
own no last mover advantage. And look,
I'm not going to say that Jimmy ought to
have had these guys stand in silence in
a circle for 30 minutes in some
warehouse in Riad at midnight, but I
can't think of another serious game show
that seeds its rules to the whims of its
players in this way. The last round is a
two-way duel between Brett and Monica.
Brett bribes Jim, Monica's literal
pretend game show husband, $30,000 to
vote for him instead of Jim's literal
maybe game show wife. And Brett is
surprised when Jim votes for his
probable wife. No amount of money would
change that decision, and Brett is made
to look like an idiot for even trying.
But what's even the point of this game
otherwise? Nick ends up taking big money
from both Monica and Brett for his vote,
promising them both his vote. Throughout
this episode, the edit has presented
Nick basically as a two-faced liar,
saying whatever was necessary to get a
bag.
>> Nick, Nick, Nick, I I don't understand.
So, Monica's paying you 20K for a vote
this round, and Cory paid you 15 grand
for a vote next round.
>> Yes.
>> But between us, I thought you were
running the wrong.
>> We're going to see what happens.
>> Monica, in particular, is framed as
being consistently strung along by Nick.
>> Please don't screw me over this.
>> I got you. You're good. Start making
your way to your pods.
You're good.
>> I'm so sorry. Like, I swear. Like,
>> you're good.
>> Okay.
>> You're good. Thank you. You give me 10
more thousand.
>> I would. Can I again trust you to not
change your mind here?
>> Yes.
>> Thank you.
>> Monica's entire strategy ends up hinging
on Nick's vote in round six, the final
round. And we see every step of that
process in agonizing detail. By
contrast, we're shown no substantive
conversation between Brett and Nick for
the whole episode. Episode 9 cliffhangs
on Nick's deciding vote. So, the framing
is pretty straightforward. Will Nick
deliver for Monica, or will he betray
her one last time for Brett for some
sort of vague unsatisfying reason like
he's my boy?
>> The person that I'm locking in the
person I'm voting for is
>> Thank you for your vote.
>> So, I'm recording each of these segments
in its own audio file. So, this is like
beast video 2, episode 10. And I've
already said this a whole bunch of
times, but it is insane that we are
going into episode 10 with the final six
that there are going to be five
eliminations
in this one episode.
Cracked.
Nick casts his vote for Brett because
he's Nick's boy. The finale then stops
in its tracks to get really, really
weird about passing judgment on specific
contestants. Both Jim and Nick reneged
on their promises, effectively canceling
each other out. Jim renegged on a
promise involving $30,000, and Nick took
$33,000 for a vote he didn't provide.
Jim stuck by his wife. Nick stuck by his
boy. They are offsetting sins. It would
be a waste of time to try and weigh the
ethics of these lies. It'd be
particularly weird to scold Jim for
voting for his own wife simply because
Brett was gullible enough to offer Jim
money to do otherwise.
The show weighs these lies and opts to
school Jim for voting for his own wife.
>> Brett looks so mad I didn't vote for
him. What's he got to be mad about?
>> He took 30 grand and he didn't vote for
you. Oh yeah.
The show then absolves Nick by passing
the most extreme judgment on Monica for
attempting to lie about selling the
coin, going so far as to try and pedal a
bizarre claim that Monica's failure to
make it into the top six was a direct
consequence of her deception.
>> Can't trust Nick at the end of the day.
>> I was honest about the money I made that
night. You weren't. And you lost because
of it.
>> Yeah. If you told your teammates you
took $0 so they could take more money
when in reality you took 500. If you
told everyone you took 500, you would be
here right now.
>> By this point, it should be clear that
the final edit cannot be relied upon to
accurately capture what went down on
set. So maybe this is true. Maybe people
were pissed off at Monica for insisting
on maintaining a lie even after the
truth had well and truly come out. But
that is not the story we were just told.
We were just told a story where no one
cared about the lie around the coin. We
were just told a story where a virtuous
down on his luck wrestler rejected a
million-dollar bribe earned the trust of
the majority of his peers only to later
surrender to his greed and devolve into
a hypocrite. A man who in the end
demands sweeteners in order to maintain
his promises.
>> Can you give Nick three more K? You know
what? I'll give Nick three more K.
>> For what? I don't know. He wants more
money.
>> If you give me 10 more thousand,
>> I would. Can I again trust you to not
change your mind here?
>> Yes.
>> Thank you. We were just told a story
where a woman who, despite all the
warning signs, rests her shot at
generational wealth on the word of this
man and is ultimately betrayed by him
for vague and fickle reasons. Look, I
don't need to overwork this. Nick is a
villain. It's a villainous act. And
yeah, it is worse than Jim voting for
his maybe game show wife. By trying to
make this about the coin, it undercuts
the story we were just told in favor of
a contradictory version of events. And
worse, it essentially turns this moment
into an exercise in victim blaming. Yes,
Monica was betrayed, but she got what
she deserved because she lied, too. If
Monica's lie about the coin was indeed
worse and more harmful, then show it.
Don't try to spoon feed me August
after the fact to try and
manufacture a conclusion for the coin
out of thin air. Regardless, this gives
us our top six and the stage is set for
the finale. or I guess we're 6 minutes
into the finale, whatever.
We get this kind of high production
value animation that is made very
annoying by Jimmy's narration declaring
Beast Games to be a very legitimate and
very illuminating simulation of reality.
We then get the reveal of just how big
of a warehouse Jimmy hired for the
finale. Keep in mind as we go that this
entire finale was filmed in one night,
so strap in. First up is a game that the
wiki refers to as ball kick, which
yeah, it's not quite dodgeball because
it's less interesting than dodgeball.
Players each take position on a platform
opposite a heart representing their own
life in the game. Players then take
turns kicking a soccer ball attempting
to break each other's heart until two
players have been eliminated.
Apparently, Beast Games went with soccer
balls because Ronaldo was supposed to
have a cameo because he's in Saudi
Arabia at the moment. Did that influence
the production's decision to shoot in
Riad? I do not care. Do not discuss this
in the comments. Anyway, there's an
initial foreplay period where again,
players refuse to play the game. After a
bit of that, they get a bit boulder and
think strategically. Your closest
players are your greatest threats, and
there's a chance that aiming at the
person next to you could result in a
whiff that breaks your own heart. So,
the game settles into a routine of
players kicking it vaguely over there in
an attempt to be as agreeable as
possible. though over there quickly
begins to resemble Jack and Hannah's
hearts.
>> So, I assume it's me.
>> Let me try for Jack again.
>> Let's just aim for Jack.
>> Jack is nothing personal.
>> I know it's easy for you to say it's not
personal, but when everyone's aiming for
you, it's not a fun feeling.
>> Eventually, whether deliberate or
accidental, Cory merks Jack. The game
then gets super melodramatic for a few
beats, and Jack really drives home how
blindsided he is by the elimination.
>> You You do so much in this game. you
give like a full effort for 41 days and
to lose on someone just kicking a ball
right into your heart.
It is literally the worst feeling in the
world.
>> And Jack is justified to feel this way.
So, let's take a detour and drill into
Jack's emotions in this instant and see
if we can figure out why this moment
feels so strange.
The top down structure of Beast Games is
very bizarre and causes all sorts of
problems. We've hammered very hard on
the issues caused by the cliffhers, but
a perhaps equally harmful choice
involves the pacing of eliminations.
Most game shows have an uncontroversial
pace to the eliminations. Ideally, it's
something the audience would barely
notice. A contestant is eliminated each
episode, maybe once a week. Beast Games
has a bizarre cadence of eliminations,
which is further aggravated by the
cliffhers shifting everything around.
So, let's go through a timeline of
eliminations, listing eliminations based
on when they are official. and we see
the stupid red cross imposed over the
players. Episode 1 features 50 strong
and 50 smart players being eliminated,
leaving us with a clean 100. Episode 2
features the choose your own challenge
gimmick. We have nine eliminations in
balls, 11 eliminations in balance, 10
eliminations in bluff for a total of 30
eliminations in episode 2. Episode 3
features 20 eliminations in big blocks
and 25 eliminations in the obstacle
course for a total of 45 eliminations,
50% more than episode 2. Episode 4
features the survivor crossover, so the
only eliminations are the four from
Captain Bribe plus one person who had to
withdraw due to a family emergency.
Episode 5 features six eliminations in
the cube game. Episode 6 features one
elimination from cubes and two from
Hearts Will Be Smashed. Episode 7 begins
with one last elimination from Hearts
before we see zero eliminations for the
next
159 minutes of television Sans credits
in a production where a 15-hour shoot
boils down to 30 minutes of television.
Those 2 hours and 39 minutes represent
like 2 weeks of production. The top 10
cohort spent an absurd amount of time
together. And finally, cutting the top
10 down to the final six involved a huge
and elaborate telephone game that took a
full night. And here in episode 10, Jack
gets his red elimination cross just 9
minutes after those previous four
eliminees. In reality, this is something
like an hour into the next day's shoot.
So yeah, Jack would be justified to
expect more from the finale, that the
show would continue to build big and
ceremonious eliminations resulting from
complex challenges, and that he wasn't
paying 30 grand for the privilege of
being bullied at a worse version of
dodgeball. After all, nine of the top 10
contestants are eliminated in the
finale. An insane decision. And so this
is the way the finale is going to go.
It's time to wrap this crap up. The show
will screech to a halt to press F to pay
respects to the elimine, but they're
universally anticlimactic because
there's simply so much still to cram
into the episode.
Jack was right to feel blindsided by his
elimination and feel bitter in the
moment about this whole thing. But at
the same time, how did he think this was
going to go? How did he think his beast
games journey was going to end? By this
point in the game, it's clear that smart
players offer no unique benefits in
themselves. Team Beast are not, in the
literal 11th hour of filming, suddenly
going to ask the contestants to do math.
Jack's primary utility to the Giga
Avengers was simply that he was a
non-threatening ally that helped them
attain majority voting power. And
ultimately, he was a free elimination
that could be cashed in at the right
time. And top six was the right time.
So, farewell, Jack. Now, let's play a
quick game. If you had to guess which of
these five people was about to get
bullied by the remaining four, who would
you pick?
That's right. Actually, that's a little
unfair.
>> Hannah. Unless I want to create enemies
with the three that are aiming for you
right now. I have to I have to join
forces.
>> Despite saying that and really thinking
about it, Cory does not in fact go for
Hannah. But that clip is indicative of
the rhetoric in the room and it makes
for a really uncomfortable watch. It's
not even malicious. And that lack of
malice kind of makes it worse. It's so
self-evident that Hannah is the correct
option to target such that Cory's
decision not to is an act of mercy.
>> It's just the smartest play for myself.
Kick for Hannah. We're all kicking for
Hannah.
>> And so Hannah, like a woman, starts
crying to make it weird.
>> It is a sucky feeling to have the entire
cast gang up against you.
>> This might actually be the weirdest
moment of the show. I'll explain what
we're shown and told, but understand
that this is almost certainly not
reality. Tyler is aiming to go for
Hannah. She breaks down crying and Tyler
hesitates. August then begins chirping
to Tyler non-stop about how he simply
has to go for Hannah. And then this
happens.
Oh my god.
So Tyler breaks August heart from a kick
that we only get shown for a few frames.
>> I truly felt bad. You know, all of us
were targeting Hannah and then after
seeing her tear up, man, that's that's
when I made my mind enough just told
myself I couldn't keep doing this to
her. My young boys at home, you know,
that would watch this, you know, I want
to be a good role model for them.
>> Dang. And you know, I want them to stick
up for the you the underdog, the little
person, you know, the person in need. So
>> that is the version put forward by the
show. Tyler regretfully eliminated
August to put an end to the harassment.
Tyler merckked his best friend to
protect a woman in need. What a guy.
This is fiction. August is adamant that
the edit misrepresented the situation
and his and Hannah's relationship. I
think in the edit it makes it seem like
I like really hate Hannah or she really
hates me. But there's no animosity
against each other. There's no there was
no hate for Hannah and Hannah and I are
totally good. Hannah's awesome. As
August tells it, Tyler was playing the
game as Jimmy intended. Tyler and August
had been close the entire show, but
Tyler saw August as a threat. Tyler
deliberately eliminated August for that
reason. So when August is yelling go for
Hannah, it is not misogynistic blood
lust, but rather August pleading for his
own life. that would track given that
Hannah had just made the I'm a small
bean, you should want to face me later
argument to Cory. So, who should we
believe? August, who was kind of wound
up and annoying on TV, but otherwise
seems like a normal dude, or the
production team that brought us the
amazing disappearing push-up contest.
Answers in the comments.
So, we have our final four, and it's
time for the penultimate Beast Games
challenge. The ultimate strong versus
smart. The merging of brains and bronze
into one spect. It's just stacking
blocks again.
>> Do you all recognize these?
>> Yes.
>> It's a combination of the pole hanging
challenge from episode 6 with the block
stacking from episode 1, but somehow
even worse than that makes it sound.
Players hang from the poles opposite a
stack of 16 colored blocks. You can then
press a button that will raise all the
platforms up and drop the blocks. You
must then attempt to recreate the stack.
If you're successful, you get to
nominate a person to eliminate. If you
get it wrong, you're eliminated. So,
just to start, the game theory of this
challenge is ridiculous. The raw
statistical odds of succeeding at the 16
block stack are incredibly low, lower
than your two in three chance of not
being selected for elimination. So, even
if you are Hannah and know for a fact
that you're likely to be eliminated
next, you're better off doing nothing
and betting on the contestants failing
to match the pattern. And if you're
Tyler, beloved by all, you have every
reason to just hold on to that poll and
let the other contestants sort it out.
Or at least that's how it would have
gone if the players didn't break the
game yet again. The the edit's kind of a
little bit different than how it
actually played out. Um, all right. So,
the thing was me, Brett, and also Tyler,
you know, we kind of had already a
strategy made up. Hey, Brett was going
to count the first six blocks. I was
going to count the next six blocks. And
then Tyler was going to count the last
four blocks. And what what you guys
don't see is actually Tyler was the one
who stacked the last four four blocks on
there.
>> So it was actually like a three-way
alliance that was working together. So
yeah, no caveats this time. No
mitigating factors. It was a three-way
conspiracy against Hannah. It's # bags
for the boys. This represents one last
individualistic smart challenge that was
bypassed collaboratively. And there's
something almost poetic about this being
how the last smart contestant goes. A
perfect distillation of the smart
experience on this show. The producers
are too cowardly to admit to this
happening, by the way. And so the
version we see on the show is an
incoherent fantasy. We're shown Brett
pushing the button with no preamble. He
gets about halfway through and looks
cooked before Corey for Lornly begins to
give Brett the solution, and it's
implied that Brett is led by Cory all
the way to the end of the sequence. The
scene suggests that Brett attempted the
puzzle with no confidence in his
recollection, essentially committing
Beast Game suicide before Cory saved
Brett from himself at Hannah's expense.
Oh, right. Brett chooses to eliminate
Hannah. By the way, now that the season
is all said and done and the cast have
made their podcast appearances, it's so
aggravating that Team Beast insisted to
our faces that they don't manipulate
events in the edit. Not only is that so
clearly untrue, they don't even
manipulate events for the right reasons.
They excise whole elements of the
production because they're embarrassing
and discrediting to the creatives. Case
in point, the final bribe. Three players
must become two, so there is a final
bribe for a player to self-eliminate.
The set is designed to try and evoke
mystery and subtrifuge with covered
buttons, whatever. But the three just
negotiated who would take it. It was
agreed that Brett would be the one to
take the bribe basically before the game
even started.
>> The edit doesn't show us really talking
or anything like that because obviously
they want the drama for the TV. But in
real life, we're just sitting there
talking and hey, who's going to take it?
Who's not going to take it? Who wants to
move forward? Who doesn't want to move
forward?
>> They chatted through the whole thing and
did the prisoners dilemma thing where
they simply wanted to see how high the
counter would go until Jimmy told them
it wasn't going any higher. So even here
we have adversarial games being resolved
collaboratively. And again, we're shown
none of this in the edit, which
constructs a simulacum of tension
through everyone's bored expressions and
benile remarks, but MMA fighter Brett is
now a millionaire. And that leaves our
finalists as Air Force pilot Tyler and
Navy vet Cory.
Which leads us to the final briefcase
challenge. This game was famously a bit
of a schmazzle in season 1. It's meant
to be analogist to poker. Adversarial
deal or no deal. One contestant will
place the $5 million check in one of
these briefcases, and the other
contestant will have to guess which case
contains the check to win it all. After
a failed guess, a briefcase is
eliminated to increase the odds of
finding the check. This is supposed to
be the ultimate beast game. Jimmy and
his boys imagined this playing like a
master's game of poker with players
lying, double bluffing, searching for
tells, and all that. In season 1, Jeff
found the check on the first attempt by
random chance. Here we see return to the
mean and the game goes on far longer
than is ideal. Now either Corey or Tyler
are master poker players. Both hate
lying. Both are fatigued from shooting
beast games all night long. And so both
are scared of giving away tells and lean
on their military stone faces to get
through and end up repeating phrases at
each other like lunatics.
>> Opening to find out. Open and find out.
Opening to find out. Open and find out.
>> I really really don't get this show's
obsession with shooting at night. Like
there's so many scenarios where they
shoot at night for no reason. Set up in
a sound stage and shoot during normal
hours, you you goblins. But Cory, in one
last act of disobedience, realizes that
the odds are in his favor, and it's
actually not in his interest to know
what case the check is in because he'll
have a tell. So Cory just closes his
eyes and chooses a case randomly. It's
like that one episode of Yu-Gi-Oh where
Yugi outwits Pegasus' mindreading
ability by swapping between personas and
blindly playing each other's cards.
You're wrong, Pegasus.
>> Huh? Remember, I still have one more
card out. The card that took the last
bit of Yugi's courage to play. And now
IT'S TIME TO FIND OUT WHAT IT IS. I
DIDN'T need to play that clip, but at
this point, it's just nice to have a
moment's respit from Beast Games. Upon
seeing this, Tyler then pretends to
start closing his eyes as well. But in
perhaps Beast Game's biggest twist,
Tyler doesn't actually pick randomly. An
act of deception that accomplishes
nothing. Cory takes him at his word and
asks no further questions, so it
devolves into yet another game where
players discard the game Jimmy made up
in favor of simply rolling a dice. Like
seriously, if I were a game designer on
Beast Games, I would be offended that
most people opt to solve my games by
playing other pre-existing games
instead. But maybe that's better for all
of us. The game is bad, and it takes
eight rounds for Tyler to eventually
win. They then insist on stoically
dropping Cory into the foam pit. Tyler
flexes on the pile of fake money and
then the show wraps up by spending its
final two minutes doing inspiration porn
of the contestants families and slapping
itself on the back for how much money it
gave away.
>> But no one is walking away empty-handed.
Multiple people literally became
millionaires.
>> Getting on the show is a miracle.
>> So, what did we learn today? Nothing.