Stream It Or Skip It?
Final Draft is a reality survival competition pitting 25 former professional athletes, all but one of whom is retired, against each other in a series of extreme physical challenges. The prize for the contest’s winner is 30 million yen (a little over $200,000).
FINAL DRAFT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Photos of the participants in Final Draft during their playing days in their respective sports. “For many professional athletes, their entire lives are devoted to sports. Eventually, they retire and their journey comes to an end. But not for all.”
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The Gist: The 25 contestants are immediately challenged as they’re driven blindfolded to the base of a mountain ski trail. When the blindfolds come off, they’re told by a disembodied voice that they have to climb to a gate that’s at 1500 meters of altitude, wearing backpacks. The first 24 people to cross the gate will move on to the next challenge; the last-place athlete will know that they’re eliminated when their backpack explodes.
After the remaining 24 contestants introduce themselves to each other, they’re given another challenge. They lie on a pink slide, their heads pointing downwards, and they have to do crunches after a buzzer sounds, pushing a button with their heads. Those who don’t complete a round of crunches are sent down the slide and are eliminated. In this round, four competitors end up going home.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Final Draft reminds us of The Challenge crossed with a hint of Squid Game: The Challenge.
Our Take: The idea behind Final Draft is that these athletes, men and women who range in age from the late 20s to the mid 40s, are trying to prove to themselves as well as each other that they still have the ability, skill, stamina and mental toughness to complete these challenges. That comes through loud and clear as the show’s producers give each contestant at least a small bit of time to explain what sport they played and why they’re competing.
Despite that, it’s still tough to keep track of who’s who when there are 25 contestants to start. The climb up the mountain is a pretty arduous first challenge, with the weather and snow becoming more of a factor as the competitors climb the slope. You can tell that some of the contestants are in better shape than others, despite the fact that all of them likely trained for months before being dropped at the base of that mountain.
One of the other aspects of the contest we found interesting is that some competitors want to prove that the less-popular sports they participate in need as much athletic skill and training as others. Atsushi Arai, for instance, was on Japan’s national water polo team, and Tomoe Tamura was on the country’s national ultimate frisbee team. One athlete, Masato, did something called street workouts, which require lots of balance and core strength. There are even a couple of contestants that played American football in a Japanese league. It’s that variation in the sports that the contestants participate in — it’s not all former baseball players, tennis players, rugby stars, soccer stars — that will certainly keep things interesting.
Sex and Skin: A couple of male contestants take off their shirts during particular challenges, but that’s about it.
Parting Shot: Down to the final elimination in the sit-up challenge, we see one contestant miss hitting the button with their foreheads.
Sleeper Star: Some of the athletes, like Koji Tokuda, washed out of their professional leagues for one reason or another and are looking for a second chance. We like Koji because he decided to pursue comedy after his pro sports career was over.
Most Pilot-y Line: We don’t love the dystopian-seeming disembodied voice; this series could have used a host to provide a little bit more of a human connection.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We like seeing these elite athletes being tested with the extreme challenges on Final Draft, and we hope the personal stories will become more prominent as the contestant pool gets smaller.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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