Top Shot Episode 2

Top Shot episode 2 was shown on Sunday and as promised, I DVRed it and watched it later. I was rather liberal in use of the fast forward. Today was going to be a pistol shooting competition using a Berretta 92F (the same one they used for the elimination round voting).

There were a couple of pistol shooting champions and they did their requisite showing off (at least on the blue team Blake did). What I want to know by this time is what in the heck are they doing with all of their off time? Each team had 140 rounds to practice with. Assuming (and this is being generous) that you are spending 1 minute for each shot, then that is less than 2.5 hours per team. What about the other 14 waking hours of the day?

Is there a shooting range that they can just have fun at? Do they have airsoft set up in the basement? And did I hear that right, they are in California? Why go to such a gun unfriendly state for a show about firearms? Lots of questions.

What was good to see was the inexperienced pistol shooters took direction and followed it explicitly and were in many cases shooting better than the experienced shooters. Then there was Brad, the red team's expert. I understand that he shoots Glocks (he only mentioned it about 500 times - which means if we didn't have the video edited he would have mentioned it 10,000 times in real life). But this is a pistol at roughly 7-10 yards. You aren't doing anything fancy. If in your first five rounds you are shooting low and to the right, then adjust your aim for the next five shots. It's not rocket science!

There was enough coverage of him and other teammates comments about him that I was fairly certain he was going to be in the elimination round. The competition the next day was rather creative, shooting a plexiglass cover out the end of a tube. No paper or other target to see your misses. The red team was up first. The "inexperienced" shooters did well hitting on the first shot. Then the misses happened. Including Brad.

When the blue team was up, the old guy started off and missed, then again, from what I gather he hadn't shot a pistol before the practice session the day before. The rest of the team all hit theirs on the first shot, it was back to the old guy. He was taking his time and some of his teammates were whining, but it was good that he took his time and scored on his second shot. Plus he had 30 seconds to spare. The Blue Team won again. I think it was JJ who did his signature legs wrapped around his teammate's body jump. (Its just an immunity challenge, you didn't win Miss America or anything.)

So the red team gets to go to elimination again. Shooting at the targets, Andre again nails the bullseye (this guy seems pretty good, I think there are teammates that are underestimating him), and there is a tie for the second place person. Frank is the first competitor and an ammo box is brought out with the people's names to choose who gets to choose the second contestant. And Brad gets chosen (see I called it earlier).

Their elimination competition involves movement. Practice is relatively boring, but the competition is not. They get to ride a zip line and shoot at targets on either side of them. This looks really difficult. There are about 12 targets total. The first time through, they each hit 5 targets. So they get to go again. One of them mentioned possibly trying to do a little strategy (after the first couple of targets just focus on one side) but then didn't carry through.

The second time through Brad again hit 5 targets and Frank hit 1. Sorry frank. Brad was a real whiner. I hope they don't shoot Glocks at all during this competition (or at least not until Brad is eliminated). I was disappointed that neither tried to hit the bonus exploding targets, but then looking at the field, you probably would only have time for one shot inside of 10 yards while you were moving at 15 miles an hour (a sprint for those who need help with the units conversion). Certainly not an easy shot to make.

Episode 2 was better than 1. The teaser for Episode 3 was for the long bow. Not sure how that will work out for them. With Frank gone there are only a couple that have archery experience form their bios.