Kept forgetting about this, and it's been over 3 years since it aired...
The easiest way to describe it is, if they initially had the idea to make a Kunoichi related boot camp, but turned it into an entirely different game show.
Overall, I had fun with the show, and I actually watched every episode.
In summary, we get 4 games each episode, and 3 during eliminations. I wish there was more variety with the games and obstacles because it often feels very samey throughout the show. The show seemed to hit its stride by around the 3rd or 4th week. I don't like how elimination with the bottom two worked for most of the show.
The show premiered after Exatlon Season 4 ended, which was the season that took a 3 month pandemic break. And Season 5 premiered right after this show ended, which was a crazy long 7 month season.
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Despite being a pandemic show, there was no random house or camp stuff or people sitting around, which I happen to have a higher tolerance for. The show was focused on being a fun and competitive game show about two teams of players competing in physical challenges.
I liked the positive atmosphere of the show and competitors. I also liked that if they had a complaint with something, they were allowed to speak up about it. Also liked that it didn't seem like they were forced to look cheery all the time, and they could feel and display whatever they were feeling.
We get to see 4 games in each episode, which adds some variety, however, they cycle through the same things a lot faster than they add new things. I really wished they introduced a new game and obstacle each week. Each of the long courses that had names also stayed the same throughout the show, so I wish they would've modified those each time we saw them.
It was an okay length at 62 episodes, although I would've preferred around 50. It ran mostly 5 days a week from middle of October to near the end of January that season. Episodes were mostly 2 hours long with some 1 hour episodes, including the last two episodes. It was a very consistent schedule, only occasionally taking a day or two off for some other event on the network, like The Election.
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The show definitely made tweaks early on, mainly with how the end of each episode works for the money collecting and elimination nominations.
At the end of each episode, one person goes into the dome to collect money. There used to be this long drawn out decision they had to make afterwards, while the team watches in suspense, and the player looking emotional and stressed out and mentioning "family" a lot, sometimes before cutting to commercial. I don't speak Spanish so my guess is they could keep it or something, maybe go up for elimination, I don't know, but they never did. Quickly, they changed it so the money immediately gets added to the team's prize pool, and it saved a lot of time, so the episode ends after the money is counted and everyone celebrates. They also get a bonus if they can guess how much they grabbed.
Sometimes it would be that each player on the winning team at the end opens boxes to randomly decide who goes into the dome, and sometimes they played a minigame to decide.
For the first two weeks, elimination nominations were done near the end of the week, with the team captains making nominations. They changed it to having nominations being done throughout the week by way of votes between players on the losing team each day. They also eventually saved time in the broadcast by no longer showing players walking up to the box and putting in their votes.
Elimination episodes featured 3 games. Each of the 4 nominated players compete with a partner or alone depending on the game to earn points. They changed what happened next early on. For the first two weeks, elimination between the bottom two players was done through a vote from everyone else. Then it changed to having the bottom two take turns answering trivia and pulling a ball out of a box until one of them pulled out a red ball. If you answered correctly, the other player pulls a ball, otherwise you pull. Then they switched to having the bottom two do an arrow with paint shootoff for the last 3 eliminations.
There was also an at-home voting portion during the bottom 3 toward the end that I didn't pay much attention to.
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One player from Blue Team had to leave due to injury 5 weeks in at the end of November. She missed a grab and fell sideways and injured her knee. She sat on the sidelines in a wheelchair and crutches for a week after, before being let go.
{You can see the injury when they recap and talk about it during the first few minutes of Episode 24.}
They added a new female player 3 weeks in for Orange Team. They also added one for Blue Team the day after the one with the knee injury left. That new Blue player later competed on Exatlon Season 5, joining that show 5 months into the 7 month long season. She's also on the current All-Stars 2 (Season 8).
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They also brought in 3 groups of celebrities to compete with the teams, where they also won money for charity. I had the most fun with the second group.
First group had 1 man for Orange, and 2 women for Blue. They joined on November 24 for 7 episodes.
Second group had 4 people, with a man and woman for each team. They joined on December 22 for 5 episodes. Nobody was eliminated that week since it was Christmas week and end of the year.
Third group also had 4 people. They joined on January 18 for 4 episodes, leaving before the finale episode.
