Ah, me.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the lameness of many members of the human race, but sometimes I just can't help myself. The main villain tonight? Michael Marelli, loudmouth.
But first, let's review this episode's highlights...
- Blue team kept on doing "walk-throughs" and imaginary shooting scenarios. They looked pretty silly walking those railroad ties, hunkering and pretending to shoot invisible guns.
- For the team challenge, they used the Benelli M4 Super 90 slug gun, a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun. I find the following in my notes: "I wish Michael Marelli would shut the hell up." How his Olympic shotgun shooting (firing shot loads at moving targets) is supposed to help him shoot slugs at fixed targets, no one knows - but he acts like it will.
- During team practice, blue team hollered in each other's ears while loading and shooting the M4. Trainer Taran Butler said of this, "What's the point of spazzing out during getting screamed at and dropping rounds?" Sorry Mr. Butler, I sure can't answer that one.
- Once again, after practice the trainer selected one person from each team as the best. Why? There seems to be no point to this.
- Back at the house, blue team kept up the pretend stuff, and Jake told the camera, "I think they realize now after this last competition that they're in the hole pretty bad." Er, Jake, do you mean the one that they won, in which you never even hit a target? Reality check, dude.
- At the team challenge, supposed "shotgun guy" Michael missed 4 out of 5 - twice. Cliff did the poorest, and in a commentary he told the camera, "I'm a revolver shooter. You know, I'm not a shotgun guy." But Cliff, you're supposed to shoot whatever they hand you, and do it well - that's the nature of the show.
- Red team got their butts handed to them when blue busted all 50 targets and red still had 19 remaining. Wow.
- According to the on-screen stats, Cliff shot worst and "shotgun guy" Michael was second from the bottom. While the team was deciding who to vote for, Michael claimed he hit 5 out of 10, but we know that's a lie. We watched him fire 10 shots and hit only 2 targets, and the stats say he fired 15 shots and only hit 4 targets. Somebody seems to be lying, and it's probably not the stats.
- Elimination: Cliff (who did worst) and Drew (who did second-best). Once again, self-preservation trumps performance-based voting. They shot resettable targets in order to allow balls to roll down tracks and into a basket. Whoever got the most balls in the basket won.
- Cliff said, "I've beaten everybody in the world." He forgets, for example, that he hasn't beaten me. He probably hasn't beaten you, or *Bryan Cranston, or most of the rest of the planet's population, either. However, he certainly beat the snot out of "Glock-guy" Drew when he clobbered him in the elimination challenge by scoring 18 points to Drew's 8.
So why do I dislike Michael? I think he's obnoxious and dishonest, that's all.
* For the record, I believe Bryan Cranston to be a highly skilled and talented actor and I love his work, and I don't mean to infer that he has ever participated in any kind of shooting competition. I don't even know whether he shoots or owns a gun - outside the set of Breaking Bad, I mean. For all I know, if it came right down to a life-or-death struggle, he might just rain a hail of Emmy awards upon his foe and thus pound him into submission. But I do know that if he reads this and I find out about it, it'll certainly give me a thrill.
Comments
Yikes. How this team let Michael Marelli escape elimination is beyond me. His profile is beyond arrogant: “I would call myself a natural – definitely. I know exactly what I’m doing.” But that’s now why they should dump him. They should dump him because he’s a liability to the team. He claims to be the shotgun expert, and yet he did worse than anyone except for one other shooter. Then he had the gall to say with self-righteous indignation, “I saw at least one or two people who did not do well; and the fact that they did not raise their hands and admit to doing poorly kind of made me feel a little angry.” What a poser. His best chance of actually helping this team perform well was in his supposed best weapon – the shotgun – and he was a complete flop. He is dead weight AND hot air at the same time. The two most comical moments were him (the biggest disappointment in the shotgun) first standing around trying to instruct the others how to shoot the thing, and then later, sitting around afterward demanding that the poor performers should speak up. Too funny. I predict that his team will do better when he is gone. Oh, and he’s a police- academy trained guy who is assigned as “courtroom officer.” That says it all. Real police officers don’t have patience for posers like this on their team when it counts, and soon, I hope, neither will his Top Shot team.
Wow, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks Michael Marelli is a joke! I predicted him to be eliminated first. But somehow, he got lumped with a team of fools who can’t see past his bullshit. I mean, the guy who says he is a shotgun expert missed 8 out of 10 shots and then has the gall to accuse others of performing poorly and not fessing up. Is he delusional?! He said he got 5 out of 10 although Colby clearly shouts out “Michael gets 1 out of 5 again”. He has nothing to offer to the red team but instigating conflict and boasting about non existent skills. And I agree with the previous fan, if he is such a great shot why is he in a court room and not on SWAT or some bonafide tactical team?