I don't think Kristen's weight had anything to do with her performance. She just wasn't really an athletic person. The talent pool in Season 1 was pretty bad too and the producers pretty much allowed any contestant that signed up for the show to compete. That's why you see moat rejects from earlier episodes appear again on the last episode of each production day in Season 1. Kristen and Jim were even moat rejects from the Geronimo episode. I feel that most of the comments about Kristen's weight are supposed to be tongue-in-cheek comments and not taken seriously. Monica from Bifocal Monocle was skinny, but she struggled immensely in climbing the wall in the Pit of the Pendulum. Also, Garrett from Mata Hari is another contestant that received comments about his weight as welll. But he did a pretty good job in the temple except the Holes of Python (which caused a lot of contestants trouble).

Quote from: The Mandarin Hand on November 03, 2021, 04:39:46 PM

Who cares about that shit?

Kirk's coming back.

Let's not ignore this detail, too  :

Quote

Fogg’s appearance on Sunday will also mark another reunion, as this week’s episode will feature contestants who first appeared on the original ’90s Nickelodeon version of the show.

Obviously no idea who, but it'll certainly be neat seeing some OG contestants again (and hopefully they limited it to only those who made it to the temple).

Wow, that's awesome! I really haven't had a chance yet to watch the 2021 version yet, but I will definitely watch the Sunday episode to see who the former contestant will be along with Kirk Fogg's return. I know there was a winning team from the David Ruprecht era of Supermarket Sweep that returned to compete on the Leslie Jones version of Supermarket Sweep last year.

I think Season 2 is probably liked the most due to being the most balanced season. No particular team really dominated this season (unlike Red Jaguars/Silver Snaks in Season 1 and Green Monkeys in Season 3) and the temple rooms were changed up a reasonable amount of times. Most of the likable rooms and temple games were also introduced during this season and were later brought back to Season 3. I don't have any issues with this season except for the stuff you mentioned. I wasn't a fan of the dubbed over temple runs. Especially when all the great runs had this terrible dubbing (Nose Ring, Priceless Portrait, Billy the Kid, and Lucky Pillow).

Season 1 had too many bad teams and temple runs. The temple layouts were either piss easy or extremely difficult. The temple was also changed too many times and more than half of the rooms were lame. The talent pool in this season was pretty bad, but it's too be expected since the entire season was taped before being aired. Kirk Fogg was also pretty boring this season as well, mostly because he was narrating too many of the rounds. One of the best decisions of Season 2 was give Olmec more narrating responsibilities. There were a handful of great episodes in Season 1, but overall this was the weakest season.

Season 3 was great and improved on Season 2 in some ways. I wasn't really a fan of how the temple remained static for all 40 episodes. They could've switched some of the temple rooms up like the Tomb of the Headless Kings and Pit of the Pendulum. There were too many hard layouts and too much Green Monkeys domination. The talent pool this season was amazing though.

I really hope no one thinks the criticism towards temple runners equates to their real life IQ. Most of the criticism I've seen is towards the contestants' temple performance rather than them personally. Admittedly, some of the comments towards contestants over the years have been harsh. Especially towards John and Tia. In fact, I found an article a couple years ago written by Sabrina for her company about her experience on the show. She seems to know that her episode is ridiculed a lot by the fanbase. As for temple runners feeling bullied, I doubt most of them care too much about their temple performance. Most of the contestants are in their late 30s/early 40s now. A lot of them found their experience on the show to be awkward (like Nick from Great Seal and Keeli from Stone Marker) and probably laugh about it. Also, some of the comments towards their temple performance is more tongue-in-cheek and shouldn't be taken seriously.

https://www.merkleinc.com/blog/what-legends-hidden-temple-taught-me-about-analytics-solution-design

Good find! I definitely agree that Shea from Get the Picture is the same one from the Great Seal episode. It looks like we've been spelling her name wrong all these years. Speaking of the spelling of her name, the iTunes store description for the Great Seal episode also spells her name as "Shea". So I definitely think they are one and the same.

Glad to see the Browns make the playoffs as well! It would suck for them to miss it again with a 10-6 record like in 2007. It sucks that their team has suffered a COVID outbreak, but they should be healthy by next week. Playing the Steelers again will be tricky but this is an old school rivalry. The Steelers have a great record against their divisional rivals in the playoffs though. The Browns will need to play 110% at a chance of winning.

The AFC playoffs will be very interesting. All 7 teams are very talented and honestly any of them could go to the Super Bowl. I think the Bills and Chiefs are slightly above the rest, but anything can happen during the playoffs. It sucks Miami missed the playoffs with a 10-6 record, but they were definitely the weakest of the bunch. Especially since they only beat one winning team all season. They are definitely a team to look out for next year though.

The NFC, on the other hand, feels very weak. The NFC East division leader will literally be 7-9 or 6-10, 8-8 Bears will probably go one and done, and the Rams QB might not play in the playoff game next week. The Seahawks have also been pretty sucky as of late and Brees is not 100% healthy since his injury back in November. The Packers seem like the real favorites from this conference. Although I am interested in seeing how Brady and the Bucs perform. I think they can make it far into the playoffs, but beating the Packers a second time will not be easy.

Yeah, I definitely feel bad for the Browns and would love to see them make the playoffs. They've been through a lot ever since they lost their team. The last time the Browns went 10-6, they missed the playoffs also (2007 season). It's amazing that an 11-5 team might miss the playoffs this year when most years getting 10 wins will earn you a playoff spot. Fortunately for the Browns, the Titans are losing to Packers right now and they have the tiebreaker over them as well. And the Titans have to play the Texans next week, who are definitely more competent than the Jaguars and Bengals.

And yes, I would love to see the NFC East winner at 6-10.  This past decade alone, we've seen 3 teams with losing records make the playoffs - Seahawks 7-9 (2010), Panthers 7-8-1 (2014), and the potential NFC East winner. The Seahawks and Panthers both won their playoff game. Could the NFC East do the same?