TNT has been hyping their new competition reality show The Great Escape for months now, and they’ve done a great job of selling it to me and others who enjoy these types of shows. It certainly has a terrific pedigree, coming from Ron Howard & Brian Grazer and the creators of The Amazing Race, but that pedigree is only going to get you so far. Unless the show delivers with the first episode, all the hype and behind-the-scenes talent won’t bring the viewers back. So did the first episode deliver?
Unfortunately, not really. That’s not to say that it didn’t have some good moments, but I don’t know if it’s the format or just something else that I can’t put my finger on that made this first episode a bit lackluster compared to The Amazing Race. We start with three teams of two people who have some kind of relationship — siblings, friends, dating or married, etc. — who are blindfolded and taken to the location. We get really brief intros on each team but we never really get to know the individuals on the teams enough to actually care about them … because it’s a self-contained episode, so we don’t need to be invested in them (all we really get are basic stereotypes). But even with a show like Fear Factor, there was always enough banter between the teams and the host for the viewer to know them beyond the stereotypes they were portraying. In The Great Escape, the teams meet host Rich Eisen long enough to hear the rules of the game, and then they (and we) never see him again until the end of the show, only hearing him describe the action in voice over. He’s so low-key, even when presenting the winning team with $100,000, that he almost seems to be wishing he were anywhere else but there.
The best parts of the first show weren’t necessarily the challenges themselves, where teams had to first break out of their jail cell then follow a map to various locations and move stuff around until they found one quarter of a special key, but the fact that the game could be flipped on its head at any moment if the teams were careless. In the first episode, the Red Team was the first team out of the cell, taking a nice lead over the Green and Blue teams (and it says a lot that I don’t even know their names, except for Lexx, the annoying guy on the Green team), at which point I figured it was going to be an easy win for them. But there was one major pitfall — teams had to be on the lookout for prison guards as they made their way to each of the four locations on the map. If they get captured, it’s back to the cell to find another key before they can go back to the game from where they were captured. This twist gave a little seesaw action to the game as the Red and Green teams kept passing each other and getting caught (the Blue team was so hopelessly behind that they weren’t even a factor). How this twist will play out in other locations (the second episode takes place on the USS Hornet) remains to be seen.
The constant shifting of places did make my heart beat a little faster at times, but was this enough for me to be as hyped for the next episode as I was for the first one? Sure, I’ll watch it, but it probably won’t be an appointment show if there’s something else on at the same time or if I have something better to do like clip my nails. I like the concept, but the show just needs a little something to give it some oomph to really make me want to tune in faithfully as I do with The Amazing Race — even when I complain about it week after week, it still manages to draw me back because it’s compelling, something The Great Escape, so far, is not. I really wanted to like it, and afterwards I was asked what I’d score it on a scale of 1 to 10. I was generous with my 7, but deep down I knew it was really only a 5.
So what did you think of The Great Escape? Will this be appointment TV for you, or something you can watch whenever? Sound off in the comments below. And if you missed the show and want to check it out, you’ll be able to see the full episode online or by downloading the free TNT app for your mobile devices.
Clacked by Chuck Duncan 
on Jun 25, 2012 @ 03:06 EST5EDT
Sunday night is my early to bed to rejuvinate for the upcoming week night. Well, I stayed up for this show last night expecting something fresh and cool with the “hype” as you call it that has reached me.
Well, I was totally disappointing. The challenges seemed to be week. The “not getting caught” segments were really week. So obvious that the Producers could have thrown the game with the lackluster searching by the guards. Unless some major changes come quick, this show will not escape the reviews.
Since the players have cameramen following them around the guards would have been able to spot them every time. How silly was it seeing players try to sneak around when the cameramen are out in the open. It seems the guards are a way for producers to keep the game close. Only “see” the players when they get too far ahead. Just like The Amazing Race uses closed venues or air travel schedules to allow others to catch up. I’ll take a pass from now on unless they replace the guards with unmanned static traps.
I thought the exact same thing about the cameramen. It is dark and these teams have camera spotlights lighting them up like Christmas. How can the guards not see these teams very easily is beyond me. One time the green team could see the flashlight of a guard, but the guard could not see the spotlight of the camera on the green team, even though the cameraman was standing in the wide open filming the green team while also turning the camera in the direction of the guard. Come on, give me a break. I think these “contestants” are hired actors, so I am calling shenanigans.
*POST AUTHOR*
I thought the same thing about the camera following the teams. I was thinking that they had to be “touched” by a spotlight, like the Red team was in the Rec Yard, but that doesn’t apply to the other areas so that part really makes no sense. If the teams were wearing cameras, I could buy it but as much as I’ve been trying to make sense of that twist, while a neat way to switch the game around, there’s no logic to how the rule is applied.
It reminds me of a similar show on SyFy called Chase. People had that exact same question because it also relied on not getting caught. We never got an answer for that show either, but my best guess is the one I had for that show…that the guards might either A) have prearranged “paths” that they walk and can’t confront the players unless the players cross them, or B) they can’t engage the players unless there’s either a spotlight or they’re within visual range. Otherwise everyone would just look for the cameramen and it’d be over in five minutes.
Just a guess, but it was a problem with Chase and it’s a problem here.