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We have never watched any of MrBeast’s YouTube videos, or ordered from one of his many ghost-kitchen burger joints. But we know who he his; that’s how he’s been able to transcend into general pop culture. Now he’s the host and one of the executive producers of a massive reality competition series, with a gigantic pool of contestants, and an equally massive grand prize.
BEAST GAMES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: MrBeast (Given name: James Donaldson) is shown standing on a massive pile of money. “I am standing on $5 million of real money, the largest grand prize in entertainment history. And competing for this $5 million are these 1,000 contestants!”
The Gist: That’s right… 1,000 contestants in blue numbered football jerseys come out and stand on platforms in a huge, airplane hangar-style space. They are the contestants competing for that massive grand prize in Beast Games. In a quick preview at the beginning of the episode, he shows that there will be potential to win millions of dollars in prizes along the way, but the last one standing gets the $5 mil. MrBeast hosts the challenges, and has his friends Chandler, Karl, Nolan, Tareq and Mack there to encourage or discourage the crowd.
A challenge is given right away: Eliminate yourself in the first 10 minutes. and you will be able to share a pot of $1 million. Of course, the more people who take that immediate out, the less everyone’s share is.
After those people leave — they’re dropped through their platforms, never to be seen again — there are more challenges. In one, three columns of 80 people each are eliminated if they’re the last to have someone sacrifice themselves. Another involves building a tower and making sure it stays up; the first 100 people whose towers fall get eliminated.
Finally, the people are now broken into rows, and an increasing amount of money is offered for those who are willing to eliminate themselves. But if someone does, the entire row goes home and only the person who hit the button on their screen gets money. That goes on until the number of contestants left gets to 500.
Why 500? That’s how many beds are in Beast City, a compound constructed for the game where the contestants will live and play games for a month. As more people are eliminated, prizes like private islands, a Lamborghini, and oodles of cash are up for grabs, even before the big prize is awarded.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Beast Games is more or less a photocopy of Squid Game: The Challenge, even down to masked assistants and people in the “control room.”
Our Take: Just like with Squid Game: The Challenge, it’s hard to get to know the contestants in the first episode, given the sheer numbers of them. They talk into cameras that are posted on their platforms, and we see a few more than once. Some are there because they want to make a better life for themselves and others. Others are simply there because, hey, it’s $5 million, and they are completely sure they’re going to win it all.
We start seeing names and professions in Episode 2, the first one where games are played in Beast City. It’s not much of a stretch to think that the people the producers identify are the ones who are going to be going relatively far in the game as the number of contestants gets whittled down to something manageable.
One thing we know: Getting to the 1,000 that made it to Beast Games wasn’t the beginnging of these contestants’ journey. Sure, there are multiple members of families, people who were friends before the game started, and other groups in the mix. But it feels like, when we hear people talk about who was eliminated, that there was some decent bonding time before the first game started. As we see below, MrBeast started with 2,000 people just to get it down to the 1,000 people who made the show. The bonding that happened during these phases certainly makes people more emotional when new buddies are eliminated.
Another factor that gets to us are the extreme emotions. Sure, there’s $5 million at stake, but in the early stages that money is such a longshot that we a) don’t understand people who won’t take the significant sums offered to them and peace out, and b) we don’t get the sobbing and rending of garments that happens when people are eliminated — or the elation when people move forward. Sure, later on in the contest, when the odds become something real, we can understand it. But in this first episode, that prize is more of an abstract concept. Either that’s a comment on just how hard up most people are these days, or the producers really get these people into a headspace that makes them think they’ll go all the way.
Beast Games, at the very least, is much less dystopian-seeming than Squid Game: The Challenge, mainly because of the brotastic attitude of MrBeast and his cronies. You envision them screaming “Bruh!” at each other and giving each other chest bumps when the cameras aren’t rolling, and that enthusiasm gets the contestants pumped up. In these early rounds, that’s necessary, because without that, the game would be a depressing mess.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: The remaining contestants get to see Beast City for the first time at the end of the first episode. The second episode ends on a hell of a cliffhanger.
Sleeper Star: We did enjoy watching the long columns of people fall through their platforms, especially the row where they fell down one at a time in rapid fashion. Kudos to the set designers and the people working the trap doors for that.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not sure what the use of MrBeast’s five buddies are, besides being annoying and acting like they’re still dumb teenagers, even though they’re adults.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re tempted to say SKIP IT, mainly because we hate that Beast Games takes advantage of people’s greed and/or desperation for drama. But the second episode shows that the game will start getting really fun as we get down to a manageable group of contestants, and a lot of that is thanks to the enthusiasm of MrBeast and his hoodie-wearing buddies.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
