Andy DehnartTop Shot ended its second season on the History Channel last night, and gave its winner, Chris Reed, $100,000, and Colby Donaldson his last chance to say “Top Sheeeot!” until the summer’s debut of season three. Joe Serafini was eliminated in the first round, and George Reinas’s elimination meant Brian “Gunny” Zins went to the finals with Chris.
But the real drama came in an earlier round, when George, the show’s resident asshole, appeared to throw the competition. First he missed a giant plate target with a handgun, and then he missed a rather large target while lying in a sniper position, which is his specialty (and I realize I’m using imprecise terms here).
Chris Reed clearly thought George threw the competition to help him. “I’m the first one to offer a hand out, try to help people, expect nothing in return,” he said. “But the minute someone tries to help me or whatever, it’s just tearing me up, man. After George missed the shot, he said, “Son of a bitch boy.”
After he left, George said, “Did I throw myself under the grenade? No. I played the game the way I wanted to play it. I went out on my own terms. Don’t regret it, wouldn’t change a thing.”
So is this just really one buddy helping another? Or, as one blog suggested, did George just miss and “For him to suggest otherwise, for the producers to perpetuate this fiction as some kind of male bonding thing, is patently ridiculous.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with Chris, The Military Times reminded Chris that, in the first episode, George referred to him and said, “If the realtor from Mississippi beats me, I will buy a house from him, sit in the kitchen and burn it down from the inside.” Chris said that George is “so funny you can’t even imagine. I lived with him for six weeks and he’s truly a remarkable person and I like him like a brother. He really is a stand-up dude. Stuff like that was just like an inside joke for us, although I didn’t know he’d said that at the time. He didn’t dare mention it. But I’ve had to rib him about it ever since the first episode when that came out.”
So did we just misunderstand George? Was he comic relief instead of a total asshole? It may be both. Let’s not forget that he ridiculed Jamie, especially, for no reason, and did things like pathetically trying to conceal his fear of heights during a recent challenge by dismissing the challenge as stupid, which was so transparent and juvenile it was almost comical, if it wasn’t so sad.