Mr. Beast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) is someone who has been a little controversial in the past few years. He’s the biggest YouTuber in the world and a philanthropist, giving away sometimes upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars per video. I’ve been a Mr. Beast fan for quite some time, but he’s kinda lost my favor in the past few years, with a lot of scandals and other things surfacing, which made me not as interested in his content. However, when he announced a large-scale game show on Amazon Prime with 1000 contestants and the largest cash prize in game show history, I wondered if maybe this could make up for things. “Beast Games” has 10 episodes where several millions of dollars are at stake, and tensions get very high. 

Setting aside the large number of controversies surrounding this show for a minute, I wanted to look at this show from a relatively objective standpoint. It has millions of dollars of funding, backed by Amazon, and hosted by one of the most popular personalities of our generation. Surely this couldn’t go wrong, right? Unfortunately, it definitely can, and does. One of the first things I noticed when watching the first episode of this show is that this is almost exactly the format of one of his YouTube videos, it’s just stretched out to fill a 45 minute episode. I think Mr. Beast does shorter form content very well. He has a loud, commanding voice and really gets your attention and holds it. But holding onto that type of person, even for just an episode, felt exhausting. It feels like Mr. Beast (can I call you Jimmy?) just throws the same premise at the audience every episode, with some games intermixed. This is sort of what I was expecting for something made by Jimmy, but for ten 45-minute episodes, it just felt repetitive and drawn out. 

My second criticism is that a lot of the challenges that contestants were playing just felt like all the same. It was either a vote between contestants, or some sort of mind game with progressively more elaborate and expensive props. Occasionally there was some sort of physical challenge thrown in, but it didn’t seem like those types of challenges were nearly as represented as some of the other types. If you’re going to make a TV show that’s just a longer version of one of your own videos, at least make them a little interesting and unique. It just felt boring after the first episode or so. 

It wasn’t all bad though, there were a couple things that I did like about it. One was that as there were a smaller and smaller number of contestants from episode to episode, it became more personal, and I enjoyed following the story of the contestants more. Also, I do think that Jimmy Beast knows how to run a good show. He seemed very intentional about keeping the contestants (and the audience) focused on the results of the game. But it was just that a lot of the challenges and obstacles for the contestants seemed uninspired and sloppy after a while. I really wish there were more effort put into the mechanics and uniqueness of most of the games. 

There were also a bunch of controversies with this show. Five or so of the contestants actually filed suit against Jimmy and his company for bad treatment of the contestants and poor living conditions and accommodations for the contestants while on set. If these allegations are correct, then that could be a wave of bad news for Jimmy and his staff. But, no ruling decision has been made yet. I really hope that these allegations are not true, as the conditions described by the contestants make it sound terrible, but there is a possibility that they will be found to be accurate.

All in all, this show is not very good. I think a lot more work could’ve gone into it, I think the contestants could’ve been treated better while on set, and I think that this has not changed my mind about Mr. Beast’s content. That being said, it isn’t the worst show I’ve ever seen, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have on in the background or watch a few episodes of if you’re bored. It is somewhat entertaining, but not high quality entertainment for sure. I would rate “Beast Games” with a two-and-a-half out of five stars. Not great, definitely room for improvement, but not horrible to watch. Just more sub-par reality TV that has been released into the world. “Beast Games” can be found on Amazon Prime.