ABC’s ‘The Quest’ episode 2 preview: Raising the stakes

Have you not watched ABC’s “The Quest” yet? If you haven’t seen it to date, you should really get on that. It’s a rather fantastic new idea, and it does a good job of capturing basically all your childhood dreams about being part of some grand adventure to save a kingdom.

On Thursday, this quest will continue as the paladins are forced to embark on the next round of training … but not before they are reminded yet again of the stakes. The mysterious forces of evil are closing in on Sanctum, and for a show with actors mixed in with unscripted contestants, we have to say that they do a very good job of selling the dire situation. It appears as though this entire preview below is meant to lead directly into a challenge, which may have to do with testing the paladins’ riding skills.

While we are still finding out more and more about the people on this TV journey, we’re for the time being convinced that Shondo is a boss. For one, he took losing someone in his party very seriously in the premiere as the journey to Sanctum began; also, his name is Shondo Blades, which has to be one of the top five coolest names we’ve ever heard. (With our luck, he’ll probably be eliminated come Thursday.)

Hopefully by the end of this episode we’ll understand more of how the show works, and what mechanisms we can use to figure out who we like among the paladins, and who we will be slightly less bummed to see eventually leave. There’s a certain level of excitement that comes with a new competition show for us, given that over time these tend to settle into a groove. Now, we literally have no idea what is going to happen next.