IIRC, the bumbling frat boys last season tried to trade shoes that they had purchased with Race-provided funds for cabfare, and failed anyway. I don’t remember anyone before trading their own possessions for cabfare, but I do remember several instances of people begging strangers and negotiating with cabbies to reduce the fare. Remember Joyce and Uchenna - standing at the entrance of the park where the race finish line was, asking passersby for money to pay off the cabbie? If it had been allowed, I’m sure they’d have given the guy everything they had with them and run to the finish line in their skivvies to win the million. Or more realistically, stiff him, but get his name and address and send him $500 later. If I’d have to guess, I’d have to say the rules are (1) you can only pay a cabbie with funds you’ve gotten from the race and/or begging, (2) you can negotiate fares with a cabbie as needed, (3) you CANNOT stiff a cabbie - you can’t leave until he’s satisfied with what you’ve given him.
ETA: jayjay beat me to it, but glad to see such a wise & knowledgeable TAR fan is in agreement with me.
And did one of the brothers really payoff a cabbie with a carabiner, claiming it was very valuable?
Poor Victor. Couldn’t even figure out a propeller and a couple of washers. It appeared that even though the props were keyed, the shafts weren’t, so you had to hammer them or tighten them like mad to get them far enough onto the tapered drive shaft to bind.
I’ve basically lost interest in the season, but retain enough vestigal interest to want to know who was eliminated. From a quick skim of this thread, sounds like M&M came in last but it was a non-elimination?
Correct…actually, they came in 4th, but incurred 2 2-hour penalties for using their personal possessions (twice!) to pay off cab fares that became necessary because they left their bags at the Roadblock and had to cab it back there to get the cab they left there. That saved the sisters, Jen & Kiesha, who actually did get to the mat last because…ta-da! They left their bags and cab back at the Roadblock (AND left their Amazing Fanny-Pack on the dock at the Roadblock!) and had to go back for them.
It was an Amazing Clusterfuck for more than one team this leg.
Maybe it’s just me but I got a sense from the M&M team that the “items of personal significance” he was worried about in his bag were… not appropriate for a family show.
The denture-fitting challenge- it had to be harder than it looked. Each of the 5 toothless wonders had two bowls in front of them- one with water (or some solution) and teeth, one with just a solution. It appeared that you just had to pick the one from the bowl that fit the mouth- couldn’t you just run through them one by one? How long could that take? Margie did 4 before Luke finished one, then she did the last lady too. And she did the propeller task. She rocked this episode.
Oh- I’m looking forward to the smackdown between Luke and LaKisha/Jennifer (not sure which one). She really bodyslammed him out of the way of the cluebox in the previews.
I don’t understand why M&M didn’t just pay the cabbies when they picked up their bags with their money in it. Take the cab, arrive at the dock, one stays with the cab while the other gets the stuff, get back in the cab with your gear and drive to the pitstop, pay the cabbies.
They said several times that they didn’t have enough money. That’s one of the reasons that younger stuntbrother was upset with older stuntbrother. The other was, of course, time.
I think this is a good rule, although I am not sure about the 2 hour penalty, but I guess in their meetings they determined that it was something they really did not want contestants to do. It doesn’t really matter, if it’s a rule then they should have known it and followed the rule.
I have a feeling that airport bunching will definitely alow them to catch up.
I am also confused about the starting times, maybe it was just a production error and the wrong times were posted.
I think the money at the start of each leg is calculated to be enough, if you do the leg correctly. They weren’t expecting anyone to have the cab wait for them, so there wasn’t enough money to cover it. Kisha & Jen must have saved enough from previous legs. Mark & Michael were shown earlier to be a little sh…, er, to not have much money.
Didn’t the stuntmen try to call their waiting taxi? It would have saved a little money and time to take the current cab to the Detour and just wait there for the original cab to meet them with their stuff. I wonder why that didn’t work.
I thought one of them suggested it, but the other vetoed it. Either way, there was plenty of stupid to go around.
I’m with Scuba_Ben. One of the basic rules of TAR should be never, ever leave the Amazing Fanny Pack behind. One of the secondary rules should be don’t leave your bags somewhere assuming you’ll wind up back where you left them.
I’m still a bit new to this show, but isn’t being given only a certain amount of money to accomplish each leg part of the contest? After all, if money was no object, it would be easier for the richest team to win.
In effect, it acts as kind of an anti-bunching rule. If a team breezes through the tasks, they seem to have plenty. It’s when a team gets really stuck on something that they seem to run out. (Those taxis don’t sit around idle for nothing.) I think Mark & Michael ran out when they took forever at the stack-wood/build-shutters Detour. Once you’re a little behind, having to scrounge a cab ride only makes things worse.
I started watching around season 4. They used to give no money during the last couple legs, and you had to get by with what you’d saved up to that point, but I haven’t seen that lately.
With a miilion dollars at stake I don’t think they would get away with this…
Also, is it just me, or do the teams seem to be getting more money now than in earlier seasons? The whole meme of paying a taxi to follow seems to be a relatively recent development and seems to mean that the teams have an overabundance of funds (although some did run out this time). I wouldn’t like to see a new rule introduced that you can’t follow taxis instead of reading a map, but it should be made more difficult for the teams to do so…