(7) If all the other teams are on one flight, and you find an alternative flight that appears to be better, don’t take it unless it’s either substantially better, or you can take another subset of teams with you.
(7a) This goes double when the alternative flight requires more connections.
(7b) This goes triple when the “connection” means taking a taxi from Orly to DeGaulle.
(7c) The definition of “substantially better” shifts depending on the length of the flight, and shifts more when it’s the last leg.
(This is because planes are delayed. If your plane isn’t delayed, you come in first, which is nice. If your plane is delayed, you’re eliminated, which is bad.)
I didn’t start watching until late in season 4, and I’ve missed a few since then. (Was traveling when season 6 was on.) I gather some team tried to do a connection in Paris without realizing there were two different airports, and it worked out badly?
There are alternate airports at other cities, too. When they flew to London in season 7, everybody went to Heathrow and it’s a rather long train ride into the city from there. I was wondering if they’d have been better off if they could have found a flight that arrived a bit later, but landed at London City airport.
If I ever get on the show, I’ll have to do some research.
If a dead-last team still has to complete the leg, it’s a non-elim. Proof last night.
Dittos on the marked-for-elimination improvement, and yes, there has to be a FF dangling in front of Coal Miner and Wife next week to make sure they finish a half hour ahead of somebody.
And I still don’t need to go visit India anymore - even if we don’t get to see the Barbies get groped on a train this time.
A Fast Forward is an alternate task, early in a leg, that lets one team bypass the remainder of the leg and go directly to the Pit Stop. However, only the first team to complete the task gets to claim it.
Teams don’t have to try for the Fast Forward. If several teams are attempting it, the first one to finish gets a huge advantage, but the others have wasted their time and still need to complete the rest of the leg as usual. So, if you see several other teams go off to do the Fast Forward, you may decide it’s not worth the risk and go on to the next clue knowing some of those teams will be behind you.
I believe early seasons of the show had a Fast Forward on every leg. They’ve lowered that to be only two FF’s in the whole race. And a team can only use one per race. (That was a bigger consideration in the early seasons. Now it just means that the team that gets the first Fast Forward doesn’t need to even try for the second.)
Yes it is true that in the early seasons every leg had a Fast Forward. For many legs no one competed because of the requirement that once you successfully obtained a FF you could not get another. The net result: especially early in the Race many FFs went unobtained since Racers wanted to save the opportunity for later in the Race and FF challenges had to be created that went unused.
It also seems to me that in the later seasons as the number of FF dropped, the lengths a team had to go to to successfully win the FF has increased. Many of the FF now seem to require activities like the competitors being willing to have their heads shaved (seen that at least a couple of times), or eat/drink gross Fear Factor-type stuff (too numerous to count). This part of the FF I don’t particularly enjoy. I’d rather see them complete some slightly scarier than usual task and/ or some kind of task that must be completed in a timed event, or some kind of puzzle. Pretty much anything other than the gross food. If I wanted to watch that, I would watch Fear Factor.
I’d like to see the Fast Forward rule changed to: A team can only compete for one FF during the race, unless they arrive at the FF challenge site after the FF has been won. This would force the teams to weigh their chances of claiming the FF the first time it is available vs. their chances of still being in the race when the second FF shows up.
According to Wikipedia’s leader board, Ironleg is the strongest team in terms of finishing positions, and Kentucky & Alabama seem to be the weakest. As much as I admire the spirit of AL and KY, they’re getting worn down by the race. I doubt they’ll last much longer.
I believe the number of Fast Forwards was decreased because of the additional cost; it’s expensive to construct and staff a FF on every leg when most don’t even get used.
However, in terms of Race strategy and viewer interest, I liked the Fast-Forward-on-every-leg better.
With a Fast Forward on every leg, and the rule that teams can only get one Fast Forward, the best strategy is to “save” your chance for when you really need it. So teams that take the FF tend to be the teams in last place, in danger of elimination. Which means that teams in the front never know when they might be passed, and the order could be shaken up at any time.
With only two Fast Forwards on the entire season, there’s no reason not to take a FF, because you’re unlikely to be in a position to use your FF opportunity again. So the teams that take the FF tend to be the teams who are out ahead, which means the order isn’t shaken up and no one really gets passed.
It seems like the Race organizers have put the recent FFs right after a bunching point, so it’s not as bad as all that, but I still thought it was better the old way.
A good cost compromise would be to increase the number of FFs to four or five, and put them mostly in the latter half of the Race. That gives the teams more incentive to “save” their chances when they come across a FF and would lead to more mixing of the team order.
Speaking of unused options… A rule I’d like to see is that each option at detours must be done by at least one team – just so us viewers get to see what they were.
Yes, this would potentially mean that the last team to arrive at the detour doesn’t get to chose, but so what? If they wanted a choice they should have been faster.
I’d like FF on every leg, with a rule that it has to be used. So if you’re last to the FF and it hasn’t been used, you have to do it.
Which means that the teams ahead of you would know that teams behind them could leapfrog and so they might have to do it to keep those teams from doing it.
This would be good, but for the head-shaving FF options. Nobody should have to do that one, not even because the Rules say so. It’s a lot of drama, and … it’s a lot of drama. But if they changed the FF’s to something else? I’m all for it.
Although, on the other hand … if everybody signed up for the Race knowing that they could very possibly have to have their head shaved to stay in it, we might get some “better” Racers, and I’m all for that, too.
Now, me? If I were on the Race, I would totally shave my head if it improved my chances at a million dollars, but you guys would all know it was me on your TV, because I have the lumpiest head ever. I mean, it’s worse than Mrs. Potato Head.
From an overall point of view, I wouldn’t be in favor of rules that force teams to do something. I like the decision-making aspect of TAR: which Detour should we do? Who does the Roadblock? Which airline do we fly? Which road do we travel? Do we take the FF or not? So I’m not in favor of a rule that forces a team to do a FF.
However, perhaps a rule that encourages a team to do a FF? Like how about: if a team is in last place and they do the FF, they still have the opportunity to another FF later in the race.
But honestly, you’re forced to do a Roadblock. You’re forced to do a Detour. You’ve got a limited amount of choice, but it’s definitely a “do this or you’re out.”
I like this idea, but at the same time, I like when a team choses one Detour option, decides it’s too hard, tries to do the other Detour, and then switches back yet again. Much laughing and finger-pointing ensues.
If one team were forced to do a certain Detour, we wouldn’t get to see the much-loved Desperation Switching.
Well, technically, you’re not forced to do anything. A team could skip the tasks and take the penalties, but that’s hardly the road to success. I wonder, though, in a Detour where you have to do such and such and the local person will give you the next clue, what would happen if you refused both options and just demanded the clue?
This may be sort of off topic, but I like the tasks that are examples of things the natives of whatever area the Racers are in do as a normal course of their lives. Things like working with animals native to the area, making bricks or those coal clumps. Even learning local dances or eating local foods (if they’re not overly abundant or disgusting). It gets spoiled Americans out of their comfort zones and makes them more aware of how other people on this planet live!
I agree. Last season, they had a choice of washing a bus or something else. Washing the bus was hard, but it’s not that different than washing a really big car.
In season 2 or 3, one of the Detours was washing an elephant. Now, that was different.
Oh, sure. It’s a game after all. You can’t sit in the dugout and expect to win a baseball game.
But I think TAR would be much less fun without the choices. If it were all “do this, then this, then this” and teams could mechanically follow instructions without making choices, it would be much less interesting to watch. More choces = good, fewer choices = bad.
(Actually, what I think would be really cool would be to give teams a list of all tasks at the beginning of the episode, and have them figure out the best order in which to do the tasks. The thought of all the teams criss-crossing past each other and not really knowing what the other teams are doing or whether they’re ahead or behind seems really cool.)
I think it was Rob (and Amber) who first decided not to eat all the food and took the 30 minute penalty before they got the next clue to go on. They then convinced a couple other teams and secured their place as “not last”.
The other choice was opening up Russian nesting dolls, searching for a clue amongst 1500 of them, while a mad Russian band played crazy Russian folk dances in the background.
The penalty was four hours from the arrival of the next team, not 30 minutes. And Rob’s success lay in being able to persuade the other teams to quit, not in skipping the task himself. I was talking about the notion of just skipping all the Roadblocks and Detours and going directly to the Pit Stop, which is theoretically possible under the rules of the Race but would not lead to success.
