Plus, thanks to the Amazing Editors, they showed that the alphabet was written on the side of one of the carrels.
I love the Amazing editors.
I was. On an earlier leg (admittedly in one of the third-world countries) they got $1. Maybe we’ll figure out the reason for it next Sunday.
That’s what I wondered aloud last night.
Hadn’t thought of that. Maybe all four of them saw The Hunger Games.
The thing is, I’ve never seen them call a tie, even when it’s inconsequential. I was truly baffled when they discussed the pact. It didn’t make sense for either of them, IMHO.
I wonder what would happen if Abby & Ryan proposed a deal to the Goat Farmers, telling them that if they agreed to throw the Race and let Abby & Ryan finish ahead of them, if A&R then ended up winning the whole thing, (and of course collecting a cool two million bux in prize money!) they would give the Goat Guys $100,000 (maybe $250,000?!?) each for taking a dive.
Would this violate any Amazing Race rules?
(I am not suggesting that this is going to or should actually happen, just wondering if there is anything expressly forbidding such an arrangement between teams)
One of them said something about it not being so lonely when there’s another team around. I can imagine that both teams are so tired and emotionally drained about being so far behind that it’s a morale boost just to have another team with you going through the same thing.
Doesn’t mean I would stick around with them at the swimming pool more than one failed attempt, though, even if I were fairly confident I could outsprint them to the mat.
That was by far the best leg of the race yet.
Difficult tasks, airplane travel drama, lost passports, and some goofy-assed goatfarmer synchronized swimming all in the same episode?
Classic!
Can’t wait til next Sunday!
I know this is expressly against the rules in Survivor, and assume it is in TAR as well.
Besides, if they were already committed to running the leg together, why didn’t they just skip the tasks and take identical penalties?
Zev Steinhardt
Never watched Survivor, but on Amazing Race I have seen different kinds of collusion between teams in an alliance, although none where one team flat-out took a dive and willingly eliminated themselves to help advance another team’s chances at victory.
I admire Abby & Ryan, it would have been all too easy to tell the Farmers “So long!” after they completed their swimming task, but they were true to their word, which is something that I can appreciate, even in a race with two million bucks on the line.
I think the goat farmer will skip the swimming task and take the penalty, so they can be ‘with’ Abbie and Ryan during the rest of the leg, but they would still have to wait out the 4 hour penalty. And I bet the rockers will get their passports back. That’s my prediction!
One thing that’s kind of bugging me is that the passport was effectively stolen. There are no provisions in the rules for stolen stuff?
How did A&R and the farmers both manage to miss their flight? I missed that part and came back just in time to see the shocked looks on their faces.
Was it a connection they missed, or did they miss the flight out of Turkey?
Their flight out of Turkey was delayed, causing them to miss their connecting flight.
Zev Steinhardt
I had this vision of the four of them all jumping on the mat at the same time, followed by a ten-minute NFL-style video review, with super slo-mo from several angles and grainy close-ups showing who’s foot actually hit the mat first.
Believe it or not, they aren’t the first team to leave their passports in a taxi in Moscow. Toni and Dallas did it several seasons back and were disqualified.
Yeah, I would think by now most people would know to keep some sort of pocket with their passport and money strapped to their arm or leg or something. Then again, they also didn’t seem to be able to figure out that the alphabet was right there on the wall in order. Can’t believe they couldn’t figure that out - you’re a lawyer for chrissakes!
One question - was the taxi still there? The camera seemed to zoom in at one point on a green-looking car, as if they taxi was still there and they just didn’t notice it.
Kinda surprised at this point that the Chippendales are in my “like” category. Can’t stand Ryan (he seems to want to be like Major Dave in more ways than one, such as being a huge douche) and the Twins are constantly annoying.
Really mystified by Abbie and Ryan’s choice to “run the race” with the Farmers. What does that even mean? At what point do they split up? (Not to mention A&R should be leaving the Farmers in the dust). I kinda hope they actually try for some sort of simultaneous check-in to the mat, and Phil eliminates both. Heh.
I’d be kinda surprised if this was a non-elimination (or planned to be) since they just had one two episodes ago.
Doesn’t anybody have direct flights anymore? I’d have thought Istanbul->Moscow would have one. (I didn’t see anybody actually check the Aeroflot desk.) And then once the two teams missed their connection in Frankfurt, they had to book new tickets through Warsaw.
I wondered the same thing. I just checked Expedia and found Aeroflot Flight 2131 leaving Istanbul at 14:05 and landing in Moscow at 19:20. It appears to be a daily flight…though I suppose it’s possible it didn’t start service until after the show was filmed…
What time did the teams get to the airport in Istanbul? If you get there at 15:10, I guess you take what you can get rather than wait for the next day. I’m just surprised there’s only one flight; Aeroflot has to have their hub in Moscow, don’t they? Maybe it’s like trans-Atlantic, where there are lots of flights, but all going the same way at the same time.
I was a bit surprised no one checked at Aeroflot. The one team that was told to go there went to Alitalia, instead. I think if I was going on the Race, I’d do my research on which airlines tended to have the most service in different major cities. (I originally though that the ticket counters at the airport were constrained to only sell tickets on their own flights, but at least one of the connections was on Aeroflot, so I’m not sure.)
I just rewatched the beginning of the episode online. Assuming we saw events in chronological order (which used to necessarily be the case, but I’m not sure these days), we had:
Trey and Lexi depart at 12:35
Abbie and Ryan depart at 12:56
James and Abba depart at 1:03
Trey and Lexi arrive at the airport, go to every airline desk *except *Aeroflot, then have lunch at Popeyes
Natalie and Nadiya depart at 1:44
Abbie and Ryan arrive at the airport
Jaymes and James depart at 1:55
James and Abba arrive at the airport
Josh and Brent depart at 2:07
So it looks like the trip to the airport was about an hour, give or take 10 minutes. So Trey and Lexi might have made the 2:05 flight if they’d gone to the right airline like they were directed, and possibly Abbie and Ryan could have made it, but everybody else would probably have been too late.