Heh–I’d think it was more of an incentive: “Come see the lions that ate Rachel!”
I’d go.
TAR is still must-watch TV for me, but this season’s cast has been a bore, no question. Nobody to really cheer for except Kentucky. I held on to liking Art & JJ as long as I could but they’ve been just terrible the last two weeks.
I’m bummed out about Mark’s knee - the amount of running and walking on each leg, nevermind the challenges, is going to be a real problem if he’s re-injured it.
They’d be pooping green spangles for a week.
Let me see if I got this right: Art & JJ came in 3rd. If Dave and Rachel had kept up their end of the W-Turn bargain, Art & JJ would have come in … 3rd.
Their reasons for who to U-Turn were strictly personal and had nothing to do with race strategy (as evidenced by their revelation that they had been planning this move for 5 legs)…which is stupid.
The honey task was either a complete freak-out hysteria-inducing spectacle (if they got a contestant with beephobia), or pointless and easy. Unfortunately for the producers and the viewing audience, it was the latter.
Time for my weekly defense of Rachael (Team Green)
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She was the only competitor to say someting to a native in an African language that was not “Hakuna matata”
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She finished the leg although injured with the huge gash from the “water supply” task.
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She did not call them “bamboons”
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She was quite mature when they found out they were U-Turned
I agree 100% with all of this—Amazing Race is much, MUCH less interesting to me than it was four or five years back, mostly due to the very things you have outlined.
Money management used to be a huge issue, (“Can we afford a cab or should we try to walk it? We are down to our last $20 bucks and I am starving to death!”) and now everything is pre-planned and Disneyfied.
I still enjoy the show more than anything else on Sunday nights, but all of the real-life aspects (such as they were) of travel have been done away with in favor of safe, scripted TV.
I agree the tasks have been too easy. I recently watched the Australian version of Amazing Race (a really really good show, great people, amazing scenery, and HARD tasks) and the things they had to do were unique and seriously challenging.
Go watch Amazing Race Australia, it’s on Youtube and is much more entertaining.
I agree that this season has been a bit of a letdown. I can’t put my finger on the reaons.
Fenris raises some good points. The one thing, however, I NEVER want to see again is Americans begging for money from impoverished people. That was brutal to watch.
Art and JJ must be great bully cops. They make a promise five legs ago and then get pissed when logic and strategy calls for that promise to be put aside. Nothing was lost by breaking the promise and Dave and Rachel were able to keep a U-turn in the pocket. And the only logic for using the U-turn was spite. Art and JJ were never in danger of being beat. Really, the classy and ‘honourable’ thing to do was to not U-Turn them. Only Art and JJ can’t see past their hatred of a team.
Jerks.
I too have been a bit underwhelmed by the last season or two. I thought it was just me since I used to watch it with my ex. I’m glad it’s not just me then.
I don’t much like the rule in the double U-Turn where the first teamed U-Turned can turn someone else. That first team has not made it to the U-Turn yet since they’ve been turned around to do the other challenge.
I also thought the speed bump was interesting, but it seemed to have taken a lot longer then any of the other ones we’ve seen lately.
Does anyone know if there are any other NELs left?
In what world is “Haters gotta drink their hateraid” mature?
You’re right though – props for “Jambo…asante”.
Mature in that she didn’t break down and start crying like a 3 year old like when she got her boo-boo.
I would guess that many of the changes are because the budget of the show has been cut over time. I am pretty sure that is why the amount of Fast Forwards decreased (I could have sworn when I started watching (not season 1 but very early on, maybe season 3) there was a FF every leg)
I don’t know if that was a budget concern. I didn’t start watching until a bit later than that, but it seems like a Fast Forward on every leg would make it more difficult to follow what was going on, for the viewers and the teams. Teams would have to weigh the risks of attempting the FF and not getting it, along with trying to get the one that would do the most good (since you’re only allowed one). Plus, as the number of teams got whittled down, they (and us) would have to remember which teams had used a Fast Forward and which hadn’t, so we’d know who really had the shortest path to the finish.
I was confused by the editing. When the federal teachers got to the bike challenge, Vanessa and Ralph were finding out they got U-Turned. That means V&R had to hump it back a mile to the water challenge, wait in that line, hump it back, wait for the cab to change a flat tire, and in all that time the teachers only barely managed to catch up even with them.
Also with the teachers, after they finished the bike challenge they ran across Big Brother on foot. Rachel directed them to walk a kilometer, then Rachel and Brendon hopped in a cab. I can’t figure out any way that makes sense unless Rachel was sending the teachers two kilometers (when you factor in round trip) out of their way on foot on a wild goose chase. If that is what happened, that would explain the missing time from my first paragraph.
Anyone have a firmer grasp on this sequence?
While I agree that she was a grown-up about the U-Turn and that she handled the bee thing better than I would have, I gotta disagree with the specific point you raised.
She whined about the scratch on her leg multiple times and expected huge props from her boytoy for toughing out her ouchie. While she showed (a bit) more maturity than I expected this leg of the race, IMO she behaved exactly like a 3 year old being brave for daddy about her ouchie.
I’m just hoping that they’re not trying to give Rachel/Whatshisname a beauty edit 'cause they won. :mad:
Totally agree–they’d never do it, because they go crazy trying (futilely, IMO) to preserve the illusion that the camera/sound people aren’t there and to try to keep the illusion that the race is as unscripted as possible*—but IMO the way to handle money is to A) give them cash and B) give them a credit card (other than their “for tickets only” cc) for running out of money, but every $10(?) they spend on that card gives them a 30(?) minute penalty. That way, they can stay in the race if they run out of cash but suffer a penalty–and a severe one–for bad cash management.
And this lets them do it without begging from impoverished people or stiffing cabbies (the two dwarf/little-person/whatever-the-term-is stuntmen who kept stiffing cabbies and trying to barter with them) or the final straw–they put serious begging rules down after this ep–accosting random passengers in the air on your airplane flight, panhandling the other passengers with demands for money and vague threats about “bad karma” if they didn’t cough up cash (thanks, faux-hippies for being classy :rolleyes: ) Had I been on that plane and two filthy faux-hippies started panhandling down the aisle (camera crew or no), I’d have called for an air-marshall and had them shot. 
*To the point where every time you see them ask for “two tickets” to something, they’re actually required to ask for 4 tickets (two racers, one sound guy, one camera guy) and then refilm it asking for two.
Hadn’t Big Brother finished the “walk on foot” thing (it was just to the tavern or pub or whatever where the U-Turn was set up) and were heading for the honey task? I do remember seeing that at the time and hoping they were going to get a penalty for taking the cab but when they didn’t, I remembered that everyone else had taken a cab to the Gem whatever and the honey task.
Those were all features of having a FF on every leg. It introduced a real element of strategy to every leg, when a team near the back had to decide if they should risk using up their only FF on this leg and worry if someone else might get to it first. It was great for the audience.
The reason they changed it is that it required them to set up a separate FF task on every single leg, and half the time the FF didn’t get used. It was a waste of resources. I really dislike the FF now because there is absolutely no strategy – if you’re in first place it makes sense to go for the FF, because it may be your only chance - so it only provides an advantage to teams that are already in the front of the pack.
A way to help with that is to have a FF on every other leg–in other words, there’s always half as many FFs left as contestants so there’d be a real race for them towards the end of the race.
I was impresses with Rachel on the beekeeping task. More accurately she made a liar out of me. When I saw she was doing it I explained to my none race watching husband that he was in for a spectacle he hadn’t seen since my girl was 4 and then she goes and acts all brave.
I’ve been over Art and JJ for a couple of weeks but they sure are acting like the poster children for entitled power addicted law enforcement. Way to show your worst side to the world assholes. It’s worse somehow because they don’t even realize that their behavior is awful.