Amazing Race 5/10 - "This is how you lose a million viewers."

Cafe Society
21

One thing, real quick during the first commercial break.

I hate all these teams. After this segment, I’m convinced that tammi & vic were given a “Good guy” edit…but either way? I’m rooting for the cheerleaders.

Yeah, they’re incompetent racist bitches, but at least that’ll satisfy the hysteria Amazing Producers have to have an all-female team win.

Once they get that, perhaps they’ll quick picking retards from the shallow end of the gene pool and we’ll see competent racers again who aren’t picked for the sole criteria of being “easy for the chicks to beat”.
Second commercial break-I still hate all these teams and Margie & Luke are getting the “good guy” edit. And I hate them.

And has there ever been a more lame set of season finale tasks?

Put salt on a pig.
Carry pig 200 feet.
Search ~33 bouys in a 100 square foot area.
Put pictures on surfboards in order.

Colin/Christie, Rob/Amber, the Guidos…hell, Mirna and Schmirna would have been able to do these tasks in their sleep*. I hate the dumbing down of the tasks.

*Well maybe not the pig one with Schmirna–remember when she had to carry the side of beef and was worried she was going to get mad cow disease? Two words: Swine flu.

The least of the uber-lame 'tards won, so that’s good, I guess.

Frankly the deaf kid and the bimbos should both have been eliminated for helping each other. It’s a fucking RACE. Yeah, it gave 'em a closer race to the finish-line, but who cares? That it was allowed shows how sucktastic this season was.

And mom, I take some serious comfort in the fact that if you hadn’t coddled your fucking wimp of a mama’s boy, he would have cowboy’d up and just kept trying the last one or two rather than throwing a tantrum. Luke, you did nothing for the deaf community because your defining characteristic isn’t that you’re deaf, it’s that you’re a fucking whining pussy.

Phil said “Verrrrry tough competition” and he’s just wrong. All these teams were pathetic.

I want my real Amazing Race back–the one with hard tasks, the one with challenges that I couldn’t do in my sleep, the one with fire and competition, not marshmallows and huggles for the lusers.

Grrr…

And because the bimbos didn’t win, next season will have another cast of lame, brain-damaged losers so that an all-female team can compete. No 'two young guys" team, 'cause they apparently can’t cast women who can compete who are also hawt. And the tasks’ll be similarly dumbed down, 'cause the bimbos they cast can’t do the tough stuff. I wish the producers realize that if there’s no “2 young guys” team, any all-female team victory is tainted.

I’m seriously wondering if my beloved Amazing Race has jumped the shark.

22

There’s a Detour name in here somewhere: Jump the Shark, or …

23

If they’re serious about getting a team of two women, here’s how I think they should go about it. They need to quit looking for a team of cheerleaders/flight attendants/divorces and go up about 10 years in age. Basically, they need a team who are 8 or 9s when it comes to brains, not looks, and have some llife and travel experience. I think a team in their late 20s or early 30s would be ideal, because you’ve got life experience, but without the creakiness that tends to set in as you get older. The team needs to be both smart and fit.

I don’t like watching bitchy women who think they’re beautiful and who think they should succeed because they’re beautiful. Among other things, it conjures up to many bad memories from high school. A team with brains and character could be tough to beat, although they wouldn’t look as good in bikinis or stripped down to their skivvies.

24

It would be cool by me if next season’s cast were all hot females. With many more bikini tasks, please!

As for Victor and Tammy, they really were the best racers this season, statistically. They had a large number of first place finishes. Victor nailed the intelligence task, giving them the lead for the win.

Although, if he had more of an engineering bent, he would’ve realized he could easily use mechanical advantage to ease Tammy’s burden by holding his pole closest to the pig and telling Tammy to hold it as far away on the end of the pole as possible. And it seemed like putting it on the shoulders was a smart tactic… that’s what Margie and Luke did (and the locals in the example video).

25

I can live with the result. The win was decided at the final task, which is how it should be; no flight delays or taxi drama that was bad enough to change the outcome.

I wonder what happened to Luke, though. He was kicking ass at the Roadblock. Didn’t he have 9 surfboards right before Victor even started? The two most recent legs should have been the easiest to remember. Maybe the pressure once Victor arrived got inside his head, even with a big lead.

Tammy said she couldn’t lift it up to her shoulders. I think the smart move would have been for Victor to lift one end onto her shoulders, then lift and carry the other end himself.

Screw the Pooch?

26

I have often wondered…is there any “proof” that tasks / destinations / timings are altered part-way through the race to ensure bunching? Of all the legs I have seen, I have never seen one team get a truely significant lead that isn’t quickjly wiped out by a bunch point - many of which are quite obviously (or seem) deliberate.

Does anyone actually try to do the tasks before the teams do them to see how long it takes (particularly the needle in a haystack type)

Also, are there any indications of cheating by the producers? Maybe of the sort of camera team providing clues, or something similiar?

27

The legs are all meticulously planned. And if they tried to cheat, they’d get in some real trouble…TAR is a game show, and falls under the “Quiz Show” laws. If they tried to help any particular team to the detriment of the others, they’d end up with some whopping fines.

They do deliberately put in bunching points. The first (and second, I think) seasons didn’t have them (other than flight times) and they found that the tension and suspense couldn’t survive having a team more than 24 hours behind the others. It can still happen, very rarely, but when it does it’s more that a team sucks so much that they couldn’t keep up despite the deliberate brakes on separation.

28

I think if a team is wandering aimlessly that they could get an implicit clue from the cameras. The cameras often zoom to the clue box or its location when it is in sight.

Of course that could be just editing tricks, but IIRC from last season, Ken and couldn’t find a clue box in Moscow. The cameras got an angle on them with the clue box about 50 ft behind them.

Ken = (former NFL football player and adulterer) and his wife Tina (bleached blonde control freak).

29

Hump the Pig!

30

I’m waiting for the day when a team gets more than 24 hours IN FRONT of all the others. That would be hilarously funny to my warped sense of humour.

What do you think would happen in that situation?

I would expect that they do have some very tight rules and regulations to adhere to, but who would “audit” them and how would they go about it? I am thinking here of clues of the sort of the camera crew saying to the team - “why don’t you check that blue house over there” or something similiar. Or maybe on the “needle in a haystack” challenges removing part of the haystack (when you can’t tell the difference on camera)

31

With the exception of one cheat where they (allegedly) paid off the second team–Rob-n-Ambuh were on a plane which was taxiing to the runway. Had the plane taken off, they would have been like 12 hours ahead on the final leg.

A second team showed up after the gate had been retracted, after the plane had left the tarmac and was heading towards the runway and the, the plane “Just happened” to turn around and come back to pick up the second team. :rolleyes:

That (IIRC) was the same leg where the slower team didn’t bother to pay the taxi driver on the last leg and won the race anyway.

I wouldn’t call shenanigans on any other weirdness in the race*, but that particular race? Clear, obvious bullshit.

*Other than selecting obviously incompetent and dumb racers to try to make sure a specific demographic team won. See this season which started with…what? 4 all female teams (sisters/cheerleaders/stewardesses/another one?)

32

A couple of the early seasons had the reverse-two teams out ahead and the third team a continent or two behind.

Frankly I miss those days. It was hilarious watching Phil check in the winner and the runners up as the camera switched to the Yukon and the third team was pushing a dogsled through a howling blizzard.

Or the one where the two dumb frat boys ended up in like the south pacific when the other two teams were being checked in in like Chicago.

33

My favourite is still season 1, when the two life partners got eliminated after winning the fast forward…and deciding to go for coffee and sightseeing instead of just rushing to the pit-stop and checking in.

This is why I would love to see a full minute by minute breakdown of each leg…who arrived where when, and how long it took them. (posted the day after the leg airs maybe?)

34

They would have been eliminated, except for Momily incurring a 24 hour penalty from skipping a task. They were the team that ended up a full day behind on the last leg.

35

Really? A taxi driver that doesnt know where to go and a taxi manager that is offended that she should be expected to know how to read a map?

36

I just really don’t like Victor. It’s been something every leg (last week it was his inability to let Tammy relay the restaurant orders. I wanted to scream “shut the fuck up. we know. you speak Chinese. we get it. let your sister talk, damnit.”) This week, it was his “encouragement” while they were carrying the pig.

He’s awful. But then, so was everyone else. They’ve got to get more endearing teams in there. I’d like to root for someone to make it to the end.

37

Jaime & Cara left the pig in third place and got to the surfboards in third place. And they didn’t seem to have lost very much time to Tammy & Victor (who were behind a slow car on the road). I don’t think the taxi drama was enough to affect the results. It looked like Victor aced the Roadblock anyway, so there wasn’t much chance to make up any ground.

Besides which, I’m not sure the problem finding the surfboards isn’t partially J & C’s fault. Margie & Luke asked their driver to go to the Hana Highway, and he said he knew where that was (and I saw one road sign pointing to it). I never heard Jaime or Cara give those directions to their driver. (If I were racing for a million dollars, I’d give the cabbie all the help I could, but maybe they just didn’t tell him the right landmarks.)

38

It seemed to me like they went to Hana Highway, they just weren’t sure which direction to go on it.

I love when racers tell their taxi driver that the ride is worth a million bucks. I’m sure the driver is thinking “Well it’s only worth $20 to me.”

39

Victor and Tammy, yuck. If I had to hear one more time about the trips they took overseas or their Mercedes, I would have hurled. The race was in China a long time, much too much of an advantage for them, language-wise. I hope they give some money to charity because it sure doesn’t seem like they each need another half million to "survive"on (Oh wait, surviving is a whole 'nother show). I thought he was incredibly pompous and she was the epitome of a woman who has been treated like a princess all her life. Sigh.

40

I couldn’t stand the notion of Jamie winning, so either of the other two would have been fine.

I have to say, though, that I’m glad Luke had such a problem getting those last two surfboards, because that meant everytime he put a new one in place, the camera would do a quickpan over to the blonde hottie in the bikini. Over. and Over. and Over. :smiley: