I neither love nor hate Rob & Amber, but I’m very sorry to see them go so early. The were great racers - one of the best TAR teams of all time. And they provided a lot of drama. The race is going to be a lot more boring without them.
I guess Ian never really got my goat. My dad was like that, so that’s normal for me.
Colin was always in meltdown mode. I can’t imagine Ian almost getting arrested because of his pigheadedness, like Colin.
I totally agree with you, Otto. I think Rob and Amber are very good racers and know why they are there - to win. They make strategies and play mind games with the other racers and it usually works, but I think more teams ought to take on those strategies instead of whining about how it isn’t faaaiiir. I hate Charla and Mirna so much, they are both petty whiny little bitches. Every time they come in last they blame other teams. “No one would help us! They cheated! They lied! They didn’t let us cut in line!” etc. SHUT. UP.
They don’t trust Rob and Amber, yet when they come up to the stop where they have to find they flag, their first instinct is not to try and look around themselves to see if they can find the marker, they immediately follow Rob and Amber down the wrong path. Then when Amber doesn’t tell them it’s wrong, they bitch because she lied to them. It is a pet peeve of mine when people follow other teams and then get mad because the other team was wrong or even purposefully leading them astray. That’s the price you pay for not doing the work yourselves, ok? Here’s the first rule of a race - The other teams want to win and they do not want you to win. Got that? Gah. That was my issue with Kentucky last season too, and when Kentucky and Schmirna teamed up briefly last time I laughed at the train wreck that invited. I didn’t mind so much when Rob and Amber got out, as they did make some pretty big mistakes that were their own fault here, but I hated to see Charla and Mirna live to see another day. Oh well…I am confident they won’t last much longer.
Oh, I totally get that the misspelling was the only thing screwed up with their sign. I’m just wondering if they’d have done any better even if they got it right the first try - it seemed like the first 3 navigators shot through their task. And at that point - it didn’t matter if you were 4th or last - you were on the same plane.
I wish TAR would put up an episode summary with time stamps - when each team reached each clue, started/finished each task, etc.
I am very sad to see Rob and Amber gone.
They may have been a bit cocky, but they were some of the finest racers to ever race. They definitely deserved to be in the “All-Star” show.
They royally screwed this task-up and it cost them the race.
But I would have thought if the producers would pay-off an airport and airline to have them bring the plane back to add 2 more passengers, they would have made this a non-elimination leg.
Bad Phil…
This is from memory, but I’ll do my best.
The first clue directed the teams to fly to Punta Arenas, Chile, and take a taxi to Lord Lonsdale’s Shipwreck. Money for the leg is just over $300. Standard trip to the airport, with two exceptions: Rob & Amber were first, booked tickets on the ealiest flight, then found a place they could go online to look up info on the shipwreck (smart move), Charla & Mirna used computers at the inn to search for flights, but knew they couldn’t get to the airport in time for the early flight.
There are two flights, about two hours apart. Teri & Ian get to the airport as the early flight is boarding. At first, they’re told they’re too late, but after a little persuasion, they get on board.
At the shipwreck is a Detour, “Navigate It” or “Sign It”. “Navigate It” is fairly simple. Teams are given a map and have to find their way to a park in the center of town. There, a sailor gives them a compass and they have to go south to find a particular building. In the building, they get the next clue. “Sign It” gives teams building supplies (hammer, nails, small planks, paint and brushes, a pole) and they must build a sign showing all the sites visited by Ferdinand Magellan on his trip around the world (there’s a map that shows his route), in order and spelled correctly.
Oswald & Danny, Eric & Danielle, Teri & Ian do “Navigate It” and breeze through. Uchenna builds his sign starting at Guam, after they’re told it’s wrong, Joyce figures out the problem. Rob has built his sign correctly (or so it appears) except for misspelling “Philippeans”. They never do figure out the problem. Dustin & Kandice are trying to align the arrows on their sign to point in the right direction, which doesn’t matter anyway. At Rob’s suggestion, both teams give up and do “Navigate It” together (as the teams from the late flight are about to arrive).
The next clue takes teams back to the airport. There is a signup sheet for charter flights to Ushuaia, Argentina; two flights, leaving the next morning, three hours apart. Oswald & Danny, Eric & Danielle, Teri & Ian on the earlier flight, others on the latter.
Joe & Bill do “Navigate It” with no problems. Charla & Mirna start to do “Sign It”, but after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, bail.
From Ushuaia airport, teams take a taxi to Playa Larga, which seems to be just a small, natural park. There’s a small red-and-yellow marker on a railing around the parking lot, but Teri & Ian don’t see it and head up the wrong path. The clue is to get back in the taxi and go to a small post office on Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. To get to the island, boats can hold two teams each and leave 20 minutes apart, teams take a number.
The Roadblock is to sort through 1600 letters in a mail bag, looking for one of two letters addressed to your team. Read the letter out loud to your teammate, and get the next clue. From there, walk around the island to the Pit Stop. Oswald & Danny are first and win a trip to Maui. They invite Phil to go with them. Phil doesn’t say no.
Meanwhile, back at Ushuaia airport, the second plane arrives and three teams get all the available cabs, leaving Charla & Mirna and Rob & Amber. Rob starts walking up the entrance road of the airport, hoping to intercept any taxis that come in. Charla uses a phone at the taxi stand to call for one. A taxi shows up, Rob & Amber hail it and get in. Charla protests, but it’s not clear if it’s the one she called for or not.
At Playa Larga, R & A head up the wrong path. When they realize their mistake, they turn around and run into Charla & Mirna on the path. Amber says “I got it” to make C & M continue the wild goose chase. After falling for the trick, Charla says she can tell when people are lying to her because she’s a lawyer.
At the boat dock, Amber is bragging to the other teams about her ruse. Charla arrives and confronts her about it; Amber lies again, claiming she had been talking to Rob at the time.
Uchenna & Joyce and Rob & Amber are on the next to last boat, giving them a 20-minute lead on Charla & Mirna. Rob does the Roadblock (Amber says he was probably anxious to after she did the first two) but may be getting a little flustered.
And that’s about where you came in. (Hmm, the recap turned out to be not quite so quick as I thought.)
Nutty Bunny, according to Wikipedia, Colin and Christie were going to be in this race, but had to withdraw when Christie became pregnant.
But be careful if you do check Wikipedia, it has some interesting potential spoilers.
I’m not sure where these “Finish Line” interviews take place prior to them being posted on the official website, but people at Television Without Pity have apparently seen Rob and Amber’s interview and they said that the Detour clue did not specifically say that spelling mattered, and that it did say the arrow direction was important, both of which are completely contradictory to what was narrated by Phil on the show. So when Rob said, “I hope it’s not something like spelling,” he really didn’t have a concrete reason to believe that was the case, though it obviously would still have been smart to double check yourself once it occurs to you that it might be a factor.
But really, that alone was not the reason they lost. Joyce and Uchenna finished way ahead of them and still didn’t get on the earlier charter. At that point, Rob and Amber were neck and neck with 4 other teams, and it came down to just losing steam off that plane, not getting to the taxis fast enough, and it was all down hill from there.
I called their elimination at dinner before the show even started, so I was not the least bit surprised, but I am very, very disappointed to have been right in my prediction. There’s not a single team left that I care one lick about (I don’t even know most of them, having missed most of their seasons). Oh well, I guess some time just got freed up on Sunday evenings for me.
Yup. Rob and Amber stole the cab. They were just wandering around looking for a cab, while Charla an Mirna called for one from the front of the hotel. When C&Ms cab got there, R&A grabbed it and lied by telling C&M that they had also called for a cab, which they had not.
When he said that, I got all swoony. Why can’t straight guys be like that, dammit.
Nice to see that Patrick and Susan are as classy as ever. If my 15 minutes of fame rolls around, I hope I don’t spend it bitching that someone else got half an hour.
Come root for Oswald and Danny. They’re the ginchiest.
It’s easy to be philosophical when your wife’s got a million dollars in the bank, and you’re basically just doing this for a lark.
I’m sorry to see Romber go, but I also like having Mirna & Schmirna around to point at and laugh. I was hoping for a NEL.
Romber were not at all ‘the greatest racers of all time’. You are just sucked in because they keep telling you that. Case in point: they lost. Twice. They did about the same number of smart things and the same number of stupid things as the others; they lucked out of the stupid things once or twice. They did mean things that others didn’t do. And between the two of them, they can’t spell the name of a country even with it spelled out for them. Loud, brash, in-your-face, yes. ‘Great’ - not so much.
It becomes a question of prep time and distance, something that is often lost in the editing.
Navigation had no preparation time, just finding the location and walking.
The signs required carrying the materials up the steps and doing it correctly. Done properly and quickly this task could have been very fast, but an error can be hard to spot and correct.
And afterward there’s always the factor in how far you are from the next task.
So it’s impossible to really say but there’s no reason given in the show that someone doing the signs with the right mix of muscle power and attention to detail couldn’t finish as fast as someone doing the navigation.
I don’t think anyone has said they were THE GREATEST of ALL TIME, but I have to agree with those who said they are up there in the top of the pack. And I think the posters here are smart enough to form their own opinons on this, and not just believe it because they were “suckered.”
Rob & Amber might not have won, but in their first season they came darn close, and in this season they had 3 first place legs to 1 last place leg…that’s a pretty good record, IMO. One thing I noticed about their racing during both seasons is that they tried to think about and plan what they could ahead of time, by getting on the internet to look up the landmarks they knew they would have to find. They also, generally speaking, get the tasks done pretty efficiently, and don’t let a lot of negative thinking & hysteria get in the way. It’s qualities like these that make for good racers. And a little sneakiness doesn’t hurt, either…it IS a competition, after all…no sense in shooting yourself in the foot. Although they made a few mistakes on this leg, I think they definitely had a good chance at winning the whole thing.
Nah, I watched the show. They were first, first, first and then lost on a needle in a haystack task. Those tasks are thrown in for a bit of randomness, and they got bit by the draw. Racing skills had nothing to do with their loss.
If you believe that they “lost” in their first race when a plane that had left the gate came back just for their competitors, well I have an uncle in Nigeria who is trying to move some money out of the country…
It’s fine to dislike them for whatever reason, but to dismiss their obvious racing skills is just sour grapes.
When Charla was trying her best to carry things up the stairs and Mirna started yelling at her, she picked up the long post and hoisted it onto her shoulder. I thought to myself, “Here’s the side of beef all over again.” The Soup has it’s next clip. It’s too bad Mirna was a complete bitch and made her drop it.
Oh good gravy! She’s carrying his CHILD?!? The horror! :eek:
Isn’t the proper choosing of the tasks, knowing who should perform them, and leaving when the task has you beat, part of “racing”?
I’m not going with the conspiracy theory either. People will do a lot of things for folks with camera crews*. Now I’m not saying they aren’t good racers, I’m saying that they shouldn’t get more credit than they deserve either.
Mostly though, I’m just sick of them. They have made a career of being themselves. For crying out loud, they even have a show on the reality network. I haven’t seen any of it, but it comes up occasionally on my channel guide, and it irritates me every time.
*As an aside: Once I got on a plane that had not yet been pulled from he gate, but had the doors closed, and the walkway drawn. They flight was a actually a bit early, and begging, and crocodile tears can go far.
It doesn’t sound like they were backing out and decided to bring the whole plane back to the gate and open everything back up for you.
That season, I was rooting for Uchenna and Joyce, and I still thought there was something awfully fishy about that. This season, there just are so few teams to like. I was kind of pulling for Rob and Amber, and thought that they were clearly better competitors than almost every other team. On this leg, they just had an awful time of it, and made some poor decisions. Yeah, they lost because of their own mistakes, but their overall record is one of being one of the best teams.
The absolute greatest moment of the whole season was the letter to Charla and Mirna, and the line to the effect of “You said that you speak five languages, and it turns out that you barely speak English.”
Nuh-uh. Robot Arm is, after doing that very long recap for me.
For racers, though, yeah, I’m rooting for D and O.