Due to the Masters Golf Championship.
Plan accordingly
Due to the Masters Golf Championship.
Plan accordingly
We are at 45 minutes and they are interviewing the winner of the tournament. This could easily be a one hour delay.
After watching tonight’s episode, it seems to me that just about everyone left Racing, with the shining exception of Bopper & Mark, have shown themselves fully capable of being petty, whiny, and more than willing to undercut both their own teammates as well as the competition at the drop of the hat, usually for reasons unknown to anyone watching at home.
In fairness, the Kindergarten Cops are actually good Racers, but for some reason their needless lies about who they are is kind of offputting to me, and up until now I thought the Border Patrol agents were OK guys until they got into a childish pissing party with the Big Brother team, whom I, like apparently everyone else on Earth, find loathsome.
At least for me it makes the show much less interesting overall, but I suppose for some viewers the backbiting and 7th Grade drama makes for quality entertainment.
(Also, if I had to guess, I would bet that these days cell phones are much more integral to a young, single Maasai looking for romance than jumping around in a circle is.)
The CBS feed on my local cable system (Boston) has been FUBAR all night. The screen was frozen during 60 Minutes, black during The Amazing Race, and now it’s showing The Good Wife while the audio is a promo for the Bruins.
I guess the guy who knows how to fix shit has today off.
No delay in Denver.
I hope the Big Brother chick suffers a debilitating brain aneurysm and dies. Man, I hate her. Her whiny voice goes through me like an icepick through the eyeball.
Pilot and Wife, I’m inclined to cut a little slack to. My understanding is that he just got back from being overseas and that’s a tough, tough transition. He’s not a bully, he just treats her like a subordinate and he has to (re)learn how not to. But she doesn’t seem abused or even particularly upset by it. She’s just (verbally) whacking him on the nose like a puppy.
Nary and other FBI chick are slightly annoying but have no real personality. If it hadn’t been an obvious non-elim, (it’s sad…once upon a time, the non-elims weren’t telegraphed like they have been the last season or two.). I DO like that they stopped to see the elephants.
Still liking Vanessa and Ralph and can’t really explain why. They’re normally the sort of team I hate.
And the less they show Bopper and Mark the more I like the team.
Why in the world would anyone in their right mind choose target practice with unfamiliar weapons over 1 (one!!!) minute of jumping in place? Dumb, dumb, roadblock, but dumber contestants for choosing the wrong one.
Actually, I’ve yet to meet one person who prefers the idiot 7th grade drama to the actual race.
And as a friend of mine put it “Gee thanks, Amazing Producers (and casting people). Instead of getting more of the beauty and splendor of Africa, we get to see 10 grown adults having a slap-fight in an airport. Keep classy guys. :rolleyes:”
What type of federal agents are those girls? Postal agents? CIA?
I should add that at first, I couldn’t stand Bopper & Mark, as I was 110% convinced that they were just a total Hee-Haw act, playing up the bumpkin angle for the teevee; I am now 110% convinced that they are exactly who they come across as, (albeit with a little bit of good natured mugging for the cameras on Boppers part) which makes me like them as much as any Amazing Race team I can recently recall.
I don’t know if you watch Survivor, but there is a correlation between “idiot 7th grade drama” and water cooler talk, which IMO, the TPTB want. Despicable contestants are still getting talked about in these threads. I think Jonathan and Victoria have been brought recently in TAR threads. No one is going bring Ernie and Cindy. (The team that won last season). Because they were not a hateful team. I don’t even remember them.
I had to look here to remember them, and what happened on the final task. Atlanta, flight simulation, Margaret Mitchell home, Turner Field.
But I sure do remember Jonathan verbally abusing Victoria.
When Phil first presented the Detour options, I though there would be some skill or performance criteria attached to the jumping task. My wife asked me which one I’d choose, and I opted for the Marksmanship, thinking that there was no way my knees would withstand sustained pogo-sticking. But…a minute? Jump up and down for a minute is an actual task? Something you’d ask a bored four-year-old to do? What’s next, “find the black car”? “Make Play-doh snakes”? “Spin around until you fall down”?
Taxi Assessment:
Stuck in the Desert and Officially Detained - or, Philiminated with extreme prejudice.
Misa & Maiya and Dave & Cherie and Elliot & Andrew and Kerri & Stacy and Joey & Danny - Already eliminated.
Flat Tire - or, not likely to get anywhere soon.
No one right now.
Stopping for Gas - or, not broken-down, exactly, but not a good sign.
Brendon & Rachel (holding steady) - So the drama wagon has come calling, and as expected it’s pulled up to Brendon & Rachel’s front stoop. Maybe that’s unfair, because maybe the drama isn’t Brendon & Rachel’s fault (or not all their fault), but I don’t really care, because I’m bored with it now. And, yeah, I’m sure Rachel’s all motivated now, and thrilled to death to hit the mat one spot ahead of Vanessa, but (a) a fourth-place finish when you’re super-duper motivated isn’t all that impressive, and (b) if you’re all motivated to win because someone else is bitchy, as opposed to being motivated by the pot of one million dollars at the end, then I’m not sure this is the right show for you.
Nary & Jamie (down from “Rapido!”) - A little bit of bad luck in this episode leaves Nary & Jamie thankful for the non-elim. I think the tent task might really have been harder for this team to do, as the toughest part of it seemed to be holding poels in the air, whcih probably required upper-body strength that men just have more of. Whatever the reason, Nary & Jamie slip to last place and have to do a Speed Bump task next leg. Although the Speed Bump isn’t a terrible penalty, it does seem to consume some time; Nary & Jamie probably need one of the other five teamsto make a significant mistake for them to survive. Although Nary & Jamie aren’t necessarily the worst team left, no one else is obvious dead weight, either.
"Rapido! Por Favor?" - or, making meaningless ineffectual comments from the back seat, but in no immediate danger.
Vanessa & Ralph (holding steady) - Vanessa seems to be wilting recently, and I’m not sure how much farther she can get. But it only “seems” that way to me; I’m honestly not sure, as Vanessa & Ralph did finish out the episode without any breakdown. I’m interested to see how they perform next week.
Mark & Bopper (holding steady) - A second place for Mark and Bopper is their best finish yet. They seem to be getting better as the Race goes on, and I can easily see them sneaking into the final three.
In the Passing Lane - or, ahead of the pack, but not quite comfortably.
Dave & Rachel (holding steady) - Although I appreciate that this team seems to sincerely let go of their sniping after the task is done, and I appreciate that Rachel doesn’t really take any shit from Dave, I still think it would be better if they quit scoring points off each other during the task and just listen to each other instead. When Dave senses a problem, he somehow thinks that being a dick is required as part of the solution, which makes Rachel go all “talk to the hand!” and then they’re farther from solving the problem instead of closer. In this episode, it didn’t seem to hurt them, since they arrived at the campsite first and everyone else had similar problems setting up the tent, but still it’s not a winning strategy.
Cruisin’ with Earl - or, drivin’ on the shoulder, takin’ shortcuts, and generally kickin’ butt.
Art & J.J. (holding steady) - Art & J.J.'s issue with navigation, which we saw way back in the second episode, crops up again when they go completely awry looking for the Simba Campsite. But they’re not the only team that makes this mistake, and they still get to the Campsite with plenty of time to finish in the top three once again. That’s seven straight top-three finishes, and even when Art & J.J. do make mistakes (which is rare, but noticeable), they’re still in contention for the top spot. Anything can happen in the final episode, but still this team looks hard to beat.
Oh, thank god I wasn’t the only one with that issue! I called our cable provider to see if it was anything on their end. They had a recording that “they were working on it”. Which probably means we have the same cable provider
I gave up trying to watch CBS after 9PM.
Sit on a block of ice for five minutes? Ha ha ha. What? They did that? Never mind.
Same here. I let my eyes kind of skip ovre the rest of the thread, because I don’t want to see spoilers. I’ll try to watch it tonight online.
At least in that case that was a speed bump as I recall which is more forgivable. Why everyone didn’t immediately switch I don’t know, unless the throwing task was actually easier than the editing let on.
I watch tv using an over the air broadcast, so I was hit by Boston being out, too. Found this on websites:
====
BOSTON (CBS) – Due to technical difficulties at our transmitter site in Needham, WBZ-TV and My-TV-38?s over the air signals are not working at this time.
This problem is affecting other stations as well, Paul Pabis, the Director of Broadcast Operations & Engineering, said in a statement Monday.
Crews have been working at the tower site since Sunday evening to fix the problem.
“We apologize for the inconvenience. We hope to have service restored soon,” Pabis said.
“We are still available on cable and some satellite TV providers.”
===
For anyone who cares, the other stations affected are 5 (back on the air after just an hour or so via an alternate broadcast site) and the 44 cluster.
Personally, I’m just relieved it’s not my TV dying in some inventive way.
Wow, a bad Easter Sunday for Boston TV engineers. I hope they didn’t leave some poor intern in charge for the weekend who ended up monumentally messing things up or making things worse before he called his boss in.
Anyhow, FWIW, CBS.com has last night’s episode for online viewing… I’m guessing the CBS station in Boston will re-air the episodes overnight at some point this coming week too.
When they were building their tents “to spend the night” I smelled a non-elimination leg coming a mile away. We still have the double leg in play this season, correct?
I have to assume the roadblock (“roadblock”?) clue read something like this:
Marksmanship
Each of you must throw a Masai hunting stick and hit a clay target once.
Courtship
Both of you must do the traditional Masai courtship dance, which consists of continuous leaping for a full sixty seconds. Bear in mind that we are at an altitude of 8000 feet, and if you pause the leaping even for a moment during that minute to catch your breath, you must restart the roadblock from the beginning.
That’s the only way I can rationalize anyone choosing “Courtship.” Of course the viewers in hindsight can see that jumping for sixty seconds is not a big deal, but the clue card must have sold it differently. If the clue was anything like the above, I certainly would have considered the “Marksmanship” challenge.
Their Achilles’ heel is being too headstrong and not catching their own mistakes quickly. But they also don’t make many mistakes they have to catch.
I’m kinda wondering about the stuff we don’t see. Art & J.J. always seem to one of the first teams out of the airport and into the taxis. I’d like to see how they manage that.
Odd, it was working for me by late Sunday night. Unless it’s out again today (I haven’t checked).
I liked the tent-building task; let the teams do some of the work to make the Race possible. Singing for their supper, as it were.
Detour, actually. I don’t remember a Roadblock this episode.
And I think you still do Courtship first. You can try one task on a Detour and switch to the other. They were at the same location; if Courtship does turn out to be hard, you’ve lost less than 60 seconds.
I’m curious about the detours. I think (could be totally wrong) that the detour reads something like:
Courtship - Do a traditional dance or
Marksmanship - Hit a clay target with a traditional weapon.
And then they rip open their choice and it goes into further detail. That would explain some of the questionable decisions.
Also, re: changing tasks, they might have had to bike back up the hill and down again, which would have required considerable time delay. As nobody did this, it’s only a guess.
I do dislike key tasks that require strength. It does favour teams with strength. My heart went out for those poker girls a few seasons back that were stymied by a dancing (?!) task that required a strongman hammer thing at the beginning or a golfing thing that required a limited number of shots. Both required strength to complete.
Strength challenges should be matched with non-strength ones to be fair.
I liked the leg, though. Showed lots of culture, had interesting challenges and some inter-team drama.
Look at the teams who took Marksmanship: the military veteran; the federal agents; the border patrol guys. Teams that know how to fire a weapon. I don’t think they looked much past the names of the options. If your job requires you to be well-trained to fire a weapon, you’ll choose “Marksmanship” over “Courtship” without much thought at all.