Something that occurred to me last night after the episode was done and gone…Joe using the compass on his watch. That’s a really bad idea in several ways…I’ve found that unless it’s a very high-end watch, the compass in one of those is pretty low-quality and not very accurate. Also, there’s nothing in the race rules that requires production to make all “compasses” used in the race accurate. The directions on that signpost compass could very well have been completely arbitrary and have no relation whatsoever to the actual real-world cardinal directions, as long as the buriers followed the signpost compass instead of a real one in placing the bags (as the clue specifically told the teams to do!).
In addition, Jayjay, the starting point for the count has to be the wooden “compass” thing. It looked like Joe just randomly picked a spot and said “110 paces northeast from here”
The cops outsmarted themselves…again. Really dudes…it’s not a grid search. The bit about just drawing out “Ok, 110 paces northeast is there, then 20 paces west is there, then 57 paces south is here…it’ll be in that area” is a good one. Then you go count it out. You don’t just search acres of open field.
The lesbians are getting on my last nerve. Privileged, self-centered, whiney bitches who need a kick in the ass. Or two. The only other time I can think of that we’ve ever seen a team seriously grilling another about their transportation route was Jonathon & Victoria grilling Gus & Hera. Nice company, jerks.
Ok–I felt a little bad for the beauty queen and her scruffy boyfriend. having food poisoning in a foreign country is a creepy ass feeling and to their credit, they ran a solid race. And didn’t they beat the obnoxious gay brother and the boring straight brother? On the other hand, it’s been 16 seasons. What kind of idiot doesn’t learn how to drive a stick before coming on?
I’m sorry the lawyers are out–the last three legs have been almost exclusively physical tasks. IIRC they did well on the one physical task: the housepainting one. I would have liked to see a bit more balance in the tasks.
In the same vein, what is with these tasks? There’s little interaction with the locals, the tasks are all cheeseball faux-cultural stuff (play polo on wooden horses? Dress up in a bird suit and jump off a pier? C’mon.) Remember the olden days when there was actual cultural stuff attached to the show? This sucks, and it really does feel like a “jump the shark” season. (Especially combined with last season’s "Attempted murder (or spouse abuse–your pick)? We won’t interfere 'cause it’s good TV! 
" moment.
I’m really disappointed by stunt-casting, theme songs (I’m already as sick of the faux-Magnificent Seven theme for the cowboys as I was with Sweet Georgia Brown for the Globetrotters) and stupid-ass tasks the last few seasons.
Most hilarious joke possibility out of a stupid remark in this episode:
Lesbians playing polo, both a little cranky after a hissy-fit; one on the ground says to the one on the horse with the mallet aiming at the ball, “Just pretend it’s my head.”
What, she wanted her to jump off the horse and sit on the ball?
It was even better than that. He said something like “we don’t need to count steps, I’ve got a compass.” Dude, you may be going in the right direction, but that doesn’t tell you squat about how far you have to go.
I kinda wish we’d seen the lawyermoms on that task. They were so far behind, it got edited down to “let’s switch tasks” - “hi, Phil”. I’m curious if it was as easy as they made it look; all the other teams that tried it seemed to be having a lot of trouble.
I liked what the cops did in drawing out a map beforehand, but they still should have walked the path to confirm they were in the right place. (I’m not convinced they applied the proper triginometric functions, for one thing.) The other thing no one thought of is that once you’ve pulled up the wrong bag, draw a little map with those coordinates to figure out where you are, then compare it to your own map to figure out where you should be.
application of high school geometry (good old pythagaros) could have saved a whole lot of time. One pace NE = 0.707 paces in a North and East direction. then net out the paces in the opposite direction.
110 paces NE = ~78 paces North and 78 Paces east
+20 Paces W = ~78 Paces North and 58 paces east
+57 Paces S = ~21 paces North and 58 paces east
Does anyone else suspect they rewrote the first clue specifically to help out Brent and Caite, and let them spend as much time in the hospital as necessary? I don’t remember ever seeing a clue that said “You must take this particular bus, based on what place you were in on the last leg, so there’s no point whatsoever in racing for the next 8 hours.” Normally we’d expect everyone to have to go to the bus station, and either pick a number there indicating their bus or have a scramble to find the best bus once the place opened. I think they told B&C ahead of time that they’d be on the same bus as 5 other teams, so they should spend as much time recovering as possible.
It wasn’t based on the last leg, it was based on arrival time. We saw the exact same thing in the first episode, where only the first three teams to arrive got to go on the first plane. (Which then broke down so everyone ended up on the second plane anyway.)
I personally love this new twist, where only the top teams get rewarded with the earlier departure.
I got some mixed emotions. If you are the 4th team but only a minute behind team #3 but ahead of team #5, you fall way behind team #3 while letting team #5 catchup to you.
When the cowboys won their prize (a trip for two to Patagonia), one of them said indicated that they were already here. Do you think they knew that prior to the race or only learned it while they were in the region?
I’ll rewatch it, but I thought the clue and the racers said that teams 1-3 from the previous leg got on the first bus, regardless of when they get to the station, and all other teams go on the second bus. That’s why the cowboys felt comfortable going to bars to get info on their destination - they knew there was no rush to get to the bus station.
Not sure if they knew what Patagonia was, but I am in favor of making this sort of trip the prize for winning a leg. Get a trip to wherever you won the leg. That way you can come back and see everything that went flying by. The cost might add up and there might be some legs that even winners might want to forget or travel back to, but still better than jet skis or a dune buggy.
Since the object was to beat the gnome, the dealer would have to interpret the gnome’s request for additional cards. Kind of like how they decide whether or not Punxatawney Phil has seen his shadow.
This applies also to the return of the fucking Intersection (worst damned idea ever). The Blondes in…like s11 (miss Americas) got screwed twice because of it. Not only did they bleed like 4 hours because they were stuck waiting for the second batch of teams to arrive, they got stuck with incompetent loser teams both times to team up with.
The return of the Intersection is another reason this season is jumping the shark. Intersections suck.
Why not just play blackjack with the Gnome as the house? At least there’s an element of skill there.
Sitting on a wooden horse and swinging a polo mallet doesn’t involve very many cowboy skills. Precisely zero, I think.
Full episode on CBS website is here.
All they say is “first three teams only” without specifying if it’s the first three to start or to arrive. Then again, the fourth team started an hour and a half after the third so it’s mostly moot, seeing as how it’s just a matter of walking to the bus station in the town they started in.
“The steps are only for people who don’t have a compass!” What an effing idiot.
While still at the beginning mat, the cowboys say they’re on the 8:30 bus, and they later say they “don’t have to run like scalded dogs” - I interpret that as them thinking the clue has guaranteed them a spot on that bus. Racers don’t get told the arrival/departure orders and times of other racers, do they? They had no way of knowing if the 4th place team was 5 minutes or 5 hours behind them.
The second team does read the clue out loud as “tour bus, leaves at 8:30 AM, first 3 teams only.” But the moms who leave 4th say “we have the 8:50 bus” and don’t make any attempt to become one of the first 3 teams to get on the 8:30 bus.
I do think it’s likely that the producers wanted to give Brent & Caite as much time as possible to recover (since having a team leave due to the trots wouldn’t be good TV), but thought it unfair to make all the other teams wait all night in the bus station just to find out there was no reason to rush there, so they assigned buses to teams right at the beginning so they could have time to do whatever they wanted.
They did go slightly faster given that they knew exactly how to help each other on something horse-sized, and were more comfortable balancing and moving around that distance from the ground. But they generally seem to be faring quite well despite any advantage they had from familiarity. Their friendliness and willingness to talk to the locals for help makes them good travelers/racers too.
I didn’t hear if the search clue gave instructions on step size, but with the numbers given (at least one had 199 steps) that’s a lot of potential for error. They had some help since the bags weren’t fairly easy to spot, and if you did a circular search from your finish you’d probably find it in reasonable time as long as you didn’t screw up. It appeared that the lawyer moms were among the few to be consistent in their steps, and that may have helped them (but it’s hard to know what cut they got).
Note on edit: The cable TV info for this show had the title as “Run like Scaled Dogs”; a bit disturbing no matter which way you interpret it.
I’m not ready to say the season is jumping the shark – I’m enjoying it so far – but I gotta agree with you about the Intersection. Worst game element ever.
I wish they would bring back multiple FFs, like in the earliest seasons. So there was strategy involved in whether to take one.
As soon as Phil said Patagonia, one of the cowboys said, “Great, we get to come back down here, eh?”
They are NOT unintelligent hicks, and I figured they would be the team to beat from the very start. (that said, I think its assinine that they insist on wearing jeans, boots and hats the whole time, as it seems like there would be other clothing that would allow them more freedom of movement, but then WTF do I know)
PS—howye—I am not saying that you think the cowboys are hicks, that was a general statement…