I disagree. right now, I think many of the teams realize the cowboys are the team to beat. If a team is reasonably sure that they are ahead of the cowboys and they have an opportunity to eliminate them, then it makes sense to U-turn them. If they are eliminated, then the chances for your team to win the million dollars.
Deaf-kid and his Mom thought Kris and Amanda were the team to beat for the million dollars and “U-turned” them.
I think the U-turn is effective to get rid of your competition for the million dollars, and not to eliminate a weak team in that particular leg of the race.
Going by Zut’s taxi assessment, if I were Steve and Allie, I’d be wanting Jet and Cord out of the race.
They flew to Frankfurt and then took the train to Hamburg, right? I’ve been there. There’s a small train station right at the airport. I don’t know if you can go directly from there to Hamburg, or if you have to go to the main station and transfer.
However, there were some shots in this episode that didn’t look like either station. I thought I saw the teams in a station with a long, barrel-vaulted, glass roof. Looked to me like the new central station in Berlin.
I wonder if that was an editing mix-up. Maybe the teams will be off to Berlin next week.
I thought that was the Hamburg station, though I haven’t been there in several years. At least it looked close to it.
I expect the only reason we only heard one song from the club is that the producers had no desire to blow the show’s budget on a single Beatles song.
There seemed to be quite some luck this week - the Detectives get on the early train, and if they hadn’t the Cowboys would have ended up at the back. Then the competitions really worked out well for them, and poorly for the Cowboys (despite their apparent strong showing on the soccer field). Actually those two teams seem to have the best attitude so far, though the Detectives lack in ability compared to most of the rest.
What was the comment that Joe made that has people kind of skeptical about him? I missed some parts of the show trying to get my kids to settle down. My husband could not get beyond the fact that one of the cowboys said he had never had beer. I guess that seemed very un-cowboy-like to him.
As a fan of the original Eco-Challenge, I can assure you that The Amazing Race involves approximately zero actual racing.
I makes no sense to U-Turn a last place team because they’re already in last. It only makes sense to use it to knock down a team in the front.
Of course that won’t matter either, since so many legs start with a complete bunching on mass transit… And also, when was the last time you saw the last two teams rushing toward the mat with each other in sight? Last place is almost always way far out and usually it’s in large part because of some random thing outside their control. (eg: Jeff and Jordan going the wrong way twice in one leg.) So its unlikely you’ll knock any given team out with a U-Turn since the randomly determined last place for the leg is usually further out of second-to-last than it takes to do the second road block.
All this just dovetails into the “no actual racing” thing I mentioned above. I never saw the early seasons, but from everything I’ve heard I really wish they’d go back to showing the “behind the scenes” socializing among teams between legs. That sounds far more interesting to me than booking plane tickets.
While I agree with your ranking and assessment of team Big Brother, holding your nose is a valid strategy when trying to eat something you find distasteful. Taste is largely comprised of smell, so holding your nose makes it much easier to eat gross stuff. Unless I got whooshed, in which case never mind.
I did a little online research after my post. There are two different rail stations/platforms at Frankfurt Airport. There’s a place to catch the subway/commuter rail (which must have been where I was), and then a separate set of tracks for the long-distance/high-speed lines.
The long-distance station looks like this. They really know how to build train stations there.
I don’t suppose we will get an actual answer to this, but I can’t help but wonder how much the producers change up the tasks to guarantee bunching. I would love love love to see one team get like 12 hours in front, or the lead team to make one of the “bunch points” like 5 minutes before closing so have a whole night’s lead on the other teams - if only to see how the producers would pull them back.
The goal of each leg of the race (except the final one) is simply: don’t come in last place. The only effective way to use a U-Turn is to ensure the other team does come in last (and, of course, your team does not). Knocking down a team in front is rarely effective, because it’s hard to knock them all the way to the rear (plus you can’t U-Turn someone ahead of you).
The very best use of a U-Turn is when you’re in second-to-last place and the last-place team is breathing down your neck. U-Turn the last place team and you’ve got some breathing room, and a better chance of not landing last place on the Mat (which is, after all, the goal). And even if you can’t actually see the last-place team, you don’t know if they’re hours behind (in which case the U-Turn is probably irrelevant) or mere minutes (in which case they could come roaring back to pass you).
Heh. I was thinking more along the lines of “if you’ve gotta hold your nose in order to choke down a few bites of sauerkraut in a speed-eating task, then you’re probably not helping very much.”
I have the impression that the producers alter the start times of each leg (rather than hours of operation) to make sure teams stay bunched at the appropriate times. The clue here is that Phil will sometimes say, “Team X, who arrived at 11:57am, will depart at 11:57pm,” and he will sometimes say, "Team X will depart at 11:57pm. "
That doesn’t make sense to me: In TAR, the object is (except in the last leg) to insure that you don’t come in last.
Since the producers will make sure there’s a bunch point fairly early on most legs. it doesn’t matter how far ahead you get in any given leg, you’ll all be within 20/30 minutes of each other in the first 10 broadcast minutes of the next leg.
So the only strategy is to use it to knock someone out of the race. I suppose if there’s two teams towards the back and one’s strong (but had a bad leg) and one’s weak, you might want to use it on the stronger team even if they’re not the absolute last team.
But the only thing a U-Term is good for is to knock someone out of the race.
I don’t think that makes sense at all, actually, unless you’re in the bottom of the pack yourself and thus using the U-turn to help ensure your survival. If you’re in the front of the pack, you should use it on a strong team near the back that can probably/possibly be wiped out by it, thus eliminating them from future competition. Wiping out the team that was going to lose anyway makes the U-turn moot.
In an actual race, yes, I agree with the strategic assessment with those who have been disagreeing with me.
TAR is not a race. It is extremely rare that the last two teams are anywhere near each other coming to the mat. In each leg, one team is (mostly randomly) going to fall way behind everyone else. Think of this season. In the first episode, last place didn’t even finish. The leg where grandma & granddaughter got eliminated they were days behind second to last.
So in any given leg, odds are that one team will fall way behind everyone else. Let’s call them the “natural last” team. For any given leg, who will be the natural last team is mostly (though not completely) random. Even great racing teams can be natural last, as evidenced by Rob & Amber.
The natural last team will usually finish so far behind that even if every other team got U-Turned, they’d still finish last.
So, you can’t predict who will be natural last, and you usually can’t U-Turn anyone to finish behind them. Thus, the U-Turn is mostly unhelpful for knocking people out of the race. All it can do is knock somebody back to a later bunching group.
That’s why it makes sense to U-Turn the strongest team you aren’t cooperating with that is currently behind you.
I just watched the episode, and it looked like Jordan not only didn’t like the sauerkraut, but she thought the polka band was too loud. She seemed at one point to be trying to plug her ears and pinch her nose simultaneously.
I was very disappointed that Jeff also didn’t seem to be trying very hard to eat the kraut. I don’t know anyone his size that would have any trouble with that task, even without any help from a partner. I really want to root for Team Big Brother, but they just don’t seem to have what it takes.
While the models are not really physically up to the race, you have to give them some points for perseverance. Brent didn’t get much beer-drinking help from Caite, but it showed spirit to vomit and then go back to drinking. Imagine if either of the lesbians had thrown up–neither one would have been able to continue. The models are also really supportive of each other.
I agree about the models, though I wasn’t overly impressed by the vomiting and then drinking more. That’s known as “rallying” and is a time-honored tradition among males.
To be fair to them, I don’t think they realized the song was going to be so short. When they arrived, Jeff said something about thinking the song was going to be an hour long.
That’s funny.