Not sure if anyone noticed but the Amazing Race finally kicked off last Wednesday. The teams all seem pretty interesting, all there’s a pair of sisters that I feel will get on my nerves.
According to Phil, this was the most exhausting season they’ve made because of how fast-paced it was.
Moved from P&E to Cafe.
We watched the first episode and like the teams so far. No one really stands out as over the top annoying, though the sisters to which you refer are dancing close to the line. I didn’t quite understand what they were talking about, so that might have helped.
I noticed a lot of sibling teams this season.
I liked that the leg had tasks that were random enough and/or difficult enough to allow significant position changes at each one. I find FIFO tasks incredibly boring unless the location is exceedingly spectacular to justify a non-meaningful task.
We have been watching old seasons of The Amazing Race to ‘travel’ during these no-travel times. Having a new race right now is pretty cool, except since this is the One Million Miles benchmark, they showed clips from past shows that are spoilers to us (not that I have a right to complain, these are many years old spoilers).
Our absolute favorite thing is when they visit a place we have been, so I’m hoping they go somewhere we know this season.
Dang! I thought it started this week. Hopefully the DVR remembered and recorded it. I’ll have to go look for it.
I had no idea this show was still on. I stopped watching it a few years ago when its starting times became erratic enough during football season that one could never guess when it would be on.
I’ve always enjoyed the show (well, there was that season with families that sucked) and I’m glad to see it back. I was thinking the other day, wasn’t there someone here who used to do very entertaining posts for each episode with commentary and rankings?
It’s too early to say who I like or don’t. Though the sisters mentioned above do ping my “annoying” radar.
zut was the Doper who used to write up the Taxi Assessments after each episode, but it’s been a few years since they participated in a TAR thread. Whoever started the thread for the last race tried to do one to start with, and then they never came back to their own thread!
I watched on the DVR last night. So far there is no really obnoxious team to root against, but it’s still early.
I was happy they sprang for a song I know!
I would still be there trying to.do that. I have very little rhythm.
When the last team got through, the judge had an expression like “Yeah, that’s as good as it’s gonna get.”
Because they put the season name into the title, my DVR never picks up new seasons automatically. (They should know this happens - don’t know why they keep doing it). I’ll try to catch it this week.
I think you can watch the first episode on the CBS website for free.
Today’s was a good episode of TAR. There was lovely scenery. Racers’ decisions mattered. There were ways to get ahead or fall behind.
I only hope the rest of the season is like that.
Strange, I thought it was a weak ep. First, even though they called it a ‘continuing’ episode, they wiped out all the time differentials by putting them all on the same airplane. Then the choice between finding an emerald or the gold thingie apparently had no real effect on what happened. like neither option took more or less time than the other.
The five teams that found the hourglasses and signed up for the first ‘release’ ended up in positions 1,2, 3, and 4 at the pit stop, with just one team from the second half moving up to 5th. And none of the hourglasses were used anyway.
I actually always track the order teams reach various points during an episode to watch for shuffling like this. The points I chose were 1) getting the clue after doing the clown stunts 2) getting the clue after decorating the truck, and 3) reaching the pit stop. Here’s the order of finish at each point for each team:
[1-2-2]
[5-4-4]
[7-9-9]
[9-8-8]
[2-1-1]
[10-10-10]
[8-7-7]
[6-5-5]
[3-3-3]
[4-6-6]
Not exactly a whole lot of successful scrambling or leapfrogging going on there.
I’m assuming the yield is going to keep coming back this season, so they’re hanging on to their hourglasses to use later.
I’m kinda sad the sprinters are gone. When they were racing the goats you could see how fast they ran, the one almost beat the goat.
I wish the tight rope was a bit more challenging, the umbrella was attached to a wire so there was little chance of them falling. It would have been much more interesting to make them actually walk it and maybe fall.
The truck challenge was a good one, and good on the producers to ‘hide’ the horn fact in the clue. Funny how some of the teams heard the horn going off and couldn’t’ figure out they might have to do something with it.
I’m glad the member of the couple who refused to read the clue again admitted it was a remarkably stupid thing to do.
First rule of TAR: Read the clue. Then read it again out loud. Then have your partner read it. Then have your partner read it again out loud. Then start the task. If you get stuck for more than 30 seconds, go back to step 1. The time you take to actually understand the clue will certainly be smaller than the time you lose because you missed part of the clue.
On previously. tv people were speculating that the people who didn’t realize about the horn thought it meant the judge played it to indicate that they were correct.
I really don’t understand why people don’t obsessively read the clue over and over.
Watching the show, it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that the horn part was in the clue. Phil said something about people not realizing they needed to attach the horn, and I was thinking that was dumb and stupid of the show because the horn was already attached to the car so why would they expect the racers to futz with it.
Then later they showed the clue, and I felt much better about the race set up.
I can only assume that in the panic of the race, people don’t process information very well. They had to have read the clue at least once, right? Or were people just arriving to the task and doing a monkey-see monkey-do sort of thing?
I seem to remember the football players knowing they needed to hook up their horn. I think they just get so focused on the “match up the truck” part they blow past everything else. I can forgive them missing it at first, and maybe even after the first check. After you fail a task twice and you don’t know why, you better check your damn clue.
Yeah when the one guy wanted to go find the clue and read it again, and the other one shrieks “We don’t have time for that!” I was kind of hoping that was some foreshadowing of their coming in last.
(It’s like the old workplace adage “if you don’t have time to do it right, how are you going to have time to do it over?”)