Didn’t Will say he already knew how to drive stick, but took lessons to prep for the race? And to be fair, it looked like he did know how to drive stick - he just was unfamiliar with that particular car and kept putting it into 3rd instead of 1st. Definite rookie mistake, but once he realized it he was driving fine.
BTW, I just googled “Stick shift driving school” and found a bunch of them.
I was completely caught off guard by the blondes overtaking. I was sure it was just a bunch of dramatic nonsense and they would finish in dead last. I really wish they did more “drive yourself” or “walk” legs. Taxi drama is just boring and unfair.
Yeah, they managed a comeback, but they’re not long for the race anyway - they’re just generally not good racers. They were in the second bunch this episode, but still managed to fall all the way back to last place. Their finishes so far have been 8, 8, 3, 8 (non-el), 7.
That was also weird. It seemed a little hard, but not that hard. I also (not having been there) wondered why no one went for paintings/people in red. It seems like it would be really distinctive and easy to pick up details.
I didn’t see any two of the Racers who picked the same person and artwork. It’s possible that after someone was successfully chosen and brought to the judge, they didn’t go back to the party. If that’s true, the task gets more difficult as there are fewer correct characters left.
First, I just discovered that Pluto TV has a The Amazing Race channel! (sub-channel, whatever. Somewhere in the 200s.) Yes, they apparently show nothing but TAR episodes, 24/7.
The episode I stumbled on was Season 5, with just four teams left. Unfortunately not the one where Colin’s ox was broken. I was amazed at the differences, and how much they changed the tone of the show. Like the scrambling at airports, complete with lying to the travel agents. And a team being questioned by a cop when they refused to pay a taxi driver. Nowadays it seems all the teams are on the same airplanes routinely, and their encounters with local authorities are smoothed out of happening or just erased. And the Fast Forward! When did they drop that one?
Second, has anyone ever kept track of how many different countries they have visited? This might be complicated. For example, in the episode I watched, the teams had to make their way from some Indian city to Aukland, NZ, and at least one pair took a route that involved a plane change in an entirely different county than the others. Would that be enough to count the country as ‘visited’, if it was just a matter of a team sitting in an airport there for a couple hours?
They dropped most of the airport book your own tickets mostly due to.(I have read) a) declining budget; and b) fewer flights than before. They don’t want to risk some team never being able to get tickets from Rome to Kampala or wherever.
But were any of the people wearing red one of the possible matches? My under standing was that only nine of the people were possible matches. There were plenty of people without a matching portrait. I also think that once a match was made that person left the party; otherwise Gary would have helped alliance-mate that was having massive problems.
I don’t recall any red clothing matches. I bet people tried to match red clothes but that was doomed to failure.
The blondes annoyed me last leg, but their positive attitude while they were certain they were last was pretty good.
When they showed the guys talking about how they were looking forward to self driving, I was on red alert for them. Rut roh!
Am I the only one who was glad to see … umm … Michele (the shorter Cajun Asian sister) go? She was obnoxiously annoying in the first two episodes, but then settled into just being mean. And annoying. Meanly annoying.
I really like most of the remaining teams, so eliminations are going to start being painful.
Totally with you. She even bragged about it at the beginning of the episode - she’d be driving, and her sister would be navigating, so her sister had better prepare to be yelled at for the entire drive.
I did not like a lot of these people during these two legs.
The boyfriends bounce between annoying and awful. I want them off my screen. And Hung’s weird “I fucked up making an unforced error, but you only get to be frustrated for 90 seconds” was offputting. And the whole alliance thing is just ick.
But I have wanted to go to Almaty for the past few years and so it was really cool to get a chance to see it!
The producers are definitely unhappy with how the Alliance of Five is working out, with them showing up probably every second where an Alliance member gripes about another team (to reassure watchers that this will come to an interesting end?) and the warnings to ‘Use your timers before they’re no good!’, plus Phil is getting in digs to various racers that they may be giving more than they get.
It’s definitely made the last few episodes feel rather flat, with them sharing info so much. At least that HAS to be coming to an end. Once the blondes finally run out of luck, the Alliance will have to start eating each other.
I think this was the only challenge this year that had a straight-forward answer at the end. I can’t imagine the producers were expecting that 5 of the 7 teams would be in such a strong alliance this far in.
My rudimentary understanding of The Amazing Race history indicates that this type of collaboration is hardly new or unusual. The only ‘new’ thing about it is the extent to which the audience is explicitly being shown teams helping other teams and pretty much bashing us over the head with talk of ‘the alliance.’
Also, Hung needs to cool it on saying Gary and DeAngelo don’t help them. DeAngelo explicitly told her she needed to look at the letters and unscramble the word. That is a BIG help. The fact that the letters flashed made it very difficult to know it was a word that needed to be unscrambled without prior knowledge to look for that. She only had to go down once, and based on how she reacted the first time, that was a decent favor to not have to do it twice plus time saved.
Just got caught up on these two legs last night. At the end of the Berlin leg, Phil said something to the Asian couple (Hung and Chee?) that he didn’t think they had ever had a team complete a task then hang around to help another team. But I am almost positive it happened during the season that the Beekman guys won. They were almost always on the brink of elimination, and I’m pretty sure I remember at least one task that another team finished but stuck around to help them. Those guys were such horrible racers and got so much help from other teams, it really pissed me off that they wound up winning the race. (It would be like the blondes winning this race…)
There were definitely times when a team would finish a task, then run back to their partners/allies still doing the task and give them a clue/the answer. But that was always very quick - you’d lose 30 seconds tops doing that. Whereas Hung had to wait for DeAngelo to go back up the stairs, get hooked back into the harness & rappel down again before she could give him the answer. So 15 minutes maybe? That’s a long time to wait for an ally when you could be cementing first place, or building a cushion to avoid elimination if the next task is difficult.