After completing just three legs in February of 2020, TAR obviously had to shut down production due to COVID. But it looks like they’ve managed to film an abbreviated season between the last global pandemic and the current one! Yay! Premiers January 5, 2022.
That’s excellent. After a disappointing Survivor Season, I’m looking forward to some fun “Vaccination or Tax Evasion” type challenges.
I have not watched an Amazing Race since about 2005 or so. I have a really simple question.
Do they still “tie them all up” by forcing them into situations where businesses and places are not open and then the leading teams sit there and wait.
The forced “catching everyone up” of the show was a major turn-off for me.
Bad news – according to the Variety article, for this season they had to charter a plane so every new country will begin with them bunched up. On the other hand, it looks like they’re filming multiple legs in each country.
COVID protocols can’t help but make it a very different show. No booking their own flights, no confused taxi drivers abandoning them miles away from their destination, no accosting random strangers desperately asking “English? Do you speak English?” And the most exotic locale they’ll visit is Portugal. I’m sure I’ll still watch though to see what they can make of it.
They are called equalizers, and yes, they still happen at businesses, sometimes on travel as well.
The alternative is never having an equalizer. Then some team builds an hours long lead which they maintain show after show.
Reportedly this season is going to do some staggering to account for the charter flights.
Flights really haven’t been an issue for a while now so I don’t think the charter flights will make a big difference.
When there’s a situation where everyone lands on the same plane, but the business they need to go to for the next leg doesn’t open for several hours, they’ll sometimes do a schedule - first 3 teams to arrive get to enter at 8:00, next 3 at 8:20, the rest at 8:40. So you get a little drama as to who can navigate from the airport to the destination most quickly.
I was sorely disappointed in the last race, with that stupid cliquey “alliance” bullshit. So I will watch the first couple of legs, but if it looks like it is heading off the rails, I’m out.
It’s a shame that the locations they had to shoot in (Switzerland, Corsica, Greece and Portugal) seem less like a typical season of The Amazing Race more like a trust fund kid’s gap year itinerary.
“Flotillas or Chinchillas?”