I wonder how much is editing.
In the most recent episode (5) she behaved remarkably better. People usually do not change so much, so fast. So, I wonder, is it the editors fiddling with what we see? The difference was big. Either she really roped herself in or the show cherry picked. I am leaning towards cherry picked because people don’t usually change so much in a short timespan.
But maybe she did.
Yeah, I’m sure that editing has a lot to do with it. A friend of mine was an Amazing Race contestant and has often complained about how negatively they were portrayed.
mmm
I thought last night was beautiful, but dull as a race. The opening bit with the train and the bandits was fun, but didn’t mean anything. And seeing Petra/the Last Crusade location was interesting.
But there was no real opportunity for anyone to pass or catch up due to skill - the Roadblock was pure luck and designed to spread out the pack even more, since the later you show up the fewer metal plates are left. And the Detour was boringly straightforward - the camp task was simple to do, if somewhat tiring and time consuming, and most people appeared to blast through the slide puzzle. It feels like they lost some good opportunities - if you’ve got a camel involved in a challenge, someone should damn sure have to ride it, or milk it.
I was thinking that they could have the teams run up and down that sandhill a few dozen times. At least it would be a travelling task. Maybe roll a cheese wheel down the hill just for fun.
The location was great but the race part wasn’t that entertaining. I’m glad the dad and daughter are gone. She did much better than I expected but as she said, she was not prepared for this. Now I can focus on who the other teams are. The only ones who stand out so far are the long lost sisters and Kevin Hart and his tall wife. What, that’s not Kevin Hart? 
Yeah I hadn’t really thought that before this episode, but at multiple points during this episode I was convinced he is Kevin Hart’s twin.
Did anyone else notice that when talking about the pit stop Phil said old Petra was thought to be “100 square miles which is the equivalent of 100 Manhattan islands”? Um do the writers think Manhattan is only one sq mile in size? 
Petra would be about the size of four Manhattans.
I did notice that. And last week he said one third of the all the major artworks in the entire world are located in Florence. I think his writers have gone completely nuts.
Yeah, both my eyebrows (of doom) immediately arched at that bit of trivia.
Also, I had the Kevin Hart vibe from the get-go.
mmm
In some ways I’m sorry to see the father - daughter team go home. I wanted them in the race long enough that she would have no choice but to do all the remaining roadblocks. Is that mean?
(At one point they were doing the talking head thing with one of the teams - maybe Kevin Hart and his tall wife - and they said something like “there are no non-elimination legs, and nobody wants to go home!” and I said “Somebody does!”)
I thought this week’s episode was pretty good, lots of opportunities for teams to jump ahead several places or screw themselves into a deep(er) pit.
The combined physical/mental challenge of the castle rappel was fun, and seeing which contestants figured out reasonable strategies to tackle it. And the medieval games was fun to watch. (The dance couple totally owned it!) The walnut oil option was rather boring, though.
The dance couple didn’t do the games, that was big brother. They’ve done that “move up the ball up the maze” game a few times on Survivor, but I like the twist of having one person have to guide the other. Hopefully Probst was watching.
I liked this episode, the navigation drama is always lots of fun, especially now after nearly 20 years of GPS, when no one under the age of 40 knows how to read a map. I’m sorry to see Kevin Hart & Glenda go though, even though they were kind of inept they were fun to watch & always had a good attitude.
Team Kim Wexler made a good decision that seemed to pay off for them. “Everybody’s doing the walnut challenge, and it’s going to take everyone about the same amount of time to finish. Let’s do the games challenge and see if we can’t move up a few spots.” It may have just been the editing but it looks like they got through them pretty quick, and they finished what… third?
Gosh, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
I felt bad for the kid who can’t swim (although it’s something you should learn to do before you go on TAR), but honestly, they were so far off that they probably could have through the fissure a dozen times and still not gotten the names/dates correct.
I’ve watched all 34 seasons, and I’d guess that in about half of them, three teams that I don’t really care about make it to the final. This is one of them. It doesn’t matter to me who wins, but I’ll be watching anyway.
What I’m upset about is that this season wasn’t “a race around the world” — it was just a race to the Middle East and back again. WTF?
Yeah, who goes on the Amazing Race and not know how to swim
Guessing Covid and its protocols are impacting possible destinations.
The last season was interrupted by Covid and once they resumed the race, they never left Europe until the final leg when they returned to the USA - Los Angeles
I like all three teams, but rooting for the Sisters.
I was three weeks behind and just got caught up last night. So, thanks everyone for not posting any spoilers the last couple weeks! 
I, too, felt sorry for the guy who couldn’t swim, especially since he had TWO tasks in that leg where he had to swim. But yeah, going on TAR and not knowing how to swim is about as smart as going on TAR and not knowing how to drive a stick.
Speaking of which, what was up with those Range Rovers? It looked like there was a second “stick”, and I thought one guy said there were four pedals. Driving one of those beasts looked like a challenge in itself!
Indeed.
The woman who famously would not go down the water slide because of a fear of heights amazed me. How did she not see something dealing with heights likely being in the race somewhere? You’d think it would be something she’d work on before the show (and, indeed, we see other people in future episodes who express a real fear of heights but knew they would face such challenges so power through it somehow).
What really gets me is the number of people baffled by stick-shift cars. By now everyone must know there is a good chance they will end up driving one. It would make sense to get lessons in driving manual transmission cars before the show but still there are people who stumble on this.
My first two cars were stick. It’s been a couple decades, but I might not even bother to practice driving stick if I were going on the race since I did it for years. (I don’t know anyone who drives stick whose car I could practice on. Maybe a rental?)
And even if I did practice, it wouldn’t change the fact that I would be clueless about the two-stick four-pedal setup they had going on there.
What is this? I Googled it and the closest I came to a twin-stick were for off-roading trucks. I saw nothing about a 4th pedal.
I am pretty sure Amazing Race contestants are driving normal manual transmission cars. Same thing we grew-up with. Three pedals (gas, brake, clutch) and a 5-speed stick.
Sometimes the biggest hurdle is knowing that getting into reverse requires pulling the stick up on some cars.