No, they didn’t have to figure out anything. It was just a contest to find the right umbrella.
I missed a couple of minutes – what happened with the lost passport?
[spoiler]She dropped it at the gas station and one of the gas station customers (attendants?) found it, Tweeted about it, and brought it to LAX.
Unclear whether it was his idea to go to LAX or someone out in Twitterverse.[/spoiler]
I’ll bet the producers had a lot to do with that passport getting to LAX.
Heh. I asked here and on Twitter, and y’all answered first. 
Thanks, Motorgirl!
That’s two suspicious things in just the first ep. My Phil eyebrow is raised.
When was the last time the very first leg was non-elim? And a double next week? I’m seriously considering calling shenanigans. They were apparently hoping to have a new Gretchen and Meredith (or Don and Mary Jean) and these two definitely weren’t it.
And I have my suspicions about the passport, too…
After talking in their intro about how smart they are.
I definitely had suspicions also.
I also wondered if they changed the first task. I thought Phil clearly said that they would need to figure out Taipei, Taiwan and they ended up not having to do so.
That’s what it sounded like, but I doubt they changed anything, since the clue was prerecorded video.
That prerecorded video that appeared to be playing on a video screen in the cars could have been recorded last week for all we know. At least one team member was shown opening the clue in the back seat and reading"…fly to Taipei, Taiwan…", which made me think that was the first time any of them actually knew where the first destination was.
Oh, me, too. I could have sworn the guys asked a customer how to get to LAX. Was this customer still hanging around later when the girls came by and dropped the passport, or was he working there?
Either way… I think TPTB had a hand in getting the passport back to her.
Something changed…I didn’t get what they were supposed to do at all. Unscramble the letters on the sign, and add the letters on the umbrella? I thought they had to actually do something, not just find an umbrella with the right letters. Phil’s commentary on solving the puzzle was weird, but then all they had to do was find an umbrella and he gave them the keys?
Whoops, forgot to snark on the teams!
I really like Ernie and Cindy. I think it’s Cindy, right? Still too early to have all the names sorted out.
I hope Ethan is up to the physical challenge. I usually don’t like stunt casting (I can’t freakin’ stand Boston Rob), but I like Ethan and Jenna.
I like the father and son team, too. Are they the father and brother of that young girl who tried to sail around the world on her own and got stuck when her boat capsized? There was a whole rescue mission, and IIRC, the family got quite a lot of flack for letting her try something like that.
Not sure about the football player and his wife. I don’t like when people try to hide their real identity from others. I’m not sure why, but it bugs the heck out of me. It’s like they think they’re putting one over on everyone else. So you played pro football. Who cares?
I’m wondering if Ethan and Jenna know that everyone else knows who they are, and if not, how long they’re try to keep the charade up.
I know the poker players tried it a couple seasons ago, and I’m pretty sure it’s been done before.
Everyone else is pretty much a blur so far. It always takes me a couple of weeks to get everyone straight.
The poker players and the NFL guy at least have a chance of passing as anonymous. If you’re not a superstar football player, you don’t generally get your face on TV too much, and televised poker still doesn’t have a really wide audience. But Survivor is a CBS staple that gets tons of promo from the network. And they were BOTH on twice (their own respective seasons (which they both WON) and the first All-Star season). There’s no way to not be recognized by SOMEONE when you’ve had that much national exposure.
If I remember their conversation correctly, they just weren’t going to offer up the info about who they are, not that they were going to lie. They have to know that someone will know who they are, though.
I just don’t get the football player’s line of thinking. “Oh, I better not let them know I played pro football!”
I guess he thinks it gives him an advantage somehow.
Yeah, 'cuz everyone sure had it in for the Globetrotters.
Well, everyone knows the Globetrotters aren’t millionaire basketball players. Not all NFL players are millionaires, even if they play as long as Marcus Pollard did, but apparently he did okay.
Salary data from The USA Today
(Fun fact: he only played basketball in college, Bradley University doesn’t have a football team.)
Because a network executive did not have the balls to stand up and say that the schedule is what it is. Now instead of having a few pissed-off viewers, they have a buttload of pissed-off viewers.
To hear the guy tell it, he did it based on suggestions after he tweeted that he found the passport and had just been filmed for TAR (since he spoke on camera he was surely made to sign a release so he knew what was what). They showed screenshots of the tweets in question. It was nice of the guy, in any case, to make a special trip, even if he did get some remuneration for it.
It really would’ve served the team right if they’d been ousted before any planes ever took off. If you don’t secure anything else on the Race, you secure your passport.
There were so many funny moments when they got to Taipei and were all trying to figure out where the clue was. “It says ‘look up’…Hey! That guy has Amazing Race boxers on!” What the hell?
I must say, Sunday nights in my house are much better now that we let the kids stay up to watch with us (barring football delays of more than 15 minutes). They both love the show, and my son is going to be the Travelocity Gnome for Halloween.
I’m not sure how many rules are in the unofficial rulebook so far, but there needs to be a “‘Search the area’ does not mean ‘search the entire city’” rule.
I’m wondering how they couldn’t figure out “Taipei, Taiwan” when the letters weren’t even scrambled. Too many teams had too many wrong guesses.
Still, there seemed to be some editing of some editing of some sort, like a challenge left out. And a first leg non-elim is weird.