I know, it’s all a bit of folly but after watching AR last night, I can’t help but think that certain changes could be made to improve the show, the race, and the quality of the winning team.
At this point, it seems safe to say that if Flo/Zach were in the first iteration of this series they would have been eaten alive by the final 4 teams. Clues were more difficult and took a lot more thinking than just choosing a good flight time. Return to more difficult clues. Make them find “this tower located in Italy” while they read the clue in London. Force them to be resourceful and figure out where it is rather than telling them to “proceed by plane to the Tower of Primavera located in Naples.”
Don’t have two non-elimination legs in a row. This effectively penalizes strong teams, rewards bad teams, and (in the case of this version) result in a watered down final grouping. Doing this essentially rendered the Fast Forward meaningless for John Vito and Jill. It penalized them for not using one up to that point yet still racing well enough to never have needed it.
Institute some type of rule for Roadblocks. Zach carried his team, and by doing so they won. Good for Zach, but Flo carpetbagged like crazy. This is a tough rule to try to institute, but I think it could be a good idea. Simply say “In the course of this entire race, there will be 14 roadblocks. If you reach the final 3, each member of your team must have done at least 4 of the roadblocks.” This would give teams the flexibility to let a player with an obvious strength (swimming) do a roadblock to take full advantage of that skill (diving for a clue.) At the same time, it forces a team to use more strategy to ensure that the other member has to do something. But, it gives them choices and flixibility at the same time.
The race to the final pit stop should involve more work by the racers and less by the cab drivers. Luck plays a great role in this show, which is a good thing. It makes things interesting and unpredictable. But, at some point luck should be replaced by the skills of the racers which plays a larger role. Flo and Zach got a quick cab pickup to the finish line which gave them the win. Ken and Gerard, faster runners, couldn’t find a cab and were 3rd. I would propose that the end be more like series 1 or 2 where a car ride took them up to a certain point, but then a fairly lengthy run was involved.
Bunching is good, but over-bunching is bad. Every team knows it will occur during the race, but I think that having multiple bunching points, especially towards the end of the race harms good teams and is a savior to bad teams. Have thigs be more flexible so that a team that runs well and gets out 4 hours ahead may actually have a shot at an earlier flight. Perhaps some drama of the final sprint is lost, but with multiple bunchings the drama of the previous 110 minutes is lost because you know that no matter how well or how poorly a team does they will all end up the same anyway.
Punish the quitters. How many times over the course of the series did Flo utter a statement say she quit, wanted to quit, wanted to go home, etc? I understand that at times of stress, people can snap to some extent so some of that is acceptable and expected. But, at some point I believe the threats have to be dealt with. Some sort of rule where if you say you quit 5 times over the course of the race, you are done. No exceptions. Having a team win where one member consistently threatened to quit hampers the integrity of the race. Maybe that’s a little too high-minded for a simple reality show, but if someone of that little fortitude can win, something with the race seems inherently flawed.
Eh, maybe I am thinking about this too much, but a great show can be made even better.
I tried to get into this show, but every time I watched it seemed like the same thing: people standing around the same ticket counter at the same time, eventually ending up on the same flight/train, then racing simultaneously to cabs, which drove next to each other on the street as the occupants screamed “Go fast!” Then they got out of the cabs at essentially the same time and sprinted to the finish line. And if, by chance, the teams got spread out somehow because someone snagged a secret earlier flight or such, they would then all gather at some task or place that didn’t open until a certain hour, entirely negating all the previous rushing around and time gains.
So the “race” portion really ended up being just the last two minutes of the episode. The previous 58 minutes were just pointless excercises that seemed to heighten the drama but didn’t really have much effect in the end. And even the “drama” was pretty weak most of the time, e.g. people standing at a ticket counter asking for the earliest flight to Tokyo.
Just my two cents. I want to like the show, but damn it, I just can’t.
I think we can blame all of the bunching points or equalizers on what happened to the Guidos in the first Race. A couple of opening/closing times and flight times got to them and they wound up exactly 24 hours behind the other teams with no way to catch up short of a catastrophe on the part of the first two teams. (This had actually started before the final legs; Kevin and Drew were behind with them in China.)
OTOH, it does seem as if they have overdone the equalizers. I can see why they wanted to prevent another finish where one team was still in Alaska when the other two teams are at the finish line in New York, but instead they have removed any advantages stronger teams may have and have changed it so that luck is more important than skill.
I also think the clues have been dumbed down a bit too much. I still think the best clue they have ever had was in the first Race where they gave the players a flag and a photograph and told them “go to the capital of this country and find this man standing in front of this fountain”. Again, skill should count for something, not just luck.
Finally, just a remark… Isn’t this supposed to be a race around the world? It looks to me as if Seattle is about 3000 miles from the Florida Everglades. Aren’t we a bit short? The first Race started and ended in New York. The second started in the desert near Las Vegas and ended in San Francisco. OK, different places but (relatively) close to each other. (At least they’re in adjacent states.) I can see this; you want the final leg to be a challenge so you don’t want the players to know what city it will be in (so they won’t stock up on guidebooks, etc. in advance). Still, I thought they should have ended somewhere closer to Florida. (I would have put it at the Southernmost Point of the Continental US marker in Key West myself, but that’s just me.)
Really, how much do people think “tricky” clues would slow people down? 10 minutes maybe? We’ve all seen that they just ask every random person they see if they know the answer, which makes them not really a test of anything except willingness to harass stranges. Look at that flag clue. It was hard enough that only one team knew the answer, but no one ended up in the wrong country like some people fantasize they would.
Another thing… I think people fail to realize how little control they have over the bunching after the race has started. The pit stops are fixed length, the destinations are set, and all the train and plane schedules are pre-determined. They can mess with the operating hours of the challenges, but those seem to usually be “normal” hours, opening at 9 or 10 AM. To be honest, I wonder if the organizers even figure out the bunching ahead of time, or just assume it will come up naturally.
I like your new rules, Mullinator. The bunching was extremely frustrating, especially at the very end. It was pure luck as to who would win, and Flo/Zach only won because they happened to catch the cab first. I thought the brothers were great offering all of their money to the final cabbie - they were very smart the whole time and I think would have won if not for the stupid bunching.
This is the first time I’ve watched the show, so I didn’t realize the clues had been dumbed down, or that the bunching was new. I’d much prefer to see the contestants more spread out.
Like the bunching, I think the dumbing-down of the clues is a reaction to how hard they actually were in the first season. Most notoriously, the Taj Mahal clue in India. The contestants were in New Delhi, and instructed to go to a vendor in a bazaar who would give them the clue. He would open a box, revealing a model of the Taj Mahal, and tell the contestants to take the envelope. The clue simply said “Go to this inn,” not mentioning the Taj Mahal or that it was in Agra, several hours’ drive away. Several contestants missed this, including the mother/daughter team who were reduced to weeping in the taxi.
The producers have obviously been tinkering with the formula. I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way. There’s too much bunching and the clues are too easy.
Wishful but highly unlikely rule#7 - Let the vieiwing public vote on a percentage split for the winning duo. Have some type of limit (maybe 70-30 or 80-20.) This would let someone who does the vast majority of the work like Zach reap the rewards while someone who only offered language skills and a nice rack like Flo to get what she deserves.
It’s interesting that airports and trains and such are where the most bunching occur, but they are also where a team can get a real setback or advantage, a couple of minutes can mean the difference of hours getting a different flight. The worst bunching is when they are simply waiting for something to open. The main bunching in this episode was leaving Vietnam which almost certainly had to happen anyway.
For most of what you suggest, I don’t think there needs to be a rules change – the penalty for a team member who constantly pouts ands wants to quit is the time it takes for the other team member to coax her (or him) through the tasks.
I do think that the bunching in the last episode is a mistake. They should do what they can to eliminate guaranteed bottlenecks over the last two legs. Flo’s meltdown at the boat/bike Roadblock would’ve cost them the race if not for bunching getting out of Vietnam and Japan. As it was, Zach could coddle her through the leg knowing full well that they didn’t have to worry about elimination, and with a pretty good idea that things would’ve evened out for them eventually. If the three hours they were behind had remained in play over the final episode, things would’ve been more interesting.
And having the outcome of the race come down to who has the best luck hailing a cab is frustrating.