The Turkish Bath task seemed SO passive (i.e., there was really no way to finish it any faster than other teams) that I imagined the pretzel task would be quicker if you were able to really get it in gear. Didn’t turn out that way, but I was thinking that if I was closer to the end of the pack, I’d see the pretzel task as my only option for potentially making up some time.
I would have loved to see Texas give their half back to the Rockers and tell them exactly what happened.
I was half expecting the Twins to get a penalty, maybe the Texans as well, but I also sort of thought the Rockers could get a penalty. I thought there might be a rule against taking money from locals when it wasn’t an assigned task.
Didn’t they put something like that in when they realized it wa embarassing to have Americans begging for cash in third-world slums?
The rule is no begging in airports.
Phil tweeted today that it is not against the rules to keep money you find. Doesn’t mean they should have, but not against the rules even if they knew whose it was.
As for choosing the Turkish bath over the simit task I might have done the same thing. My experience with Turkish baths is that they can easily take 90 minutes. And navigating around that part of Istanbul isn’t really that difficult (though I’m amazed at how long it apparently took for them to find someone who spoke English well enough to give basic instructions; I didn’t have any problem around there).
The monster truckers got to the task much later than the farmers and they knocked it out to finish at almost the same time.
For several seasons, if you finished last in a non-elimination leg, Phil would confiscate all of your money (and in some seasons, all of your belongings). I think fans were justifably turned off by the sight of wealthy Americans begging from citizens of third world countries and they finally came up with the Speed Bump instead.
I’m with those who felt like the Twinnies and the Texas Two should have been penalized, the Twinnies much more heavily so. I would have been happy to see the Twinnies kicked off the race. As said above, I hate thieves.
My kids (11 and 9) were also outraged, so at least I haven’t screwed up that part of their education.
I’m finally caught up. I thought the twins, whom I was passively rooting for before this episode, acted like complete jerks, as did the Texans. Not a fan of Ryan. The goat farmers are not long for this race. So… go James and Jaymes and James and Abba. James of James and Abba is quite witty. He reminds me of a friend of mine.
Just watched the episode on DVR. There is a mistaken impression running through this thread that seems significant to me.
The rockers did not drop the money. Abba (I think) took it out of his bag and put it on the counter. (That’s why the pouch was unzipped, which led him to think it had fallen out.) One twin saw it on the counter and started to ask, “Who left their money here?” But her sister told her to shut up and pocketed the cash.
I’m sorry, but where I come from, that’s theft.