Season 4. And don’t forget…“MANURE!!” Just for their enthusiasm for that task, you have to love them.
All the tasks, actually (except the “Drive into North Korea and confront armed guards then do that sub-zero swim that might cause a heart attack” one…but no-one was really enthusiastic about that one. 
)
Especially since almost everyone else that season was such a downer.
Google tells me 10,000 rubles is $325. But since the guy took $40, maybe the cabbie was just more interested in getting dollars from the American tourists. But presumably the cabbie left his meter running while Dad struggled with the Russian stick bowling…it apparently took at least an hour and he’d already been with them all day long already because they didn’t follow the rules. Plus the other teams didn’t struggle nearly as much at bowling, so maybe the fare wasn’t so out-of-line.
No, I really had no idea about Stephanie—I thought that the short, chubby-cheeked blonde girl (the one racing with her dad) was a beauty pagent winner, so maybe I got those two mixed up.
I guess to my tastes, Stephanie is the least physically attractive woman left racing, except for the Tattoo Princess, who is pretty rough looking to me.
(I was also not drawn to either of the doctors at first, but the more they showcase their intelligence and competence while racing, the hotter they both look)
You probably didn’t get them mixed up, because Mallory is also an actual, literal beauty queen. As is Brook. What are the odds, huh?
In season 13, ISTR Andrew & Dan also getting hit with a huge-seeming cab fare in Moscow (well over $100 for not much driving). I think Russian cabbies see Americans with camera crews following them and adjust rates accordingly.
Isn’t it that you continue the race with whatever you had at checkin? That’s why the above mentioned Andrew & Dan had to buy shoes in an airport - they checked in without their own after a dress up as a horse task.
In a way she’s rough looking, but in other ways she looks like she’d be a lot of fun during sexytimes.
Perhaps they adjusted the bags rule. However, the pay your cab rule seems like a logical rule that’s probably in the “rules” they give out ahead of times and is rarely violated by the teams, hence we don’t see it applied much (the aforementioned Andrew & Dan were stuck just outside the pitstop in Moscow trying to get their cab to accept what they could give him). In the past, an explicitly stated rule was you couldn’t check in without your passport, obviously. People have abandoned their backpacks to travel with only their fanny packs before.
I was actually thinking more of fanny packs now that you mention it-you have to have your passports/document stuff with you to check in.
But I vaguely recall in the last post-season or two a contestant saying that the new “cleaner fresher racers” policy means you need to check in with your bags. No cites, and I’m not even sure I’m remembering correctly. 
While overall she seems like a decent young lady (who is clearly partnered with an asshole boyfriend) all of her ink and piercings kill any physical attraction I might otherwise have towards her.
(and while I am not usually drawn to blondes, ol’ Jill is a stone-cold stunner; one of the most attractive women I have ever seen on the Amazing Race)
If I was in the final leg, I think ditching/selling/stashing/giving away my backpack would be the first thing I would do.
A couple of others were Chip/Kim who (IIRC) didn’t pay their cabbie at the final pit-stop, they just said they’d come back after (although they didn’t have the money), Unchenna/Joyce who went around the world stiffing cabbies (my favorites were when they stiffed the poor cabbie in Africa and Unchenna decided to make some sort of point about virtue–he was a GOOD person so it was ok to stiff the cabbie), then stiffing about a half dozen other cabbies before, in the final leg, someone apparently made it clear to him that he couldn’t check in without paying the cabbie, so they had to stop every few blocks to beg for more cash.
Then there were the stunt-dwarves who kept trying to barter with the cabbies even though the rules clearly stated “You can’t barter–you must pay cash.” And they got nabbed for that like 2 or 3 times.
Heh–or there was the time when Myrna and Schmirna freaked out that another car was going in the same direction as her cab and they started screaming at the cab they were following–begging and pleading with him to wait until the other car passed and then they found out that for him to lead them would be like $200. And then they REALLY freaked out.
Or–the single greatest cab-moment EVER on TAR. Someone (Jonathon, I think) was being a gigantic douchebag to the cabbie and the cabbie pulled over in the middle of the road and threw the contestant out, stranding him on a median. (Sadly they were picked up by another cabbie soon after)
There are some things you might have packed in your back pack that might come in handy on the last leg. Like a calculator, compass, bathing suit, dry clothes, etc.
When I kept hearing about a Russian Mystery, I was really thinking that this could not be good for Team Tattoopid.
IIRc, this is third leg w/o a plane trip. Is that unusual?
(They were in Ghana for two episodes, Sweden/Norway for two leg, and now St Petersburg for two legs)
Oh my, thanks for the AR cabroulette memories, Fenris.
Yeah, I know. But the actual thing that caused them their penalties was Kevin not reading the clues, despite his father telling him to read every word of the clue. So, in the final analysis, Kevin doesn’t have a “My father is so frail” excuse for their elimination—at least not solely for their elimination.
I still have no idea how he thought it was even a remotely viable option for them to try to win The Amazing Race, but…::shrug::
Two teams violated the principle RTFCx2? I’ve got to see this episode.
What makes it even doubly stupid is that it appeared that one of the other racers told him, as they were waiting to get up into the tower, that they weren’t supposed to follow a cab to that point. If that were me, I would have gone back over the clue to make sure, and then would have been reading every future clue extra hard. He appeared not only to not get what the other racer was telling him, BUT also not to bother reading for comprehension as the day went along.
Of course, he looks like a jerk vis a vis his dad, but I would have had a hard time standing and watching my dad blow that challenge for an hour. Michael seemed to spend forever trying to fling the stick using just his arm strength, which he appeared to have very little of. He appeared to be consistently accurate enough, but didn’t get the strength part until the very end. Does he never do anything physical?
I would have also been particularly frustrated if I were Chad, since Stephanie appeared to fluctuate wildly between a perfectly accurate throw followed by letting one loose over the backstop.
By the way, Phil never said anything last week about a Speed Bump. I noticed it because it seemed odd at the time. Who knows if they edited it out, or if they just decided it wouldn’t be required for this leg.
The whole Race is run before the first episode is aired, so the Amazing Editors can edit the earlier legs to conform to what we’ll see in the later ones. Foreshadowing is fair game; if a team’s fate hinges on cluelessness or intra-team drama, we’ll probably see hints of it beforehand. If the Speed Bump was irrelevant to this leg, they could cut the reference from the previous one.
Considering that they showed us a Speed Bump of two people sitting on ice, this one must have been a real yawner.
According to discussion on TARFlies –
“Nick posted on his Facebook that they didn’t get a Speedbump because there was an error last episode where Nick and Vicki got the songs right way earlier, but the judge said no to them. So, they weren’t given a speedbump…Its unconfirmed though.”
Well he was right. The son had done more Roadblocks than the dad and thought this looked like something simple the dad could do. Clearly it wasn’t. The dad pretty much was completely useless on that task.