Yeah, I came in here to make a comment along these lines. My wife was crying with laughter, and I was sort of miffed (a) at the stupid “cheese carriers” that looked like they were engineered to fall apart and made of balsa wood and twine to hold 50+ lbs of cheese, and (b) at the potential danger of a 50+ lb wheel of cheese hurtling down the hill at increasing speeds, in the path of people trying with some difficulty to walk up the steep, slippery slope (not to mention the unsuspecting people walking down the hill who might find themselves in the way of the deadly projectile); human vs. cheese, cheese is the victor.
I do have to hand it to the hicks though, that was the only intelligent way to get 3 wheels down the hill. Too bad he’s also saddled with 150 lbs worth of useless cheese for the rest of the race, though.
Some unusual casting this season: no long-distance dating couples; nobody’s even “working on their relationship” or “trying to reconnect”. Just plain ol’ dating.
And the blond stewardess friends and the redhead cheerleader friends seemed totally redundant.
Gay dad & gay son? What are the odds of that happening?
Do not like the brother/sister lawyer combo. Bad vibes from them. Mel and Mike are great fun but have no chance of winning. Cheerleaders and flight attendants? Sigh.
Weren’t they also the ones who couldn’t find the taxi stand? If so, that doesn’t bode well for them.
I really remember the siblings being uber competitive about anything. In fact, I don’t really remember much about them at all except they thought it’d be a good idea to move three cheeses even though they have to do it twice anyway. What did I mess?
In an episode where people had to tie a rope to their ankles and hurl themselves off a dam, who’d have thought moving cheese would be the dangerous part?
Ranking is simply based on when each team arrives at the mat at the end of the episode, which is ultimately fair: everyone started out at exactly the same time at the beginning of this leg, and that means their ranking is based on the cumulative effect of all their choices: how fast they do tasks, primarily, but also which airline they choose, which taxi they get, the route they travel, and so forth.
You’ll notice next episode that the teams start out in the order they finished this episode in, so the choices made this episode also can effect rakings in the next episode. You might also notice that the producers will insert some natural or artificial “bunching points” into the Race to allow lagging teams to catch up; for example, there may be only one or two available flights to the next destination.
To be sorta fair, the hill was slick with dew, and I suspect that it wasn’t whenever it was that the producers vetted this task. Which turned a moderately difficult task into a clusterfuck. Given the apparent danger of being flattened by a runaway cheese, I’m surprised they didn’t just abort, but I guess the inherent hilarity of people falling down and hurting themselves was too great a temptation.
I wonder what rules they were given about the cheese that we didn’t – my understanding is that the racers are often given more info than makes it to air, unless a rule turns out to matter to the outcome. Personally I think those carriers were deliberately built to not work right. I also have some doubts about the historical authenticity of hauling cheese on a slippery wet hill, but I found it hilarious since nobody got hurt or anything.
I loved the stuntmen, they seemed to be cheerful and fearless, always a good combination. Tammy & Victor’s “this may be the train of DOOOOM…but we don’t really know” was kind of annoying - I hate it when people are uber-competitive in the wrong places. Hint: if you’re all getting on the same train anyhow, trying to fake out others makes you seem ridiculous.
“Ask for ARRIVAL never DEPARTURE times” is definitely of the Things You Should Tattoo on Your Forehead When You Enter The Amazing Race, right next to “RTFC” and “Never take a flight that requires you to change at Charles de Gaulle”.
Thrilled for another season of TAR! Mrs. S. and I almost forgot about it coming back last night, we would have been crushed to miss it.
My first impression is that this season is loaded with people I am going to be annoyed with, and happy to see fall on their faces. This included team “southern fried frat boy and sorority girl”, so I was happy to see them go. However, i would have been even happier to see the self proclaimed hillbillies go down, simply because that woman needs muzzled. What in og’s nme did she expect? First rule of TAR- it’s a race, and you are going to have to move quickly.
Anyway, I was very happy to see mom and son win this leg, although he does come across a bit high drama. Phil’s signing was tremendous!! As a side note, I think his deafness may be an advantage, since he will actually have to READ THE FREAKING CLUE!!!
Thanks for the explanation, zut and DrFidelius. I was thrown by the staggered departure times they were signing up for at San Antonio (7:15, 7:30, 7:45) and assumed elapsed time from departure to arrival factored in somehow.
I thought that was strange too. I’ve never seen a team on TAR with rolling luggage. I know it’s typical for flight crews to have bags like that, but you’d think they’d get some backpacks for The Amazing Race.
The staggered departure times are kind of an artificial check point you’ll see occasionally in the Race. The checkpoint primarily serves as a “bunching point”: even if a team drops to hours behind the leaders, the pre-ordained departure times mean even the last team is no later than 30 minutes out of first the next morning. However, because the departure times are staggered, it still rewards teams for getting to the checkpoint early instead of late.
(You can argue–and some people do–that these bunching points are antithetical to the idea of a Race. However, you might also imagine that the show would be much less exciting if the teams wound up permanently strung along like beads, with hours and hours seperating each team, and no real suspense as to who was going to come in first or last.)
Yeah, that struck me as odd, too–what happens if you have to run on a gravel path? My wife guessed the luggage may be convertable into backpacks when necessary; if that’s true, that might be a pretty clever solution. No sense getting winded from schlepping your luggage hither and yon if you can just drag it.
If you want that fifteen minutes head start, you have to earn it. You earn it by getting there first and signing up for it.
I assumed they were rolling backpacks. Flexible and fast, might be a good choice for the race. If I got chosen, I wonder if there’s a luggage store anywhere that would let me try out different packs to find the fastest one; from one end of the mall to the other, with a stopwatch.
Ooh, I’m unemployed at the moment. Could I hire myself out as an Amazing Race coach/consultant; testing products for weight and usability, finding on-time statistics for all the world’s airports, that kind of thing?
Rolling luggage usually drives me nuts, though. I’m only 6’1", but I still wind up either hunched over or with the case hitting my heels.
If mlerose and I were to go on TAR, I’d wind up doing the bungee jumps and climbs and stuff, as I don’t have the vertigo like she does. But I also have a much larger stomach and more of a willingness to eat strange and unusual things. So I’d probably be doing both of those types of tasks.
She, on the other hand, is better than me at logic and puzzles and such - so she’d wind up doing all that kind of stuff.
Wow, I’m glad Preston and Jennifer got eliminated. Even at Elimination Station they are bickering. It’s not fun to watch on the race, but it is kinda fun to watch at ES.