Meant to add, I’ll give props to the Big Brother team: stunt casting is usually horrible, but when they fucked up the clue reading, they owned it, didn’t get bitchy or whiny about it, kept moving. There were even signs of Cody having a personality beyond “Big Brother douche”.
On the flip side, I think Britney’s “if you steer us wrong I’ll haunt your nightmares” gave us the reason why they’ve been dating for nine years without getting married. Run, dude.
Well that was an interesting change. I’m not really happy about it - so now your ability to survive the Race comes purely down to your foot speed? Regardless of how well you do on every other challenge?
I’m glad the Yalers didn’t get eliminated, since they were the 3rd to arrive at the mat.
I hope if they do a similar challenge again, it isn’t just a foot race - it should be involve a puzzle or some other non-physical task, so the uncoordinated folks have a shot too.
I agree that the way the races were set up has a fatal flaw. If one of the first two teams loses BOTH of the first two races, their fatigue is likely to end up just about the way it did, with them then losing the 3rd, 4th, 5th and so on as they are more and more tired and facing fresh new competition each time.
I don’t know what would be a fairer system, though. Make it Team 1 vs. 2, then 3 vs. 4, etc. And only after all the teams have had one race, move on to loser of the first race vs. loser of the second race? But that would clear be ‘unfair’ in another way – the team that arrived last could end up racing the team that arrived 5th, a significant wiping out of the accrued advantages from the rest of the tasks.
Maybe go with some dexterity task or new skill instead of a foot race? Then the advantage from having tried before would go to the earlier team, which seems more fair.
I dunno.
Was it the Yale team that realized you could simply hold the exemplar up to the light and look at it through the back? If so, I’ll root for that team.
I agree, the problem was that the more you lost, the harder it got. Whereas if there was a puzzle or something involved, it would get easier the more times you did it. There was actually a substantial disadvantage for getting there early, if you weren’t an athletic team. I was thinking after the first few losses, the Yalers should have decided who had the best chance of winning, and save that person for the teams that would be easier to beat, like the Goat yogas & eaters. Have their weaker racer race against the lifeguards and firemen.
No, it was the skiers.
That was actually a really good detour task. I’d love to try that myself. It was cool that you couldn’t just turn a “p” upside down and use it as a “d” and things like that.
The Amazing Editors really let us down with this episode – the last 20 minutes was devoted to watching people push handcarts around in circles. I actually fast-forwarded through half of it.
Listening to Phil calling the race and trying to make it interesting was pretty amusing though. He’s clearly not cut out to be a sports announcer.
I wonder what the plan was if one of the teams had a time penalty to serve?
I would’ve been excited to do that one, since I took printmaking in college. I also like that the basketball players, who almost went home on a word challenge were the first to complete this one.
I’m guessing they would have to wait before they could run the race.
Count me in on not liking the challenge. Getting to the mat shouldn’t come down to it. I think it would’ve been okay if they did it near the start of the leg, and whoever came in last had to wait 10-15 minutes to get their clue.
The Head-to-Head race has been an occasional feature of some international versions of TAR, variously called Double Battle, Duel, or Face Off. I don’t think it’s been used to determine mat placement, though. Usually the last place team gets time penalty and then they race on. I agree that this was a rather uninspired choice. They should have sped it up to double speed and set it to “Yakety Sax”. At least Henry finally figured out (on the fourth try?) that you shouldn’t just stick to the inside and the proper racing line uses the full width of the track.
Quite the uneven leg. The Roadblock was uninteresting. The Detour, both choices, was top-notch. The Head-to-Head race was bad. At least the worst team got eliminated.
Also figured out that the way to win is to shove your way in first at the start of the race. Was there a single one where whoever was in first at the first turn didn’t win?
I hated the last task. Having to watch that over and over was boring and annoying. Listening to Phil was not pleasant either. We made use of FF as well.
The Head to Head thing is really dumb, especially AT the Mat. Elimination entirely rested on the frites race. Worst frites racer gets booted. Part of what makes the race fun is that often people can screw up one task but make up for it by navigating efficiently or not making other mistakes. Not so in this episode. Strong dislike. They literally had to wait for slower racers in order to proceed. That’s messed up and bad design.
That diamond estimating task would’ve been a killer for me! I could do the weight and maybe the color, but the occlusions? I’m surprised anyone eventually got it right. How did they get them to the dollar?
StG
The weight establishes a baseline value for the diamond from which deductions are made for less-than-perfect color and clarity. Racers were given a table to determine how much to deduct for each combination.
At least one team brute strengthed their way though it: if the combo was color A and occlusions A then it would be worth XXXX. No? Well if it was color B and occlusions A then it would be…
Weren’t there 3 diamonds to grade? I’m not sure how many different color and occlusion options there were, but if it was only 5 each that’s still 15,625 choices.
As I recall, there were three diamonds to grade and you had to choose the two most valuable. The table of deductions they showed was much bigger than 5x5. Definitely not something you can just brute force in a timely manner.
Well, I doubt they went in completely blind. If there were five classes of occlusiveness, you might be reasonably sure it was one of the best two, and similarly able to eliminate some of the color shades on each.
There was definitely a team – one of the last couple – that showed up the sheet of paper with calculations all over the back where they’d worked out multiple combinations before hitting on the right one.
Finally got around to watching this episode, and yeah, that was a painful ending all-around. I wonder if there’s a junior crew editing this season, as it overall feels a lot weaker in the editing department. And boy was Phil a bad play-by-play guy, he’s certainly no Jeff Probst.
Yeah, this was TAR’s very first head-to-head task and, IMO, it can happily be the last.
Really did not like the head-to-head. “Fair” often gives way to “drama” in reality TV, but it’s too easy for one bad run to become, due to tiredness, a whole set of them, and it punishes the leading team by having them wait around at the start of the task for the next team. Okay, there’s often a reset/bunch point at the start of the next leg, but the lead team earned their margin.
And Phil should never do play-by-play again. Sorry, dude, but just don’t. Stick to the eyebrow-pop, it’s what you’re good at.
On the diamond thing, it’s not like brute-forcing meant trying all the options. Weight gives you the base value, then you deduct for inclusions and colour. So if you think a diamond has no inclusions and grade it that way, you’ll likely only have to move one step down if you miss a little flaw, that sort of thing. So if you’re on the fence about “is it flawless or is that a little inclusion?” then you try it with whichever you think is the best bet and, then, if that doesn’t work, you try it with the other.