Two questions:
Do we still get a Taxi Assessment even though this is a “to be continued…” leg? Please, please, please?
The ad on this page took me to the Great Urban Race. Has anyone here tried that, and is anyone thinking of doing the one in Boston?
That was the solution we came up with in our house though I think there’s still a few things (like how smoothly each diver steps off) that could screw it up.
I think it’s because they had to jump and land on the board and then land in the water at the same time, not just jump off the board.
Once we heard that it was a swimming detour my wife and I knew we would kick ass. We would have been in and out in ten minutes or so. Hell I would have been asking if I could have kept the LZR suit as well.
My interpretation was that all the cabs look alike. They’re not exactly staring the drivers in the face as they walk up to the cars.
Yay for TBC legs! I love Phil messing with Racer’s feelings of entitlement. “You feel entitled to a twelve-hour rest? Ha! Take this clue, bitches! See you in a couple sleepless days!”
Boo for predictably-timed tasks! I hated the foot-massaging task for precisely the same reason I disliked tasks from last week: teams just arrive and do the task and leave, and it takes everyone exactly the same amount of time, and the task winds up having no effect on the race standings. A better Roadblock would have been giving the teams a choice to either accept a foot massage, or learn the technique and give a foot massage (which of course takes longer).
Anyway, time for the…
Taxi Assessment
Stuck in the Desert and Officially Detained - or, Philiminated with extreme prejudice.
Jennifer and Preston,Linda and Steve, Brad and Victoria, Amanda and Kris, Christie and Jodi, Mel and Mike and Mark and Michael - Gone, but not forgotten. Well, maybe forgotten. Actually, yeah, pretty forgotten.
Flat Tire - or, not likely to get anywhere soon.
No one this week.
Stopping for Gas - or, not broken-down, exactly, but not a good sign.
No one, really.
"Rapido! Por Favor?" - or, making meaningless ineffectual comments from the back seat, but in no immediate danger.
LaKisha and Jennifer (holding steady) - Ooo, a rare triple-Detour switch and a complete meltdown. Bingo! Seriously, though, complete breakdowns are seldom good. It turns out that a) this winds up being a TBC leg, so Jen’s breakdown has a minimal impact, and b) Kisha was pretty understanding and supportive, so the effect on team dynamics might be minimal; however, the emotional aura might very well linger, particularly with no twelve-hour rest break at the end of the leg. It looks, though, like Kisha & Jen aren’t really that far behind everyone else; the actual swimming time was only ten or fifteen minutes, so they’re not out of the running time-wise. (Also: did Kisha & Jen switch up the Roadblock assignment after learning what it was (a TAR no-no)? The snake-rattle of oopsieness seemed to imply they did, but it was over so quickly I wasn’t sure.)
In the Passing Lane - or, ahead of the pack, but not quite comfortably.
Margie and Luke (holding steady) - Luckily, Margie & Luke totally put last week’s incident with Kisha & Jen behind them, so it will in no way affect their attitude and performance the rest of the Race. Or, wait, scratch that. I guess they didn’t totally put it behind them. Ah, well. Still, Margie & Luke had a decent leg this week, and I expect them to have less trouble cracking the final three than either Cara & Jaime or (gack! ptooie!) LaKisha & Jennifer. I’d feel more confident in that prediction if they’d worry more about their own standing and less about Kisha & Jen’s, but we’ll see next week.
Cara and Jaime (up from “Rapido!”) - This was probably Cara & Jaime’s best leg yet. They got a little luck up front by grabbing a better taxi driver out of the airport, but they ran with it and stayed in first the rest of the leg, making a decisive Detour choice, sticking with it, and finishing strong. Jaime dialed back her hatin’-on-foreigners this week (or maybe she was just upstaged by Kisha), and they look like they’re working better at a time when the other teams are showing signs of fatigue. One leg isn’t impressive enough for me to think that Cara & Jaime are suddenly the favorites, but they’re certainly peaking at the right time.
Cruisin’ with Earl - or, drivin’ on the shoulder, takin’ shortcuts, and generally kickin’ butt.
Tammy and Victor (holding steady) - I’m not sure I really blame Tammy & Victor for going with the diving Detour first–I too thought it would be the easier task (seriously, “on three…one, two, three.” Does no one else know this? I imagine the task really is harder than it looks, but there’s no excuse for not at least trying to coordinate). And Tammy’s inexperience did call for avoiding the swimming task (I admit I was impressed they had the foresight to patch holes in their pre-Race experience). What concerns me is we saw flashes of the old leg three Victor, when he passive-aggressively forces Tammy to make the decision to switch tasks, so it will be her fault if it’s a bad idea. To her credit, Tammy waffles only briefly, and to his credit, Victor is immediately supportive, but cracks are showing in their armor. Not enough for me to supplant them as the favorites (despite their third-place showing), but enough to comment on.
[sub]Props to Mullinator and his Raj Ratings.[/sub]
I think this season is kind of fizzling out with a combination of meh teams and meh tasks. I can’t really summon up a lot of like or dislike for any of the teams–it seems like all of the interesting teams (or theoretically interesting teams, if you get my meaning) were eliminated early. And the tasks for the last few legs have just been of the go-here, plod-through, get-next-clue variety.
To be fair, look back over the earlier episodes of this season. Take episode two: that had the paragliding Roadblock, where most teams bailed to run down the mountain instead, and the pie-throwing Detour in front of the drunken German band. Fun tasks, and some critical decision-making, particularly at the Roadblock. The episode also featured Linda getting totally lost walking down the mountain, other teams getting lost driving, and Christie & Jodi wandering around in the dark trying to complete the last task. Those results might be just a case of teh stoopid, but point is there was a much wider chance for teams to use their own skills (for better or worse) to decide the outcome of the leg.
So it’s not like TAR can’t design a fun and interesting leg; they just haven’t seemed to do so recently. 
A better idea for the foot massage challenge would have been to give them a choice between a super painful 10 minute massage (with some yucky things to drink in addition), a painful 20 minute massage or a mildy painful 30 minute massage. That way there would actually be some temptation to stop the massage and go for a less painful one. Now there was no point, since stopping the massage would just mean having to do it all over again from the beginning.
Or, if you call “Uncle”, you don’t have to start again, but you have to wait 30 minutes from when you quit.
I don’t get why casting is so hard–the very first season they had a PERFECT cast. Through season 4 they had fantastic casts.
Season five, excluding Mirna/Schmirna and The Useless Pizza Lusers had great casting.
Season six was * and Victimitora and from there, things plummeted.
The nice thing about seasons 1-4 is they had normal, diverse people. Starting with 5, they started freak-casting, and the last few, they’ve desperately been avoiding the two “College-age guys” team and the “Two youngish gay guys” teams since they’re both very likely to win. (They’ve also eliminated the two-older ladies category)
I know they’re desperate for a female/female team to win, but if this is the crappy level of lusers doing useless lame-ass tasks (“sit here while other people do stuff. We’ll watch you watching them. Ooo…exciting!”) they need to get a win for a couple of females*, they might as well pack it in.
*And it’s not. The two blondes–Dustin/Kandice? (in All-Stars and the previous season) could have kicked the asses of every single one of these teams blindfolded. Hell, the sisters who got eliminated 'cause of the stupid (literal) needle-in-a-haystack challenge (there weren’t enough clues in the haystacks) or the Bowling Moms or Mommily could all have whupped these pathetic incompetents.
My suggested minor change to the foot massage to make it interesting: take their watches at the start and tell them they need to stop the massage anytime after 10 minutes. But if they stop early, they have to start over. It’s pretty hard to keep track of time under normal circumstances, but when you’re in pain, time probably seems to move more slowly. And don’t let the massagers switch feet during an attempt, since that could be a cue.
It would be interesting to the audience to see how long people go. (or how far over they go)
This is EVIL.
I like it. 
Probably just editing, but I noticed that they didn’t show Luke drinking his post-massage tea…
He probably tried to drink it, cried like a little girl, threw up and said (or signed) “I can’t dooooo it! This is tooooo haaaaaaaard” and mommy-dearest said that the challenge was bigoted because deaf people have endured centuries of tea-drinking related oppression.
One thing that’s detracting from the excitement: 3 straight legs in China. Can we cross a freakin’ border, please?
Last year, I did City Chase. It looks a lot like the Great Urban Race. My sister and I teamed up and had a blast, but it was freakin’ hard. We were both wiped out by the end of the day. Of course, the fact that I’m out of shape didn’t help much.
Ooh, that looks like a blast! I’d be up for doing it. Only problem is my work schedule 
Kisha & Jen just rubbed me entirely the wrong way last night from “I don’t do small talk, it’s fake.” to “they all look alike.” And their entire attitude. I was cheering for them to get kicked out. Stupid double leg.
Friend Fenris,
I must disagree. I found Charla and Mirna to be the most entertaining racers ever cast. They weren’t really good at anything, and they whined and complained a lot, but they sure kept us entertained.
I totally agree with you, longhair75. I LOVED Charla and Mirna because they were so clueless but enthusiastic and entertaining, and because they annoyed the other teams so much. I was overjoyed when I found out they would be on All-Stars.
For me, the bit where they went to airport guards and asked them to arrest Colin and…um…some other team because the two teams were “criminals” was so over the top that it stopped being entertaining. All you need is some sort of serious international airport incident to shut down TAR, IMO.