I mean, the ideas of all Big Brother alums and only in Europe sound like two kisses of death, but nobody can even be bothered to rag on it???
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago in the “Series you have watched…” thread, I had no idea a new Amazing Race had started*, and I had never even finished watching the previous one. And I generally don’t like the TARs that are all previous Survivor or Big Brother or even TAR participants, so probably not even going to bother with this one. The DVR is recording them if I decide otherwise, but for now, nope.
* CBS seems to do a really crappy job of promoting TAR, for whatever reason. I don’t watch much live TV these days except for football, and I never see promos for TAR when watching football. I see promos for Survivor and a bunch of the scripted shows, but for the last few TAR seasons I’ve only learned that there is a new season after I see someone post here about it, and by then I’m already three or four weeks behind.
I am not.
However, that is not a change from the past ___ seasons that I haven’t watched, either.
I 100% concur. I’ve watched at least one, often two games on CBS every Sunday and haven’t seen even a 10 second promo for TAR. I certainly would have started watching it if I had.
Or maybe not.
To be ridiculously pedantic (what would the Dope be otherwise?), it’s not really ALL Big Brother alums. One member of each team is a former Big Brother contestant. Their partners are not, they are either family members or friends or SOs, just like always.
I’ve never watched Big Brother, so I don’t know any of these people. But then I never know any of the regular TAR contestants before the season starts, so in that respect it’s no different.
I wonder if they’re limiting it to Europe for budgetary reasons. Travel is getting more expensive all the time, and I somehow don’t think that TAR gets as much financial support as a lot of other reality shows do.
Hey, some comments! Yay!
But Yow. The contents of them don’t bode well for the future of the franchise.
I blame it somewhat on the stretch to 90 minutes: there just doesn’t seem to be enough content to fill 90 minutes, without spending a ton of it on showing us EVERY DAMN TEAM somewhat have a breakdown over walking out on a blank whatever hundreds of feet it was, while strapped into a safety harness, of course. I mean, they don’t even tell us what penalties a contestant might face if they lost their balance and fell. Obviously they get reeled back up … do they then have to take a four hour penalty before skipping the task? Or can they just try again in five minutes? Who knows?
I was talking to my sister about the show last week, and she thinks that it is in fact because the teams all come from Big Brother backgrounds. I’ve never watched the show, but according to her, a huge factor in that game is the social aspects: everyone tries their damnedest to be nice, agreeable, get along with everyone, because otherwise they can be voted out earlier than otherwise. She thinks the players are still in that ‘play nice, get along’ stage and that is why we’re seeing no interesting interactions, between teammates or even between teams. “Wait until the fatigue sets in” she says… I dunno.
What I did notice was that the entire first third of last week’s show was about nothing but the teams picking which train routes to take – now that’s gripping tv!
And then a full eight of the teams played ‘follow the leader’ as they chased each other off the train at the wrong station.
I don’t watch BB either so I’m not even aware of which partner in each team is a BB alum unless it is mentioned (which they frequently do). There are even dating couples who met on BB who are on different teams. The whole thing is a different dynamic since many of the t4eams have familiarity with several of the other teams. I’m not sure I like this aspect yet.
I didn’t think I’d like the whole season based in Europe either; however, after only 2 episodes, they’ve already gotten back some fun racing aspects which have been missing in the past few seasons. They are using trains more for transport between cities. The second episode had teams going from Amsterdam to Prague and there were multiple trains being taken. Even with that, all but one team was going to arrive at the same time with the last team an hour behind. There was a good bit of “drama” during the trains with teams getting off on the wrong stop but then getting ahead of other teams and then one train was cancelled and three teams got delayed to the same train as the last place team. One of the delayed teams was who eventually got eliminated. Anyway, it was an interesting twist which I hope they keep up with through the season.
I’m tough to please, quick to give up on a show, and hate Big Brother… but I’m entertained:
A number of the teams are interesting people, leading to questions like “Will the nerdy gamers have the physicality necessary for this task?” or “This task takes mental acuity; how will the buff frat-boy-types do?”
Spoiler: Not well. Not well at all…
And some of the tasks have been more exciting than other seasons, oh, and the cities are beautiful. So I’ll hang in there…
Since we are being pedantic, one team (Taylor/Kyland) are both previous Big Brother contestants
FWIW, two of the most most annoying (IMO) BB alumni (Enzo, Angela) have been eliminated. With any luck, Tucker, Turner and Kat will be the next three that are Philiminated.
I’m find myself sort of liking the Europe theme of this season, especially if it means more self-driving. Though having parking set aside for you really takes away the most challenging part of driving there.
I was surprised that a few teams didn’t figure out that the big person on the team should be pulling the plow.
I have trouble reading the ‘info’ postings on the screen (bad eyes) but I was told this morning that there was at least a five hour gap between the first pair who started this leg and the last – which must be causing all sorts of logistic problems for Phil and all the locally hired people. The first teams did have to wait a couple of hours for one one the events to be open (maybe the beer factory?) but they don’t seem to be doing many deliberate ‘bunch up the contestants’ factors. Maybe as a side effect of there not being as many times they have to wait for air plane departure times vs. trains or drive yourself?
I noticed something else that’s missing: the “you have $xxx for this leg” announcements. I don’t think there has been a single one so far. Do the contestants now have unlimited credit cards or whatever? Or the camera crews hand over money as needed?
Yeah. The last team left at 11:30am and the first couple teams were already at the beer factory before 7am, after driving an hour! Most teams had already checked into the Pit Stop before the last one even made it to the first task!
Did anyone else think the plow task was a lot lamer than it first seemed? The clue was in a mesh bag that stretched across the whole strip of land they were plowing, so there was no way to not catch it, and all of the clues were in the same area so once the first couple go, all you really need to do is run the plow lightly to where the other plows were parked and then search there. It was not a needle in a haystack challenge.
Yeah, I was disappointed when I realized that every row had a clue. Plus, they should have had to return the plow to the start.
I stopped watching when Kisha & Jen were barely good enough to not be last on elimination legs then got lucky on the final leg. At that point it was too obvious the game was rigged against the good players.
I have no idea who Kisha and Jen are, but “the game is rigged against the good players”? 
Wow…The Amazing Race has been enshittified.
I guess it was only a matter of time but now they just seem to be phoning it in and going for what cash-grab is left.
It cannot be difficult for them to see previous season data and comments and critics to figure what works but the last few seasons they barely seem to be trying anymore.
There is only one reality TV show I have watched (beyond a cursory glance) and it was TAR. Seems they aren’t worth it either anymore. Bummer, I used to look forward to this and thought Phil had the best job ever (or second to Anthony Bourdain).
Absolutely. In one of the early seasons, a team got the last flight out before the night. The won by like 24 hours. The rules were changed so that flights the teams could use were limited to stack them in the airport. And then a few seasons later, the crossroad was established requireing teams to wait until the next team caught up to them. And have you noticed that no matter how big of a lead a team has, they never get to a challenge just before the place closes so everyone catches up to them over the night?
That’s not the show being “rigged” to favor certain teams over others.
I always thought it would be interesting to do an Amazing Race like the Tour De France, where the lead is based on your overall time. The eliminated team would not be who came in last on a particular leg, but who had the worst overall time at the end of a leg.
I suppose it wouldn’t be as dramatic though, if it seemed obvious who was going to win with a couple of legs left to go.
It punishes the teams that play well and take the lead to create a rubberbanding affect.