That’s what’s so funny. If you’re hoping to leverage the extra EP for help when you need it, isn’t this about as perfect an opportunity as you’ll ever have to reap that benefit? Hand it over to get the help that you need. Duh.
It is just tweaking (not twerking) my memory that some team in the pat has been turned back because of their lack of clue. Not the Cowboys (who I love and would like to see on every race) but maybe the male duo with the autistic guy? That may have been his passport. It just feels like it’s happened before.
StG
That may be true, but it also may be that Phil would only ask the question if he knew (or had reason to believe) that the team didn’t have their clue.
For example, Phil doesn’t ask teams at Pit Stops if they have their passports, yet when James and Abba lost theirs in Season 21, Phil asked them for their passports at check-in time.
Zev Steinhardt
We see about 25 seconds of edited footage of Phil with the teams on the bath mat.
They are only going to show something if something is wrong.
Example of Boring TV
Phil: Got the Shield? Check
Phil: Got the clues? Check
Phil: Do you have your passport? Check
Example of Interesting TV
Phil: Do you have your passports? Oh Shit, No we don't
Phil: Go Find themI always assumed (and I could be wrong) that if something horrible happens (lost passport, missing clue, team didn’t follow directions) one of the sound/video crew lets Phil know by text (or some other method) before they reach the mat, so Phil only asks if he’s told that there’s something amiss.
Zev Steinhardt
That all sounds reasonable.
Now… we need some more bikini tasks!
It’s too bad Nicole didn’t think to psych her out when she wouldn’t trade the EP: “Good luck with the next part of the roadblock!” 
You’ve got to wonder what they would do if a team lost a clue/passport in a way totally not their fault. Like an armed robber accosted them and took their fanny pack.
The hippie guys did this a couple weeks ago on the jigsaw puzzle tile task. When Pinky showed up to do the task, they told her they’d been there three hours already, and that the ice girls (who were just leaving) had been there two hours before they got there!
You have to figure the odds of that are pretty low what with the film crew following them around.
That was the Afghanimals. When I see “hippie guys” I think of the Beards (althought it’s not a great fit, it’s better than calling the Afghanimals “hippies”. They’re just bros.).
Would you include a taxi taking off with their backpacks? Because that happened (Season 21, James&Abba) and the team was SOL.
Also to Dallas(?) and his mom in an earlier season. They were stuck in Russia without passports and couldn’t go on to the next country, so they were eliminated.
I don’t see why that’s any different (in terms of the race) than any of the other bad things that happen which aren’t the fault of the racers (broken down cabs, bad directions, etc.).
Zev Steinhardt
Do you think the producers knowingly supplied a wheelbarrow with a flat tire, or that it was just bad luck? I could see them supplying one bad wheelbarrow and by luck of bad picking the Afghanimals got it because they didn’t check. But if they did check and swapped it for a good one, would that have meant that some other team got the bad one? Maybe there were a surplus of wheelbarrows and nobody had to get stuck with a flat.
Two of the teams (Oklahoma, Baseball Bunnies) took the other part of the detour so there were at least 2 extra wheelbarrows available.
Above the Arctic Circle, wheelbarrows spontaneously generate whenever codfish oil is present in sufficient quantities. All they had to do was wait. :smack:
D’oh, you’re right. Yeah I was thinking of the Beards but it was the Afghanimals.
I could have sworn there was a leg a few years ago where a team was sent back from the mat because they didn’t have their clue with them. They went back to the site of the last task, found it, and returned to be checked in.
But maybe I’m mistaken.
We call them the Beardos 