Waiting for the Taxi Assessment. tapping foot impatiently
Did everyone watch the Oscars instead? I was migraining last night, so watched with 1/2 an eye. I will say that the twins seemed woefully unprepared for any task not requiring them to say “PUSH!”.
StG
Due to the Oscars, I’ll be catching up on this later this week. I’m probably not the only one.
I missed it, but I was at the curling club planning our season-ending tournament. It will have an Amazing Race theme.
Taxi Assessment:
Stuck in the Desert and Officially Detained - or, Philiminated with extreme prejudice.
Matthew and Daniel (already eliminated)
Idries and Jamil (Black twins) (down from “Passing”) - When one of the twins commented in their interview that they both had the same weaknesses, which may be a problem, I thought he was being modest. Turns out he was making an objective diagnosis. Their Detour performance was pretty wretched, and they were seriously - seriously as in arguing for tens of minutes - discussing quitting and taking a six hour penalty, which would have almost certainly eliminated them, rather than dipping a toe into the water. A little cooler reasoning would have suggested checking out the other Detour option - which one of the twins did, in passing, but they acted on only after fruitlessly diving for one clam at a time and dropping hopelessly behind. Probably one of the top three worst Detour performances ever, and this team is understandably eliminated/
Flat Tire - or, not likely to get anywhere soon.
David and Connor (Father & son) (down from “Passing”) - Yikes. If that injury is as severe as it sounds, we might get the first TAR injury withdrawal, which would make next week’s leg somewhat less exciting. Even if not, Dad’s going to be limping for a long time, which is not good when you’re, y’know, racing. That’s a little disappointing, becasuse up until now this team was doing pretty good, with a pair of top-three finishes.
Stopping for Gas - or, not broken-down, exactly, but not a good sign.
Chuck and Wynona (Married Alabamans) (holding steady) - Chuck, at least, is pounding through the tasks, but it didn’t look like Wynona was doing anything in this episode. I feel a little sorry for her, because it’s pretty obvious that competing on the Race is Chuck’s idea, and she’s just struggling along, doing the best she can, because it’s important to him. At some point, though, she’s going to have to do something that’s more physically demanding than she can handle, and that’s when they’ll hit the mat in last place and we’ll get to hear the “Tearful Banjoes Disappearing Into the Sunset” theme.
Max and Katie (Douchy newlyweds) (holding steady) - What is going through Max’s mind when his clever insights boil down to, “the other team is going to try to beat us, so we should try to beat them”? Good God, it’s a Race! The word is right there in the title of the show! I guess Max is just so enamored of his own cleverness that he assumes that every thought he has is automatically insightful and worth sharing.
“Rapido! Por Favor?” - or, making meaningless ineffectual comments from the back seat, but in no immediate danger.
Joey and Meghan (YouTube hosts) (up from “Stopping”) - Richard Simmons. Heh. Always a funny reference. I’m still skeptical of Joey and Meghan’s long-term viability, but I admit they’re doing far better than I thought they would, and their division of labor decision on the Detour would have made Henry Ford proud. I’m tentatively moving them up a notch.
Caroline and Jen (Blonde bandmembers) (holding steady) - A pretty good recovery this week, and Caroline and Jen beat not only Max and Katie (who they thought they had to beat), but two other mistake-prone teams, too.
Pamela and Winnie (Asian women) (down from “Passing”) - Yeah, that was a pretty bad navigation error, when it allowed the teams that started an hour-and-a-half behind to catch up. Plus not-great performance on both the Detour and the Roadblock, and Pamela and Winnie wind up starting in last place next week.
In the Passing Lane - or, ahead of the pack, but not quite comfortably.
Mona and Beth (Brunette derby girls) (holding steady) - Mona and Beth haven’t really finished all that well, but in this episode it was because of picking the “wrong” Detour option, and I’m not sure I can ding them for that. The disparity between the options surprised me - I would have picked the same option Mona and Beth did, on the theory that the pearl-hunting option was a needle-in-a-haystack task that’s best avoided. However, it seems the dining task was more time-consuming than I thought, since it dropped Mona and Beth behind everyone who didn’t either make big mistakes or start out 90 minutes later. Still, I’m hopeful for the roller derby girls, and I’ll leave them ranked here.
John and Jessica (Dating surfer couple) (up from Rapido!) - John and Jessica now have a pair of top-three finishes, and an Express Pass, so that’s enough to vault them up into this category. Although I think they’re trying to be too clever by half with this second Express Pass - what they don’t seem to realize is that the more teams they lead on, the more teams will be irritated at later when someone else gets the Express Pass. It would be, I think, a perfect strategy to hand it over to David and Connor, because (a) that was the agreement to begin with (silly as it was), (b) no other team is going to be pissed that it’s used to help an obviously gimpy team that needs the help, and (c) David and Connor are pretty clearly no longer a long-term threat, so the choice wouldn’t bite John and Jessica later.
Anthony and Bates (Hockey brothers) (up from Rapido!) - So Anthony and Bates are, quite quickly, the only young(er) male-male team left (and it’s not unlikely that next week they’ll be the only male-male team left, period). I still think TAR has a slight skew toward male teams, even if not as much as in the past, so that gives this team an edge. Also Anthony and Bates seem to be a little more clever and laid-back than I first gave them credit for. That, with the addition of pretty extensive travel and competition experience, makes this team look pretty good in the long term.
Cruisin’ with Earl - or, drivin’ on the shoulder, takin’ shortcuts, and generally kickin’ butt.
No one yet.
I saw it.
I’m very disappointed with this season’s contestants. We’re two episodes in and they’re falling over each other to find ways to give up and take penalties, sometimes without even trying.
Also, they’re breaking the unwritten rules of the Amazing Race, “Read the Clue,” “Learn to Swim,” I’m betting there are at least 3 teams who can’t drive a stick, they just haven’t had a chance to fail at that yet.
The YouTube team, is growing on me. They’ve got good attitudes and they did figure out how to efficiently handle the pearl task. Good for them.
I did watch the Oscars last night but will catch up on TAR tonight. Not reading thread until then. puts fingers in ears
Wynona laying on the boat like a dead fish was pretty funny. Pretty boring episode though. The Twins were just embarrassingly bad at that task.
I heard it more like this:
“The other teams are going to try and throw us under the bus to get ahead, so we’ll just have to out-race them.”
or yet another way: When we try to win it’s ok because we are on the side of angels, when those teams try to beat us, it’s because they are assholes!
Black people can’t swim and Asians have no sense of direction. Did they cast this season’s contestants from Stereotypes-R-Us?
I agree. Has there been a single season of TAR where contestants could race all legs and not need to do a water-based task at some point? That’s a huge handicap
to try to overcome and the fact that they spent so long discussing whether they would take a 6-freaking-hour penalty rather than even try made me completely lose respect for them.
I need to go back and check the DVR but I could have sworn that Caroline and Jen were just behind Max and Katie through the entire leg. Did they get ahead of them during the stilt-walking?
The twins arguing about doing the task vs taking the penalty just floored me. For crying out loud, at least try the other task first before giving up! They did eventually try the other task but by then it was too late.
And yeah, Chuck and Wynona are doomed. Even when she could have been doing something, like shucking oysters in the boat while Chuck was doing the diving, she just stood there like she had no idea what to do. She’s a good sport for going along on the race with her hubby but she really does seem like dead weight at this point. I can’t see this team making it through more than another couple of legs before they’re on the way home. (On the other hand, I expected the Beekmans to be going home at any moment last season, and look what happened.)
Yes - whichever of them did it was a high school gymnast, and shot right through the stilt task. Meanwhile Max was trying to kick the coconut “AS HARD AS HE COULD!! GRR!!”, even though he was going to have to walk to wherever it stopped anyway, and as a result, he fell off the stilts after every kick and had to go back to the beginning.
Didn’t Wynona say that Chuck’s job as a Walmart manager was good experience for the stilts? I’m still not sure what that’s about. She said something about his job last week too - I hope they last long enough for us to find out more about the myriad of abilities needed by a Walmart manager.
Yes, that. They were actually pretty close through most of the leg, I think, but Caroline/Jen just kind of waltzed through the stilt-walking and Max flopped (though, as I recall, he was still comfortable ahead of Winnie/Pam).
That surprised me as well - taking a six-hour penalty on the second leg of the race, with no sign that anyone else is in that kind of trouble, is about as sure a path to elimination as you can get; taking the extra 20 minutes or whatever to check out the other task isn’t going to decrease your nearly infinitesimal odds of surviving any farther, and might help a whole bunch. The cost/benefit is so obvious that the twins’ talk about quitting before checking out the other task is just astonishing.
Yeah, I know. I’m usually pretty down on people who seem like they’d rather not be Racing (because, c’mon, there are a hundred people in line behind you!), but Wynona isn’t bitching about it, and seems to be doing her best. It’s just that her best isn’t really all that.
You would think a pair of doctors would be smart enough to learn to swim beforehand. The thing that’s really annoying is that the other detour (set up the underwater dining table) was basically hand-made for people who can’t swim, yet they never considered it until too late. The twin arguing for taking a six hour penalty is a moron.
I agree with zut that the team with the second express pass should just give it to David and Connor, since it allows them to keep their word, look nice, and also give it to a team that’s likely to be eliminated in two rounds anyways. But instead they’re looking for ways to be total assholes about it.
Really not sure how much of Max I can take, unfortunately there are enough bad teams that he’ll likely be around for awhile. Sigh.
It’s almost like his fear was irrational.
This is the second season in a row where I am finding I am just bored with everything. I hate that because I really want to like the show.
Plus it seems like in two episodes we have seen more “take the penalty” talk than in every other season of the show combined. Probably not literally true but it feels that way.
It’s only been two episodes, but Max comes across to me as a real douche bag. Maybe it’s because he reminds me of Jonathan from TAR Season 6. I don’t know – not really impressed with the contestants after the first two weeks.
Two things to do when you learn you are going to be on TAR: Learn to drive a manual transmission car and learn to swim!
Usually I have a favorite team after the first couple of episodes. This year I hope they all lose.
I have a personal rule with all reality shows: I pick a winner within the first 10 minutes of the first episode, and I have to root for them to win, even if I wind up hating their guts 15 minutes later. Idries and Jamil were my pick this time…thank god they’re gone.
I’m sorry, but I can’t stand when people are that fucking selfish. There are thousands of people who would have loved to have the opportunity they were given, and these two can’t bother to either A) learn to swim, or B) realize that they’re going to come across a water-based challenge at some point and decline to be on the show? Dickweeds.