Half the teams are gone, and Team Fauxgal Family proved that whininess is next to godliness, and godliness is next out the door when you stand by your fake morality when it’s down to the last artifact.
Tonight, teams…er…no idea really, the previews didn’t say too much about the specifics except wasn’t there some rope climbing? Will Team Miss USA stay hardcore? Will Team “Geniuses” ever live up to their names? Will Team Air Force reboot? Let’s watch, shall we?
I may be alone in this, but Team Air Force bores me. All that competence and sanity and teamwork and stability – it’s too much to take! They are excellent Treasure Hunters, but terrible TV. BoooooOOOOOoooooring! We can’t even heckle them, really, because they’re so bleh. Where is the dysfunction I’ve come to love from my competitive reality shows? So disappointing.
OK, the final moment of this episode? Might have been the best moment of the season (series?) so far. “This isn’t the outfit I wanted to get eliminated in.” Heh. Speaking of which … has anyone heard anything about whether there will be more seasons of this show? Not sure how I feel either way, just wondering.
“Hmm, here’s where the picture of the castle is. I don’t see anything. I’m sure those words aren’t important. Let’s walk two miles over there.” Morons.
What the hell; Paris, again? You guys were just there. It’s way too soon to start repeating yourselves. (Kayte Fogal was impressed just to see the Eiffel Tower. She kinda missed out on this episode, didn’t she.) And again with the jump; Paris to Normandy ain’t just around the block.
Is it just me, or did climbing that mountain look like fun?
You want to enter? You, me, and we’d need a third person. We could be team Totyl Strangyrs.
Aw, I like Team Air Force. Their sanity and competence is just so darn refreshing. And hey, they’re polite too. (Hm, maybe it’s my Canadianess that’s appreciating all this. 
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I’m interested in what the final prize is. The promos keep talking about “millions”.
Well, I was sorry to see Team Miss USA go. They were having so much fun and they had a great attitude and I appreciated the fact that they actually struck out on their own (even if it was necessitated by their taking the detour to skip the mountain climbing). I much prefer it when each team has to figure things out on their own, and two of the teams on the train in Paris got lucky because the third team figured out the map watercolor message early. But that’s kind of par for the course for this show. It happens on TAR, too, but the TAR teams seem to be a lot more competitive and guard any information that might give them an edge.
I was hoping the “Geniuses” would get the boot, although I was glad the slow one (Sammy?) was able to make it up the mountain. Good for him, and I hope the skinny “genius” wasn’t too much of a dick to him on the way up. That dude rubs me the wrong way. Oh, and how corny was the other guy’s motivational speech to Sammy? “Make it up the mountain and Jessica Biel will want to go out with you!”
I guess I’m rooting for Air Force. CIA is usually smarter than they were tonight–they should have known better than to go on a wild goose chase with the Southies and “Geniuses.”
I don’t watch the show regularly but I watched tonight.
Didn’t any of them know that Eiffel made the Statue of Liberty?
One of the Genius-Southie-CIA collective might have known that, but it was moot anyway, since they figured out the map thing early. Then again, maybe not, since they seem shocked to discover that there was also a Statue of Liberty in Paris. (Which, by the way – they could have filmed that whole bit in Vegas, since there are pretty much identical landmarks there. 
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I’d love to, if there are any other takers. But you’ll need to know in advance that I can’t drive stick, I won’t go anywhere unless my bras and panties match, and I would totally sell my own team out for a Marlboro Menthol. If you’re OK with that, then figuring out how to make an audition video will be cake.
Team Wyld Totyl Strangyrs. I’m in!
You bring your own panties, I’ll get the cigarettes.
I like Francis a lot better than I used to, but Charles is still a tool.
I missed the last show, didn’t get to see the Fogals go. I am sad about that. 
But, this was a fun episode! I like Miss USA, but cit happens!
The three teams going together are beginning to annoy me…but then it seems to work against them as much as for them! Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to chant at the screen: ‘Don’t listen to the Geniuses!’ Sometimes their advice is great, but sometimes it sends other teams off on strange tangents (like the Young Professionals - I rather blamed the Geniuses for their cut.)
Team Airforce is my hope for a win, though the Southies are fun and my second choice! We’ll have to see what happens!
Was it me or did it look like the daylight kept changing at the Statue of Libertay (TM Airforce) (or was it Lady Libertay?) Especially with the girls. I mean they left the Eiffel Tower at night, but when they showed up it seemed really bright, and then almost immediately it was dark again.
I really hope this show gets a second season. I’ll bet they can make a few changes to improve all the little bits we keep talking about. Step one: new host!
I think that somewhere between the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty and the end, they went into a Metro station or a coffee shop to check something out – the lights were not only brighter, but also that weird fluorescent tinge.
When is the advice from the “Geniuses” ever any good? They seem more than any other team to go the “put that down, that’s not important” route. My favorite is when they know they’re overthinking a problem but still overthink it anyway, and then say how they’re too smart for the puzzle. Yeah, being too smart for the puzzle is why you’ve been in the basement so many legs. They’re really the only team that it would actively piss me off to have win. I was rooting for Miss USA because they were so hardcore, but with them gone I’ve gone back to my first love, Team [del]Hot Twin Firemen[/del] Southie Boys.
Too many things about this show are contrived to make me believe that the whole thing isn’t scripted. The Hanlon’s taking a two hour detour during the challenge to get a hamburger was almost believable because they were morons, but last night clinched it for me.
Miss USA fails to spot the Statue of Liberty from the Eifel Tower, so instead of keeping looking, they go to the gift shop and browse postcards, only to find the clue they need! With a camera right there next to them!
There are other things too, like when a team walks right past a clue, the camera which has been following alongside them will stop following them and focus on the missed clue. I’ve seen this in Survivor, too.
I don’t find that to be credible evidence of scripting.
That’s not scripting. That’s comedy gold. TAR camera people are the champs at this.
It never occurs to anyone that maybe the cameraman might have a reason to stop and focus on some loose bricks in a wall or some candles in a church?
I don’t think it’s scripted, but I think it’s filmed and edited in such a way as to highlight the drama and not with a strict documentary approach. Of course there was a camera right next to them when they found the postcard, the cameraman stays with them all the time. When a team walks right by a clue and we see it full screen, I think some of those are shots taken later or zooming in to part of the frame in post-production (I know I caught that at least once on The Amazing Race). If the camera crews with the teams do know the answers in advance, I’d hope they’d be very careful not to give anything away.
But there were two things in last night’s episode that looked a bit off to me. When Team Junior Birdmen found the clue box on the hillside (with the treasure), there was a camera shot of them moving a branch out of the way to move away from the clearing, but it was shot from in front of them. If the cameraman had been waiting there for them, it would have given away the position of the box. I figured after the box was found, the cameraman said “would you come through these bushes again so I can shoot it from a different angle.” I read somewhere that TAR films the start of the race several times, some for close-ups and some for long shots without the camera crews visible. I can live with that.
And the finish seemed a little fishy, timing wise. Team Beauty Queen got to the Eiffel Tower in second place, but there’s no way to know how long they looked for the statue. (It looked hard to find in the darkness; I wonder if the producers planned for the teams to get there before sunset.) They found the postcard, went to the statue, and were puzzling over washing the streets. (Did anyone else figure this one out on their own? I did.) Team Geniusesses, Team Spook and Team Wicked Awesome figured out the map and got to skip the tower. But they all still had to get their cars at the statue for the drive to Normandy. I don’t know how they did that without running into the Beauty Queens. And they drove all the way to Normandy (not as far as I thought, but 80 miles in a strange country in the dark has got to take some time). I’m wondering if they passed the Queens while they were still in the tower, and the editing made it look closer than it was.
And one of the Junior Birdmen is married to the Birdwoman. Was that common knowledge before last night?
I’m convinced that everything on TV is scripted. Leastwise everything is so heavily edited as to be closer to a preplanned script than to the actual events. I’m also convinced that everyone on these “reality” shows is a member in full standing of SAG and is getting paid scale for their performance. No producer is going to pay to produce a prime time TV show unless they have complete control of the final product. Turning a bunch of everyday folks loose to hunt willy nilly across two continents has the same chance of producing good TV as does a room full of monkeys the collected works of that English writer guy.
And there you have the Art of the Stolen Camera Shot. The secret is not to let the teams notice that you’re focusing on the wall or the candle or whatever. And it really doesn’t take that long when a team is running past the clue box for the third time while insisting that it doesn’t exist (I’m looking at you, Fran and Barry) to sneak a quick shot as they’re running and distracted.
Yeah they do, and it just occurred to me last Saturday while watching a TAR repeat on GSN that they must shoot at least some of the leg starts out of real time. When you have three teams leaving the Pit Stop a minute apart it just isn’t possible to move them in and out quickly enough for it to be real time. And I’m OK with that sort of time manipulation for dramatic purposes.
I twigged to it from the Genworth Financial sign which I think came before the statue clue.
The motorolamessages for Air Force and the three-team bunch directed them to cars “next to” the SoL. The BQs were right at the SoL and one of the three-team bunch said they saved time by not going to the SoL. We don’t see how far away exactly the cars are from the SoL but I can see how the three-team bunch would miss the BQs. The BQs were presented as being past the tower and on to the SoL before the three-team bunch got to the tower. That’d be a pretty major timeshift.
It’s on their website.