danm

Well, one thing this episode taught me is that just about every team who is likely to be cast in the future needs to add "how to hit a nail with a hammer" to their needed basic skills list (paper maps, manual transmissions, sawing wood, etc.) My favorite from The Amazing Editors was quoting Claire when she was yammering on (again) about how smart she is to be a software engineer and now -behold!- she's so smart she can even use a hammer!!!! And she's so much ever so smart that she knows that the secret is.... leverage. leverage. LEVERAGE!!!!. All the while showing her with a hammer in her hand pushing it in the general direction of some nails, and not using ANY leverage at all. Ha ha, I'm that kind of engineer to be entertained by such things (I won't say what kind of engineer, but I do have a P.E. to back up my statement). Glad the show is back, don't like the time slot, can't tell many of the teams apart, etc. etc. And I love The Amazing Editors.

Too bad about the non-elims..... The biggest thing I learned during this leg was that Phil isn't wearing any kind of a necklace. I am, really, very happy that TAR has a current season being released now. To production and associates: keep up the good work and don't let any negative comments get you down!

Well, I was really looking forward to a 2-episode night, but that was not to be... even though the CBS schedule at their web site said it would be. Good news for me is that through some combination of KF, being themselves, and saying plenty of words for the editors to chose from the teams have given me some opportunity to form a few opinions. Primarily, as a registered PE (Professional Engineer) in two US states I know a little of what it takes to be an Engineer and what an Engineer does. It has become apparent that Eswar does not share this knowledge, but he does not let this stop him from talking about it as if he does. I wish he would stop it, or if he's being prompted by production to say "I'm a software guy, I have a lot of specialized knowledge and experience with reasoning and logic which may help me with figuring out how to ride this camel" instead of "as an engineer, I know everything about anything, including how to make this camel work." And.... Will and James can take each other and leave the show any day now as far as I'm concerned. They have earned it. This episode was OK, but I still anxiously await something other than a spoon-fed flight to be awaiting the teams at the airport. Yes, I appreciate the non-standard destinations (South America! If only we could bounce around there all the season?!?! Oh that's right, we have so far!), but as a non-competitor do not love the observation voiced near the start this episode "we came in last, but now we're tied for first!". The dancing looked difficult to me, and the watermelons appeared harder than I thought. But as an Engineer, I know everything about constructing melon pyramids (and dancing!) so things would've gone very smoothly for me at either one! OK show, bring on some entertainment and airport competition.

I'm liking the season so far, but am a little put off by the spoon fed transportation (Episode 1 - provided cabs to airport, 1 flight to destination. Episode 2 - 1 flight to destination, production-supplied cabs [assumed to be by me based TAR-colored sticker on windshield). Granted this is all probably necessary because of the -very nice!- destinations, and it may or may not be questionable practice to get into any random cab, if you can even find one, in or near Bogota Columbia. So I'm not calling out Phil on this, and hoping for some regular airport and cab drama as the season progresses. Enough complaints! I'm still happy that this season is finally being aired, that the casting still seems better than recent seasons, and that physically strong teams can still be eliminated early. The provided cabs give me some entertainment, as I like to see who/what/where take their backpacks with them when they leave the cab. I think I saw on this episode where 1 teammate took their pack with them and the other one didn't. The supplemental info with the clue could be lengthy, complicated and interesting.

Happy to have the show back, or at least finally have this one out of the can. No love or hate (yet) from me for any of the teams, and I always feel sorry for 1st team eliminated. Happy also to have teams "regular people" instead of "re-packaged wanna-be tv personalities" because I feel this is a very important part of this show's core values. I'll stretch to include the ex-NFL players into the "regular people" category, partly because of their comic-con intro, partly that they have now demonstrated that they can easily come in last place, partly because they seem to be fairly normal people, and mostly because I have no prior knowledge of them and they haven't been on some other tv show already. Funny thing for me, was I saw Phil pushing a particular Cellular Service Provider on broadcast tv a few days ago, and didn't get what/why he had fallen far down enough to where he had to do that. And then during the show there was a product placement ad for the exact same Cellular Service Provider (show sponsor) and immediately understood why he was doing regular ads for them. I'm currently visiting my father, and he uses that exact same Cellular Service Provider... but has absolutely no idea or knowledge of who Phil is. For me, I liked the team intros mixed into the first 20 minutes of the show, because I find the team-team-team... usual order to be quite tedious. And I don't remember who any of them are anyway. At least in this (new) way, I could wonder for a minute or two "who are those unintroduced people and what is their story" and then eventually it was revealed. There was some chances for order-mixing, and believe that now "one motor or two motors" will become a decision factor on which boat to choose if you have a choice. Let the season continue, and improve with every episode.

I'm enjoying the season so far. As with the American Version, I cannot tell if me not caring about and not connecting with any of the teams makes the show any better or worse. But that's just me, I'll still watch it. In this episode, I became fascinated with the extremely specific pixelation of -some- brand names lit up in the bright lights of Toronto. While other prominent advertisements in the field of view were left untouched. Which ones get blurred out? Who chooses? All I could come up with that makes sense would be: pixelate something in direct competition to CTV (or CBS), or something the producers don't like. There was a big sign for a beer(?), in which the brand name was blurred, but the catch-words were left untouched. And there was an enormous "sign" for Reese's above the cars used for the "pack-it, drive-it" roadblock... while it was not pixelated, it also was not featured prominently. So while Reese's obviously paid for the huge promo at that location in the city, did they pay extra for CTV to leave it alone (but not enough to get lengthy direct shots of it)? It's a rough world out there, and marketing/advertising seems to play pretty tough which makes me curious about what is in the rulebook.

I had my first visit to Florida Keys (Nov-2017), and I was happy to be staying on Marathon Key, quite near to the Trailer Park Task Site, and the Finish Line on Pigeon Key, finale locations for S18. A large hurricane ("Irma") blew through the area in September of 2017 and hit Marathon Key vicinity very hard. The Galway Bay residential area had a great pile of collected debris outside of it, but looks pretty well put back together on the inside. I didn't try to go in and intrude on the people who live there. Pigeon Key looks like a large wave or two washed over the whole island and left a lot of damage behind, it looks a lot better in the finale! And the "Old 7 Mile Bridge," site of the bike/trike-to-the-finish-line-showdown is under some kind of repair or renovation and inaccessible to the public at the current time. The people who live here have my admiration and respect for how they can deal with natural events like this and bounce back to keep on going.

Just to say, with all the very correct comments on Brooke's behaviour.... I did notice at the start of the episode (where everybody is waiting around for their spoonfed bus ride in the middle of the night), she shows up with a bright and cheery countenance and gives every impression, for a few seconds at least, of being a reasonable human being who would not be that bad to hang out with. As mentioned upthread somewhere, maybe the cast of the show doesn't mind her because they see more than what is being presented to viewers by the editors. And all we get to see are the sorted out and sifted through "highlights" of what she does and how she does it. It doesn't really matter to me, because I don't care a lot about this season except that I don't want it to be the last one.

Yawn. Well, that's over. Not nearly as bad as I feared it would be. And it didn't ever really cave into the "social media star" premise that was being pushed at the start of the season, so hooray for that. It was at the beginning of this episode, during all the "we're gonna do whatever it takes to win, and we're gonna win" talks that I realized that I really didn't care who won or not. Please, show, step it up a notch for the next season -- I'll be there, and I hope that you show up too. Then I looked at my watch at 14 minutes until the top of the hour and thought "huh, what, no memory/review task?" to then learn that they tried to have one but it apparently wasn't that difficult and wasn't presented as being very suspenseful. LA never looked so good, and it's kind of nice for the teams to get the clue "welcome to LA, now get on a helicopter and leave this place." It was an OK season for me. For entertainment I have started to watch S21 again and have quickly re-learned what an "annoying team" looks like on this show. So.. this season kind of won for not having any _Really_Annoying_ teams... but ho hum, please do better next season.

If I ever cared about any of the teams during the season, I don't remember when. Whatever. It has not been as bad as I feared it would be. The funniest thing right now is.... "DanDrew2". LOL. Not that bad of a season all in all, so far. Somebody will win, I guess!

One of the things I really liked about this episode was the few glimpses of Blair's apparently now nearly-empty pack. Yes, she did have her cold-weather gear on, but still. It is quite a change from earlier episodes and her horrible pre-season self-promoting video about how clever and minimalist her packing job is/was. LOL. I have heard that at the end of the season she revisits the packing strategy and shows what was left in her pack by the end of the race. Maybe she learned something during the course of the filming, I hope so. Brodie or Kurt, whichever one it is that does the screeching can stop it any time now, he's really got on my nerve. Glad the show is back from break, glad it visited a very scenic and interesting Armenia, and am glad to be looking forward to next week. Maybe the show can find its way to booting one of these teams off. Any of them please, it doesn't matter which one.

Well, I'm not a fan of lists, but I just have to comment on that one word: "lovable". I don't disklike that team as much as I should and certainly not as much as they deserve. For some reason I didn't mind them that much, even though they were over-the-top annoying. Go figure. So, from my almost-favorable perspective there are many words I could apply to that couple but "lovable" would never occur to me. I hope everybody enjoys CBS' attempts to maintain interest while cutting the show off for a few weeks. This example is one of very creative writing, and as such is mildly entertaining. Except for that one delusional word.

Well, oddly enough I kind of like this team (except for "the voice", but yeah). I'm a dad and I have a daughter and if we were fortunate enough to be on this show together, there would be a LOT of "DADDY!" screams until I did something stupid enough to get us eliminated. One thing she forgot to mention during the "what's in my bag" video is that her Dad was going to carry it all for her. (If it was me and mine, there would be NONE of that). I hope they last until the end, and then she can post a video of "what's left in my bag after I threw away most of that crap that I didn't really need and some of the stuff that I really did need". Funny thing is, I have a backpack very similar to that (different color and maybe different size) and was wondering if it was going to be large enough to pack more than I will need -- now that question has been answered for me! Looking forward to suffering through her episode recap videos, and perhaps I will learn enough to start carrying a handful of makeup paintbrushes as part of my minimalist kit.

Well.... I still hold out hope for the current season, but can't Killer Fatigue hit ALL of the teams, like, RIGHT NOW???? Please. It was only 15 minutes in when my basic thought was "at least one team will be eliminated... tonight!" And then Phil said that "...the last team to arrive.... MAY be eliminated." WTF. Oh well, I still hold out hope for the current season. KF please come visit soon and then stay on for a long while. At least I didn't feel so bad that the father/daughter team got non-eliminated, because I am a father and I have daughters and I don't think he makes his living on social media.

OK, thanks! I didn't really pay attention to much of the show, and thought that a TAR ad would catch my eye. (I am NOT the target demographic for most any advertisements and have a difficult time with most of them). I thought I saw Phil in one montage of "CBS has so many awesome shows to watch" but I did not see any specific promos for TAR. Yeah I didn't watch all that closely (and see above about whether I am a target demographic subject or not. Hint... I am probably not). I don't think and certainly don't hope that the towel has been thrown in, but I had hoped for more of a push, even given the hopeless concept behind the team selection for next season. I'll take your observation as confirmation of, and hope for, belief in the future.