vousviou

It is called "strategy," NOT collusion. And it is good to see human beings caring about each other instead of backstabbing all the time on a reality show. The way I split the difference is that I think cooperation between challenges is OK but during them it should be banned. During Roadblocks it's against the rules for someone to help their other teammate in even the slightest way. Yelling out even something as vague as "count all the puzzle pieces" is banned. I think it ought to be against the rules to help another team as well. However, two teams joining up to navigate to the next challenge, or a team leaving a challenge giving advice to another team about to start is OK in my mind. It's like the difference between telling one team that the dance they're about to learn has a specific tricky step at the end, versus actually putting on a costume and doing the dance for them.

I'm late to the party, but my reaction to this episode was similar to the rest of the season - not great, but not terrible. I think the fact that the 10th leg was the second in the Dominican Republic underlined one of the struggles for the season - a lack of geographic diversity. The Covid issues other people have referred to were obviously a barrier, but I wonder if there were ways to deal with the Western Hemisphere-only angle. Maybe by having the first leg in Alaska or Canada and only one leg in Mexico, for example. The design of the challenges was pretty middling for these two episodes, which I also think reflected the rest of the season. The flag roadblock was excellent, and the mascot and Declaration of Independence challenges were fine, but the Liberty Bell was weak and I would have preferred one of the frequent season wrapups that require recalling things from the previous legs. The Dominican Republican ones were pretty dull. The one thing the windsurfing roadblock brought to mind though is that I'd like to see one or two more physically demanding detours per season that expose teams which have someone who can't swim, or bike long distances, or climb well. The good thing about the Declaration challenge was that it exposed both team members, and I think TAR would benefit from a bit more of that on the physical side too. I think these later episodes were a lot better than the first third of the season, which seemed to spin its wheels eliminating teams which were over their heads. The personalities (except for Vinny and Amber) were pretty good, but considering how long the episodes were, I wish the producers had added a bit more footage from downtime in hotels or at meals to give a better sense of their characters. It was another episode where Ricky and Cesar gained a lot by being good at navigation, and a lot of the lack of drama this season comes down to team selection by the producers. Although to be fair I'm not sure how much producers can do to select for teams which know how to get around places. You can weed out obvious dolts, but I'm not sure you can know which teams are 6/10 vs. 10/10, short of actually getting in a car with them during auditions. I'm hopeful that the way the next race they filmed (35) was significantly better shows that they've worked out issues from 36. I admit I'm cutting this season some slack due to the circumstances, but even by regular standards I'd argue this season wasn't too bad.

I can't find anything saying his trip was that long. This is all I was able to find: It's very common for the US government to send people far ahead to do advance work like scouting locations and handling security. If there are diplomatic negotiations involved, there may be State Department personnel hammering out the details of an agreement too who need support. It's an even more elaborate version of how a production team for TAR might spend a week setting up an episode in a country for racers who land at 9 AM and take off 12 hours later.

One thing that crossed my mind is that the separated crew may have had an accident after the separation at the roundabout, and the rules may have said any problem with the crew's vehicle still meant the team had to wait. At least one of those roads was flooded, and Rod and Leticia's car got stuck in the mud - I could imagine that conditions could have been bad enough to cause an accident. I don't know why that wouldn't be mentioned, but it's possible some kind of litigation was involved and the corporate legal department wanted nothing on film. That wouldn't be the fault of Danny and Angie, of course, and possibly not even the crew's fault, just dumb luck, in the same way that sometimes teams have been cursed by equipment breakdowns that were out of their control but the rules still meant they lost time.

I was surprised how bad the firefighters were at directions because that's a critical part of their job. 911 calls are notorious for incomplete information, and vets tend to have almost sixth senses for figuring out how to get places without knowing exactly where they are. Cutting a minute off a response time can be the difference between life and death when a fire truck is responding to a call for a smoldering basement fire or carbon monoxide leak. I realize they might not be the ones driving the trucks, but departments usually try to crosstrain personnel in case in these kinds of skills. This isn't to say I could do better, to be clear. I can easily see myself getting lost in Latin America within five minutes and never getting back.

That's a "beef" I have with some challenges (sorry about the pun). It's been noted before - a wrong attempt should always require a return to some starting point, and there really should always be a ticking clock. Otherwise teams can just sit in place and guess away by brute force until they get it. Especially in a challenge with limited stations, you need to have a ticking clock to force teams to either get it done or get kicked to the back of the line.

It's been slow, but I'm actually starting to enjoy this season. It seems to have taken longer than usual to get a sense of the teams, but they're finally seeming to snap into place. I can see scenarios where there are some big shakeups in the expected eliminations, and I hope the design of challenges lets that happen so it's not just a cakewalk.

I think it's too soon to say how good the season will be. It's not terrible though. I'm finding the people to be pretty genuine, and not loaded with reality TV personalities performing for the cameras. The challenges have been decent enough and the one location so far is good. I'll stick with it. So far I'm not seeing any really repellent personalities, and I'm seeing a lot of opportunities for teams moving up and down based on how well they perform.

I think it will take longer than usual to get to a clear sense of the pack. I think there are some interesting teams, but at this point I'm not even sure if some of them, like the firefighters, will even get past the third or fourth episode.

I'm not surprised at all by the result, but she definitely came across as one of the most genuinely appreciative people I've seen. A lot say the right thing but it comes across as practiced. She never seem like she was performing for the camera.

First episodes are always a bit flat due to all of the introductions and camera time getting divided so much, but I'll say it was a really well-designed leg. The self driving added a lot of tension, the challenges were interesting and made teams work and think, and they took advantage of the location. Season 35 had a lot of well thought out legs, so I'm hopeful that will be true this season too.

I've developed a fear of heights in the past decade or so, so even just watching them up there made me sweat. The slope on the roof made it 100 times more terrifying to me. I didn't think I had a problem, but when I went to the CN Tower in Toronto, it has a section of the observation deck with a glass floor. You can see how thick it is, but stepping on it and looking down still gave me a serious case of the creeps. I can't blame anyone on the show who struggles.

There was a little bit of gamesmanship when Joel was razzing the brothers about how they were going to hate the trapeze challenge, but even that was good natured enough that it didn't seem mean spirited.

I had a bad feeling going into the Space Needle challenge that it was going to be a set of dumb rubber stamp challenges after that made it impossible for teams to switch places, but I'm really glad everything that folIowed showed I was wrong.

I agree completely. We've had good and bad judges in the past, but this was absolutely top-hole! In fact, I'd go as far to say he's one of the top-tier judges we've had for any challenge in the race. He was a part of the Riverdance production, right? I think one of the marks of really good coaches, teachers, and directors is their ability to deliver rejection in a way that inspires people to try harder. You could see the four of them responding that way after being told they needed to go again.