vousviou

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.

One thing I would add is if you're not used to really cold water, it can completely mess up your breathing, and a life jacket will let you always have your head up so you don't struggle. Although we don't know how cold it was, and how much of a factor it would have been.

Sorry, double post.

That was my impression too. When they hit the mat they knew they had lost, and I don't think it was as close as the producers tried to make it appear.

I was worried about this episode at first. The Newton bit seemed twee, but then they dumped it. Then having the Doctor and Donna alone seemed like it was headed toward a hopelessly introspective time, but then that turned out to be wrong. The pieces clicked together and it was a lot of fun even though there was horror too. And there were interactions between the characters on a personal level too. The past two episodes have involved people behind the scenes who like the show and the characters and want everything to succeed. What a crazy concept!

I agree having no other teams made it much less stressful. If this had happened about five legs earlier you would have seen teams throwing plates. Well, this season teams were too even keeled to throw plates, but you'd definitely see more flustered people.

I really enjoyed the scene early when the brothers looped back after missing the numbers, and one of Team Facial Hair said "we'd love to help you out, but we're not going to because you're too strong" and the brothers just took it in stride. They all seemed to understand the situation. I'm glad Team ZZ Top won, and they were clearly helped by not being a part of the pack at the finish. It shows how sometimes you're gambling when you join up with someone else -- you may all be dragged down together.

I agree and I'd add the design of the challenges and the level of self-navigation has been really good overall. There haven't been a lot of slam dunk challenges. Most seem to have had something that someone could and often did mess up, even strong teams. There been lack of drama due to one team falling far behind, but even then there has usually been some serious questions about who will place where. I was too. The brothers mentioned it had a needle in a haystack setup, and doing that in kayaks if the wind kicked up a lot of chop would be even harder. It definitely looked at one point the water was getting rougher.

I've wondered about this - there have been other times when in theory one team or person could block another but it doesn't seem happen. I sort of assume for safety there's a rule that says slower teams have to give an overtaking team or person a chance to pass to avoid scuffles or people being knocked down stairs or off bridges, but I'd be curious if anyone knows. Come to think of it, I could see that happening in cars too, and I'd assume the producers would want to prevent teams from cutting off another team at high speed and other risky maneuvers, but I don't know if there are explicit rules.

I'd say he was overthinking it, but in his defense the history of the former Yugoslav republics is wildly complicated. For example, nearby Montenegro has had multiple periods of independence and being a subject going back to the Middle Ages. I could see someone thinking back too far in history to some early time predating the invasions of the Middle Ages instead of just recent history. But like I say, that would be a case of overthinking a plainly stated question.

I wouldn't be surprised if that artificial snow was also icier than most snow.

Thanks, that's a good explanation. But maybe the regs will have an exemption for vintage cars, and we can see teams racing 1968 Ferarris down the Autobahn! Or we can at least dream....

Ooh! That's a good idea. For everyone, not just Chelsea. Any time someone presented the wrong number of coins, rappel and then start over. Would have made the task much more challenging. As is, I though it was ridiculously simple, and not likely to shake up placements. There was a small version of this -- every time she gave the wrong number she had to go back to the sign with the conversions before she could make another guess. The first time they showed the gatekeeper sending her back. It's a fair question whether that distance was far enough. A couple of seasons ago Penn was basically making semi-random guesses of the number of columns in Portugal with repeat trips to give his answer. I think his eyes just weren't good enough to get more than an approximate number. The difficulty he faced was that he had to go back hundreds of yards for each wrong guess while he worked by process of elimination, and he ended up spending a lot of time and effort along the way.

I'm sorry to see M & A go, but that was a huge navigation collapse. If I somehow ended up racing, I think I'd skip practicing memory puzzles and dance lessons and just spend all of my time with my teammate navigating in strange places. I was a little surprised Team ZZ Top was sure they were last and didn't have some hope M & A might have been behind. Maybe it just didn't occur to them that they could be so lost. I was struck when they said the sausages were the first food they'd had since breakfast. Racing all day like that must be pretty draining. The cars were automatic, weren't they? I would have liked to ha e a little stick shift drama.

I am bumming that I just found out this was on and I've had to catch up. Is it just me, or has this been a really good season? It feels like there are a lot of well-designed challenges, good locations, good balance between teams, and competitors who are mostly taking this seriously but still finding enjoyment along the way. I'm also glad that the amount of teams working together has been pretty minimal and reasonable in context. For example, the two Franklin teams briefly collaborated to get to the picture challenge, but after that each team worked on their own. I'm struck by how Team Pink seems to have a perfect sense of which detour to pick and who does the roadblock. And I loved the way they flat out gaslit AL in this episode when she was trying to figure out who voted against them, saying basically you can find out when you watch the show. I have a lot of doubts they'll last, though. If I had to guess a winner, I'd pick the Franklin brothers. I think this episode showed they have the strength to handle the brick challenge and the attention to detail for the printing. But I think most of the teams have a strong chance of sneaking past.