etagloh

And look, Joey and Kelsey were competent racers, but they're basically an anodyne nonentity interchangeable-personality team befitting their jobs (where they have to be ready to become Live Action News Team in some vastly different corner of the US) and some of their behaviour once they had the lead was pretty gross. Can we pretend that nobody won this season and whoever wins the next one gets an extra million? So, it's the Amazing Cab Driver Extortion Finale, welcome home to the good old U S of A? Really? We know that final legs are kinda bullshit because of the constraints they're under, and we know that too much depends on the capriciousness of cabs in them, but because it's Justin who gets the sharp end of it we're now supposed to celebrate it as Part Of The Race? Seriously, if Joey and Kelsey had had a cab driver demanding an extra $100, and they'd chosen not to pay, and they'd lost as a result, I'd feel really bad for them, because that's deliberate shoddiness from TPTB to take teams out to somewhere well off standard cab routes on a final leg that's going to be dependent on cabs.

Well, that was incredibly foreshadowed, and yet the way it rolled out was totally bullshit. The difference between winning the big prize and coming second is that your cab driver doesn't try to extort you at the first task? Really? What the actual fuck? Final leg tasks are mostly for show. The FDNY task had a few things in common with a TAR Canada final task during the summer. And yeah the memory challenges made a bit of a difference, but the leg was decided by cab shite, and even if you're a Justin-hater, you can't respect TAR and like that outcome.

I've said it before, but I think this leg made it very clear: Justin is a reflection for better and definitely for worse of how many superfans (like us here) would run the Race. TPTB know this, and we know this. We like to think that we'd be exemplars of grace under pressure. We like to think that we'd take our knowledge of TAR and handle every pitfall and setback with cool reason, but chances are we'd go ballistic at the first sniff of a hint that our cab driver was bullshitting us about the address he said he knew, or make stupid decisions under pressure that would incur penalties. We might not do so in ways that are quite the same as Justin -- and yes, there's something very childish about how he copes with setbacks against successes -- but we probably wouldn't be as chill as Nat/Kat or TK/Rachel on the way to victory. (Those who point out that in-task destinations are generally walkable or reachable with provided transport: yes, you're right. But would you have trusted yourself to believe that the clue was in walking distance, especially when the phone message gave a street address as well as a business name?)

Let's state for the record that the Perfect Race Tactic in that situation is to ask someone on the street for directions before seeking out a cab. Let's also state for the record that even teams we love unreservedly -- and we should definitely have reservations about how Justin conducts himself -- don't race perfectly. I'm not comfortable with the idea that the cheerleaders were eliminated because of a shitty cab driver. But I'm also not comfortable with how the Green team got fucked over by their cab driver after apparently completing the hard part of their Detour task efficiently and with good speed. This was not an especially well-planned leg for it to be an F3 elimination leg.

Don't make comparisons to He Who Must Not Be Named lightly.

I'm not a fan of the weepy stuff or the ugly-American stuff either, but I'm also not a fan of teams getting fucked over by cab drivers when they complete the tasks smartly and efficiently. You can argue that Green shouldn't have assumed that the address out of the phone meant taking a cab, and that they should have sought out a local first to cross-reference the address, but that's a kind of A++ racing that you don't see even from superfans. If the edit is set up so that Live Local Action Eyewitness News finally goes from second to first for the big final bath mat -- and dear me, it's been foreshadowed that way -- then I'll be basically okay with it, because they've been a competent and un-annoying team, though, as so often is the case with Live Local Action Eyewitness News, they have not a person's worth of personality between the two of them. Chris and Logan can GTFO, because they are (based on their showing on TAR) terrible people and weak racers.

Well, damn. That was... unfortunate. Hard to say whether it was one taxi luck elimination over another taxi luck elimination, but I hate that the F3 placings relied so much on taxi stuff in this Ford-sponsorship-free and self-drive-free season. Chris and Logan can GTFO with their 'it's over' while Green was waiting out the penalty. They are an atrociously weak team and have somehow staggered to the end with a leg victory, and it's embarrassing that they have a chance at the million. This happens fairly often, but you don't get the right to act like you deserve to be there.

Well, that's your Emmy leg -- India, at night, wedding party! -- and probably your Emmy as well. I wondered about the U-Turn and its ultra-weird positioning, because the strength at the front made it feel like a processional leg that required an artificial shake-up, and then we got to the last three pushing their generators down the street a few minutes apart. But afterwards, the tension of that finish dissipated, and it was indeed a pretty damn processional leg that was only really tense because Chris and Logan had to do both sides of the Detour. So I'm ambivalent about it. Superficially, it was the ideal TAR-in-India leg: just enough teams to know them all well but for there to be an elimination, joyous at the front and gruelling at the back, just enough competitiveness for the outcome to be in doubt. But it was fundamentally a leg where the positions were determined by the previous leg and the gaps between the teams at the outset, and the U-Turn was there to stop all the teams finishing in the order they started. (Clearly Tiffany got a pass on the Road Block because having her balloon bag torn en route was no fault of her own; the edit there told its own story, and the cheerleaders were most exposed to the uglier side that sometimes comes through on Indian legs.)

A Speed Bump that's a double-racer Road Block feels like the Road Block version of a U-Turn. That's a change: ever since its first use, the Speed Bump has been, for the most part, a gussied-up time penalty: not always the same amount of time, but generally less time than it takes to complete a Road Block or Detour task. So as others have said, it's served as a handicap, but less of a kiss of death than a U-Turn unless it's the kind of leg where there's no bunching and very little chance to claw back time from the main tasks. Still, I'd be okay with that -- with the second RB racer not being added to the overall RB count -- but only in legs that don't have a U-Turn. Theoretically, a leg with two "task-sized" handicaps might get very interesting if different teams had to face them, but in practice the smart choice would be to kick the team that's down. That in turn reminds me that there are not many legs in the Race in its current form that don't include either a U-Turn or a Speed Bump. Anyway, India and Emmy-leg territory, with KF and culture shock, especially heading eastwards from the relative orderliness of Europe. I still think Justin's an interesting reflection of... well, the kind of people who have watched since TAR Classic and post here and probably have an ideal gameplan in their heads even if they'd never apply. I certainly feel that. You'd like to think that a superfan team that's also a successful team could be so while being unassuming and humble, but... maybe that wouldn't happen once you're on the race.

I'm fine with it: the distance to a Detour task and from there to the next destination is all part of the 'pros and cons' and it's clearly something that TPTB consider when balancing (or unbalancing) the Detour tasks. Perhaps it's misleading for the chyrons to indicate placings as soon as the task is ended, as opposed to when teams arrive at the next marker, but that's not relevant to how the leg is run by the racers, and because of that I don't see much value in having equidistant Detours.

Emmy leg candidate, even as a NEL, because it was really not one I saw as a NEL, and it had Emmy-leg gravitas by design. Good-ish leg design, though I still hate hate bloody hate "beg for tips" challenges, and always have done. They are capricious in a horrible way, especially when multiple teams are competing together: you might stumble across a bunch of American tourists who know it's TAR and give their money (100 zloty is $US 25, and we saw dollar bills in the hats) or you might get nada. Yes, the cheerleaders came across as sad beggars rather than confident buskers, but frankly I don't think that's a skill TPTB should be demanding on the race. You have to respect the way that Justin thought his way through the Road Block, taking advantage of the lead to rehearse the task before running it. Only pity there was that it was prime Fern territory, but the Fern is a dying breed in TAR these days.

About a mile between the overnight spot and the water taxi, which is ~2,000 steps x 2 people = $4000. Hard to tell whether the total step count was started from that point, though that's what the clue implied. Speaking of distances, the Double Dutch challenge was 2km / a mile and a bit from Rotterdam Centraal and the ship simulator challenge, so that added an extra 20-30 minutes to the cheerleaders' Detour.

It's pretty clear that Justin is channelling the Spirit of Colin for travel hustle, which is perhaps why he lost his hat over the initial run to the water taxi. (No excuse, just explanation.) The Green Team had their tram routes prepped the moment they stepped off the train. The Millennium Tower for the shipping simulator task is literally opposite the train station: that's what gave them (and the reporters) the jump on the cheerleaders.

Nononono. The clue said 'The Hague', which Live Local News decided was 'The Hagoo'. When they got to the train station, they worked out that the Dutch name for The Hagoo, which appeared on the screens, was not The Hagoo but Den Haag. I think that's part of the whole Live Local News thing: when your career might take you to North Dakota or North Carolina, you cultivate a kind of anodyne look and sound that fits without making an impact. They're so anodyne.

In normal circumstances when there's no stipulation to travel on foot, yeah. This time, the whole Fitbit promo was sufficiently vague that if I'd been running that leg, I'd have been willing to travel on foot when other options were available. I didn't think that the step count would be converted to dollars at the end*; instead I suspected there might be a final Route Marker task after the Detour where teams were given a boost for taking more steps during the course of the leg. * Pretty sure that's the biggest cash prize ever given out on a leg, perhaps reflecting how we've had two TBCs so far where no leg prize has been awarded half-way. It's about as much as the typical Ford car prize later in the race.

On trains in western Europe? Definitely yes. (As Dale Griffin says, Jazmine & Danielle crossed the Zambia-Zimbabwe border early and had to cross back, but that was part of the planned route.) I'm surprised that Chac Attack stayed in third at the beginning of the leg, in spite of adding at least 90 minutes to their journey from Paris. They took the Thalys an extra 45 minutes or so up to Schiphol and then had to go back. I also wonder if they got into a bit of trouble with the ticket inspectors (not shown on the broadcast) because they only had tickets to Rotterdam. Thinking in general about this leg: the tasks were all ones you would most likely fail first time, because it was only by failing that you worked out the way to succeed. The teams that did best were the ones who learned quickest from their mistakes. That's one reason why it had an old-school feel to it.

Actually, that was the only smart bit of transport thinking they did all leg. Denise and James Earl's direct train was delayed an additional 10 minutes, and the 7 minute gap between scheduled departures probably wouldn't have been made up by two stops, as it's only a half-hour journey. Of course, if Denise and James Earl had got on the same train as the Chacs, then the Chacs would have been less likely to get on the wrong tram once they arrived in The Hague. It was that decision which sunk them.

Well, that was actually a fun leg: nice to go to the Netherlands and not Amsterdam, that is unless you can't read your damn clue. I'm sort of glad that the Chacs got the heave-ho after such an accumulation of public transportation failures, beginning with the wrong bloody -dam. What is it with medical professionals and basic cluefulness? At least Live Local News worked out that The Hagoo was Den Haag. (I'm actually a wee bit sympathetic to racers not quite knowing what country they're in: once you're in Schengen, then there are no border checks and it's probably weird for most of them to have a train journey that starts in one country and ends in another. Or a train journey full stop.) Double Dutch skipping is not Dutch, obviously, other than by reabsorption from the US. Having the Pit Stop in a different city once all the tasks are done would normally annoy me, but trains to Den Haag from Rotterdam are plentiful and frequent. The ship task was right next to Rotterdam Centraal, while the skip task was a bit further away, which is why the Greens got ahead of the cheerleaders.

The pros and cons of the Detour, time-wise, were that the croc side was probably quicker if you didn't have to wait, but more teams were likely to choose the croc because of that and thus create a backlog. Can't fault teams at the back end of the pack for making that choice. See, I beg to differ there. There were three and a half shifts: the cheerleaders got ahead of Chac and Pap at the RB and stayed there for the rest of the leg; Alabama jumped up with Green via the EP and sneaked the win; the track team sent themselves to the back with their mess-up of the lion task. No team actually gained a place through their own efforts, which is what made it a let-down for me. And it's still too early for the Emmy episode.

Spectacular legs are often ones with the most problematic design, and this was no exception: the Detour was the only place with much opportunity for the order to change, and with most people choosing the (quicker) croc side, it got very processional; it feels as if TPTB knew that and threw in the fruit-walk at the end to offset it, but it didn't make much difference. And the order was set by the previous Detour. (There's now a disincentive to use the first W-Turn unless you are in danger of elimination. The cheerleaders may not make it to the second one, but they really shouldn't have bothered using it.) Lots of KF at work there, but also some really poor teams at the back of the pack who managed to throw away their advantage on an Amazing Wait Your Turn leg. Read the damn clue, don't air your dirty laundry in public. It feels like there's a big gap between the three strong and competent teams (Green, Texas, anchors) and the rest.

Perhaps a way to tie a bow around this is that Justin/Diane (and especially Justin) are mad-keen race fans who want to celebrate their love of TAR by running That Kind Of Race. As I've said before, it's a fascinating bit of casting, because the superfans clearly know that the Texans are cast as the alpha male team, while the Texans clearly regard themselves as the alpha male team who'll tough their way to victory without necessarily knowing the deep history of AMs on TAR.

The EP has always been multi-function: it's potentially a ticket to a first place, but it's also a way to nullify being U-Turned on the Detour or to avoid falling behind on a difficult Road Block. Of the "late TAR" innovations, I don't mind it as a reward. The extra EP that becomes a source of inter-team draaaaama, not so much.

Putting the U-Turn board right next to the Pit Stop (and the orphans and the charity box) seems like a deliberate challenge to teams thinking of using it. But that's to be seen next episode. U-Turning from the front of the pack may win you a leg but it'll rarely eliminate your target. However... based on the length of the giraffe-staining Detour, a clever U-Turn strategy and smart racing might have put Green in a bit of trouble. How much, again we don't know, given that this is a pure TBC and not one where there's a leg prize for the first team. What happens to the last team? Keep racing, NEL/Speed Bump, or elimination? Dunno. Loved the S1 callbacks, and it's interesting that TPTB feel they can now visit Zimbabwe, even as many other countries have been taken off the list of potential destinations. Any idea how long it takes to do border formalities between Zambia and Zimbabwe?

If you want to come up with a list of other reasons why black people might have trouble getting cabs, that's your privilege. But there are multiple countries (Japan is another one) where African-American racers have fared less than well on taxi-heavy legs, and the editing has left enough odd gaps to allow us our suspicions about why they lost time. We can say that TAR happens in the real world, not a controlled island environment, but there are plenty of decisions that TPTB can and do make over what's exposed of a country's good or bad sides during a leg. After a big-city leg, this was an 'ethnic folkways and feral dogs' leg. Anyway, I hate 'dead team walking' legs where you have to go back to the previous leg to work out where the elimination was decided, and this was one of the most blatant, because you knew those long-distance buses had a 2-3 hour stagger. There's still duelling entitlement (superfan / alphamale) at the front of the pack, and messiness further down.

Once again, I miss that they've started. Justin is kind of an amalgam of Romber and Brenchel, and while the amount of time we hear his voice is down to the edit (and the fact that he's either been at the front of the pack or the back) it feels representative of the race. While recent seasons have generally had one focus-of-attention team from leg one, it's odd for there to be a big rivalry between multiple teams so early on. It does feel like there are two different kinds of TAR entitlement butting heads -- the superfan who has dreamed of running the Race, and the alpha males who have seen lots and lots of alpha male teams win. (I'm pretty sure that the Texas dudebros knew in their heart of Texas hearts that the Greens had finished in first, which makes the leg twinge even more hilarious.) The cardboard was obviously planted, but the alternative was to require a smaller amount or limit the number of teams even more. Unless we missed something, it does feel like the reporters weren't really rewarded for doing well with their side of the Detour.