Fat Bastard

Dunno how it is these days but olden times the teams freely mingled with each other during Pit Stops, in technical lingo it was called "eat, sleep, and mingle" -time (ESM). It was time to strategize, set up alliances, and call taxis for next morning.

Wow, was that one generously arranged bunch to keep Joel & Ashley in the race! I didn't really get Steph & Kristen logic of using U-turn. As a front-runner they have no real need to do that and as there is likely another U-turn coming up later on it would make sense not to paint the target in their backs even larger it already is. Maybe it was payback to Jillian & Emmett for breaking their Express Pass -alliance. Only reason for leading team to use U-turn would be if they know their worst rival team is suffering on that exact leg and they want to try to kick them out. Otherwise, better not use it as there is no benefit. Delaying any team is just equalized by next bunch. They were smart with Express Pass though, keep it just in case but if they clear tasks easily Pass won't help any. Any time advance gained by Pass over other teams would just be equalized off next bunch. Jillian & Emmett did the right thing, as they were U-turned, they U-turned team they think is the weakest to make sure somebody stays behind them and they saw Joel & Ashley arriving to the market square last so they picked them. I didn't know rigging and sailing a boat was so easy that all teams cleared it up just like that. It is easy to see that Steph & Kristen and Jillian & Emmett are the likeliest teams in the Final Three. The last team there can be any of the other teams depending on luck when they have good legs and bad legs. Going to Cuba is great. When TAR Australia did that on Season 2 it was truly fun.

I just noticed we have Angelina Jolie and her dad in the race. And they won a leg! I don't think Stéphane was trying to help other teams exactly, the ducks just went whereever they wanted. At one point he had 18 collected and left pen open for them to escape so he did other mistakes too. I wish they change the penalty rule to the correct one which says that the penalty is 30 minutes plus any time gained from breaking the rule. Now breaking the rule can actually be advantegous in some cases with only 30 minute penalty.

That surely was odd decision by Jillian and Emmett. He said that it is more important for them to finish the leg ahead of anybody else, but that makes no sense at this point of game. Due to bunching the only important thing is not to finish last. Julie and Lowell seem to be taking the race with good-humored attitude, me like! Next up: TAR and animals, always a fun combination.

The teams really lucked out when rain stopped the Sky Tram task as they only got penalty "for the time it takes to do the task". In reality many of the teams would have had to try several times. That messed up the strategy of those teams which took 4h penalty. I'm a bit surprised Brandon couldn't do the monkey bars, I would have thought that team would have aced all physical tasks. Steph hanging-upside-down-with-one-ankle-only-trick looked quite dangerous, somebody else tried the same and failed. Self-driving was great as always, there is nothing better than clueless team driving around aimlessly in wilderness!

To be honest, I thought this detour felt pretty badly designed. It was clear that it would take more time to learn to drive the thing than the planners thought, and the whole trip down the road among pedestrians and cars seemed pretty dangerous to me - not only to the racers but to the innocent locals. If you take out of control 20 pound unicycle to your achilles tendon you won't like that very much... The charm of TAR over the years has been is that it is fairly straightforward stuff, racers against elements to reach victory. There are plenty of reality shows where backstabbing is the norm so having one with whiff of adventure book innocence is like a breath of fresh air. Therefore if somebody kicks in full Survival-mode it feels off. As they say, there are rules and then there are Gentlemen's rules. When B&A reached cliff-jumping task previous episode Korey asked "did you u-turn us" and Burnie answered yes. My read of that was that the whole thing was planned beforehand by the teams.

That was in season 4 I believe. At least they got fresh food... In my grossometer season 6 in Hungary where they ended up eating each other's puke on soup bowl was the top. Feels like there are lot less eating challenges in recent seasons.

I'm sure some Swiss gentleman would have exchanged dollars in the train too if they would've asked.

I kept wondering how they managed to have Mr Putin judging the task at United Nations. Otherwise one of the poorest leg designs in TAR, but I kind of liked the story arc "from sunny Colombia to snow-covered Alps".

Was this the famous Miss Colombia who almost but not quite was crowned as Miss Universe?

I think they take extreme care these days not to get teams separated too far apart which means we lose some charm from what the legs used to be. I feel the needle-in-a-haystack-challenges are lot easier these days too, probably for the same reason. I have warm memories of that one girl who toppled all hay-poles of Swedish countryside, or that one guy who sifted all sand they have in Egypt!