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TAR Other Locations

Whimsy

By Whimsy
in The Amazing Race

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Whimsy

Whimsy

Here's a place to talk about TAR in other locations, besides the USA, Canada or Asia as they all have their own threads.  We will not have individual threads per location.  We can revisit the need for full boards for different locations if there is a lot of activity. 

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

Aaaaaaaand... ratings flop. 635k, in a timeslot where the last few weeks The Masked Singer Australia was averaging 900k.

And it wasn't very good either (production was so poorly timed they had about six weeks to edit the season and it showed), so ratings are likely to drop further for the second episode tonight.

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Kelda Feegle

Kelda Feegle

Amazingly diverse cast. I have no idea who the host is but I didn't need to see him in his budgie smugglers.

Obviously nobody has told the nuns that God is in the tub. Their praying can gtfo.

Instafluers can gtfo.

Don't think the team that got eliminated were very bright.

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TVbitch

TVbitch

I was like... is Bo.... gonna hug everyone. Sometimes he even forced his way into their hugs! Demure Phil he is not. Not sure if I will warm to him.

The eliminated kids seemed pretty clueless. The influencers I guess are playing the same characters that the "evil" couple just played on Amazing Race Canada. 

But are you really allowed to STEAL another teams efforts in a detour. That's very different then stealing a cab. Like if they were stacking wood could one team just take some of another team's wood? I was hoping they would get hit with a penalty at the mat, cuz that just seemed like it should not be allowed. 

And finally, would it have killled Bo to say "A Detour is a choice between two TASKS?? 

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

Unfortunately it was confirmed during the week that Ten is so confident this will be a major success he's been signed on as host for at least three seasons.

The good news, I suppose, is that it's been far more of a ratings flop than they anticipated (635k for the premiere and 522k for episode two despite two months of promos in literally EVERY commercial break, with Australian Survivor averaging 750k and The Masked Singer averaging 900k in the exact same timeslots in recent weeks) and it's not looking likely it'll be brought back next year? I feel bad for wishing for the cancellation of a TAR franchise, but... you know, hurry up and put us all out of our misery already.

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amazingracefan

amazingracefan

On 11/2/2019 at 1:27 AM, SnideAsides said:

Unfortunately it was confirmed during the week that Ten is so confident this will be a major success he's been signed on as host for at least three seasons.

The good news, I suppose, is that it's been far more of a ratings flop than they anticipated (635k for the premiere and 522k for episode two despite two months of promos in literally EVERY commercial break, with Australian Survivor averaging 750k and The Masked Singer averaging 900k in the exact same timeslots in recent weeks) and it's not looking likely it'll be brought back next year? I feel bad for wishing for the cancellation of a TAR franchise, but... you know, hurry up and put us all out of our misery already.

In most cases in Australia when something comes back after a break it's a lot worse.  There's something cheaper, bland and playing it safe with this version.  You saw inferior versions when Big Brother and The Mole came back as well. 

I haven't seen the earlier versions of Survivor, but even if it's different in that case there was such a long break and Survivor had changed so much in the meantime that it was never going to be the same kind of show anyway.  So in that case maybe it's hard to make comparisons.

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TVbitch

TVbitch

Are they airing 2 episodes a week?  

Wow, a single U-turn. Used poorly. 

Beau is a ham, and cheesy. He's ham and cheese. He seems to think he is the "star" of this show. So bad. A producer needs to tell him to stop with the awkward forced hugging. 

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Kelda Feegle

Kelda Feegle

An eating task so early was a surprise.

Waste of a u-turn/

Ballsy move going for the fast forward after a task change, glad it paid off. Thought we were going to get another Floyd moment - note to self - avoid shrimp baskets.

I wonder why we don't get the departing times, I like to know just how far apart the teams arrived at the end of the previous leg.

So.Many.Stairs.!

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Kelda Feegle

Kelda Feegle

Oh hell - this one had all the feels!

I love Africa and have been to Livingston a few times and been on the ultra lights with Batoka Sky. This brought back so many wonderful memories then ... fkn instfluencers 😞 I was rooting for them to come in second last and get penalised/evicted for breaking road rules but NO they get to stay in a NEL. Not happy.

Always awesome to see AFL legend Roosey tho.

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PhD-Purgatory15

PhD-Purgatory15

(edited)

I've been following along via bootleg episodes (only missed episode 6). The Social Influencer guy gives me the creeps. Like he wouldn't think twice to run someone off the road to get first or stay in the race (while his partner in crime would just laugh hysterically from the backseat).

Other than that it pretty much has hit all of the beats of most seasons of TAR. The inoffensive, super athletic male duo who joshes each other and everyone else wins pretty much every leg. The other male/male teams struggle somewhat with directions (a whole lot in the Femi/Nick's case) but generally aren't in danger of being eliminated. This has been true with the gay duo but not Fem/Nick. The laser-focused married couple doing it for their kid grinds out mid pack finish after finish, and the plucky underdog brother/sister duo fluctuate wildly depending on the leg.

Edited by PhD-Purgatory15
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TVbitch

TVbitch

I was wondering why the teams who were bunched at the last pit stop were  not power walking like Femi/Nick. It's like they just gave up once they had to walk. 

This season is not grabbing me, in large part due to the host and his incessant mugging and hugging, but any Amazing Race is better than no Amazing Race. 

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TVbitch

TVbitch

Ummm, can we talk about that "vote for who you want to U-turn" at final four, which was a single U-turn.

What. The. Fuck. That is basically like asking the final four teams to just vote someone out. Gee, I wonder who it will be?!?!

I know the US is dabbling with this too, but not at final 4, not a blind vote, and I don't even think it was an elimination leg, just a tactic to stir up drama. I think it was also a double U-turn to at least give U-turned teams a chance.

I'm never a big fan of one team dominating the race, but the boys were totally screwed. I guess future teams who are really strong will have to start throwing legs of the race to avoid being voted out. U-turns are supposed to reward you for getting there FIRST. Ugh.

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Fake Jan Brady

Fake Jan Brady

(edited)

But watching straight white rich boys realise that not everything was going to go their way was sooooo satisfying; their privilege being denied by three minority teams was almost enough to make me take up smoking so i could light up while watching them sulk on the mat.

The finale was also satisfying as it was one of the rare times when each team was at the front of the pack at some point in the leg, and I would have been happy with any of them winning [although my faves placing third was a *little* disappointing]. 

The low point of the entire season was the annoying host; Australian TV suffers from producers thinking ex-sportspeople are somehow entertaining off their respective fields. I will be forever haunted by the phrase 'bring it in".

Edited by Fake Jan Brady
typo
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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

Looks like it's going to be 20 legs, because Australian television never met a TV show it couldn't drag out to the point of nausea (there's 14 teams instead of 11 as well, but that's still a fuckton of non-eliminations to deal with). The stalkers at RFF had evidence of seventeen legs, and the promos have implied one location that wasn't known and outright confirmed another, and combining them with the gaps between spoilers means this is the most likely route:

Spoiler

Leg 1: Newell, Queensland (Daintree rainforest)

Leg 2: Winton, Queensland (Outback sheep farming country; also near the birthplace of Qantas, who presumably are sponsoring the season)

Legs 3 and 4: Townsville, Queensland (Great Barrier Reef; looks to be one city leg and one island leg)

Leg 5: Cairns, Queensland (tropical beaches; also seen in TAR4)

Leg 6: Tiwi Islands, Northern Territory (Indigenous communities; this is one of the unknowns but the timing suggests there's a missing leg here and this is the most likely place)

Leg 7: Darwin, Northern Territory (basically Florida but even drunker and with crocodiles; also seen in TAR9)

Leg 8: Alice Springs, Northern Territory (desert city in the middle of the country; non-zero but unlikely chance of a 400km sidetrip to Uluru and/or the Kata Tjuta rock formations)

Leg 9: Coober Pedy, South Australia (Outback opal mining town; also seen in TAR2 but evaded spoilers here)

Leg 10: Adelaide, South Australia (arts and cathedrals and nearby wines; think of Budget Paris and you're... not close, really, but as close as I'm going to be able to get)

Leg 11: Port Lincoln, South Australia (fishing town on the edge of the Great Australian Bight)

Leg 12: Esperance, Western Australia (gold mining town on the other edge of the Bight; also fur seals)

Leg 13: Broome, Western Australia (more beaches, more deserts, and dinosaur fossils)

Leg 14: Hobart, Tasmania (founded by 18th century prisoners but now mostly just an expensive-as-fuck arty hipster city)

Leg 15: New Norfolk, Tasmania (founded by 18th century prisoners but now mostly just a generic farming town)

Leg 16: Unknown (but appears to be somewhere in the New South Wales snowfields)

Legs 17 and 18: Hunter Valley, New South Wales (more farming and wineries)

Leg 19: Broken Hill, New South Wales (silver mining; also appeared in TAR18)

Leg 20: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (literally nothing ever happens here, I don't even know why they're bothering)

 

If you're wondering why there's no Melbourne or Sydney: the season was filmed at the tail end of Victoria's hard lockdown when nobody could get into or out of Melbourne, and Sydney sucks.

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

(edited)

From here:
 

Quote

 

The winning team of a non-elimination leg, gain two massive advantages:
1. They do not have to compete in the next leg. Instead, they receive a First Class Pass and are rewarded with some kind of luxury experience while the other teams continue to race.

2. They will return to the Pit Stop for the arrivals of the final two teams and
choose to Salvage one and Sabotage the other.

Salvage: A bonus or advantage of some kind given to one team. For example, the team may receive a personal driver for the next leg, they may get extra money, or they may be allowed to know what the Roadblock challenge is, before they choose who attempts it.

Sabotage: A disadvantage or setback given to one team. For example, the team may need to complete the leg with one of the team members blindfolded or tied together, they may lose all their money, or they may even have to do it barefoot.

T-Junction: A huge challenge day, only once in the Race, where all racers are split into two massive super-teams. The super-teams will be chosen by the first racers to reach the T-Junction board at the head of the episode. They will pick their super-team and the remaining teams form the second group. The teams will move through the entire race day in these two groups. Whichever group checks in second at the Pit Stop, will choose to eliminate a team from their group themselves.

 

So if I'm reading this correctly, (1) winners of non-eliminations get Date Night instead of racing, (2) there's a 50/50 chance a team that finishes last in a non-elimination will get rewarded for their incompetence, and if not the team who finishes second-last gets the reward, and (3) there's an episode that's literally going to ignore the race part of The Amazing Race entirely and just be a glorified tribal episode of Survivor.

Hard, HARD pass.

Edited by SnideAsides
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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

Confirmation from the host in a media interview today that the season will be 24 legs.

If it lasts that long. Twitter interaction is usually a pretty reliable indicator of how the overnight ratings are going to pan out in Australia, and this show was barely pulling a third of what either of its two main opponents was (ie, out of all the tweets about the three shows in question, only 1 in 7 was about this) even after weeks and weeks of endless promotion during one of the highest rated shows of the summer, and quite a lot of those tweets were negative. This doesn't bode well at all.

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TheRabbi

TheRabbi

24 legs? All in Australia? My goodness. I know we've been clamoring for a return to down under on the original TAR for a while now - I guess anyone who wants that will get some version of what they wished for here. That's a lot of Australia.

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TVbitch

TVbitch

Well, it wasn't hideous. I only actively dislike a couple teams. Beau remains insufferable. I got a kick out of the needle in a haystack double whammy. In conclusion, after the just finished absolutely hideous season of AR US, I'll take it! 

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

Enjoy it while you can, because the ratings were DIRE. Only 501,000 viewers despite weeks of endless promotion, and fourth in its timeslot in a system where there's only three major channels. (For context, that's lower than the absolute lowest episode last season, and last season did so badly that this season even happening at all was a shock.)

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TVbitch

TVbitch

I enjoyed episode 2. Good display of how you implement a judicious moment of teamwork, couple of solid teams to root for, obvious villain, cab drama, one team quits.  Do you know if they are doing 2 or 3 episodes a week? 

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

Three episodes a week. Monday to Wednesday this week, then Sunday to Tuesday from next week onwards (again, ratings permitting; they dropped very slightly for episode 2 but when you start at rock bottom it's hard to go down by much).

It looks like each week of episodes is going to be in a different state:

Spoiler

Week 1: Queensland (Daintree, Gold Coast, and Winton)

Week 2: more Queensland (Townsville, Magnetic Island, and Cairns)

Week 3: Northern Territory (an unknown location, Darwin, and Alice Springs)

Week 4: South Australia (Coober Pedy, Adelaide, and Port Lincoln)

Week 5: Western Australia (Esperance, Kalgoorlie, and Broome)

Week 6: Tasmania (Hobart, New Norfolk, and Cradle Mountain)

Week 7: New South Wales (Blue Mountains, Dubbo, and the Hunter Valley)

Week 8: more New South Wales (Coffs Harbour and Broken Hill), and a finale in the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra)

 

Most excited for Tasmania, by FAR. In a US context, this route is basically like starting with six legs in Florida and then another nine in Utah. Like I get they couldn't get everything they wanted (Victoria, the state that probably has the most to offer in terms of diverse Australian locations and cultures, was in lockdown during filming), but it's hard to care when the places they've picked are almost entirely "I am aware of that town, but I'd never actually go there willingly" towns.

 

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TVbitch

TVbitch

I was confused cuz in the first episode, one of the woman said "I want to hug you but I'm not allowed" to one of the challenge people, but in this episode people were hugging the elderly lady at the toilet hauling challenge.

The advantage/punishment passes were stupid. Giving a team a whole leg off is too much. If they are doing three episodes a week then they will have a non-elim every week. It's almost too much race! I'm not finding it unbearable yet, though. I mean, I did live through the last US season, so that toughened me up a lot. : D 

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

So basically, the Stolen Generations involved tens of thousands of Aboriginal children being forcibly taken from their parents and adopted by white people as a plan to both eliminate Aboriginal culture and eventually "breed out the Black". It's quite an infamous part of Australian history, as you can imagine, and the Catholic Church's role in pretty much being equal partners with the government in handling the events is similarly well-known. So putting the Pit Stop for a leg in an Indigenous community at a Catholic school is INCREDIBLY problematic, like maybe the worst thing any TAR has ever done.

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Netfoot

Netfoot

1 hour ago, SnideAsides said:

It's quite an infamous part of Australian history, as you can imagine, and the Catholic Church's role in pretty much being equal partners with the government in handling the events is similarly well-known.

I am familiar with this despicable piece of history, although far from an expert on the subject. As for the catholic church, Just let me see your Stolen Generations and raise you a Magdalene Laundry!

The fact that the catholic school is even allowed to exist in the Indigenous community makes me think that perhaps the pit stop was not necessarily problematic. It might be the worst thing TAR has ever done, because frankly, I can't think of anything done by TAR, previously or since, which could be considered "problematic" in any way.

But let me hasten to add that I am not a frequent watcher of TAR Australia, and haven't been watching this season at all. So I could be wrong - it's happened before.

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SG429

SG429

13 hours ago, TVbitch said:

WTF?! They have a team of 2 professional athletes enter the race on leg 7?! I was enjoying this season but this is ridiculous and totally unfair! I will be super pissed if they end up winning. 

 

It's a lot of weird variations - reviving an eliminated team to replace a med evac'ed team, adding new teams mid-race, a day off for some Team 1's, and an overall reluctance to eliminate any team. Some interesting and dramatic challenges though. But it's all we've got, so Oi Oi!

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TVbitch

TVbitch

I agree. oi. But there is a huge difference between bringing back the last eliminated team because a team medical dropped, and even giving teams a one leg rest for coming in first, and allowing a fresh-as-a-daisy new team to start the race on leg 7?! That is an utterly unfair advantage, and I would be pissed if I had already been exhausting myself for 6 legs.

I don't mind all the non-elim legs. With the 3-episode a week format, I figuresd that would be par for the course, otherwise the race would be over in thee weeks.  I actually like getting to know the teams a bit better. 

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

I hope you liked Queensland, because you're about to get more of it. Hilariously, they made the mistake of building the preview for Sunday's episode around a "top secret location" because there's an army task... and then made the rookie mistake of showing Beau standing at the Pit Stop in front of a sign giving the name of the exact location, which Google confirms is just north of Townsville.

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theschnauzers

theschnauzers

For those of you who may not have realized it, but in the TAR AUS leg in Coober Pedy, two of the exact locations used (the opal mine and the golf course) were used on TAR 2 US as both sides of the same detour during its Outback leg that season. There’s an irony in that.

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TVbitch

TVbitch

Well, at least now it will be easier for me to tell the skinny teams apart! Still enjoying the race, but am chapped that they brought yet another new team in, on leg 10! I really hope one of the original teams wins, cuz that is bullshit. I am enjoying this season much more than I thought I would. The teams seem all very real with no huge personalities or youtubers or wannabe actors or what not.  It reminds me of earlier seasons of US. Beau is even more tolerable this season. 

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SG429

SG429

4 hours ago, TVbitch said:

Well, at least now it will be easier for me to tell the skinny teams apart!

I was spoiled for the elimination - at the top-of-the-episode highlights, the elimination preview showed one pale, skinny, bare right arm in the shot.

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SnideAsides

SnideAsides

5 hours ago, TVbitch said:

The teams seem all very real with no huge personalities or youtubers or wannabe actors or what not.

There's a few people who are probably here to improve their media careers - definitely Violeta (who was one of the pro dancers on Beau's season of Dancing with the Stars last year) and Aleisha (who has hosted a nationally-televised children's game show in the past and who from memory is a significantly better presenter than Beau), probably also the twin models who withdrew, the footballers, and I'd be surprised if Ashleigh and Amanda's main goal wasn't "get more Instagram followers" - but it's definitely not a "normies need not apply" show like the US version has mutated into.

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TVbitch

TVbitch

@SG429, I always skip ahead of the intro on any program cuz they give so much away these days. I don't even want to know what the challenges are ahead of time! 

@SnideAsides, I did not even realize that was Violetta from DWTS AU, which I have been watching last couple seasons, cuz I love Tristan, Sharna and Craig as judges and it is soooo much better than the US version. Wow, Beau was pretty bad on that. Yeah, I'm sure everybody these days wants more followers on whatever, but I appreciate that this group does not seem to be mugging for the camera or creating fake drama. 

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