S25.E03: Get Your Sheep Together

[Donny Ketchum]

Compare to another married dentist who came on the show in TAR9, and- I remember this well, as a chubby nerdy guy- was kind of insulting to chubby Dave of Dave & Lori, calling him fat (I think his wife even said to him "Don't say that, it's ugly").  Now that guy was a dickhead dentist,

Lake's justification to Michelle was weak, too: "Well, he's fatter than me!"

[rozen]

I keep forgetting TAR comes on Fridays now, and wait until Monday to watch it on the website. 

 

"How do you bend a nail?" Seriously? Where did those two live? Are they from some special wrestlemania planet where all problems are solved by spandex and chest thumps? He seemed so earnest and mystified too, I just felt sad for them. I think they're insecure, and in that insecurity psyche themselves out over little things. 

 

The editors seriously need to get it together and show more food scientists! They had such a strong leg, and were only done in by bad directions, which they quickly corrected. They could easily have been in 2nd or 3rd place. What do they have to do to get screentime. Would have been much more interesting than scene after scene of Bethany howling in frustration. So happy to see them think through the peat task instead of bald snarking. Both female teams did quite well at that challenge, bodybuilding experience aside!

 

I like how Misti just sat in the backseat smiling while Jim did his pump up speeches. She clearly knows to just let him go do his thing to keep himself motivated. I don't think she's nearly as invested in being the all time greatest TAR winner evaaaah, winning by itself would be more than sufficient. I like how Jim kept telling her to get out of the way of the pony (which she was clearly trying to stay far away from), when he was letting that pony go buckwild and run every which way. 

 

Soul surfers are a strong and easygoing team, but so boring to me. All they do is smile, affirm each other, and smooch/stare dreamily into each other's eyes. They're like a walking Hallmark movie, I can't even bring myself to cheer for them. 

 

Cyclists are hilarious. I think going to sleep instead of exploring pub central is pretty square, and I would absolutely be one of those racers snoring away on my backpack. I have no idea what was up with the dancing outside thing, though. I enjoyed the speed with which the blazed through the torch task, heading to the water was logical but unfortunately didn't work out for them. 

 

Whitney is such a southern lady. "Sure, I'll let you do it, as long as you're doing it right." He's going to spend the rest of his life stuck with the garage as his play space until she decides retrofit it into a greenhouse, or something. Won't miss team Boston Strong. The one with the sprained ankle wasn't all that great before then, and didn't seem to have much urgency or hustle to him. I guess I would have liked to have seen them take on an archery challenge, just because the other one looked like an older roided out Jeremy Renner.

[ProfCrash]

Confession: I post from work. I tend to have a ton to do at home so Amazing Race moving to Friday has been great, no Football bs, and awful, it takes me 2-3 days to get around to posting...

 

Loved the episode. The ponies, the sheep, the dogs. All kinds of awesome. Just wonderful.

 

I loved that the Scientists took a look at the bog task and figured out the physics behind it and made it work. We need to see more of them because it is important to see smart teams using their brains to figure out tasks. They didn't muscle through it, they thought through it and made a physical task happen for a team that is not as physical. That is a great lesson to show others. I have seen some people comment that more teams need to do that but I have learned at my job that what seems to be apparent and easy to one person really isn't all that obvious. I took the critical thinking class at work (mandated) and pretty much rewrote the class to include a large number of alternative approaches and a discussion of how there are many ways to approach a problem as opposed to the one method that they were teaching. My other classmates were thoroughly smitten by the class and the one approach and thought I was crazy to recommend multiple approaches. This has happened more frequently then not.

 

The moral of this story, what can appear obvious to people who are open minded, well read, and well educated often does not appear obvious to others. As someone who is highly mediocre at science, I would have muscled my way through the task or tried to figure out how to use the tool most efficiently but I would not have intentionally sat back and worked out the physics (never took the class). But I was thrilled to see them do it and think that they really need to be shown a lot more.

 

The Tooth Fairies are ok. Jim is so over the top but I get the feeling that is his real life personality. He is a totally type A personality and everything is a competition and you have to win at everything. I had a Doctor once say to me that she was worried about how I would handle failure (for the record I have failed a fair amount in my life and am pretty good at moving on although some things do eat at me because I know I could have succeeded if I had made a real effort.) and I wonder the same thing about Jim. Being the best is so important to him. I am not sure how he would handle finishing second. I do believe he or his wife are the ones who said second is simply the first loser. That said, they are polite, they don't seem pushy, they are efficient and effective. So the overly competitive personality is balanced by good manners and behavior. They did share how the compass worked in the first leg when the free pass was on the line so there is something there that is not annoying.

 

I like the Bikers. I don't know their names yet but I like their attitude. Why camp out when you can have some fun. The only real problem with their plan is that they would have to spend much needed money to have a pint or two or three and I am not sure that is the best use of limited resources. Which may be why we saw them hanging outside and not in the club because they could dance and hang out with different folks without paying any money.

 

I like the Surfers. They have a solid relationship, don't worry about how to approach tasks that Bethany is limited in, and just do. It can be boring to watch because they are simply well behaved, competent racers. So we are kind of screwed as viewers, we want the competent racers but we are bored by them. We want some drama and some thing that makes us root for or against a team (see the Tooth Fairies) but are annoyed by teams that are simply very, very good.

 

The other teams were less interesting and noticeable to me this week. I did laugh at the clothes barrier. None of the sheep had to jump over it, they walked right under it.

 

Sorry to see the firefighters go. They were a polite team that seemed to enjoy themselves. That ankle looked awful though and I think that it is a good thing that they are gone.

[Lamb18]

Would have been much more interesting than scene after scene of Bethany howling in frustration.

I don't remember Bethany howling in frustration.

[rozen]

I don't remember Bethany howling in frustration.

 

Oh, is Bethany not the female Wrestler's name? My bad!

[HappyDancex2]

The bouncing sheep could be strong contenders to replace Puppy Bowl (the Super Bowl alternative of cuteness.)  At least using them as halftime entertainment would be a win/win for me.

 

Boing.

[ghoulina]

Oh, is Bethany not the female Wrestler's name? My bad!

 

That's Brooke. And yes, she DOES howl in frustration. A lot.

[Rusun]

Some curious observations:

 

The number of torch-making kits had a limit of six maximum, yet the Up Helly Aa Detour took longer than Shetland Peats on Ponies, the Nashville Survivors being the only ones to pass some non-Viking teams via their quick success at the Sheep Corral. Quite the contrast to last season's second Sri Lanka leg, where four teams tops could do the Elephant Log Detour and the remaining three had to do Paper Making instead.

 

The construction workers mistakenly told Amy/Maya that the Ninian brooch was found at Scalloway Castle - the very same place containing the Detour Clue - though the Dessert Gals somehow believed them. The reason(s) may be that there was already a precedent for backtracking towards previously visited landmarks in the opener alone: Vendors' Plaza, the very first place visited upon arrival at the USVI's Cyril King Airport and the site of the Pen-Stealing Incident, was right next door to the Fort Christian PitStop.