S21: Talk

[Rusun]

With the rancid aftertaste of the previous season still fresh, production put together a course that seemed even worse on paper, yet somehow overcame itself in practice.

 

• To get it out of the way, there was no salvaging the route, the first to feature zero new countries (and Spain finally getting a full leg as paltry solace).
• Conversely, the boot order is incredibly satisfying if Abbie/Ryan's ouster is interpreted as karma for bamboozling Amy/Daniel out of the Double Your Money prize, to say nothing of the other bottom-feeders trounced in Asia.
• Speaking of the foiled overdog Divorcees, their elimination is not only the most effective use of the W-Turn since its inception, but also an example of how to conduct a TAR alliance: three cheers for the Dream Team!
• The overall progression of the season begins in uninspired generic squalor and takes a turn for the better upon crossing continents, including all the unplanned flight drama in the midgame.
• Everything about the two-part finale works - one of the most lovable Final Fours* ever, continuous place changes, a penultimate showdown, the sublimely shocking finish - and only UB's is better.

 

* It speaks to Trey/Lexi's and Natalie/Nadiya's goodwill that despite "finding" James/Abba's cash, they still proved more rootable than magnanimous donors Art/JJ and freely lending Dave/Rachel.

[TheRabbi]

I agree that this was a crappy looking season on paper, but managed to be a highly enjoyable season overall.

 

The route:  Mediocre at best.  Yet more trips to Amsterdam, France, Shanghai, and Moscow which have all been done to death.  A pretty boring second trip to Turkey.  The route highlights were the second trips to Spain (Palma Mallorca was great) and Bangladesh (the contrast with a place like Indonesia right before it is great and jarring).

 

The cast:  Above average.  There was probably one too many co-ed couples in the cast.  Trey and Lexi were very boring in a Jeremy and Sandy type way, but Abbie and Ryan were great.  It's a shame taxi routlette eliminated Amy and Daniel so early, as that was a good story that would have been great to watch.  All 4 guy teams were unique, had good stories, and were entertaining in their own way.  Remember when the Chippendales were almost eliminated in the first leg?  That would have made for a completely different season, and a much worse season.  Nothing against those lumberjacks, but I found the Chippendales to be an extremely likeable team, a much more heartwarming and endearing version of the Afghanimals.  And say what you want about the twinnies' ethics, but they're one of the strongest female teams to run the race in a while in my opinion.  And, money issue notwithstanding, I enjoyed their antics and wacky line of communication with each other.

 

The results:  This was a really good season to watch.  A tense finish to the first leg, the 3rd leg bicycle-taxi race to the pitstop is the single most nerve-wracking elimination in the last dozen seasons (and superbly shot and edited).  The finale is the absolute best designed finale the show has done since moving to the one-city format for the final leg.  You had cool locations like Coney Island and the UN, a great memory challenge, and cool visual challenges like the Houdini task, as well as the pizza task which allows teams to shuffle order.

 

You can also count me as a fan of the gimmick twist to the beginning.  It's a way of adding a new gimmick to the show without changing the core dynamics, and without adding any elements to increase high-school level drama (u-turns, second EP's).  I thought it was a great idea.

 

My memory isn't great on a lot of the tasks, but I remember both good and bad.  Moscow may have been a boring place to revisit again, but it did feature the great 'PENCILS DOWN' roadblock, and a coll synchronized swimming challenge.  Some grueling manual labor legs in Bangladesh, with rather boring tasks to balance it out in Shanghai and Amsterdam.

 

And it's hard to not like the Beekmans.  I would have been happy if either them or the Chips won, but was happy for them.  It was a supremely satisfying finale all around, and a solid season as well.

[Whimsy]

Since some older seasons are available to view on different platforms, we are starting all episodes threads for each season.

[Supay]

Shanghai to Dhaka x2 is easily the worst first half of a TAR season, but Istanbul to NYC is one of the greatest second halves in the show's history: the counterparts on the other two CBS shows would be BB(US)14 and Survivor: San Juan del Sur.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Supay

[Kanaloa]

RIP, Sheila ~

[hincandenza]

On 4/30/2014 at 7:58 PM, Rusun said:

With the rancid aftertaste of the previous season still fresh, production put together a course that seemed even worse on paper, yet somehow overcame itself in practice.

• Conversely, the boot order is incredibly satisfying if Abbie/Ryan's ouster is interpreted as karma for bamboozling Amy/Daniel out of the Double Your Money prize, to say nothing of the other bottom-feeders trounced in Asia.
• Speaking of the foiled overdog Divorcees, their elimination is not only the most effective use of the W-Turn since its inception, but also an example of how to conduct a TAR alliance: three cheers for the Dream Team!
• The overall progression of the season begins in uninspired generic squalor and takes a turn for the better upon crossing continents, including all the unplanned flight drama in the midgame.
• Everything about the two-part finale works - one of the most lovable Final Fours* ever, continuous place changes, a penultimate showdown, the sublimely shocking finish - and only UB's is better.

I'm kind of surprised; this ended up being in some ways my least favorite season of all time (just finished a binge-watch over the last few weeks of every season I'd missed, including this one).  The twinnies were... among the most loathsome people I've ever seen on this race, and I was so happy when they left: racist, entitled, unethical, thieving, looooud, obnoxious, etc, etc, etc.  This was the last season I watched during the binge, because 10 minutes into episode 1 I thought "I freakin' hate this cast" and skipped it to watch the other seasons I'd missed first. :)

But I'll give you that the final 3 were mostly decent people (to me, the Beekmans didn't deserve to win, but it was one of those rare final 3s where you don't care too much about any team winning/losing).  I was surprised how much I liked the Chippendales: they had a gimmick/schtick but also competed hard and showed good graces, and reminded me a little of my all time TAR favorite team, the Beauty Queens.  I don't get what people disliked about Abbie & Ryan; their "bamboozle" in leg 1 was self-inflicted by Trey & Lexi (who tells a team where a vital clue is when you're like a half mile run from the pit stop?!) but that would start a weird pattern this season where teams waited for each other and helped each other out far too much.  Hell, if Abbie & Ryan had simply left the Beekmans to swim in that Russian pool, they'd have been many more hours ahead and quite possibly not eliminated.

But what infuriated me and made this season so tough is that about half the eliminations were purely because of a bad taxi driver.  From the Russian taxi driver who stole James/Abba's passports and ended their race, to the many taxi drivers who were belligerent, obnoxious, stupid, clueless, lost, etc, etc, etc., this season was for me the epitome of taxi luck as the far-too-dominant force over the history of the show. 

 

On 5/2/2014 at 6:02 PM, TheRabbi said:

I agree that this was a crappy looking season on paper, but managed to be a highly enjoyable season overall.

The route:  Mediocre at best.  Yet more trips to Amsterdam, France, Shanghai, and Moscow which have all been done to death.  A pretty boring second trip to Turkey.  The route highlights were the second trips to Spain (Palma Mallorca was great) and Bangladesh (the contrast with a place like Indonesia right before it is great and jarring).

The cast:  Above average.  There was probably one too many co-ed couples in the cast.  Trey and Lexi were very boring in a Jeremy and Sandy type way, but Abbie and Ryan were great.  It's a shame taxi routlette eliminated Amy and Daniel so early, as that was a good story that would have been great to watch.  All 4 guy teams were unique, had good stories, and were entertaining in their own way.  Remember when the Chippendales were almost eliminated in the first leg?  That would have made for a completely different season, and a much worse season.  Nothing against those lumberjacks, but I found the Chippendales to be an extremely likeable team, a much more heartwarming and endearing version of the Afghanimals.  And say what you want about the twinnies' ethics, but they're one of the strongest female teams to run the race in a while in my opinion.  And, money issue notwithstanding, I enjoyed their antics and wacky line of communication with each other.

The results:  This was a really good season to watch.  A tense finish to the first leg, the 3rd leg bicycle-taxi race to the pitstop is the single most nerve-wracking elimination in the last dozen seasons (and superbly shot and edited).  The finale is the absolute best designed finale the show has done since moving to the one-city format for the final leg.  You had cool locations like Coney Island and the UN, a great memory challenge, and cool visual challenges like the Houdini task, as well as the pizza task which allows teams to shuffle order.

 

My memory isn't great on a lot of the tasks, but I remember both good and bad.  Moscow may have been a boring place to revisit again, but it did feature the great 'PENCILS DOWN' roadblock, and a coll synchronized swimming challenge.  Some grueling manual labor legs in Bangladesh, with rather boring tasks to balance it out in Shanghai and Amsterdam.

That PENCILS DOWN guy was fantastic, and one of my favorite mini-challenges; there's nothing quite so satisfying as challenge hubris when a player loses their shit while being completely, provably, objectively wrong.  It's also great because these kinds of challenges are the ones that seem simple, yet can lead to big shuffling when cocky teams suddenly find they've wasted an extra hour before hitting their head and realizing how dumb they were.

I kind of agree with your summation (except the twinnies bit, absolutely hated them): I found a lot of the leg designs and challenges pretty good, but there was also way too much questionable bunching mid-leg (such that flights and the first roadblocks didn't matter, and it came down to the last challenge + taxi time), and again the eliminations due to taxi roulette.  The cast itself grew on me, although by TAR 20+ there's no excuse for some of the sloppy mistakes made by teams in terms of (lack of) clue reading and (piss poor) navigation.  

All in all, I'd say it was a good season if they'd solved the taxi issue.  Instead, it really frustrated me how much taxis affected the outcome in so many legs, and lessened this season for my viewing.  I love when teams drive themselves and get lost/overthink things, because then they're actually losing The Race by doing Bad Racing, not because that particular dude in a taxi turned out to be an asshole.  Instead, we have for example Gary & Will celebrating the "greatest comeback of all time" of not being eliminated because another team had their idiot taxi driver take a wrong turn for no good reason.

[Star Aristille]

On ‎7‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 5:53 PM, hincandenza said:

(except the twinnies bit, absolutely hated them)

Since they're more liked than hated, nobody cares, @hincandenza.

[hincandenza]

On 7/31/2017 at 3:12 PM, Star Aristille said:

Since they're more liked than hated, nobody cares, @hincandenza.

That was unnecessary, we all know we're just sharing opinions.

[Roccos Brother]

This was the first season I started watching TAR, so full circle, yay! However, it has been so long that I only vaguely remembered anything and it was almost like watching for the first time.

This was a good season, plenty of likeable teams, good friendships, rivalries that did not escalate into catty melodrama, and most importantly – a lack of the excessive intra-team/couple bickering that has plagued the entire series.

I loved the Beekman boys. I thought they were adorable in every way and just the type of normal, down-to-earth gays that I love to root for (unlike season 4’s masc4masc famewhore, yuck). With the right combination of sass, good-natured humility, a cute backstory (gay goat farmers, what’s not to love?), and a cute team name to boot.

I remember hating the twinnies and finding them so annoying, despite recognizing them as a strong team. And yet, I found them very likeable upon second viewing. They were grating at times, but also very funny and entertaining – similar to Charla and Mirna.

Also, one of the best finales to date, with a rewarding finish.

[dgpolo]

Not many comments on this season. Just finished my rewatch and loved it. Loved most of the teams, many of the challenges and the finale. (Except for John, lighten up! you're getting free publicity, smile)

The Beekman Boys were very likeable, and both luck and unlucky. Love that Josh was the only one to get the times correct on the first try, even the judge said he was a very smart man. Loved when one was musing if the goats in ? can't remember already, could talk to their goats in the 'language of baa'. And the 'hometown curse' wasn't in place for them, either. Can't believe how long it took everyone to 'see' the Houdini poster, the Chippendale's walked so close to it so many times I'm sure their cameraman was struggling not to laugh.

Jaymes and James were very nice, nice to everyone, I wouldn't have minded if they had won.

Don't really have anything to say about Trey and Lexi, they were just sort of there. Though Lexi could take lessons from Gretchen on how to continue a race after an injury.

The Twinnies were mostly fine, just TOO LOUD! They didn't break any rules about the money but that incident coming after the call about James' father's cancer made it seem really bad. But that had to be the most brilliant use of a double u-turn ever! I remember when I watched it live practically jumping out of my chair when it all worked exactly the way they wanted it to. They did take a chance leaving it to the Chippendales and going for the FF, but it worked.

Gary and Will annoyed me, that such self-proclaimed fans got to the first 'task' and he was already saying 'I can't do this'.

I think all the teams called that little ping pong champion 'he' and I think they said she was a girl.

I'm wondering about the boats that brought some of the teams to the pit stop before the other stop they were supposed to make. I'm sure the locals knew something 'different' was going on and since they knew a lot of people were there at the pit stop they thought all the crazy Americans wanted to go there, especially if they couldn't understand them. I thought something similar happened in the last race in Panama.

[mikewho]

FWIW, I didn't like the Twinnies AT ALL. I found them extremely annoying.

I was glad they were out first on their second season.

[Hera]

I've just finished rewatching this season. I remember I started it, but never finished it until now. I think the first time around, I lost interest after James and Abba lost their passports, which happened a lot later than I remembered. Anyway, there were lots of fun teams this season, and I'm surprised that only the twins have ever been brought back. I would have thought the Chippendales would have been shoo-ins for any returnee season: they were entertaining, nice, and—after a slow start—good racers. Abbie and Ryan appear to have broken up shortly after the race, so I suppose it makes sense that they wouldn't (and will never) be brought back, and Lexi and Trey have young children, so they might pull a Colin and Christie and show up again years later, if the show is still around. I wouldn't have minded seeing Amy and Daniel back again either. They were an early boot, but it really did seem like it was entirely their cab driver's fault and I was curious about what they would have been like if they had gone further in the season. And of course, I really liked James and Abba, though they may have aged out of wanting to run again.

The route on this race was a little unusual as well—there were no legs in South America or Africa. Mind you, Asia is very large and diverse, and this season does capture that. I don't know why, but I tend to enjoy the seasons where teams travel east around the globe slightly more than the ones where they go west. I think it's because it feels like the teams are being thrown in the deep end and the difficulty of the race is stable throughout the run. When the Europe legs are early in the race, it can feel a little like teams are being eased into the race and the difficulty is getting ratcheted up as they go to places that have few cultural connections and similarity to the US. When they come late in the season, teams tend to be in a more competitive mindset (and also really worn out by all the previous legs) that it doesn't feel like the show is taking it easy on them.

It was funny watching this season with its three team alliance after seeing the reaction to the Mine Five/Final Three alliance in Season 32. Basically, the top teams in Season 32 managed what the twins, Chippendales, and Trey/Lexi wanted to do in this season. I didn't enjoy watching the twins that much. I don't think they're bad people, but they're a little too loud and prone to bickering for my taste. I also didn't like that they (along with Trey and Lexi) kept James and Abba's lost money. I know what they did wasn't against the rules, and James and Abba should definitely have been more careful, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. It wouldn't have been out of their way at all to just walk over and say, "Did you guys drop this?" Don't make wealthy Americans beg locals for money, especially not in Bangladesh. Anyway, in the twins' rivalry with Abbie/Ryan my sympathy was with Abbie (and just her because Ryan came across as an ass). That being said, their elimination was a little unsatisfying because they finished the Roadblock ahead of the Beekmans and lost due to getting bad advice about which château to go to for the pit stop (while the Beekmans, who also had to ask where to go, were told the right place). But it was fun watching them fall behind multiple times in their last two legs.

I liked the Beekmans just fine, but it's hard to remember any other winners whose performance was as unimpressive as theirs. They managed to botch a task that was literally just eating ice cream. They also were the only team to mess up the pizza task in the final leg. It really speaks to how hard that final roadblock was, and how well Josh's system of figuring out the answers he didn't know worked that they were able to get out of it first. I wouldn't say they were undeserving of their win, but it's hard for me to come up with another winning team with such a weak track record over the whole race course.

[bunnyface]

Jaymes got married!  I liked the Chippendales.

 

https://people.com/movies/jonathan-bennet-jaymes-vaughan-wedding-married/

[ratherbereading]

They got narried in 2015 and have 2 kids.

 

https://amazingrace.fandom.com/wiki/Jason_%26_Amy#:~:text=the second one.-,Post-Race,son named Jalen John Case.