S27.E12: We Got A Chance, Baby!

[Special K]

12) Always wear a distinctive piece of headwear.

[John Seavey]

Many times the racers jump into the cab and yell we are in a race for a million $, as if the driver should care and drive recklessly, riski getting a ticket  which will lead to higher insurance and maybe even losing their jobs.  Are the racers allow to make it worth  it to the driver by adding if we win we will give you $xxxx out of our winnings?  Could Justin have told his driver-I am short of cash now but if you stay with us and we win I will give you $10k?

 

They cannot. It's against the rules of the Race to compensate people with anything other than the cash the production team provides you, and there would be time penalties involved. This came into play back in TAR 14, where Mark and Michael were hit with a thirty-minute time penalty for trying to pay their taxi fare by handing over their Rolex.

 

It's a good rule--not only does it stop the "I'll cut you in if I win" stunts, it also keeps people from packing their backpack with valuable objects and bribing their way to the Finish Line.

 

Earlier someone posted something about Justin's upbringing...how his parents were very tough on him.  I can't find it and the mods may have taken it down.  Can someone direct me to something about his background?  Still glad he lost.

 

I think that may have been me, and I wasn't speaking from any knowledge--I was just saying that he seemed like the kind of guy whose parents pushed him to be hyper-competitive about everything. It was in response to someone who said he seemed like the kind of guy whose parents coddled him and gave him an over-inflated ego. Neither one of us has any real idea about Justin's childhood, and those were just jokes.

 

Don't forget that they allowed them to drive themselves during the first part of the final leg in Season 25. I don't get why it was allowed just that one time, and hasn't been done before or after. Is it much easier to drive in LA? (They were in LA right? But don't they end in LA pretty often?)

 

The driving thing is (I'm pretty sure) entirely random. Like a lot of Race tasks, they like to keep things unpredictable so that Racers don't know what to expect, so some Races they'll do a lot of self-driving, others none. It's like eating challenges, heights challenges, memory challenges...they don't want Racers thinking they can reduce the Race down to a system or a set of skills.

[Ilovemylabs]

They cannot. It's against the rules of the Race to compensate people with anything other than the cash the production team provides you, and there would be time penalties involved. This came into play back in TAR 14, where Mark and Michael were hit with a thirty-minute time penalty for trying to pay their taxi fare by handing over their Rolex.

 

It's a good rule--not only does it stop the "I'll cut you in if I win" stunts, it also keeps people from packing their backpack with valuable objects and bribing their way to the Finish Line.

 

 

I think that may have been me, and I wasn't speaking from any knowledge--I was just saying that he seemed like the kind of guy whose parents pushed him to be hyper-competitive about everything. It was in response to someone who said he seemed like the kind of guy whose parents coddled him and gave him an over-inflated ego. Neither one of us has any real idea about Justin's childhood, and those were just jokes.

 

 

The driving thing is (I'm pretty sure) entirely random. Like a lot of Race tasks, they like to keep things unpredictable so that Racers don't know what to expect, so some Races they'll do a lot of self-driving, others none. It's like eating challenges, heights challenges, memory challenges...they don't want Racers thinking they can reduce the Race down to a system or a set of skills.

Thanks for the clarification!

[Bryce Lynch]

Don't forget "it's ok to be an asshole to someone who probably doesn't speak english, since they probably won't understand you anyways".

That was probably the #3 Justin kept telling Diana to remember.

[J-Man]

 

They do talk about getting married, although Justin freely admits that he will postpone his wedding, and won't really even pick a date for it yet, because he doesn't want to miss out on an All-Stars Unfinished Business 2 edition. He says he is going to stalk the producers and get "his fans" to stalk the producers until they get an offer to do another race.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but I wonder if TAR is going to be around long enough to have another "Unfinished Business" edition. Has it even been renewed past the next (YouTubers) season? It seems to be in decline, and while I guess its ratings are good enough for a Friday broadcast, it must be getting more and more expensive to produce. 

[kdm07]

Just based on how thoroughly and completely the network TAR Australia was on fucked it up, I'd have to say it won't be back. Big rant under the spoiler button.

Season two was dragged around the schedule so much (like, they aired an episode in different states on different nights because of a football game and were shocked when ratings fell in the states that got it a day late, in 2012; other highlights include taking it off the schedule completely to avoid it competing against the London Olympics and then burning the final three episodes of the season off on consecutive nights) that I'm pretty sure the only reason it got brought back at all for season three at all was because it won an International Emmy.

 

And then they fired the producers so they could make it in-house, delayed it for a year (by which point the host had clearly moved on mentally), reused an "Australia vs. New Zealand" casting gimmick that had consistently failed when used on other shows in the past (and which was counterproductive to the entire point of the race), cast the five Australian teams so poorly (two dull teams of fit white friends, an infuriatingly xenophobic fit white dating couple, a dull fit mixed-race dating couple whose mid-race engagement was overshadowed by a running plotline of "he is a big giant bodybuilder but has a teeny-tiny bladder", and a hilarious white cannon fodder team) it's almost as if they outsourced casting the Kiwi teams (a former NZ Idol contestant and his wife who were racing so they could afford to take in more foster kids, a Christchurch earthquake survivor and her "How is the incest subtext so strong when you clearly like men?" brother, a pair of 40-ish Maori housewives who didn't fall into the "older = slow!" thing all versions of TAR seem to suffer from, a pair of amazingly passive-aggressive bickering fat psychologists, and a hyper-competitive pair of alpha males who eventually and inevitably got screwed because everybody hated them) without telling the people they outsourced it to that the show was doomed to fail, planned the route really weirdly (six continents = good; 6/10 legs in Europe and south-east Asia = bad; the final two legs involving getting from Croatia to Melbourne via Buenos Aires and LA, with the entire LA section amounting to "photograph celebrity impersonators on the Hollywood Walk of Fame" and "eat a hot dog" = ugly), had tasks that were either stereotypical to the point of comedy (Thailand = get a massage!; random snowy Russian town = dog sledding!) or had nothing to do with anything (Cambodia = level a pool table!; St. Petersburg = find a luggage tag in a cloakroom!), didn't really sell the difficulty of the tasks that well (like, there were hard tasks, but as it was shown, the hardest tasks before the absurdly tough Argentina leg included "translate two words from Semaphore" and "tie a necktie"), got saddled with almost the worst possible boot order (aside from the first boots the most entertaining team left went home each and every damn time, while the designated assholes lucked into the only non-elimination), and then panicked when their changes weren't met with rapturous applause, hastily scheduling two ill-advised double episodes (the first with an elimination in the middle and a TBC at the end; the second with the two legs immediately before the finale) to get rid of the show as quick as they could.

 

I may still be a little angry about how that turned out, I'm not sure.

 

Wow! I had no idea things were that bad BTS and it's a shame because I enjoy watching other versions of TAR.

[shortsummers]

This is the first season in a long time that I remember money being an issue in TAR, and I assumed it was because contestants got so good at begging for money during down time at airports that money was no longer a factor.  I remember Jonathan of TAR6 had over a thousand dollars in his pocket when he was eliminated.  Do they no longer allow contestants to beg for money? 

[RCharter]

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but I wonder if TAR is going to be around long enough to have another "Unfinished Business" edition. Has it even been renewed past the next (YouTubers) season? It seems to be in decline, and while I guess its ratings are good enough for a Friday broadcast, it must be getting more and more expensive to produce. 

I hope so, and I would think so.  They still are able to pull in pretty high level sponsorships and the sponsorships seem to be pretty high quality and unique.  I know that the popularity of a show must matter.....but just showing someone looking at the Travelocity app on their phone on a super popular show might not move as many people to download the app as if you're able to really show it being used effectively on a slightly less popular show.

 

A few years back Project Runway had an advertising deal with Red Robin and Yoplait.  They were such low quality sponsorships to me because really, was I ever going to be tempted to eat bottomless fries because someone made a nice dress?  Probably not.  Or because the filmed outside of a Red Robin?  Or because I saw one guy eating fries at a red robin while he was sketching?  Probably not.  But seeing the racers use the features of the travelocity app in a situation which naturally lends itself to using the app seems like a much more worthwhile sponsorship to me.  I can't see companies like travelocity or ford getting the same quality of exposure as they do with TAR.

[Richness]

I'm know I'm late to the party, but I'm happy with the outcome of the race.

 

While I hardly knew anything about Kelsey and Joey, at least they didn't annoy the crap out of me. Both of the other two teams did. The only time Joey annoyed is when he did the newscaster voice/persona in the taxi a couple of times. Otherwise, they seemed like a nice couple, though perhaps rather bland. I was glad to read that she's just as much of a super fan as Justin, but not an annoying one. Granted, K&J's bad behavior may have been edited out.

 

The Bickersons could not stop bickering, even after the race is over. I was so tired of hearing their constant fighting. While there was little chance of them winning, I'm so glad they didn't get K&J's cab, thus guaranteeing Justin and Diana a win. I really dislike when one team actively tries something shady against another, whether it be stealing cabs or taking money.

 

My dislike of Justin, however, gradually grew as the race progressed. I felt sympathy for him in the first episode, having been burned by bad weather, thus nearly stopping his Amazing Race at the start. By the time you add in all teams, especially the Texans, conspiring against them to get them out, I was actually rooting for him to over come the alliance against him.

 

But unfortunately, Justin proved to be too successful. Around the time they left South America, I was getting annoyed by his personality.  That dislike continued to grow to colossal proportions all the way to the end. His attitude toward Diana, his laugh, his mugging to the camera, his needling of the other teams, his treatment of the locals, and more all annoyed me.

 

With that said, I have to admire Justin and Diana's race skills. Even when they were behind, like in this episode, they did well enough on the tasks, that they caught up to K&J. That is to be admired. Too bad it's attached to a personality that annoys the crap out of me.

 

Furthermore, I really dislike when one team dominates the race so thoroughly. I'd rather the leg wins be spread out over numerous teams. Therefore, I was happy to see K&J take the big prize at the end. Even the Bickersons won the previous leg, so they didn't go out totally empty-handed. J&D have plenty of trips, cash, and other prizes to make up for not winning the race. The race loses a lot of the excitement when a single team dominants.

 

As far as Taxigate goes, I wonder if this will prompt future teams to keep their bags in the taxi instead of checking them at the airport like J&D did. By the way Logan was going on, it sounds like they can only steal a cab provided the racer's belongings aren't in it. I seem to recall a previous race (perhaps the second All Stars) where one team convinced the taxi driver to remove the backpacks of another team so they could steal the taxi. Didn't like it then, and I didn't like it now. Nor did I like hearing about that for the rest of the episode. By leaving bags in the taxi, that would be another way of locking a good cabbie in along with not paying before a task if it looks like you're going to need it later. Of course, the flip side of this is to keep the Amazing Fanny Pack physically on your body at all times so you don't loose your ID, Passport, race documents, etc. If a cabby runs off, you can continue racing without a change of clothes.

 

Overall, not a bad final leg design. However, I suspect weaker teams would never have been able to haul in the lobster traps though. I'll take that over a lame eating of pizza or a one-at-a-time magic trick. The fire challenge was actually quite thrilling.

 

Not looking forward to all the internet fame whores seeking attention next year. While I begrudgingly admit that the dating themed season wasn't as bad as I feared, I think that was just serendipity. I doubt my luck will hold out again.

[John Seavey]

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but I wonder if TAR is going to be around long enough to have another "Unfinished Business" edition. Has it even been renewed past the next (YouTubers) season? It seems to be in decline, and while I guess its ratings are good enough for a Friday broadcast, it must be getting more and more expensive to produce. 

 

That's normal--they usually renew the show for two seasons at a time, so TAR 27 and 28 are covered under the same contract. We'll probably hear something not long after 28 ends. I'm not unduly worried--it gets decent ratings, it's not that expensive to produce (and it looks gorgeous for the money, because they're shooting all over the world), and it's the closest thing reality TV has to a "prestige" show. Their stack of Emmys helps a lot come renewal time.

 

This is the first season in a long time that I remember money being an issue in TAR, and I assumed it was because contestants got so good at begging for money during down time at airports that money was no longer a factor.  I remember Jonathan of TAR6 had over a thousand dollars in his pocket when he was eliminated.  Do they no longer allow contestants to beg for money? 

 

They still allow contestants to beg for money, but I don't think many of them still do; most of the time, they're just far more familiar with the expectations of the game and don't use money for anything they don't have to. If you watch the early seasons, you'll see people checking into hostels overnight when they had a bunch, or taking taxi rides even when they weren't required to do so. Nowadays people hang onto their money tighter, and so it's less of a factor.

 

Arguably, the only reason it mattered at all here was that every team voluntarily donated their cash at the end of leg four or five to an orphanage. Without that, it wouldn't have been a factor at all.

[Ottis]

I hate when "New York personality" = asshole.  Especially when promulgated by an actual New Yorker.

 

 

As someone who has lived in the south, midwest, far west and mountain west, I can attest that to most people outside of NY, "New York personality" =asshole. If it helps any, usually the assumption is NYC, not all of NY.

[J-Man]

 

I can't see companies like travelocity or ford getting the same quality of exposure as they do with TAR.

But you'll notice that there WAS no Ford product placement this season- or maybe just in the very first episode where they drove to LAX (I don't remember). All I remember was Travelocity and Fitbit. 

[RCharter]

But you'll notice that there WAS no Ford product placement this season- or maybe just in the very first episode where they drove to LAX (I don't remember). All I remember was Travelocity and Fitbit. 

There wasn't any Ford product placement this year, and I think its too bad.  Maybe they wanted to design more tasks around the fitbit, which requires walking versus driving.  I'll be interested to see if Ford makes an appearance next season...

 

Last year they had them taking a bunch of selfies, but I don't remember a phone carrier giving a sponsorship...which I think is a little odd.  So many phones today advertise about having the best camera.

Edited December 19, 2015 by RCharter

[kingshearte]

The second part of that interview is up today on realitytvworld.com and they are far less likeable in it. Diana is pretty arrogant in it as well. They do talk about getting married, although Justin freely admits that he will postpone his wedding, and won't really even pick a date for it yet, because he doesn't want to miss out on an All-Stars Unfinished Business 2 edition. He says he is going to stalk the producers and get "his fans" to stalk the producers until they get an offer to do another race. PUKE.

How utterly repulsive. I devoutly hope it doesn't work.

[RCharter]

How utterly repulsive. I devoutly hope it doesn't work.

just the very arrogance to think he has these "fans" that are going to "stalk producers" makes me dislike him even more

[Netfoot]

Didn't one of the loathsome Hippies try that with Stanford Admissions?  Let's hope Justin is as successful as they were!

[needschocolate]

just the very arrogance to think he has these "fans" that are going to "stalk producers" makes me dislike him even more

 

He has probably already discussed this with both of his fans - "Hey, Mom and Dad, can you stalk the Amazing Race Producers and get me on the next All-Star season?"  

[RCharter]

He has probably already discussed this with both of his fans - "Hey, Mom and Dad, can you stalk the Amazing Race Producers and get me on the next All-Star season?"  

Ha!  More like "mom and dad, can you each create 50 different twitter and facebook accounts and use them to stalk the amazing race producers so you can convince them I have a legion of rabid fans??"

[Muffyn]

I'm sure he has quite the circle of friend.  Of course, I'm including Diana in that circle.  If he had any actual friends they would discourage him from wearing that hat.  

 

My hope is the producers ban Justin and Diana from any future seasons because of the loathsome way they are talking about doing things to be available.  The only reason I care whether or not they get married is I want them to take themselves out of the dating pool so others don't have to deal with them.  I hope the producers understand they are hated and not in a love-to-hate way.  

[Hera]

Just watched this season for the first time (and four and half years late). I finally get all the references to the much-hated Justin and agree that he was super annoying. I also didn't like how he'd bitch at Diana when things weren't going their way or when she ever dared to disagree with him. He also, at two different roadblocks in the race (the tango roadblock in Argentina and the swimming one in Macau) was really negative about her ability to get through it, especially relative to his own. I'm glad their downfall began in the penultimate episode, because otherwise, their eventual loss would have felt like a let-down (despite how unlikeable Justin was), given how much they dominated.

Speaking of their domination, I'm not sure if it's that impressive when you consider who they were up against: this cast is one of the weakest I can remember, especially when it came to intellect/general knowledge/travel savvy. I was going to say that the weakness of the field was second only to the season that came after it, with all the influencers, but actually, I think Tyler/Korey, Burnie/Ashley, and Kurt (carrying Brodie) would all have been competitive to win this season—also, Dana/Matt, I guess, since they're the ones who actually did win Season 28. I have to give a special shout-out to the couple (ChacAttack) who thought Rotterdam and Amsterdam were the same city, and could have been saved from their own ignorance if they had just been paying attention to the stops on the train, but weren't. I also can't get over eventual winners Joey and Kelsey pronouncing the Hague as "the HaGOO".

I also thought this season was too heavy on "adventure" tasks that didn't require much more from racers than a willingness to jump off of something or ride in something else, and some very basic observation skills—especially early on in the season.