S28.E03: Bros Being Jocks

[RCharter]

I'm a big Barenaked Ladies fan so I'm rooting for Team Rooster teeth since they're friends with the band and have done a bunch of stuff for them over the years (even if I didn't realize they're the red vs blue people until like a week ago. oops). thankfully they seem more human than the other teams. After them it's the gay friends because they seem competent and self aware. I was semi-rooting for the brothers since this is an even whiter season than normal, but they were gonna go home soon anyway - it was painful to watch them bumble around. Hate both parent/kid teams, and the "should we get married" engaged couple is awful as always. I appreciated how FX guy and girl handled their setbacks, but not impressed they made them in the first place. How do you mix up a 1000 peso note and a 10 note. Did you think they put the number of cents on the bill woman?? 

Here is my thing with that, they know that a bus ride is like 1800 pesos, or whatever.  You should realize that if you need to get 20,000 pesos, you need to get at least 12 passengers.  She was 3000 pesos short, and thought she was way, way over.  Didn't she realize she didn't have enough fares to make way over $20,000 pesos?  I know he was being snarky, but I understood his frustration when he was like "and you're our treasurer?"

 

I think the bus riders were production plants.  If you can get people on the bus by promising them kisses, you're probably not a bus they need to be on.

 

Agree with your sentiments on the brothers, but didn't want to be the one to say it.  

[North of Eden]

Oh, well..the Vine Guys seemed like cannon fodder so this is not a big surprise.

 

Dana continues to fascinate...how her hotness and her super bitchyness seem to cancel each other out. That must be why her dude stays. I will defend her against the evil eye the shopwoman was giving her....the shop woman shouldn't have agreed to be part of the comp if she was going to be all put out by it.

 

Thumbs down to the Amazing Editors...I didn't like how they teased Burnie and Ashley appearing like they were going to leave their fanny pack behind with the "Unmotivated Close up" TM Roger Ebert. And then it didn't happen!

 

Just once...I want a team to be eliminated as a DIRECT RESULT of helping another team. It's just so stupid when you are in the bottom five.

 

I really, really wanted a 60 year old man to call Blair on her selling kisses and  try and plant a French kiss on her.

 

C';mon Team Purple....that one girl was acting like she was going to cross over into the movie THE DESCENT in those catacombs...there was nary a Crawler insight and it looked fairly roomy.

 

Question...I know this isn't the ratings thread but I think more people will be here. SURVIVOR in it's two episodes this season have dropped below the 2.0 rating. Now if an 800 Pound Gorilla like that show is  pulling a 1.9...doesn't it seem like it would bode well for THE AMAZING RACE not to get cancelled as long as it stays at 1.0 or 1.1 and not go fractional?

Edited March 1, 2016 by North of Eden

[Netfoot]

Why would you label anything creative "pathetic"?

 

I wouldn't.  Unless I believed it was.

 

Even if you personally don't care for the stuff he makes, that kind of video editing requires a great deal of talent and creativity.

 

Perhaps it does.  But it isn't magic.

 

And frankly, I've seen the video editing, and it looks pretty inexpert to me!

[RCharter]

Oh, well..the Vine Guys seemed like cannon fodder so this is not a big surprise.

 

Dana continues to fascinate...how her hotness and her super bitchyness seem to cancel each other out. That must be why her dude stays. I will defend her against the evil eye the shopwoman was giving her....the shop woman shouldn't have agreed to be part of the comp if she was going to be all put out by it.

I thought the shopkeeper was hilarious.  I totally thought she was going to cut someone with her fan...Mortal Kombat style.  She was just not having a single part of it, wasn't excited for the cameras or the excitement, she was just straight pissed they were stepping all over her stuff.  At one point she got up and I thought "oh, thats it, someone is going to get some what for right about now!"

 

I guess we're so used to seeing happy locals, and its funny to see one that was so clearly communicating her annoyance and saltiness through the screen...without a word.

[Kromm]

That thing is Colombia's national sport? I mean, it looked like fun and all, but national sport? There must be drinking involved.

This is Columbia--it might be another mind-altering substance.

I really, really wanted a 60 year old man to call Blair on her selling kisses and  try and plant a French kiss on her.

It was simultaneously clever of her... and annoying.

 

C';mon Team Purple....that one girl was acting like she was going to cross over into the movie THE DESCENT in those catacombs...there was nary a Crawler insight and it looked fairly roomy.

Yeah, but I can't get on someone's ass for what looks like a legit phobia. I mean it's not even like when people don't learn to swim before going on TAR, because it's not a matter of experience, just... what is.

I'm not a constant TAR viewer, but I am loving this season! Which maybe just means I need to go back and watch earlier seasons because the consensus seems to be that they were much better?

Not really (a consensus). I mean many previous seasons have manufactured drama. We did this episode finally see a team fighting with each other, but overall these teams aren't fighting with each OTHER, and that's refreshing for this show.  There is a lot of volme/screaming in this season, but that doesn't overbalance the lack of fake drama.

Because alcohol and gunpowder is such an entertaining combination!

Damn straight it is.

 

That said, glad there's no gun involved.

I'm amazed anyone chose the bus -- not only was it pretty open ended, it seemed like it had too many opportunities to go wrong.  It ended up being another majorly unbalanced choice.

Agreed. The bus seemed like a horrible option (and in fact we saw that even the fastest team on the bus finished further back in the pack).

Edited March 1, 2016 by Kromm

[Kromm]

I loved this one line from Team Clevver:

 

Greeter: I am Miss Cartagena.

Erin: Of course you are.

 

It's even funnier in relation to how Team Instagram Model responded:

 

Greeter: No.. Miss Cartegena.

Brittany & Jessica: Miss Iowa!  Miss Florida!

[aradia22]

This was another leg where I was happy to watch the teams in the lead and then suffered through the stragglers at the end. I don't want to quit watching halfway through but maybe I'll have to start to. I don't remember things being this bad consistently in previous seasons.

[Jersey Guy 87]

The brothers did well the first leg by moving up from last place to fourth place, but the next two legs showed they just weren't cut out for the race. I mean, they were the fourth team to arrive at the airport and the last to leave. If they had watched TAR in the past, they would have known they needed to get a flight to the next leg. 

 

I don't think you need to have watched TAR before to figure out that if the clue sends you to the airport to get a flight to a country that is far away you need to actually book a flight.  They seemed to realize they needed to book a flight, they just didn't seem to think it was a priority so they wasted an incredible amount of time not booking a flight and doing the things they could have done after they booked a flight.

[jhlipton]

The look the woman was giving Dana for standing on her jewelry!! She was nicer than I might have been. Then she stood up looking really pissed at Scott and purple Erin who were both standing on her stuff.

 

Nah -- she obviously agreed to participate.  She can't spread her wares directly in front of a clue and expect people to not step on them.

 

 

And the whole Miss Colombia, Miss Iowa, Miss Florida bit was just damn annoying.

 

 

YYMV -- I thought that was amusing.

 

This!   He's not a magician.  They use sleight of hand and misdirection.  He does special effects.  That said, what they showed looked pretty cool and I'd like to see more, but it is not magic.

 

"Magic" doesn't mean just what David Copperfield or Penn and Teller do.  "Video magic" is a legit term and Zach is not only way good at it, he's also creative with his stories.

[Netfoot]

"Video magic" is a legit term and Zach is not only way good at it, he's also creative with his stories.

 

You are entitled to your opinion, as am I.

[Boilergal]

Fans like Justin from last season?  No thanks.  Other, non-Justin-like fans? I will gladly sign that petition.

OOOh good point....anybody but Justin -

 

I like the race - not the playing up to the camera

[piequinn35]

Didn't like Justin from last race, he was so annoying... :>

[etagloh]

Well, that was a leg that combined a lot of what I dislike about leg design with a lot of what I dislike about bad teams wasting their opportunity on TAR. Also, terrible title.

 

I really dislike 'acquire money from locals for a thing' tasks, and while the bus route was probably meant to avoid the problem of everyone hawking for coins in a common location, it was still at best capricious and encourages teams to behave in certain ways that TPTB shouldn't really be comfortable with.  Blowhole was obviously the smarter option on that Detour. The Road Block was a fairly meh distributed variation of needle/haystack, though I was glad that it rewarded basic Spanish competency for navigation.

 

And yet... this season still isn't annoying me as much as I expected.

I think the bus riders were production plants.  If you can get people on the bus by promising them kisses, you're probably not a bus they need to be on.

I'm not sure if I'd get on a jitney bus with the destinations being barked out by obvious non-locals if I wanted to get to a particular destination for a reason. So it makes sense that TPTB seeded the route, but that just makes it more of an iffy task. In a way, I'm more comfortable with "busk for money" or "run a food stall and sell local favourites" task, which is the usual format for this kind of task, because it's not getting in the way of a needed local service.

Edited March 2, 2016 by etagloh

[Kromm]

I despise both of the female/female teams. The magenta team was extremely annoying on the bus (although I felt for her in the catacombs as I am also fairly claustrophobic and that task looked to be a nightmare)

I hate the blue team more. I loathe their intro shot, how they actually seem to be prancing up to the camera. And the whole Miss Colombia, Miss Iowa, Miss Florida bit was just damn annoying.

I found the Miss Miss Miss exchange annoying too--at first. But the reason I appreciated it later (in terms of it being on the show at least) is because the Clevver girls (who don't annoy me the way they do you), had a great counterpoint to the blue team's interaction with the greeter--not a deliberate counterpoint mind you, but one that illustrated to me that these two teams, who posters in Episode 1 kept saying seemed almost identical, are indeed very different. Whereas the Blue Girl's answer to "I am Miss Columbia" was "Miss Iowa, Miss Florida!", the Magenta team's was a sarcastic "of course you are..."  See... that I loved. The Clevver girl who said it softened it a bit with a follow up comment telling the girl how beautiful she is... but that first gut reaction was definitely sarcastic.

Well, that was a leg that combined a lot of what I dislike about leg design with a lot of what I dislike about bad teams wasting their opportunity on TAR. Also, terrible title.

 

I really dislike 'acquire money from locals for a thing' tasks, and while the bus route was probably meant to avoid the problem of everyone hawking for coins in a common location, it was still at best capricious and encourages teams to behave in certain ways that TPTB shouldn't really be comfortable with.  Blowhole was obviously the smarter option on that Detour. The Road Block was a fairly meh distributed variation of needle/haystack, though I was glad that it rewarded basic Spanish competency for navigation.

 

And yet... this season still isn't annoying me as much as I expected.

It was a horribly designed episode. but the problem IMO definitely wasn't a casting problem like people feared (although many I guess still feel that way). 

Edited March 2, 2016 by Kromm

[biakbiak]

I didn't get the Clevver team being sarcastic at all. I also thought the Miss/Miss was cute. Those are titles that they have held and I imagine it's fairly typical to share that common history when meeting other beauty quuens.

[jhlipton]

You are entitled to your opinion, as am I.

 

True dat -- not saying you don't. I am saying that "magic" is used to mean more than stage magic.  "Every little thing she does is magic" doesn't mean that she saws people in half...

[Fat Bastard]

...Miss Columbia...

 

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

[Kromm]

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

Hah. That'll show me not to cut and paste out of a previous poster's post. In my original a few posts further up you'll see I properly identified her as "Miss Cartagena".

[blackwing]

I'm pretty sure one of the blue girls asked, "are you Miss Colombia?" and she said "Miss Cartagena" and that's when they did their stupid "ZOMG, Miss Iowa and Miss Florida we can all be screeching bimbettes together!"

 

I have to say I don't really know which screeching female team is which.  I have a hard time deciding which is more irritating.  Are the blue girls the ones who are "Instagram models" or is that the magenta team?  Watch the intro shot for the blue team this Friday, it looks like they are taking these prancing baby steps and for some reason it bugs the crap out of me.  Look at us, we are ice cool.

[TsuKata]

Did anyone catch or see the actual wording of the clue for the roadblock?  Generally, when teams have made RTFC errors, the race has happily zoomed in on the clue at some point so you could see that it clearly states what they should be doing, or they've had footage of a racer reading the relevant part of the clue out loud in a voice that is definitely more "I'm reading" than "I'm restating".

 

Also, I do think that Darius' brother did say to him "Make sure to read your clue" one of the times that Darius came by the starting point.  Hubs and I noticed it because we realized that is probably the specific limit to how much help they're allowed to give...saying "read the clue" or "hurry up, there are teams here."

 

I'm kind of sad that the race didn't take some time to explain that there is a rule that the non-roadblock teammate cannot help the roadblock teammate.  If you aren't familiar with TAR history, it just seems like Darius' brother is equally dumb or mean when he was actually strictly constrained by the rules.

[auntlada]

I'm pretty sure one of the blue girls asked, "are you Miss Colombia?" and she said "Miss Cartagena" and that's when they did their stupid "ZOMG, Miss Iowa and Miss Florida we can all be screeching bimbettes together!"

 

I have to say I don't really know which screeching female team is which.  I have a hard time deciding which is more irritating.  Are the blue girls the ones who are "Instagram models" or is that the magenta team?  Watch the intro shot for the blue team this Friday, it looks like they are taking these prancing baby steps and for some reason it bugs the crap out of me.  Look at us, we are ice cool.

 

I think the Instagram models are in blue. In at least one talking head shot, one of the magenta women looked like a young Alyssa Milano to me. I can't remember which one now, but it's the one who stands on the left when they're in order of their names.

 

When they did the Miss, Miss, Miss thing, my husband looked up and said, "Look! Like calls to like."

[kingshearte]

I found the Miss Miss Miss exchange annoying too--at first. But the reason I appreciated it later (in terms of it being on the show at least) is because the Clevver girls (who don't annoy me the way they do you), had a great counterpoint to the blue team's interaction with the greeter--not a deliberate counterpoint mind you, but one that illustrated to me that these two teams, who posters in Episode 1 kept saying seemed almost identical, are indeed very different. Whereas the Blue Girl's answer to "I am Miss Columbia" was "Miss Iowa, Miss Florida!", the Magenta team's was a sarcastic "of course you are..."  See... that I loved. The Clevver girl who said it softened it a bit with a follow up comment telling the girl how beautiful she is... but that first gut reaction was definitely sarcastic.

Interesting, because I didn't read that as sarcasm at all. I kind of enjoyed the various interactions with Miss Cartagena.

 

Overall, I would say that this episode did nothing to dispel my impression that this is not the brightest bunch of racers we've ever had. Darius and Cameron... yeesh. I really can't decide if non-RB-doing brother knew where his brother had to go or not. There wasn't any talking head later where he talked about how frustrating it was not to be able to help, and his face didn't really convey anything like that either. He mostly just looked about as chill and clueless as his brother. But given that he'd been sitting there right next to other people getting their clues, it's hard to believe he'd be that oblivious. Either way, their ouster was not a big surprise.

 

And those detours were definitely wildly uneven. I don't know if the task testers were just supremely incompetent at exploding cornhole or what, but when a team that's almost an hour behind the next team can finish that task before teams that started the bus task probably before the brothers even started the leg, that's not a very balanced set of tasks.

 

Didn't actually notice Scott drop anything this week, but I'm sure he dropped one of the bags at some point or something.

[Pallas]

Whereas the Blue Girl's answer to "I am Miss Columbia" was "Miss Iowa, Miss Florida!", the Magenta team's was a sarcastic "of course you are..."  See... that I loved. The Clevver girl who said it softened it a bit with a follow up comment telling the girl how beautiful she is... but that first gut reaction was definitely sarcastic.

 

Sarcastic because Magenta believed the greeter was another plant -- more likely to won the genetics superfecta than an actual local pageant?  

 

Because otherwise, the remark wasn't sarcastic but droll. Sarcasm would have feigned surprise or polite disagreement: "Are you?  "Really," or "One more surprise, Phil."  

[Supay]

After greeting the teams, Madeleine Lopez Camelo a.k.a. Miss Cartagena had time for her interpreter and PK: