S28.E07: Welcome To Bloody Fingers 101

[Jersey Guy 87]

Did you miss Dan and Andrew from a few seasons back?  They made Korey look like a gymnast!  They couldn't walk.

 

I've tried to block out all memories of Dandrew.  I do have a vague memory that they absolutely sucked at dancing.

[meep.meep]

They sucked at marching which is synchronized walking.  No music, no steps other than forward.  You just have to do what the person next to you does.  They were the bottom of the barrel.

[kingshearte]

I think Blair didn't want to do the roadblock not because she had supposedly hurt her knee in Chamonix, but it was that she didn't want to embarrass herself in front of new boyfriend Brodie.  Now there's no telling if Blair would have been more coordinated than Scott, but if you can use gender bias and say that men should be able to change oil faster than women, I would say the opposite when it comes to dancing.  Not to mention that I think somebody who is young would likely be able to dance better than somebody who is older.  But we'll never know.

I also bristle a little at the assumption that just because one partner is younger and female means they should do the dance. Maybe she's a really, truly horrible dancer. Maybe Scott's hesitation had to with his own not-uncommon assumption that, as someone who has (presumably) never taken dance classes, he probably isn't very good, but really, he wasn't that bad, considering. And he does seem to be in pretty decent shape (maybe better than her — just because she's young and thin doesn't mean she has any stamina to speak of). At no point did he seem particularly winded or exhausted by the exertion. And then there's the knee thing. Even if she's exaggerating a little about how bad it actually was, as a few people have pointed out, dancing involves a lot of twisting on the knee. Especially considering the speed of that particular dance? There's no time to carefully consider how you're placing your weight to avoid straining your joints, and, especially in a situation of a new dance that you're not 100% secure on, sometimes you're even trying to make those already very fast moves just a hair later than you should, which means your weight will potentially be not quite where it should be, which leads to even more torque. Naw, man. Anyone with any knee concerns should probably avoid that dance.

[Fukui San]

I've tried to block out all memories of Dandrew.  I do have a vague memory that they absolutely sucked at dancing.

They sucked at WALKING. 

 

[Jersey Guy 87]

Let's just cut to the chase - they sucked overall at pretty much everything.  The ultimate cockroach team, surviving for who knows what reason.  Nobody cast this season is nearly as inept as they were.

[Guest]

In that interview above, Blair said she and Tyler learned the dance while watching their partners try it, and tried doing it themselves in the audience.  She said there was zero chance she would've been able to complete it with her injury.  

[holly4755]

Many of the racers danced without any level of grace.  She would have been judged on getting the steps right.  And just to be clear, I'm judging her very, very weak excuse for not doing the dance, which is based on a phantom knee injury that there is no evidence of her having, and all evidence of her not having.  

 

I run 5-6 days a week and even if you run on an injury you're not going to run the same, especially a serious knee injury.  Since she can run, there was no serious knee injury that kept her from dancing....this was just another case of Blair not wanting to do a task if she could send daddy to do it for her.  Running is one of the ultimate activities that puts weight on your knees as you land on your feet.  Her "well I can't put any weight on my knees" is ridiculous if she was able to run normally, without a limp or even favoring one leg or the other.

and that is you. not everyone.

I once broke my ankle and that started a string of injuries - So I have had broken feet - you can walk on them, albeit painful, if the right bones are broken, cannot if the wrong ones are broken. I have had several broken ankles - from hairline fractures, through complete break. Again,you can painfully walk on a hairline fracture, although you can injure yourself worse. Much worse are knee injuries and I have had a couple of surgeries on my knee already - When I had a torn meniscus - I could run or walk or walk straight without pain,. but if I turned or stepped on an uneven surface, the pain would be so bad, I would collapse to the the ground, anything that took the knee out of parallel was bad. In case you think I was a wimp, the doctor put off operating and tried exercise for a while - didn't work, when he opened up the knee, he found it far worse than he thought, When I asked why he didn't think it was so bad, he said it was because I didn't cry enough and did not limp. ugh,. looks can be deceiving and people can be braving through it but still get criticized,

 

This also reminds me of the criticism Peach (I think) got for not wanting to drink tea at road block, after she was eliminated it turns out she had rampant dysentery and just did not want to get another bathroom episode in an area without public toilets. Completely understandable. The show can not tell us every little thing that happens and I cut most people some slack because we just never know the whole story.

 

As to production interfering, I think early on there were some racers arrested in North Africa for not paying for a cab, I think it was some kind of a scam or misunderstanding, don't remember was decades ago. Production went in to straighten it out because the racers were in danger..

[RCharter]

and that is you. not everyone.

I once broke my ankle and that started a string of injuries - So I have had broken feet - you can walk on them, albeit painful, if the right bones are broken, cannot if the wrong ones are broken. I have had several broken ankles - from hairline fractures, through complete break. Again,you can painfully walk on a hairline fracture, although you can injure yourself worse. Much worse are knee injuries and I have had a couple of surgeries on my knee already - When I had a torn meniscus - I could run or walk or walk straight without pain,. but if I turned or stepped on an uneven surface, the pain would be so bad, I would collapse to the the ground, anything that took the knee out of parallel was bad. In case you think I was a wimp, the doctor put off operating and tried exercise for a while - didn't work, when he opened up the knee, he found it far worse than he thought, When I asked why he didn't think it was so bad, he said it was because I didn't cry enough and did not limp. ugh,. looks can be deceiving and people can be braving through it but still get criticized,

 

This also reminds me of the criticism Peach (I think) got for not wanting to drink tea at road block, after she was eliminated it turns out she had rampant dysentery and just did not want to get another bathroom episode in an area without public toilets. Completely understandable. The show can not tell us every little thing that happens and I cut most people some slack because we just never know the whole story.

 

As to production interfering, I think early on there were some racers arrested in North Africa for not paying for a cab, I think it was some kind of a scam or misunderstanding, don't remember was decades ago. Production went in to straighten it out because the racers were in danger..

And did you walk normally the entire time?  Could you run normally?  Or did you favor one foot or the other?

 

The entire story is told in the fact that she could run without favoring one foot or the other.  Running puts about 2x your weight on your joints, so if she had a knee so terribly injured that she could not put weight on it, she shouldn't have been able to run normally.

 

Its one thing to give people the benefit of the doubt....its another thing to just blindly believe people in spite of evidence to the contrary.  I give people the benefit of the doubt, but I don't just blindly believe them when there is evidence that throws their version of events into question.

 

But YMMV.

Edited April 13, 2016 by RCharter

[auntlada]

And did you walk normally the entire time?  Could you run normally?  Or did you favor one foot or the other?

 

When I hurt my knee, yes, I could. It hurt like heck, but I did it until I decided that I better let Coach know it hurt so I could get help.

[RCharter]

When I hurt my knee, yes, I could. It hurt like heck, but I did it until I decided that I better let Coach know it hurt so I could get help.

Hmmmm, I've never seen that before, maybe you thought you were running normally.  Your body naturally is going to favor one leg to avoid pain on the other as much as possible.  Thats just a human response, unless you are consciously forcing yourself to exert the same force on both legs.  Perhaps if you're running in a sport, thats what you do.

 

However, thats not what Blair was doing, she wasn't running for a sport or making a conscious decision to run equally with both legs.  She was running to the mat.

 

So no, but again, if people are inclined to believe a story that is contradicted by what people can see with their eyes....so be it.  It takes all types to make the world go around.

 

As Judge Marilyn Milian likes to say on "People's Court"....."who am I gonna believe, you, or my lyin' eyes?"

Edited April 13, 2016 by RCharter

[auntlada]

Well, YMMV, but I choose to believe her and don't consider my eyes to be lying. And since people didn't know my leg hurt before I chose to let it show, then, yes, I think I ran normally. I don't know Blair and don't know if she's capable of doing that. I think she may have spoken in hyperbole about no weight on the leg, but I do believe her that it hurt and that dancing would have hurt it more. You don't have to, but I do.

[Guest]

Why even lie about injuries?  What would be the motive?  To hide... laziness?  Is it really that much easier to watch your senior dad learn a dance routine than to just do it?  

[Eolivet]

Cole is at an age of like, maximum male insecurity, so I'm not even that bothered by his awkward reactions to literally everything. Sheri shushing him for saying "muy rapido" was freaking hilarious. You could just hear the "Oh, Lord, now everyone's going to think I can't raise my kids right" running through her head.

 

 

He's...14? 16? To me, if he's gone through puberty, he should've learned how to act like a reasonable facsimilie of an adult. It's not awkward to be like "Now that we're not eliminated, I'm so mad at you for being slow!" and "Cleaning is what Moms do", it's just rude. Putting down one's mother (which I feel like is exactly what he does) in public -- to say nothing of in front of millions of viewers -- isn't a sign of insecurity, it's a sign of disrespect.

 

If he was going to be all "eww, Mom cooties" about her, he should've done the race with someone else. No sympathy for him at all in my book.

[holly4755]

when I tore my meniscus, Yes, I could walk normally, , there was no pain in walking straight, Well, I could until I started the dreading the pain if I turned when it started happening more and more, but that was just an example of me.  no two injuries are the same. I was just giving it as an example. If the pain is inside you and not someone else it is hard to tell. how serious it is. Not only did the doctor not take me seriously in the beginning, my family, my ex, all through I was being a drama queen until it started to happen more frequently and was pretty obvious when I fell on the ground screaming, heh. I have severe arthritis there now for not having it operated on for 6 months.

 

It is like falling on a banana p[eel. Comedy f it happens to someone else, tragedy if it happens to you.  By the way, my totally non-empathetic ex used to call his mother a hypochondriac for complaining about a pain for years until she was diagnosed with advanced bone cancer, too late for a cure. . Whoops. 

[NutMeg]

Personal experiences aside, Blair has consistently sent her dad to work on tasks. We got a reason about why for the task in the episode when they were eliminated, but I'm sure we'd have many other fun reasons for these choices over the previous legs. Besides, when had TAR NOT showed an injury so as to tease us with a will they, won't they, get eliminated? And a doctor on the team would have been a nice cherry on the cake. But frankly, whether we think it's a bogus excuse or a valid point doesn't matter much. Bottom line is, this was a mediocre team that no one expected to win, and they lasted much longer than I expected. I didn't have any specific reason to want to see them stay or go, but at least their elimination will stop any talk of the supposed budging romance.

 

I thought this was a very good leg. I like seeing opportunities for the order/ranking to shift and this leg was gold in that respect.

 

Lastly, Cherri impressed me at the dance challenge, as did that frisbee guy (I didn't think he had it in him, but guy can move) and of course it was nice to see a real dancer take up the challenge, and she gave me goose bumps :) (Funny, I expected the guy to take it, based on comments I read his dancing skills are more often highlighted).

 

This season, to me, in much, much better that the previous ones.

[Netfoot]

Besides, when had TAR NOT showed an injury so as to tease us with a will they, won't they, get eliminated?

 

Hardly anyone knows this, but Dave O'Leary who was on the winning team for S24 All-Stars, apparently hurt his Achilles tendon on an earlier race (S18).  But TPTB kept it a secret from the viewing public for the entire time he remained on S22 and it was also never mentioned for the whole of S24.  (It was probably because Dave was an Old Man.)

[HaymakerHattie]

At least one team per season claims in exit interviews that they were running the race on some kind of torn muscle or hairline fracture but they didn't say anything at the time because they didn't want to get medically pulled. Smart? No. Comfortable? No. And I'm not sure all of them are totally truthful about the extent of said injuries since you can save a lot of face by claiming you were in pain the whole time...but I don't believe most of them are lying. 

 

Also, Blair did 3 roadblocks to Scott's 4 so she was hardly strongarming him into doing all the work. 

Edited April 14, 2016 by HaymakerHattie

[kingshearte]

Hardly anyone knows this, but Dave O'Leary who was on the winning team for S24 All-Stars, apparently hurt his Achilles tendon on an earlier race (S18).  But TPTB kept it a secret from the viewing public for the entire time he remained on S22 and it was also never mentioned for the whole of S24.  (It was probably because Dave was an Old Man.)

What did we used to say at TWOP (and maybe elsewhere, I don't know)? You owe me a new keyboard? This made me snort.

[Guest]

Hardly anyone knows this, but Dave O'Leary who was on the winning team for S24 All-Stars, apparently hurt his Achilles tendon on an earlier race (S18).  But TPTB kept it a secret from the viewing public for the entire time he remained on S22 and it was also never mentioned for the whole of S24.  (It was probably because Dave was an Old Man.)

I think his got special mention because it was a serious injury and he just kept racing on it and winning legs on crutches, which tied in nicely to their 'double cancer survivors' story. 

 

From a wiki:  Dave tore his Achilles Tendon while racing to the Pit Stop in Leg 2. Realizing that his injury made it almost impossible to win the Race, Dave became determined to win a leg, and he and Connor won the following two legs, even with Dave walking on crutches. They eventually quit the race in Hanoi in order to allow Dave to have surgery on his torn tendon.

 

A Youtube beauty vlogger having a sore knee is not really all that interesting or worthy of air time.  They didn't even show us her dad's blackened big toenails from the dancing.  Though maybe they didn't turn black til after some time.  

[anhydrite]

 Besides, when had TAR NOT showed an injury so as to tease us with a will they, won't they, get eliminated?

 

In TAR 22(?), Wynona got her fair share of snark when she was pawning off all Roadblocks to Chuck because she was afraid to run. Everyone was constantly calling her a wimp and/or a whiner, but it turned out she pulled a calf muscle on her way to the starting line. This was only shown in an extra clip, and never mentioned at all in the show.

 

Also, in TAR21, one of the Chippendales hurt his ankle somewhere during leg one, yet, no mention of it was made until leg 6 or 7 or so, when he had a hard time completing a dance task. Of course, the show did mentioned the injury then, but never once in all the preceding episodes, and no explanation was given as to why he had trouble with his ankle.

 

Editing, I guess.

 

No trouble at all believing Blair about her knee. One day, I badly slammed my kneecap, and though I could walk just fine on day 2 (nobody would have guessed I was injured), it took me until day 4 or 5 until I could climb stairs normally. No way on Earth I could dance with that. It's already hard enough on healthy knees.

 

Completely unrelated to all subjects mentioned previously (TV), but for some reason, I kind of found it touching the way Tyler/Korey were sobbing at the mat. Is that the first time a team cries after actually not being eliminated? I guess they just had a sudden emotion burst of relief after a hard day.

 

I'll probably be back to lurking now, see you later guys ;)

 

[holly4755]

from what I understand dysentery is pretty common on the race but do they really want to talk about bathroom stops a lot? Clean water is not always available and you have to eat on the run and can't always wash your hands, you have seen some of the muddy dirty tasks they do. They are taking weeks of running following several people, there is a limit to what you can talk about and have a coherent storyline in one hour a week. I always assume there is a lot I don't know happening, same on survivor. 

[curbcrusher]

Maybe Scott's hesitation had to with his own not-uncommon assumption that, as someone who has (presumably) never taken dance classes, he probably isn't very good, but really, he wasn't that bad, considering.

 

 

As the father of a daughter only a couple of years younger than Blair, my thought was that Scott's hesitation was a "When am I going to see some %$^#*&^ return on all those dance classes I paid for when you were younger?"  :-)

[Quilt Fairy]

Amy (of S25's Amy & Maya) ran the entire race with 2 stress fractures in her pelvis that she thinks she got during pre-race conditioning and that weren't confirmed by MRI until after the race. All we ever saw and wondered about was that she was walking awfully funny.

[NutMeg]

All right, I stand corrected, sometimes the race DOES NOT let us know of injuries. 

[In Pog Form]

He's...14? 16? To me, if he's gone through puberty, he should've learned how to act like a reasonable facsimilie of an adult. 

No way. 14-16 is nowhere near adult.

 

As Rozen said, it's the most awkward age possible. You're not exactly a "kid" anymore, but you're not an adult, and you are still suffering the hormonal effects of having just gone through puberty, but haven't entered sexual maturity yet. You don't have any financial independence, but you're expected to be responsible and study all the time, even though you won't see any actual reward from that study for at least a decade.

 

Those years are the worst kind of purgatory.

[Eolivet]

No way. 14-16 is nowhere near adult.

 

As Rozen said, it's the most awkward age possible. You're not exactly a "kid" anymore, but you're not an adult, and you are still suffering the hormonal effects of having just gone through puberty, but haven't entered sexual maturity yet. You don't have any financial independence, but you're expected to be responsible and study all the time, even though you won't see any actual reward from that study for at least a decade.

 

Those years are the worst kind of purgatory.

 

I was actually being facetious, as I don't think reality shows take any contestant under 18. So, it's not like he's 14 or 16 -- he's at least 18 -- old enough to vote, and thus a facsimilie of an adult. And at that point, yes -- I believe he should have learned not to treat his mother like hot, buttered garbage on national television.

[Bouquet]

I tend to believe her about the knee because she's usually ahead of her father going to the mat (at least that's how I'm remembering it) and this time she was several steps behind him as he was, as usual, juggling both their bags.

 

Though Blair didn't have trouble running "fast, fast" down the stairs away from the roadblock while carrying two backpacks.

[RCharter]

I was actually being facetious, as I don't think reality shows take any contestant under 18. So, it's not like he's 14 or 16 -- he's at least 18 -- old enough to vote, and thus a facsimilie of an adult. And at that point, yes -- I believe he should have learned not to treat his mother like hot, buttered garbage on national television.

"hot, buttered garbage" is hilarious.  I'm sorry, but I'm stealing that...and maybe treating someone like hot, buttered garbage just so I can use that term.

[aradia22]

Brodie is still loud and annoying to me but his interactions with the instructors/judges at challenges are making me laugh.