S04.E01: Who's Ready to Let It All Hang Out?

[radishcake]

Season 4 Premiere

Olympic Gold Medalist Jon Montgomery will be back to host the show, and the producers have promised new and adrenaline-packed challenges for new teams.

[Kanaloa]

A fifth of the cast taking penalties in the premiere and that stuntcast winning the leg? Yuck - at least the sob story got the boot!

[mtlchick]

I'm going to be very interested to learn how Lowell is going to handle the race with his limited vision.  

Two minutes and I'm already tired of the exes.  Watch them last the entire race.  

[weightyghost]

Jillian is already in screeching territory, and its the first leg, and they were in first place? Yeah, she needs to get the boot ASAP. Having someone yell from the backseat YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME. YOU NEED TO GO. WE NEED TO GET THERE as he's trying to pull into a parking spot? Stop. Patience of a saint, that man.

Other than that, I was okay with the rest of the teams. No one really stood out, other than the girlfriends one of which almost ripped off her leg when she fell from the monkey bars. Yikes. 

[Pepper the Cat]

The Jasper Line Task was nerve racking! My poor cat, he was sitting on my lap and I kept grabbing him when someone fell. He ran away! That was a really hard road block and I really admire anyone who made it through!

very glad that one of the quitters was eliminated! I hate quitters!!

0nce again, Amazing Race Canada is much harder than Amazing Race USA!

[wintrygal]

I never could have done those tasks, ok, I wouldn't even have made the run to the luggage and first clue.  I didn't like Jillian and Emmett on Big Brother Canada, she won because someone wasn't paying attention and voted out the person she actually wanted to win.. have a feeling they're going to hang around till the bitter end. 

I'm liking Steph and Kristen so far, hope they do well, also like the father and son team.  Lot of screeching it seemed to me.

[Taeolas]

The product placement was a bit much at times but the scenery and challenges more than make up for it. I'd swear they are cribbing challenge notes from The Ridonculous Race . It's a bit disappointing weather shut the challenge down so quick (editting wise) but at least most of the teams tried it and many completed it. 

 

Taking a penalty on the first challenge seems to be becoming a TARC tradition. On the one hand, it's sucks that some teams quit like that; but logically, it makes sense given the time limitations of the challenge. Of course getting a weather cancellation tossed a monkey wrench into that logic. :) And the power male couple is eliminated right off the bat. 

 

I guess Air Canada isn't a sponsor this time; but with Hotels sponsoring instead, that may give them more variety in where they go. Looking forward to the rest of the race now.

 

And the screeching was way too much for Leg 1 with an airport bunching coming up. Ugh; hope they get the boot quick. :( 

 

As for the rest of the teams, I'm warming to Fire and Ice right off the bat, and pulling for the father/son and the blind team.Mostly indifferent to teh rest of the teams so far. :) 

 

*Edit* I just realized. With Hotels sponsoring this race, there's a very good chance that one (or more!) of the challenges will involve Captain Obvious in some way, just like the Travelocity Gnome has infested TARUS. 

Edited June 29, 2016 by Taeolas

[aemom]

My understanding with the monkey bars challenge was that the second time, the harness would be supporting your weight. If that's the case,  then wouldn't you just have to hand-over-hand without having to pull yourself to finish the challenge? People seemed to still be really stressed out about it.

[Abgirl]

Coming out of previouslytv lurkdom, because I was really excited to see the first leg taking place in Jasper, just a short way up the highway from my home! I loved seeing all of the familiar locations, and was reminded of how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful corner of this beautiful country.

I could never have done the Sky Tram task, and it looked pretty chilly. It would have been so hard to keep a tight grip on the bars. Yay! So glad this show is back!

[Artsda]

Great start and happy to see team Big Brother win leg 1.

Sad the boy buds were eliminated on a gamble. Had they not taken the penalty they would have been in last spot. Stupid move for strong guys who could have pulled the task off. Emmett did it like nothing. 

[shok]

This is such a terrific show. So glad it's back! I only wish, as I've whined about in previous years, that they'd make the first episode two hours, or at least an hour and a half. Those tasks and challenges were all so good and they deserved more time than they got.

I'm glad they've got more variety in the makeup of the teams and they passed on the hulk male teams who all have an advantage over the course of the race. Looking forward to the rest of the season very much.

[Christina]

During the intros, the mom in the mom and daughter team said, "People think we're sisters! :giggle:" and I said, no they don't. They need to go. Then the Asian fitness friends started giggling, and I decided they needed to go first, because that giggle would drive me mad. Then, there was Jillian, and I had flashbacks to Hayley from a few years ago on TAR, and she seriously ruined that season for me. Now, I'm going to go look for spoilers to see how far Jillian makes it, because I don't know if I'll make it to the end of the season if her personality doesn't change.

The scenery was beautiful in this episode.

[Fat Bastard]

The teams really lucked out when rain stopped the Sky Tram task as they only got penalty "for the time it takes to do the task". In reality many of the teams would have had to try several times. That messed up the strategy of those teams which took 4h penalty. I'm a bit surprised Brandon couldn't do the monkey bars, I would have thought that team would have aced all physical tasks. Steph hanging-upside-down-with-one-ankle-only-trick looked quite dangerous, somebody else tried the same and failed.

Self-driving was great as always, there is nothing better than clueless team driving around aimlessly in wilderness!

[Rachel RSL]

Emmett and Jillian...meh. They were both very bland and inoffensive on Big Brother so I have no clue why they got cast for this. Are there so few people applying for TAR that they're already drawing from the small pool of other Canadian reality shows?

The teams really lucked out when rain stopped the Sky Tram task as they only got penalty "for the time it takes to do the task". In reality many of the teams would have had to try several times. That messed up the strategy of those teams which took 4h penalty.

YES! That really bothered me. Normally, I automatically dislike anyone who gives up on a task and takes the penalty but, in this case, it was strategic and actually made a lot of sense. The other teams really got lucky that it started raining. It's too bad because it seemed like those guys could have been highly entertaining.

 With Hotels sponsoring this race, there's a very good chance that one (or more!) of the challenges will involve Captain Obvious in some way, just like the Travelocity Gnome has infested TARUS. 

I was just excited because it means we'll get a lot of Captain Obvious commercials (they amuse the hell out of me) but can you imagine if he was actually on the Race? That would RULE!

[bagatelle]

2 hours ago, Fat Bastard said:

The teams really lucked out when rain stopped the Sky Tram task as they only got penalty "for the time it takes to do the task". In reality many of the teams would have had to try several times. That messed up the strategy of those teams which took 4h penalty.

That's what I came here to say.  Some of them might not have been able to complete the task at all and yet they got to move on, as if they were able to.

Very unfair to those who took a penalty before them.

[Taeolas]

I suspect that the task was blocked out to take at most 4 hours per team (1 hour going up, failing the task, 1 hour coming back down, 1 hour going back up, succeeding and then 1 hour coming back down.). Hence the 4 hour penalty block it had. The second time a team attempts the task, they are hooked to a guide line to keep them at the rungs and make it easier. Assumably if a team needed a 3rd run, there would be some other mechanism to make it even easier/unfailable. 

[lianau]

6 hours ago, Fat Bastard said:

The teams really lucked out when rain stopped the Sky Tram task as they only got penalty "for the time it takes to do the task". In reality many of the teams would have had to try several times. That messed up the strategy of those teams which took 4h penalty. I'm a bit surprised Brandon couldn't do the monkey bars, I would have thought that team would have aced all physical tasks. Steph hanging-upside-down-with-one-ankle-only-trick looked quite dangerous, somebody else tried the same and failed.

Self-driving was great as always, there is nothing better than clueless team driving around aimlessly in wilderness!

This . It wasn't that dumb to take the penalty . The all female team who did it first had calculated the time it would just take to go up and down with this cabin without doing the road block  and decided to gamble on the penalty . The other teams had the weather playing for them .

I actually think the ankle hanging thing was an accident and not planned that way.

[SnideAsides]

After one leg, there are now fewer men remaining in this season than there were in last season's finale.

[etagloh]

Yay, Amazing Race: Difficult Edition is back.

Self-navigation, scary opening leg tasks that teams can fail (vs bungees and parachute jumps that are spectacular but also fairly passive) and a lot of scrambling about. And of course, spectacular scenery from start to finish.

(The mechanics of the cable car task were a bit unusual: it was a weird kind of bunch, because if two or more teams of each group completed, they'd leave the task together.)

This season feels a little more stuntcast / typecast than previous ones, but everyone's pleasant enough apart from the bickering BB exes who won the damn leg and the Italian mothers. I suspect that it's going to be Bickersons vs Softball leading the pack for the duration, but we shall see.

[kingshearte]

I rarely think of taking the roadblock penalty as quitting, because it's usually done fairly strategically, and in some circumstances, it almost makes no sense not to take the penalty instead of doing the task. This was definitely one of those cases. A very time-consuming task with no opportunity to change the order between attempts? If you look at that timing and determine that it will for sure take you more than four hours, especially if you will be one of the last to complete the task, then taking the penalty clearly simply makes more sense, and I don't think it qualifies at all as quitting. The weather issue added some risk to the decision (which they may or may not have been aware of as a possibility), and the women were ultimately just plain lucky that someone else made the same risky decision, but I still think it was a fairly sound decision, and I don't remotely fault them for it.

I will say that this cast is shaping up to have more annoying people in it than the first few seasons, but I'm still feeling like it will involve less douchiness and all-around unpleasantness than the US version usually seems to have.

[bagatelle]

I missed the first few minutes of the opening and just saw the re-run now.

I had no idea that Jillian and Emmet were exes. I remember them from the first season of BB Canada and thought they were still a couple.  Anyone know what happened? 

[Artsda]

Not sure what kind of exes they even are if they spend everyday together and she calls him "hunny" still. lol

[RHJunkie]

Thought the penalty was a great strategy. Neither team could predict that weather would shut the cabin ride down and that was the monkey wrench in their plans. The Italian mothers have zero sense of direction and it will be incredibly interesting to see how they're going to manage to survive long during the race at that rate. 

I would have been pulling my hair out if I was Jillian's partner but I won't lie, I started laughing when she started crying because she felt that Emmett wasn't listening to her. If you're constantly screeching and panicking, you should automatically assume that those who are used to being around you have mastered the art of tuning you out. I know they're exes and from what I hear they were together for a while but I found their dynamic interesting. I found Jillian to be more motherly at times with him. 

Sad to see the guys go home on the first leg as I thought they could have gone far based purely from a challenge perspective.

[Rachel RSL]

A very time-consuming task with no opportunity to change the order between attempts? If you look at that timing and determine that it will for sure take you more than four hours, especially if you will be one of the last to complete the task, then taking the penalty clearly simply makes more sense, and I don't think it qualifies at all as quitting.

I'm pretty sure nobody here accused them of that. In fact, pretty much everyone here has said that it was a really good strategic move. In general though, I find that most teams that take penalties usually give up on tasks way too quickly.

[Ciarrai]

The only team I actually like so far is the female couple. The mother and daughter from Aldergrove can go now; though it would be entertaining to see how horrible their hair looks by the end of the race. The gym owners also need to leave because their giggles are going to drive me absolutely insane.

[gryphon]

Love team Softball.  Amazing recovery on that ladder below the tram!  I dislike BB stunt cast racers in general--and her screeching is annoying.  Go Team Softball!

[Blackie]

Just getting caught up on The Amazing Race-You Might Die Edition...geez  Ashley is my favourite for going to the ugly cry face even though she is a beauty queen and also because she said she was traumatized by the skytram task which I definitely would have been !!  I am traumatized by watching it.  I never watched BB so I am assuming they recruited Jillian because she is super annoying.  I think the first leg should be NEL so that we get longer to know each team. and those tasks seemed really hard for the first day.  Other than Joeand Ashley I like the twins  and I like Julie and Lowell they seem lay back and fun but could be sleepers.