S05.E06: We Just Saw Johnny Mustard...

[Kanaloa]

Quote

The race returns home to Ottawa, where the season's first Double U-Turn rears its menacing head. 

[Pepper the Cat]

I wish they would post the Citizen Test. I want to see just how hard it was!

enjoyed the episode and was glad it was an non-elimination. 

[Rachel RSL]

Same here! I've always wondered if I'd be able to pass without studying or if I'd do so bad (badly?), they'd revoke my citizenship.

That guy randomly spotting his brother in the middle of downtown Ottawa might be my favourite TAR moment of all time. Johnny Mustard!

Why couldn't last week be the NEL? I'd much rather have Zed and Shabbir over the Montreal girls. I mean, they seem nice and all but I'm still kind of holding a grudge from the first challenge of the race when they took the penalty. 

Something weird happened this episode...when it got down to the end and they were battling it out for last, I found myself really really rooting for the hosers. I guess they finally won me over. Or wore me down, not sure which.

[Pepper the Cat]

I love the hosers! They just seem to be having so much fun with everything. They are actually my favourite  team and I was quite worried when they were U Turned. But they handled it well, and everyone has to admit, they rocked the Citizenship Test!

[tkc]

I really appreciate the educational nature of this program. Thank you, Celine Dion, for our national anthem!  :)

[TV Anonymous]

Shame Montrealers, shame! Shame for Montrealers number 1 for not following up with their commitment. Even if Montrealers number 2 did not follow up, that should not have changed anything. However, bigger shame for Montrealers number 2. How can Montrealers get lost in Ottawa going to downtown? Just get to 417 already and all signs point to Byward Market FFS! As someone who lived in Montreal for 11 years, I think I have the rights to criticize them.

I would think that the "Citizenship Test" they took is not the actual one given to citizen candidates. The real test does not ask for trivia like when CN Tower or Trans-Canada Highway are built. It asks for more substantial questions like the rights of a Citizen and the structure of the three levels of government.

And why the Judge did not welcome them with the usual greetings? Because she would have had to say, "Welcome to Gatineau, Quebec." Yes indeed. The Canadian Museum of History, formerly known as the Canadian Museum of Civilization is located across the river in Gatineau. I guess that would alter the show's narrative that they are in Ottawa. Besides, neither the City of Gatineau nor the Province of Quebec sponsor this episode.

[piequinn35]

NEL boo!!! The only team I like at this point is The Hosers! ??

[SomeTameGazelle]

I enjoy the fact that the order gets shaken up a lot in this race and that different tasks require different skills.

Sister Andrea made the wrong decision not to U-turn anyone but I understood her flawed thought process and believe that she didn't intend to betray her alliance. But if Andrea and Ebonie had passed the U-turn board without U-turning anyone, there was no way to punish them for it by failing to U-turn someone else as agreed; and if they were lost (which they were) the spirit of the alliance was that Adam & Andrea would help them by at the very least burning a U-turn option. I was yelling at Andrea to U-turn Karen & Bert who were ahead of them if she didn't want it to have any other negative impact. But there was a moment when I wondered if she was going to U-turn Andrea & Ebonie based on the theory that they had already betrayed the alliance, which would have been even worse.

[Fake Jan Brady]

Thank goodness Paul is wild in the sack*, otherwise Sam may have dumped the dummy [*that's what he meant by "other things", right?]

I'm pretty sure Karen was reassessing her relationship somewhere around Bert's tenth attempt.

When is killer fatigue going to hit Team Givers? Surely they can't keep up that level of annoying for the entire race...?

 

That horse roadblock didn't seem as fiendishly difficult as most TAR Canada tasks.

Edited August 9, 2017 by cousin oliver

[piequinn35]

Was burning the other u-turn not allowed so they could rid of the hosers?

[Maxyrama]

Glad my girls survived! <3

[amazingracefan]

7 hours ago, cousin oliver said:

Thank goodness Paul is wild in the sack*, otherwise Sam may have dumped the dummy [*that's what he meant by "other things", right?]

I'm pretty sure Karen was reassessing her relationship somewhere around Bert's tenth attempt.

When is killer fatigue going to hit Team Givers? Surely they can't keep up that level of annoying for the entire race...?

 

That horse roadblock didn't seem as fiendishly difficult as most TAR Canada tasks.

I can't really warm to Karen, there's something too strident about her.

And I wouldn't say the Canadian tasks are 'fiendishly' difficult, just more difficult compared to what the modern US version has to offer normally.

 

 

4 hours ago, piequinn35 said:

Was burning the other u-turn not allowed so they could rid of the hosers?

I don't know, but I don't like the idea of burning a u-turn like that anyway, a double u-turn is meant to have two teams competing against each other

 

19 hours ago, Rachel RSL said:

Same here! I've always wondered if I'd be able to pass without studying or if I'd do so bad (badly?), they'd revoke my citizenship.

That guy randomly spotting his brother in the middle of downtown Ottawa might be my favourite TAR moment of all time. Johnny Mustard!

Why couldn't last week be the NEL? I'd much rather have Zed and Shabbir over the Montreal girls. I mean, they seem nice and all but I'm still kind of holding a grudge from the first challenge of the race when they took the penalty. 

Something weird happened this episode...when it got down to the end and they were battling it out for last, I found myself really really rooting for the hosers. I guess they finally won me over. Or wore me down, not sure which.

The Canadian patriotism bits I found pretty boring, some Canadians like it I guess but it always feels forced on this show.  Like the gay couple at the end saying how lucky they are that they are in Canada, with some 'patriotic' sounding music in the background.

It looked like team members could actually discuss what the answers were on the test (which I didn't like, they should have had to go around the museum and do it individually), yet despite that there were still loads of failures.

I don't mind the Montreal girls that much, they took a penalty but the rules say they can and it worked for them.   The 'Givers' proclaiming loudly as they left for the mat 'yeh! we know where that is!' still annoy me at times.

The sponsor task was quite boring and simple, just to highlight some technology.  It looked like the art task could have been made more difficult than it was, going by the minimal time of it we saw.

The navigation has often seemed more important than the tasks, yet the edit doesn't show much of that.

[Rachel RSL]

1 hour ago, amazingracefan said:

The Canadian patriotism bits I found pretty boring, some Canadians like it I guess but it always feels forced on this show.  Like the gay couple at the end saying how lucky they are that they are in Canada, with some 'patriotic' sounding music in the background.

 

I honestly don't feel like any of that is forced. I'm reminded every time I turn on the news how lucky I am to be Canadian. Their reactions (all the teams) seemed genuine to me.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Rachel RSL

[buffynut]

On 8/8/2017 at 10:09 PM, Pepper the Cat said:

I wish they would post the Citizen Test. I want to see just how hard it was!

Here's a sample test from Global TV:

http://globalnews.ca/news/3444782/could-you-pass-the-canadian-citizenship-test/

[Machiabelly]

The quiz was different each time so discussing it didn't bother me.

I am not sure about CN Tower but the year the railroad was completed and the year NL joined confederation were both on the test when my wife took it 10 years ago.

There is a practice test on the government site somewhere.

[Machiabelly]

10 minutes ago, buffynut said:

Here's a sample test from Global TV:

http://globalnews.ca/news/3444782/could-you-pass-the-canadian-citizenship-test/

Woo I got 19.

[etagloh]

Citizenship tests can be pretty bizarre in their subject matter from the perspective of citizens-by-birth: the UK one is notorious for having a lot of emphasis on weird pop culture stuff that is only relevant to the generation of people writing the test questions. But: TAR:US ought to have the citizenship test as the final challenge on a final leg in DC, and will never ever do it.

Anyway, that was quite a fun leg for shuffling the pack. I like the more traditional W-turn placement, and though W-turn/NEL is becoming the preferred option (in part because the following leg has Speed Bump draaamaaa) it's a reminder that alliances are mostly worthless, as are directions in Ottawa. "Never drive in Ottawa" is the moral of this leg.

Finally, I wonder whether a team doing the art detour first instead of the tulips would have won the leg without breaking a sweat. The editing foreshortened it, but it seemed like it was a much more guided "hunt for stuff" task than the tulip one.

Quote

if Andrea and Ebonie had passed the U-turn board without U-turning anyone, there was no way to punish them for it by failing to U-turn someone else as agreed; and if they were lost (which they were) the spirit of the alliance was that Adam & Andrea would help them by at the very least burning a U-turn option.

Exactly this. There was no logic in that decision whatsoever. But under pressure, logic goes out of the window, which is why vague alliances aren't worth anything. Vendetta alliances work in the final W-turn of a season when two teams are close together and want to target a single team (i.e. the TAR:US 21 strategy) but that wasn't the situation.

[Rachel RSL]

I can sort of understand A & A's reasoning, they didn't want to unnecessarily piss off another team who might U-Turn them in the future as payback.  That being said, even if I was in first place at the time, I would U-Turn somebody every single time and not think twice about it. It's part of the Race and there's nothing unethical about teams using it. (I really really really hate when teams get all high and mighty about the U-Turn, saying shit like "That's not the Race we want to run."  You should want to run the Race that will make you WIN.)

[kingshearte]

On 8/8/2017 at 9:43 PM, Rachel RSL said:

That guy randomly spotting his brother in the middle of downtown Ottawa might be my favourite TAR moment of all time.

Me too! I loved that. It's very Ottawa, though. I haven't really lived anywhere else to compare, but I know several people who have lived elsewhere who have observed that you really do seem to run into people you know a lot in this town.

I did enjoy just watching them run around Ottawa, though. It's fun when you recognize stuff. My work was actually quite visible from the tulip task, and my office is on that side of the building, too. If I'd known exactly when it was, I totally could have seen them running around down there from my window.

[Kanaloa]

On 8/10/2017 at 9:38 PM, etagloh said:

Vendetta alliances work in the final W-turn of a season when two teams are close together and want to target a single team (i.e. the TAR:US 21 strategy) but that wasn't the situation.

Ditto for Season 28: Social Media Edition, though Season 29: Strangers' Edition was a weird case of multiple teams singling out one team during the second of three W-Turns. 

I hope that the TARCAN producers acknowledge how their version of the above, the triple Express Pass twist, similarly imploded upon itself and decide to keep next year's likely All-Stars as "back to the basics" as possible. 

[La Dee Da]

I caught up on the show this weekend - as an Ottawa resident, I thought "eh, it's not that bad driving around the city" as people were getting lost.  However, tonight I drove by Commissioners Park along the canal and, because the one road leading to my destination was blocked by construction, I had to go into downtown and then back from a different direction. I feel a little more sympathetic now!