S31.E10: Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!

[biakbiak]

16 minutes ago, lexington11 said:

I get that the U-Turn is part of the game, and I didn't mind them choosing to do that specifically. Like I said, it was more the general celebrating/gloating about Nicole having to do the U-Turn on her birthday that made me not an Afghanimals fan this leg. 

Since Nicole managed to whine that no one could UTurn her on her birthday it probably wasn’t the first time she mentioned it.

[Miles]

On 6/20/2019 at 5:45 PM, spanana said:

Also in retrospect, it's probably better that Chris/Bret went out when they did because I expect they might have had a lot of issues with this leg.  Bret especially.  There was a lot of running an biking and they definitely did not excel at the former.

If you are a bit more on the heavy side, you actually do have a bit of an advantage biking, as long as it's really flat (which the netherlands are), because your leg musculature will be more developed from carrying all that weight around all the time.

On 6/20/2019 at 6:04 PM, green said:

I don't know about renewals or not but they have been running one season ahead by a bunch for some time.  As you can tell from it's look, this season we are seeing was filmed last summer.  (Actually alihart41 just posted while I was writing this and got the exact date, thanks).

And I understand another "season" was filmed last fall (maybe?) so there is now one in the can waiting it's turn next year. 

If I understand it correctly, CBS has announced the next season for this fall: https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/cbs-announces-plans-for-2019-20-season-schedule/

So we'll probably get it sooner than expected. :)

On 6/20/2019 at 7:14 PM, Halting Hex said:

But the next clue didn't begin with "Descend the stairs".  Indeed, the clue wasn't to be opened until the partner who climbed the stairs had returned to their partner.  If the clue didn't specify that the Racer had to return by using the same stairs, it makes perfect sense for Nicole to ask if there was an elevator around.

Yeah, an elevator in an old clock tower... suuuuuuure...

Edited June 23, 2019 by Miles

[millennium]

1 hour ago, Miles said:

No they wouldn't. Not if they were women ogling men. Objectifying men seems to still be allowed in western society.

It's basically one of the pillers of women-led comedies.

You make a good point.

[biakbiak]

There have been male racers that commented on attractive women particularly the greeters.

[Halting Hex]

13 hours ago, Miles said:

Yeah, an elevator in an old clock tower... suuuuuuure...

Because no old buildings ever get remodeled?  Okayyyy.

I mean, it hadn't been and there wasn't an elevator.  I just don't think Nicole was silly to ask.  (And even then, she was semi-joking, anyhow.)  But JMO.

[Kleav]

On 6/20/2019 at 1:14 PM, Halting Hex said:

it makes perfect sense for Nicole to ask if there was an elevator around.

I agree. If there's one TAR travel tip that we can all use, it's that you shouldn't be reluctant to ask, even if you think you know the answer.

[Ducky]

Wow...

 Sad to see Floyd and Becca go 😞  was hoping to see them in the final 3...:(.

Still not a big fan of Victor & Nicole.  Rooting for either Christie & Colin or Korey & Tyler.  Meh on Leo & Jamal.. they're ok... I like them more than I dislike them.

Beautiful scenery.  Netherlands is one place I'd love to visit one day (I have friends in Netherlands and Belgium). I don't know if I could have done that cow hoisting detour but all I could think was... good thing it wasn't a REAL cow!    Tandem bikes!  We had one growing up and we took it "down the shore" every summer- Mom and dad sometime rode it when we were there but usually it was Mom in front and one of us kids on the back (yes sometimes we cheated and didn't pedal lol).

Quote

Any time something bad happens on the race and Becca isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, she gets called a poser. This makes no sense to me. If something bad happened and she was pretending to still be happy and having fun, wouldn’t that make her a poser? It’s not a mask, she’s human. A human who is usually happy and upbeat but, like every other human on the planet, gets bummed out when something sucky happens.

I wanted to like this 100 times more.

Quote

Becca's got a little rage in her, but then again so do most of us.

This.

Quote

I can't recall another instance where I have seen a racer abuse the locals like that.

You can't?  After 31 iterations of TAR?  I am betting there were far worse episodes of how racers treated the locals, judges or their environment (breaking things, throwing things...).  The perception of Becca's comment is mild compared to others.

which leads in to this:

Quote

To be fair, when Becca returned with the second batch of eggs she addressed the greeter and told him she would never smash an egg in his face. So she must have thought about what she had said and at least offered some kind of amends. 

To me, the tone of her voice had no malice or anger when she said "I'm gonna throw the egg..." and the guy even smiled when she said it.  Even though I only have 'residual' hearing (I'm deaf), I'm able tell the difference between the tone of that sentence and "I'm pissed!". Even the captions lol- it did show the ! with I'm pissed.  Her face at the inspection station looked more dejected to me than anything else...but humans....everybody will see something different.  I felt she was more angry/frustrated/dejected with herself and the team but she did apologize in her way to the guy when they came back.  I thought it was a bit extreme that they counted the hairline fracture on the egg-  I barely could see it (if at all- probably why they didn't see it with the quick look).

 As for tossing the eggs over...I would think that would take more time because tossing and actually catching them without breaking them would take a bit more time- seconds seem to matter in this race.  Floyd was smart to toss the cheese to the other side though.  Someone mentioned why not put hay in the sack to cushion the eggs... I wondered about that unless there was a stipulation they couldn't. I seem to recall usually there's a LOT more text/info on those clue cards than we see or know.

[lexington11]

3 hours ago, Ducky said:

 Someone mentioned why not put hay in the sack to cushion the eggs... I wondered about that unless there was a stipulation they couldn't. 

Floyd said that when they were biking to the market the first time, he put grass in the basket and then put the eggs in that basket, which also makes me wonder if they were allowed to do the same on the jump back over the ditch, and just didn't choose to, or they flat out weren't allowed to do that until they'd gotten the eggs in the bike.

[lh25]

On 6/21/2019 at 1:20 AM, SVNBob said:

At the gate for my connection, there was a sign saying that they were filming one of those "people who behave badly at the airport" reality shows from the early 2000s, and that by simply walking past the sign, I was giving consent to be filmed for the program.  I didn't really have a choice in the matter, but I did try to minimize my time beyond the signage.

That would bug me, since you didn't have a choice.  

[iMonrey]

Quote

It was a task that proved more difficult than it orginally looked and was a big inconvenience for the locals. I felt bad for the teams because they didn't realize it was going to be like that.

Eh. I still remember the early seasons when challenges were challenging. Granted, the canal challenge was relatively difficult given the ease of challenges in more recent seasons. But I never see challenges that racers potentially cannot do at all anymore. Things teams take a pass on in favor of a time penalty because they simply cannot do them, like eating four pounds of meat, or picking up countless telephones and gathering clues that have to be memorized. Or that one where they had to ring the county-fair type bell with the mallet and the girls simply weren't strong enough to do it. Or the needle-in-the-haystack that keeps a team in the field of hay bales for six hours until they just break down and cry. 

Maneuvering a canoe through a series of canals can be tiresome and difficult but you'll get through it. 

Edited June 24, 2019 by iMonrey

[Fukui San]

12 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Eh. I still remember the early seasons when challenges were challenging. Granted, the canal challenge was relatively difficult given the ease of challenges in more recent seasons. But I never see challenges that racers potentially cannot do at all anymore. Things teams take a pass on in favor of a time penalty because they simply cannot do them, like eating four pounds of meat, or picking up countless telephones and gathering clues that have to be memorized. Or that one where they had to ring the county-fair type bell with the mallet and the girls simply weren't strong enough to do it. Or the needle-in-the-haystack that keeps a team in the field of hay bales for six hours until they just break down and cry. 

Maneuvering a canoe through a series of canals can be tiresome and difficult but you'll get through it. 

The border patrol guy couldn’t do the slippery ramp in episode 1 this year. Also the diving/poetry in motion Detour took bromance so much time to do racers from two later arriving planes passed them. I don’t think anything has changed in terms of level of challenge difficulty. 

Generally I think that challenges that are actually impossible for a team to complete are design failures. Every challenge should be theoretically possible for the contestants in each race. Of the ones you listed the meatblock was a bad idea and potentially dangerous health wise. The haystacks were probably very bad luck/a missed clue. The others were teams being far worse at something than anyone expected. 

[biakbiak]

17 minutes ago, Fukui San said:

The border patrol guy couldn’t do the slippery ramp in episode 1 this year. Also

But that was completely Brett’s fault. He got up to the top of the slippery ramp the first time he just didn’t realize he had to grab the clue and then because he had already expended so much energy he couldn’t do it again but it was totally on him not doing the task correctly.

[fishcakes]

50 minutes ago, biakbiak said:

But that was completely Brett’s fault. He got up to the top of the slippery ramp the first time he just didn’t realize he had to grab the clue and then because he had already expended so much energy he couldn’t do it again but it was totally on him not doing the task correctly.

You're right that Bret just sat there for a minute and slid back down, but he did go back up again and get the clue. The border control guy who couldn't do it at all was Art. His legs cramped so bad that someone came out and sprayed them with some kind of freezing gel, but it didn't help. If I'm remembering correctly what happened with him, he didn't seem to notice the hand grabs on the slope. He and JJ ended up taking the penalty and timing out/getting eliminated.

1 hour ago, Fukui San said:

Of the ones you listed the meatblock was a bad idea and potentially dangerous health wise. 

The meat roadblock was horrible (and the flies didn't help), but the one that still makes me a little nauseated to think about was the one where they had to eat two pounds of caviar. With all that fat and salt in one sitting, I'm surprised no one had a heart attack on the spot. Mostly I remember that one because Charla had to once again demonstrate that she was a challenge badass and that Mirna was kind of useless in that regard, and I also remember Chip moaning, "caviar ... caviaaaar ..." as he rode to the pit stop in the horse drawn carriage.

[biakbiak]

Just now, fishcakes said:

You're right that Bret just sat there for a minute and slid back down, but he did go back up again and get the clue. The border control guy who couldn't do it at all was Art. His legs cramped so bad that someone came out and sprayed them with some kind of freezing gel, but it didn't help. If I'm remembering correctly what happened with him, he didn't seem to notice the hand grabs on the slope. He and JJ ended up taking the penalty and timing out/getting eliminated.

Oh right I confused my out of shape white guys.

[Whimsy]

Again, episode threads are not the place to rehash past seasons even if the current contestants were on those said past seasons.  Posts will be removed. 

[lexington11]

19 hours ago, Fukui San said:

The others were teams being far worse at something than anyone expected. 

I wouldn't say that the detour/roadblock (don't remember which it was) that Maria & Tiffany couldn't complete was them being far worse at something than anyone expected, but rather a fail from production, because they were unable to contemplate that a team made up of two women wouldn't have the physical strength to complete that task, whereas every other team remaining was either M/M or M/F, where the male member of the team could easily knock out that task.

[lexington11]

18 hours ago, fishcakes said:

 The border control guy who couldn't do it at all was Art. His legs cramped so bad that someone came out and sprayed them with some kind of freezing gel, but it didn't help. If I'm remembering correctly what happened with him, he didn't seem to notice the hand grabs on the slope. He and JJ ended up taking the penalty and timing out/getting eliminated.

Production must have wanted to increase the difficulty this season, because Art wasn't the only one to cramp up during a leg. 

[ML89]

2 hours ago, lexington11 said:

Production must have wanted to increase the difficulty this season, because Art wasn't the only one to cramp up during a leg. 

I forget what other season Phil named, but in his interview with Chris and Alex of season 2 on his Bucket It podcast, he said this season was one of the hardest.

[lexington11]

20 hours ago, ML89 said:

I forget what other season Phil named, but in his interview with Chris and Alex of season 2 on his Bucket It podcast, he said this season was one of the hardest.

I'm not surprised, because one of the things we didn't see in this past leg was that while Nicole was running up the clock tower stairs, Victor was being attended to by medical because his legs were so cramped up from all that biking, and he could barely walk by the time they arrived at the pit stop

[InDueTime]

Damn. I was hoping to see Becca and Floyd in the finale. But alas...

On 6/20/2019 at 10:20 AM, proserpina65 said:

She definitely let her frustration get to her.

You think she's playing a character.  I do not.  I see a normally upbeat person having a particularly bad day.  It happens.

I agree. Won't begrudge her for being human sometimes.

At the Pit Stop, I noticed a shot of someone standing next to Phil, but they never showed their face. I wonder what that was about.

On 6/24/2019 at 9:45 AM, Ducky said:

Wow...

 Sad to see Floyd and Becca go 😞  was hoping to see them in the final 3...:(.

Still not a big fan of Victor & Nicole.  Rooting for either Christie & Colin or Korey & Tyler.  Meh on Leo & Jamal.. they're ok... I like them more than I dislike them.

That's my stance, too.

Once again, a beautiful locale.

[Lantern7]

On 6/19/2019 at 11:06 PM, Halting Hex said:

Over three times as long, more intense strategy, and without the tourism porn to spackle over the cracks.  Other than that, sure.

Julie does the majority of her work live.  I'd like to see Phil and Probst try that.

Yeah, I totally remember how CBS brought Julie onto TAR to insult the Racers who'd also played BB.  Oh, wait, that's was Phil's "takeover" in BB17 where he showed embarrassing Race clips of Jordan and Rachel (both past BB champions), rather than any of their better moments.  Pissing on "our" contestants on our show.  I'm still not over that.

But OTOH we got to have privilege of spending more time with Jeff & Jackie, so…  (Okay, Jeff getting completely played and humiliated was fun, I'd say.  But still.)

No problem. I'll take being the unappreciated underdog.  (And the show that gets nothing but "wacky" promos from CBS, instead of the drama generated for the other two shows.  Eh, who needs respect, right?)

In case you didn't see it on the Media thread, here's my long response. To be fair, I had been meaning to write about TAR with the underdog angle before last week's episode.

[theschnauzers]

Phil does his work live when filmed, Voiceovers may need scripting but his Mat interviews with teams are live when filmed with no scripted questions. He gets texts from production while the leg.is being filmed, but he otherwise has no idea what as going on that leg. 

[SVNBob]

On 6/26/2019 at 8:14 PM, InDueTime said:

At the Pit Stop, I noticed a shot of someone standing next to Phil, but they never showed their face. I wonder what that was about.

That was Bertram van Munster, one of the creators of TAR.  He's originally from the area that the Pit Stop was in, hence him taking the greeter duty.  Kinda like when they get Phil's dad to be the greeter on certain New Zealand Pit Stops.

As for why they didn't show him...probably a mandate directly from him to the editors.  Possibly because of a conflict of interest, or a SAG-like thing, or some other insider reason.

[theschnauzers]

I have a suspicion that Bertram’s appearance as the greeter was a last minute substitution. I don’t think it would have been something that would have been planned. If it were, his director duties wouldn’t have been a problem. Elise Dognaigari, the other co-creator and an executive producer, is also an associate director in the credits. A(She was an assistant director in season 30.

[jhlipton]

On 6/22/2019 at 7:30 PM, Miles said:

Yeah, an elevator in an old clock tower... suuuuuuure...

The Netherlands may be one of the countries that is retrofitting major buildings (which a tourist site might be) to make them more accessible to the disabled.  So an there might just be an elevator in an old clock tower. 

[Miles]

On 6/29/2019 at 2:33 AM, jhlipton said:

The Netherlands may be one of the countries that is retrofitting major buildings (which a tourist site might be) to make them more accessible to the disabled.  So an there might just be an elevator in an old clock tower. 

No. This is a building from the 17th centurie. They are all under protection. It's not like american buildings wwhere something a hundret years old is "an old building".

[doodlebug]

3 hours ago, Miles said:

No. This is a building from the 17th centurie. They are all under protection. It's not like american buildings wwhere something a hundret years old is "an old building".

But, there's really no way for Nicole to have known the current laws concerning protection of historic buildings in the Netherlands.  It didn't hurt to ask and I'm sure she wasn't terribly surprised to discover there wasn't an elevator.

[Miles]

45 minutes ago, doodlebug said:

But, there's really no way for Nicole to have known the current laws concerning protection of historic buildings in the Netherlands.  It didn't hurt to ask and I'm sure she wasn't terribly surprised to discover there wasn't an elevator.

Historical buildings won't just be retrofited, in basically any european country.

[pennben]

Seems to be a whole lot of debate about architecture & possible renovations for something I think was mostly a joke.