S07.E11: I Had One Job

[Guest]

Airs September 10, 2019

Quote

The final three teams race to the finish line in Muskoka, Ont. in hopes of winning Season 7 of The Amazing Race Canada.

[Bunnyette]

That candy cane task...really?  Very lame.

[Pepper the Cat]

I enjoyed most of the finale. The candy cane task was a little lame,  but the rest was good.

My heart broke for the sisters losing the clue. 

The sprinkler task was hard. Very worthly of a final task.

I was cheering for all 3 teams, but was still very happy with the outcome. 

Disappointed that we didn’t get an After The Race Episode like previous years.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Pepper the Cat

[RunningMarket]

Really pleased with the result. That was the order I had hoped for the finish. It did seem like Sarah and Sam did really catch up at the candy cane task and the irrigation system. Unlike other finishes where it'd edited to look like it's close but it's clearly not, this one seemed like it really was. That added a nice layer of tension.

[aemom]

I think that the candy cane task was intended to be a "needle-in-a-haystack" type thing where you could run around and search forever or find one very quickly (like Lauren did).

The water hovering thing looked very hard, very cool, and very scary.

The board game looked kind of fun.  Man - those were some serious details that Jon was asking, but everyone knew their stuff well.

I'm happy for Anthony and James.

[Evenshorter]

Excellent finish! I think this was my favourite season so far. The tasks, roadblocks and detours were so interesting, and different from previous years. Loved how the boys said there were many teams they would stay friends with, and the big hugs that followed.

[SomeTameGazelle]

7 minutes ago, RunningMarket said:

Really pleased with the result. That was the order I had hoped for the finish. It did seem like Sarah and Sam did really catch up at the candy cane task and the irrigation system. Unlike other finishes where it'd edited to look like it's close but it's clearly not, this one seemed like it really was. That added a nice layer of tension.

They edited it as if Sarah/Sam were tied with Anthony/James leaving the cranberry marsh, but it wasn't close enough to be a footrace to the mat.

The fact that theirs was the title quote made me wonder whether the sisters could recover and win it all. But the order never really changed this whole leg. 

The beanbag toss looked fun. Or at least the hovering did.

[RunningMarket]

3 minutes ago, aemom said:

I think that the candy cane task was intended to be a "needle-in-a-haystack" type thing where you could run around and search forever or find one very quickly (like Lauren did).

The water hovering thing looked very hard, very cool, and very scary.

The board game looked kind of fun.  Man - those were some serious details that Jon was asking, but everyone knew their stuff well.

I'm happy for Anthony and James.

I know teams tend to quiz each other after each leg and write down what they believe will be pertinent details later, but I'm not sure "how many ingredients in a Nanaimo Bar" would be one of them! 

[Rachel RSL]

I've been rooting for Anthony and James to win all season so I was actually surprised when I found myself rooting for the sisters in the finale.  They just really grew on me as the season went on.  I was so bummed for them when they lost their clue.  I'm still really happy with the winners though!

12 hours ago, aemom said:

I think that the candy cane task was intended to be a "needle-in-a-haystack" type thing where you could run around and search forever or find one very quickly (like Lauren did).

I couldn't help but wonder if TPTB helpfully moved the elves with the yellow & red candy canes closer to the entrance in order to get Lauren out of there quickly and hopefully catch up to the other teams.  If not, that was some really good luck on her part!

12 hours ago, Pepper the Cat said:

Disappointed that we didn’t get an After The Race Episode like previous years.

I was too, at first, but then I realized that meant we would have had to sit through Dave & Irina and I just don't think I could stomach that.   It would have been nice to hear from the other teams though.  I like how they all commented last night on the beauty and diversity of Canada.  At least some people can appreciate how lucky they are to live here. (And others can piss off back to Dubai.)

[aemom]

13 hours ago, aemom said:

I think that the candy cane task was intended to be a "needle-in-a-haystack" type thing where you could run around and search forever or find one very quickly (like Lauren did).

1 hour ago, Rachel RSL said:

I couldn't help but wonder if TPTB helpfully moved the elves with the yellow & red candy canes closer to the entrance in order to get Lauren out of there quickly and hopefully catch up to the other teams.  If not, that was some really good luck on her part!

I'm pretty sure that they're not allowed to muck around with the challenges like that from a legal perspective.

[Rachel RSL]

Ehhhhh, I don't know.  I'm pretty sure they can make adjustments if they really want to.  

[wintrygal]

So pleased with this outcome, it seemed to be very close between them and the Olympians.  Really enjoyed this season, well except for that one pair, but they're weren't a factor in the end.

[TVbitch]

Yay for the winners! All in all, I enjoyed the season and didn't mind them staying in Canada one bit.  

When James and Anthony left the chair building both other teams had a lot of pieces still on the ground, so they maybe did edit the finish to make it more exciting. I think the sisters might have been so far behind that they gave them the candy cane straight away so they could finish without having to keep the crew in place for a lot longer. 

[xcrayon2215x]

Glad Anthony and James won, wasn't a huge fan of the candy cane task but the rest were really good. 

[surreysmum]

I know they're probably operating on a shoestring compared to their US counterparts, but I've found the product placement decidedly oppressive and heavy-handed this season. The whole Santa Claus village/meaningless candy-cane task thing really brought that home to me in this episode, but it's been making me sigh throughout that we're expected to put up with these embedded ads merely to have the product at all. (But then, I'm old - I also sigh at ads embedded the middle of youtube videos and ads on banners right over the actual picture in the show - when the heck did somebody decide *that* was acceptable?)

I would have been happy with a win by any of the final three teams, and was genuinely pleased for Anthony & James.

Also, I think the engaged, even strident, reaction to Dave & Irina (here, but even more so on FB and Reddit) has unfortunately pretty much guaranteed that the producers will look to insert a similarly "controversial" team in any/every future season.

[aemom]

2 hours ago, surreysmum said:

I know they're probably operating on a shoestring compared to their US counterparts, but I've found the product placement decidedly oppressive and heavy-handed this season. The whole Santa Claus village/meaningless candy-cane task thing really brought that home to me in this episode, but it's been making me sigh throughout that we're expected to put up with these embedded ads merely to have the product at all. (But then, I'm old - I also sigh at ads embedded the middle of youtube videos and ads on banners right over the actual picture in the show - when the heck did somebody decide *that* was acceptable?)

In some cases, the idea is to promote the town that they are visiting - the town is supportive and helpful to the crew in exchange for the free advertising.  I've read several articles over the years where the towns were happy to have this publicity.

Santa's Village has been around for a long time.  My husband's cousin lives near there and I'm sure that there are many people who've never heard of it and might make an effort to visit.  Times can be tough for businesses these days, and I personally don't have a problem with promoting Canadian businesses and jobs.

As for the Chevy vehicles and the Clif bars - I honestly don't think that it's been worse than previous years.  At least this year we didn't have to hear about them tapping their RBC card everywhere to pay for stuff. 🙂 

2 hours ago, surreysmum said:

Also, I think the engaged, even strident, reaction to Dave & Irina (here, but even more so on FB and Reddit) has unfortunately pretty much guaranteed that the producers will look to insert a similarly "controversial" team in any/every future season.

God, I hope not. 

Edited September 12, 2019 by aemom
Typo

[Kel Varnsen]

On 9/10/2019 at 10:25 PM, aemom said:

The board game looked kind of fun.  Man - those were some serious details that Jon was asking, but everyone knew their stuff well.

It looked fun but made for kind of boring tv. The fact that they skipped over most of it was kind of interesting.

[RunningMarket]

14 hours ago, surreysmum said:

I know they're probably operating on a shoestring compared to their US counterparts, but I've found the product placement decidedly oppressive and heavy-handed this season. The whole Santa Claus village/meaningless candy-cane task thing really brought that home to me in this episode, but it's been making me sigh throughout that we're expected to put up with these embedded ads merely to have the product at all.

I hope you wrote this while munching on an assortment of Clif Bars.

[derriere]

No problems with the winners but my god was that a badly designed, badly edited leg. If you've ever seen TAR in your life before you knew it wasn't remotely close from that jetski thingy onwards.

Oh well. Looking forward to next season, as always.

[NJRadioGuy]

So long as Dave and Irina went away I was find with any other team winning the race and a hearty congrats to Anthony and James. The memory challenge should have been the last challenge, though. I like any final challenge to have the real potential to throw the expected order out of whack. If your final leg is physical, and you have highly physical teams racing, the outcome will be obvious, as it was in this case.

As a fan of the US mothership show since S1, and having watched all the Canadian and Aussie seasons, I have to say that overall, this season of TARCAN was just painful to watch. The product placement was beat-you-over-the-head levels of bad, the legs were often ploddingly dull, the tasks un-memorable and either too difficult resulting in penalties being preferred by the racers, or just not interesting from a TV-worthy standpoint. Like most Canadian TV, the cheapness clearly showed.

As an expat Canadian with a deep love of my home and native land, I didn't mind in the slightest that they didn't leave the country—and I liked that about S1, as well. But why so many legs in Ontario and B.C.? If you're going to spend the entire season in country, I'd like to see PEI, Newfoundland and NB as well. Especially Newfoundland and Labrador.

There were just too many "route info" legs. U.S. TAR uses them sparingly, and with that show it's usually just detours and road blocks with far more interesting tasks. Why not do the same here?

And while I'm really not a big fan of U-turns, they do have their place, especially when one team is running the table as Dave and Irina almost did. As awful as they were as human beings, they were (sadly) good racers and quite honestly many of the other teams just weren't even close in terms of their overall strengths. A strategically placed U-turn can be a great wild-card at humbling giants, especially after a particularly difficult task where the front-runners could fall behind. Maybe next year they'll cast more strong teams so it won't always be one of two or three always on the mat first.

I'm a big fan of good sportsmanship at everything you do in life, and that goes hand-in-hand with Canadians' reputation for kindness and politeness. As such, deliberately stealing a taxi or getting caught wilfully cheating at a task should incur a significant penalty. I'd say anything short of disqualification would be appropriate. In an elimination leg, they become the last non-eliminated team and have to start at the back of the pack the next day. In non-elim legs, they have to do the speed bump next time. And if their actions would have otherwise resulted in the direct elimination of another team, then they get the boot instead. 

[Rachel RSL]

On 9/20/2019 at 10:32 PM, NJRadioGuy said:

If your final leg is physical, and you have highly physical teams racing, the outcome will be obvious, as it was in this case.

I see your point but, in this particular case, I definitely don't think the outcome was obvious.  Joanne is a yoga instructor and Lauren is clearly in good shape.  And Sam & Sarah are Olympic athletes.  If anything, James & Anthony were the least likely to win a physical leg.