The Amazing Race, season 28: Legs 1 to 4

[spiderbraids]

Time for TAR to go viral ;-)

Leg 1:
1. This season, we're having social media stars competing (so basically, a season of Kevjumbas and Joey/Meghans :-)), and instead of the usual "Gather somewhere in SoCal and race to LAX" routine, Phil Keoghan decides to mix things up by giving the teams a video call to the contestants at home (!) and delivering the usual race start spiel through the call, which Erin/Joslyn (Clevver) can recite word per word, and they're even shown "singing" the iconic theme song in the cab :-) We linger on Cole (/Sheri, Alabama mother/son team) being emotional for a few seconds after the start, before we get the usual team intro spiels during the ride to their nearest airport, which for most of the teams... is LAX ;-) (Brit/Jess [Instagram models] pretend to be the pilots for their flight :-D) We do have some teams going via Dallas and Atlanta, though... and production has apparently made it so that all the teams come out of the destination airport all at once... (Well, in the interests of fairness, of course they would, right?)
2. First stop, Mexico City, where they meet Phil in person before picking up a Detour clue between mariachis and toritos (not a nacho chip, but a bull shaped fireworks rig :-)) After a weird "drug-haze" montage of teams looking for the Detours :-/ we have a hilarious scene of Sheri/Cole mistaking some random lone guitarist for being part of the mariachi task :-D The actual task involves a sea of hundreds of mariachi players at a square, and teams are to find one who's faking it, resulting in Kurt/Brodie (frisbee players) repeatedly yelling "Who's fake playing?" :-D Brit/Jess are momentarily trolled by their checker pretending that they're wrong, before then handing out the clue, prompting them to wonder what "joker" is in Spanish :-D
4. The torito task involves a bunch of glueing paper and tying ropes, prompting at least two "arts ands crafts" joke comments from the contestants :-) and climaxes with some guy attaching fireworks to it and setting them on fire... which is awesome :-)
5. After the Detours, everyone heads to some underground excavation site for a timed-release bunching point ahead of a Roadblock in the morning: "Who's ready to pick up the pieces?" Involves going down into the underground excavation and sifting out 13 puzzle pieces from sand and assembling them into a mask... Task includes a curveball, as there are duplicates as well, as some discover when attempting to assemble the mask from the 13 pieces they find...
6. For Scott(/Blair, ob gyn doctor and his beauty channel producer daughter) that Roadblock clue proves literal :-D as he apparently heads back above ground for assembly (which is also supposed to be done down there as well) and spills the pieces everywhere :-D In other proceedings, Marty(/Hagan, mother/daughter with viral airhostess video) accidentally cuts her hand, a bunch of waiting contestants do some sort of impromptu jig while waiting, and Erin and Sheri consider taking a penalty (already!) The only thing holding them back from going ahead with it is Scott's struggles, and well, they both eventually finish the task and leave Scott behind...
7. Pitstop is at a museum, and after a cab race, first place is Dana/Matt (engaged dance tutorial videomakers) and there's no word on either getting a prize or any other perks (huh.) Phil makes a comment about Tyler(/Corey, YouTubers) and his hair :-) while Zach/Rachel (creators of "magical" Vine videos) finish 3rd and take a selfie with Phil... and the editors portray him disappearing from the selfie :-D Darius/Cameron (homeschooled dancers whose mom went to Harvard) rally from last place at the night bunch all the way to 4th (!) while Scott/Blair are last after that whole puzzle piece mess, but we have a rare first leg non-elim, and they're getting a Speed Bump next week :-)

Leg 2:
1. Due to the utter hecticness of the final minutes of ep 1, the recap is immediately followed with a scene of Phil talking with Scott/Blair at the pitstop, where it's revealed that Scott's carrying Blair's hairdryer and curling iron (!) and when offered the iron, Phil's all "I don't have anything left to curl" :-D
2. Now, on to leg 2... For the first time ever, TAR is heading to Colombia (you have a certain guy named Escobar to blame for the holdup...) Teams are flying to Cartagena, and not surprisingly, many of the teams pronounce the last two syllables like Gina :-) (rather than Hay-na) then heading to a mini volcano... But first, Darius/Cameron dig themselves into another hole, by taking a selfie with a fan and then taking ages to find a ticket counter (you'd think someone who's been recently accepted to Mensa and can do a Rubik's blindfolded would know better :-/) So they find themselves in last and half an hour behind Marty/Hagan... though that reduces to just 20 minutes in practice due to a delay on M/H's flight...
3. And the cab ride to the volcano allows for more potential chipping away, because M/H's cabbie is going real slow, and we get some hilarious butchering of español, as Marty points out they're in "el race-o" :-D Roadblock asks "Who's a hot mess?" and involves diving into a mud pit to look for a satchel with an "emerald" in it... prompting my mother to comment on how ugly and tough the tasks are getting on the show :-D Blair (of the hairdryer and curling iron, remember) only has a thong rather than a proper bathing suit, but Rachel lets her borrow her spandex :-)
4. Corey drops the first emerald he finds, and after acting like Gollum (tm Tyler) for a few minutes looking for it on the volcano side, decides to just go look for another one... Still better than Hagan getting overtaken by team Homeschool, though... While Hagan's busy looking, everyone's heading to another town to pick up a clue from a table in front of a juice shop (!) pointing them to a beachside Detour between pitching up tents for cars and frying fish. Not surprisingly, the all-girl teams do the cooking ;-) To be fair though, cooking isn't the exclusive domain for girls, as Scott/Blair and team Homeschool do it as well (the former after helping local fishermen haul in their daily catch as their Speed Bump :-), the latter after initially cabbing past the clue pickup all the way to the beach!) And for the second leg in a row, a contestant injures her hand... this time, Jess cutting her finger on a knife :-) Still better than what happened to Erin once: getting a fish in her swimsuit :-)
5. The tent task involves digging up sand to put in the poles, prompting Burnie (/Ashley, the Rooster Teeth gaming channel) to comment that they've had enough mud for one day... and Ashley to respond "Never" :-D while Zach and Rachel manage to put up their tent in the wrong spot (!) Tyler/Corey power past Kurt/Brodie at the tents, before claiming 1st place and a trip to St. Thomas back at the downtown pitstop :-)
6. The last two teams are Marty/Hagan and team Homeschool, and they're both cooking... M/H finish first, but unlike everyone else, they left their cab at the juice shop under the impression the beach wasn't that far away... so Homeschool are surprised to see (and overtake) M/H running up the road back to their cab, and sure enough, we end up switching out one parent/child team for another as the first boot...

Leg 3:
1. We're staying in Cartagena this week, as after a quick clue pick up, teams get sent to a fort with really narrow catacomb tunnels. Burnie/Ashley quip about burying other teams :-) while Erin happens to have claustrophobia, so the editors have a field day with playing on her fear of cramped spaces for a good minute or so, and she's still sweating as Joslyn finds the clue box and reads off a clue leading teams to a Detour between play "tejo" and collecting bus tix...
2. Tejo is "Colombia's national sport" according to Phil. Quite a few of the teams make comparisons to "cornhole", except that this game is played with heavy metal weights, and targets loaded with gunpowder (!) Resulting explosions make Tyler skittish :-D and we get the almost inevitable hilariously bad shots from Dana :-D
3. Bus tix requires teams to get people to board their bus and collect 20k pesos worth of fares, which given that the fare's 1800 pesos a pop, comes out to 12 persons :-) Zach/Rachel make comments about the buses going down really narrow streets, get smacked by leaves on trees, and even fistbump a passing truck's driver (!)... and finally get a passenger when someone recognizes them from YouTube :-) Blair does most of the heavy lifting for this task by offering besos for pesos (her words :-)) and gets plenty of passengers to come on :-) No footage of her actually following through on the offer, though :-/ Rachel counts her dosh and sees 2 10k's and gets off with Zach, but while cabbing back to the start, Zach recounts and discovers she mistook the 1000 peso bills as 10k's, making them redo the task, ultimately dropping them to last :-/
4. Roadblock at the old market: "Who's left holding the bag?" Take a "mochila" handbag from the first marked street vendor, then find two other matching bags from other marked vendors, with a matching designer tag... There's plenty of frantic running around looking for those marked vendors, and two pairs of Roadblockers working together (Sheri/Jess, Scott/Erin, the latter of whom get quite a bit of petty drama going on :-/) but that designer tag will be important...
5. Pitstop at the old city wall, and Frisbee takes first and a trip to Greece, Dana/Matt get to dance with the pitstop dancers :-) and Clevver are bemused that their greeter is a beauty queen like themselves :-) Heading into the evening, it comes down to Z/R and Homeschool to avoid elimination... Homeschool have moved up from 10th to enter the RB in 7th, but Darius is flummoxed at what to do after he's got his bags in reasonable time: apparently he's gotten the idea that he's supposed to pick up his clue from the designer on the tag, and so when he asks the start vendor (and clue pickup) if she's "Adriana" and gets No in response, he just keeps running, thus making his partner frustrated as two more teams pick up their clues... :-/ And then Z/R get their clue in 9th, but run into some minor confusion looking for the pitstop... and yet still end up edging Homeschool out in a footrace... Hopefully this doesn't make homeschoolers look bad :-/

Leg 4:
1. This week we're heading to Geneva, Switzerland :-) But first, at the airport the contestants all meet up for the first time since the first leg, and Brody has a little chitchat with Blair... and on top of that a couple of teams meet a bunch of their fans and take selfies with them :-) On the plane, Blair is hilariously caught asking "what country is Switzerland in?" :-D
2. The contestants arrive at night, so it means a bunch up, and after picking up some queue cards at a chocolate shop, they're made to sleep in some sort of underground cellar and Blair and Brody decide to share the same sleeping bag, prompting Kurt to try to get #blodie going :-D Back to the chocolate shop for a clue pick up in the morning, and Detour is between assembling one of those iconic Swiss Army knives at Victorinox, and a rather esoteric one: measure the length of a particularly long park bench in terms of number of butts (Huh.) by holding up a newspaper while sitting down and then alternating... (Whoa.)
3. The bench Detour is a rather crazy task that is not made any easier by locals actually using the bench for its intended purpose, including two guys playing a game of chess (!) Frisbee eventually gets 190 (they're looking for a 190-197 range) and tells some of the other teams, who still have to go through the motions of trying to measure the bench as per the rules (and some do manage to get a correct answer on their own anyway)
4. Assembling knives is more straightforward (if still rather complicated)... In a confessional, Blair explains that Scott's surgeon hands made him perfect for the task with Blair working as his "nurse assistant" :-) Oh, and it's implied that teams get to keep their knives once they're done :-) but there has been evidence to suggest otherwise :-/ Brit/Jess intend to do this task, but apparently mistakenly think the Victorinox shop they arrive at is on the wrong street from the one they're supposed to go to, and end up following Sheri/Cole to the bench measurement task :-\
5. Roadblock at the flag display at the United Nations: who's having a banner day? Find the flags of the founding members in a book of postcards... They've helpfully been highlighted on a big chart, however, it takes the contestants quite some time to realize that the chart is actually a map to the flag display :-/ We have a quick soundbite of many contestants saying that they're glad that they're not doing this Roadblock :-D, and Burnie the gamer knows most of the flags instantly because he's played a lot of FIFA (!) (The only wrong answer that is apparently ever handed over confuses the flag of Luxembourg with that of the Netherlands... which only differ by a shade of blue [!]) When Jess finally arrives at the RB in last, teams make a point of not helping her causing her to whine a lot :-/
6. And the pit stop... is not only in another country (Chamonix, France) but also requires changing trains (twice!) On the train, Tyler snarks about calling Blair Brodie's girlfriend :-D... Meanwhile, the transfers allow sets of teams to catch up to each other, eventually leading to 8 of the 9 remaining teams arriving in Chamonix on the same train (!!) with the only exception being the IG models missing a train with some of the teams on it at the first connecting point because their layover is too tight for them...
7. So anyways, in a dogpile footrace between the leading eight, Team Frisbee takes home the first place and $3,000 each, as Phil acknowledges a similar dogpile happened during All-Stars (the 2nd one), prompting a response like "That's appropriate, because we're all stars :-)" And the Instagram models get eliminated... What. When TAR Asia had a pit stop at the end of an all-team bunching train ride they at least had the decency to make it a TBC leg, so why not here? :-/