The Amazing Race 29: Eps 1 to 5
May. 3rd, 2017 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsNew TAR season, new gimmick... and now, new blog service :-)
Leg 1:
1. Back to the usual LA start, as this year's gimmick is that instead of 11 pairs of contestants, we start with 22 contestants, and have them run to a shop to pick up a bag with the flag of their first destination, Panama, attached to it and contestants get to pick their partner in order of their finish. A Boston cop named Joey is the only one shown to have to go back to the shop to get another bag (and yes, he mentions the 2013 marathon in his intro)
2. Teams get paired up, and Seth (Seattle cop) gets first pick and pairs off with Olive (firefighter) as #TeamAmerica (show's still trying to make the hashtag happen!) Also amongst the teams are Matt Ladley (X-Games snowboarder) / Redmond (Navy vet missing a leg) as #TheBoys, Becca (rock climber)/Floyd (band geek) as #TeamFun (who also randomly have earned themselves an Express Pass), while Joey gets paired with Tara (Army officer) as #TeamMomAndDad (!) ... and eventually the last two are Jessie (cop) / Francesca (drill sergeant) as #SwoleSisters, who end up getting a ride to LAX from Phil Keoghan himself (! and still only manage to get tix on the latter of 2 flights!)
2.1 Incidentally, Team Fun want to be the most fun team ever on the race... Wonder if they've been watching long enough to remember S2's Danny/Oswald (aka Team Cha-Cha)
3. As mentioned, first stop is Panama, and after a hazy montage of teams trying to look for the canal where the first clue pickup is (of course) during which Vanck (Asian Wall St. guy) recommends a "135-degree turn" (:-D) to Ashton (real estate broker... as #TeamVanckAndAshton, because not everyone can get fun nicknames ;-)) we head over to some forest area for the lone task this week, a Detour between rowing and shooting fish targets (also from a rowboat) A la last season's camel/bike racing, teams will get a larger headstart every time they lose... and it turns out The Boys don't need no stinking headstart :-D
4. While Kevin (rugby player) /Jenn (model) (aka #LongHairDontCare because they have long hair... and they're also 2/3 of the Asian representation this season) and Liz (auctioneer) /Michael (butcher with ZZ Top style beard) (...#TeamLizAndMike) are holding up the rear (with Long Hair wondering how two Asians can get so lost), Team America (...I'll refrain from the obvious joke) take home first place, with Shamir (Wall St.) (/ Sara, Real Estate, aka #TheSAndSExpress) arriving in 5th with one eyebrow raised (hey, at least he knows that signature "gesture")
5. It's a race between Liz/Michael and Long Hair to avoid first boot, and L/M repeatedly flip their boat racing after trying shooting (doesn't work out for anyone other than Team Fun), but L/M eventually get it done, while Long Hair get saddled with a 2 hour penalty since it's unsafe to row at dark... Long Hair actually arrive at the mat first, but have to wait to see if L/M can beat the clock, which they do, meaning that Long Hair get a short run (PUN!) They blame it on their lack of fighting, though they're somewhat blase about it, considering themselves big brother/little sister (OOH!)
Leg 2:
1. Next stop is Sao Paolo, and The Boys and V/A plan to do a coin flip to decide 1st and 2nd for a morning helicopter ride (!) As it happens, The Boys get to the signup sheet with no sign of V/A and take the first spot on their lonesome and tell V/A when they arrive "Sorry not sorry"... V/A don't like this, and we'll see the effects of this later...
2. After the chopper ride: Detour between samba band (that's your cue Team Fun ;-)) and setting up a workout gym made from recycled goods (truck tires, improvisign weights from bottles filled with sand, filling a barrel with water etc) On the way, Brooke (/Scott ) trips and sprains her right arm (she's a leftie, as it were, but this will be important for the Roadblock) but she comments that "Pain is temporary, elimination is permanent" :-) while The Boys joke about getting a "Currently in 1st place" caption in their cab... which they then get :-D
3. After a clue pickup from a girl on a race-decorated bike, a Roadblock: "Who likes to keep things squeaky clean?" It's of course a window cleaning task, and there's always someone who dislikes height-based tasks, and that's Scott, who has no choice in the matter due to his partner's injury, and he's shown with a look of concern in the waiting room before the task... Come the actual task, he doesn't put up much of a fuss (HUH... but there'll be some later)
4. Meanwhile, Pitstop is at a forest park in the middle of town, L/M make an awesome "comeback" to overtake 5 teams on 2 other flights to take home 1st place and a trip to Barbados from you-gnome-who ;-) V/A is 2nd, and the Boys end up settling for 3rd (yes, behind V/A), as Redmond jokes about winning himself a leg (and that's when we find out he's actually missing a leg!)
5. Bringing up the rear are Swole (got on a flight after everyone else) and S/S, who trick Swole into going to the wrong spot to look for their clue biker (it doesn't help Swole that they don't notice the bike the first two times it came riding around)... and S/S do need that time, because on the first attempt, Shamir (to put it nicely) had his harness too tight around his groin, and ended up punching and breaking an adjacent window in frustration (!!!) and is getting himself checked in an ambulance...
6. Swole finally twig that S/S may have tricked them and get back to the RB, so Shamir's second attempt overlaps with Swole's first... and Shamir gets the job done the second time, leaving Swole to be eliminated, but despite their short time, they're expecting to go into body building together. DAWW + HUH.
Leg 3:
1. Brooke/Scott wonder if their next stop, Tanzania, is "keesh" (tm this show) A newspaper clue pick-up in Dar es Salaam tells them to take the ferry to Zanzibar, and V/A see The Boys cutting in line for the ferry, and it just so happens that there's a Double Blind U-Turn, so they slap The Boys on it, with Team America getting the other from Mom/Dad. A la Asia season 5, the U-Turn comes before the Detours, in this case because they both entail riding to an island on a dhow first... (Meanwhile, we manage to get two confessionals of teams, L/M being one of them, admitting that they haven't come here to make friends)
2. The Detours are: Weaving a basket from palm branches (provided by a climber named Butterfly!) and assembling together a learning table from parts and delivering it to a school, and partaking in a quick Swahili lesson :-) S/S make the obvious Ikea parallels :-) while #TeamLoLo (London Kaye [street art crocheter!] and Logan [sales rep]) initially pick weaving because, well, London's a crocheter... Turns out crochet =/= weaving, so the only teams who end up doing this task are the ones who were U-Turned into doing it... At least one of the teams is bemused that Butterfly's song includes the lyrics "Hakuna Matata" in it :-)
3. Roadblock ask "Who wants to do market research?" Or in this case, buying goods at a market from a Swahili shopping list, which the quick lesson won't have helped with (so time to ask the locals!) We get to learn what's a "halal" chicken (Michael the butcher explains it's actually a slaughtering method) and a pomelo (kinda like a really large grapefruit) The big hiccup is having to use race money to pay for the goods, and it appears that the vendors are overcharging the contestants (!) to the point where Sara has to talk it out with one of the vendors (with local help), and Olive has to convince the vendors to accept her Brazil money (!)
4. Pistop at a local hotel, where L/M get a 2nd leg and win a trip to Amsterdam. In the back are Team America, S/S... and Team Fun, who'd already checked in 5th... Wha? Appears that Team Fun's misplaced their passports, but luckily, they had the foresight to take their cabbie's business card, and so avoid another Zev/Justin, as Becca threatens to break Floyd's nose (!) The finishing order is S/S, Team Fun, and Team America, meaning that both the first AND last teams to get paired off get bumped off back-to-back (and so early!) Oh boy... (But at least Seth doesn't regret his choice of Olive, so that's a plus)
Leg 4:
1. This week's airing is two hours, except it's simply two regular episodes stapled together... It's a domestic leg, but let's join in the action as S/S are still tackling the Detours on Zanzibar (involving knocking doors or looking for a key in a pile of boxes) Meanwhile, the others have ferried back to the mainland to head to "DASICO", aka Dar es Salaam Small Industries Cooperatives. The Boys try asking their cabbie how long it'll take to get there, and he changes his answer from 5 minutes to 20 minutes... before answering "Hakuna Matata" :-)
2. DASICO is the site for a Roadblock, whose "teaser" we never get, but it apparently suggests an artistic task, so Brooke takes it for Scott... and it's a nightmare because it involves cutting up aluminum sheets and fashioning it into a ladle... The fact that the shears for cutting the aluminum are not very sharp is just the beginning... She gets support not just from Scott, but also a little bit of help from Becca, Redmond and Michael in getting the ladle up to the standards (like getting rid of sharp burrs) Once others get their ladles to pass, the checker proceeds to demonstrate it by scooping up some boiling pasta (HEH)
2.1 Incidentally, the editors probably got a kick out of cutting from Redmond talking about how as a Navy vet, he's used to following orders... to Brooke agonizing over her task :-)
3. Pitstop is at Coco Beach, and Mom/Dad are excited to win $5000... and that's before Phil adds "each" :-D S/S promise to crap themselves if they see anyone still at DASICO, but Brooke finally manages to get her ladle to pass the inspection, leaving Shamir to accidentally prick his hands on sheet metal alone until they close up shop and Phil shows up to personally eliminate them...
Leg 5:
1. Everyone's taking the same flight to Alesund, Norway, and heading to a lighthouse to have a little bit of smoked "rockfish" before picking up the next clue... Brooke (presumably still suffering from a bit of ladle-induced trauma) ends up having a bit of a fit over eating the fish, because it's just like lox, which she doesn't like (HUH.) The clue pickup includes the opportunity to travel to a mystery Fast Forward by helicopter, and both B/S and Team Fun are interested, but since Team Fun finish their fish first, they get to do the FF, which we'll find out later, as B/S are ticked at having to do the leg...
2. Roadblock asks who's ready to set a world record? It entails climbing up to help assemble a tower of wooden pallets, for setting up a world record bonfire (a clip of which we see, taking place a week after the race ran through town) Michael brags that Liz can climb up the pallet like a sewer rat (!) and there's an unusual amount of estrogen on this task, with London and Ashton also taking the climb... as does the afraid-of-heights Scott, leading to a confessional from Brooke: "I may have done him a favor ;-)"
3. Team Fun's Fast Forward turns out to be skydiving... and they're very excited about it (!) Becca's schtick is that she actually wears a button with a "Fun Meter" on it (though for the fast few legs, Floyd's been wearing it on his backpack strap) and as she gets into the chopper, she brags that it's "off the chain" today. Meanwhile, Detour is between Trolls and Troll, which V/A reference the iconic dolls... before having to double back from the parking lot to the pallet tower to get their fanny pack (!) Plural involves searching for buildings with certain decorations where ladies dressed as "trolls" are waiting to give contestants really huge firecrackers, in exchange for the pit stop clue (even comes with a Norwegian incantation to recite, from paper of course) Singular involves looking for a fish bait hook with the name of the pit stop on it, taking advantage of the fact that in some Alesund houses, it's possible to go fishing without even leaving the house (!)
4. Plural: L/M get into drama involving reading a map, as Michael has the impression that Liz is just randomly pointing the map in a random direction and assuming that the direction is north (!) There are so many huge firecrackers (6 per team), V/A just decide to use their car to carry them (which then proceeds to sap some time having to parallel park)... while other teams either compare carrying the firecrackers to jousting, or make hilarious backing up "beep" noises :-D With the fishing, Mom/Dad finds a hook with the word "Aksla" on it, and wonder what it means... and end up clueing The Boys in on what they should be looking for as well...
5. Pitstop is at Mount Aksla, where Mom/Dad win a leg (just edging out The Boys) but not a prize, and Team Fun are just flabbergasted that they're not in first place (they're 3rd, marking the first time since S20's Mark/Bopper that FF =/= 1st), but they wouldn't have traded their skydiving fun for the world :-) L/M are in for a lot of drama: First they accidentally clip a van from the local hotel and have to talk things over with the guy, and then they end up parking at a local parking lot and ride the elevator, which turns out not to lead them to the pit stop, which means they have to run up the 400 (!) steps to the summit (like most of the other teams) After all that they're in last place, but it's a non-elim/TBC leg (with a new clue coming up instantly)... but the real TBC hook is whether they even want to keep racing after all the trauma they've been through today :-\
Leg 1:
1. Back to the usual LA start, as this year's gimmick is that instead of 11 pairs of contestants, we start with 22 contestants, and have them run to a shop to pick up a bag with the flag of their first destination, Panama, attached to it and contestants get to pick their partner in order of their finish. A Boston cop named Joey is the only one shown to have to go back to the shop to get another bag (and yes, he mentions the 2013 marathon in his intro)
2. Teams get paired up, and Seth (Seattle cop) gets first pick and pairs off with Olive (firefighter) as #TeamAmerica (show's still trying to make the hashtag happen!) Also amongst the teams are Matt Ladley (X-Games snowboarder) / Redmond (Navy vet missing a leg) as #TheBoys, Becca (rock climber)/Floyd (band geek) as #TeamFun (who also randomly have earned themselves an Express Pass), while Joey gets paired with Tara (Army officer) as #TeamMomAndDad (!) ... and eventually the last two are Jessie (cop) / Francesca (drill sergeant) as #SwoleSisters, who end up getting a ride to LAX from Phil Keoghan himself (! and still only manage to get tix on the latter of 2 flights!)
2.1 Incidentally, Team Fun want to be the most fun team ever on the race... Wonder if they've been watching long enough to remember S2's Danny/Oswald (aka Team Cha-Cha)
3. As mentioned, first stop is Panama, and after a hazy montage of teams trying to look for the canal where the first clue pickup is (of course) during which Vanck (Asian Wall St. guy) recommends a "135-degree turn" (:-D) to Ashton (real estate broker... as #TeamVanckAndAshton, because not everyone can get fun nicknames ;-)) we head over to some forest area for the lone task this week, a Detour between rowing and shooting fish targets (also from a rowboat) A la last season's camel/bike racing, teams will get a larger headstart every time they lose... and it turns out The Boys don't need no stinking headstart :-D
4. While Kevin (rugby player) /Jenn (model) (aka #LongHairDontCare because they have long hair... and they're also 2/3 of the Asian representation this season) and Liz (auctioneer) /Michael (butcher with ZZ Top style beard) (...#TeamLizAndMike) are holding up the rear (with Long Hair wondering how two Asians can get so lost), Team America (...I'll refrain from the obvious joke) take home first place, with Shamir (Wall St.) (/ Sara, Real Estate, aka #TheSAndSExpress) arriving in 5th with one eyebrow raised (hey, at least he knows that signature "gesture")
5. It's a race between Liz/Michael and Long Hair to avoid first boot, and L/M repeatedly flip their boat racing after trying shooting (doesn't work out for anyone other than Team Fun), but L/M eventually get it done, while Long Hair get saddled with a 2 hour penalty since it's unsafe to row at dark... Long Hair actually arrive at the mat first, but have to wait to see if L/M can beat the clock, which they do, meaning that Long Hair get a short run (PUN!) They blame it on their lack of fighting, though they're somewhat blase about it, considering themselves big brother/little sister (OOH!)
Leg 2:
1. Next stop is Sao Paolo, and The Boys and V/A plan to do a coin flip to decide 1st and 2nd for a morning helicopter ride (!) As it happens, The Boys get to the signup sheet with no sign of V/A and take the first spot on their lonesome and tell V/A when they arrive "Sorry not sorry"... V/A don't like this, and we'll see the effects of this later...
2. After the chopper ride: Detour between samba band (that's your cue Team Fun ;-)) and setting up a workout gym made from recycled goods (truck tires, improvisign weights from bottles filled with sand, filling a barrel with water etc) On the way, Brooke (/Scott ) trips and sprains her right arm (she's a leftie, as it were, but this will be important for the Roadblock) but she comments that "Pain is temporary, elimination is permanent" :-) while The Boys joke about getting a "Currently in 1st place" caption in their cab... which they then get :-D
3. After a clue pickup from a girl on a race-decorated bike, a Roadblock: "Who likes to keep things squeaky clean?" It's of course a window cleaning task, and there's always someone who dislikes height-based tasks, and that's Scott, who has no choice in the matter due to his partner's injury, and he's shown with a look of concern in the waiting room before the task... Come the actual task, he doesn't put up much of a fuss (HUH... but there'll be some later)
4. Meanwhile, Pitstop is at a forest park in the middle of town, L/M make an awesome "comeback" to overtake 5 teams on 2 other flights to take home 1st place and a trip to Barbados from you-gnome-who ;-) V/A is 2nd, and the Boys end up settling for 3rd (yes, behind V/A), as Redmond jokes about winning himself a leg (and that's when we find out he's actually missing a leg!)
5. Bringing up the rear are Swole (got on a flight after everyone else) and S/S, who trick Swole into going to the wrong spot to look for their clue biker (it doesn't help Swole that they don't notice the bike the first two times it came riding around)... and S/S do need that time, because on the first attempt, Shamir (to put it nicely) had his harness too tight around his groin, and ended up punching and breaking an adjacent window in frustration (!!!) and is getting himself checked in an ambulance...
6. Swole finally twig that S/S may have tricked them and get back to the RB, so Shamir's second attempt overlaps with Swole's first... and Shamir gets the job done the second time, leaving Swole to be eliminated, but despite their short time, they're expecting to go into body building together. DAWW + HUH.
Leg 3:
1. Brooke/Scott wonder if their next stop, Tanzania, is "keesh" (tm this show) A newspaper clue pick-up in Dar es Salaam tells them to take the ferry to Zanzibar, and V/A see The Boys cutting in line for the ferry, and it just so happens that there's a Double Blind U-Turn, so they slap The Boys on it, with Team America getting the other from Mom/Dad. A la Asia season 5, the U-Turn comes before the Detours, in this case because they both entail riding to an island on a dhow first... (Meanwhile, we manage to get two confessionals of teams, L/M being one of them, admitting that they haven't come here to make friends)
2. The Detours are: Weaving a basket from palm branches (provided by a climber named Butterfly!) and assembling together a learning table from parts and delivering it to a school, and partaking in a quick Swahili lesson :-) S/S make the obvious Ikea parallels :-) while #TeamLoLo (London Kaye [street art crocheter!] and Logan [sales rep]) initially pick weaving because, well, London's a crocheter... Turns out crochet =/= weaving, so the only teams who end up doing this task are the ones who were U-Turned into doing it... At least one of the teams is bemused that Butterfly's song includes the lyrics "Hakuna Matata" in it :-)
3. Roadblock ask "Who wants to do market research?" Or in this case, buying goods at a market from a Swahili shopping list, which the quick lesson won't have helped with (so time to ask the locals!) We get to learn what's a "halal" chicken (Michael the butcher explains it's actually a slaughtering method) and a pomelo (kinda like a really large grapefruit) The big hiccup is having to use race money to pay for the goods, and it appears that the vendors are overcharging the contestants (!) to the point where Sara has to talk it out with one of the vendors (with local help), and Olive has to convince the vendors to accept her Brazil money (!)
4. Pistop at a local hotel, where L/M get a 2nd leg and win a trip to Amsterdam. In the back are Team America, S/S... and Team Fun, who'd already checked in 5th... Wha? Appears that Team Fun's misplaced their passports, but luckily, they had the foresight to take their cabbie's business card, and so avoid another Zev/Justin, as Becca threatens to break Floyd's nose (!) The finishing order is S/S, Team Fun, and Team America, meaning that both the first AND last teams to get paired off get bumped off back-to-back (and so early!) Oh boy... (But at least Seth doesn't regret his choice of Olive, so that's a plus)
Leg 4:
1. This week's airing is two hours, except it's simply two regular episodes stapled together... It's a domestic leg, but let's join in the action as S/S are still tackling the Detours on Zanzibar (involving knocking doors or looking for a key in a pile of boxes) Meanwhile, the others have ferried back to the mainland to head to "DASICO", aka Dar es Salaam Small Industries Cooperatives. The Boys try asking their cabbie how long it'll take to get there, and he changes his answer from 5 minutes to 20 minutes... before answering "Hakuna Matata" :-)
2. DASICO is the site for a Roadblock, whose "teaser" we never get, but it apparently suggests an artistic task, so Brooke takes it for Scott... and it's a nightmare because it involves cutting up aluminum sheets and fashioning it into a ladle... The fact that the shears for cutting the aluminum are not very sharp is just the beginning... She gets support not just from Scott, but also a little bit of help from Becca, Redmond and Michael in getting the ladle up to the standards (like getting rid of sharp burrs) Once others get their ladles to pass, the checker proceeds to demonstrate it by scooping up some boiling pasta (HEH)
2.1 Incidentally, the editors probably got a kick out of cutting from Redmond talking about how as a Navy vet, he's used to following orders... to Brooke agonizing over her task :-)
3. Pitstop is at Coco Beach, and Mom/Dad are excited to win $5000... and that's before Phil adds "each" :-D S/S promise to crap themselves if they see anyone still at DASICO, but Brooke finally manages to get her ladle to pass the inspection, leaving Shamir to accidentally prick his hands on sheet metal alone until they close up shop and Phil shows up to personally eliminate them...
Leg 5:
1. Everyone's taking the same flight to Alesund, Norway, and heading to a lighthouse to have a little bit of smoked "rockfish" before picking up the next clue... Brooke (presumably still suffering from a bit of ladle-induced trauma) ends up having a bit of a fit over eating the fish, because it's just like lox, which she doesn't like (HUH.) The clue pickup includes the opportunity to travel to a mystery Fast Forward by helicopter, and both B/S and Team Fun are interested, but since Team Fun finish their fish first, they get to do the FF, which we'll find out later, as B/S are ticked at having to do the leg...
2. Roadblock asks who's ready to set a world record? It entails climbing up to help assemble a tower of wooden pallets, for setting up a world record bonfire (a clip of which we see, taking place a week after the race ran through town) Michael brags that Liz can climb up the pallet like a sewer rat (!) and there's an unusual amount of estrogen on this task, with London and Ashton also taking the climb... as does the afraid-of-heights Scott, leading to a confessional from Brooke: "I may have done him a favor ;-)"
3. Team Fun's Fast Forward turns out to be skydiving... and they're very excited about it (!) Becca's schtick is that she actually wears a button with a "Fun Meter" on it (though for the fast few legs, Floyd's been wearing it on his backpack strap) and as she gets into the chopper, she brags that it's "off the chain" today. Meanwhile, Detour is between Trolls and Troll, which V/A reference the iconic dolls... before having to double back from the parking lot to the pallet tower to get their fanny pack (!) Plural involves searching for buildings with certain decorations where ladies dressed as "trolls" are waiting to give contestants really huge firecrackers, in exchange for the pit stop clue (even comes with a Norwegian incantation to recite, from paper of course) Singular involves looking for a fish bait hook with the name of the pit stop on it, taking advantage of the fact that in some Alesund houses, it's possible to go fishing without even leaving the house (!)
4. Plural: L/M get into drama involving reading a map, as Michael has the impression that Liz is just randomly pointing the map in a random direction and assuming that the direction is north (!) There are so many huge firecrackers (6 per team), V/A just decide to use their car to carry them (which then proceeds to sap some time having to parallel park)... while other teams either compare carrying the firecrackers to jousting, or make hilarious backing up "beep" noises :-D With the fishing, Mom/Dad finds a hook with the word "Aksla" on it, and wonder what it means... and end up clueing The Boys in on what they should be looking for as well...
5. Pitstop is at Mount Aksla, where Mom/Dad win a leg (just edging out The Boys) but not a prize, and Team Fun are just flabbergasted that they're not in first place (they're 3rd, marking the first time since S20's Mark/Bopper that FF =/= 1st), but they wouldn't have traded their skydiving fun for the world :-) L/M are in for a lot of drama: First they accidentally clip a van from the local hotel and have to talk things over with the guy, and then they end up parking at a local parking lot and ride the elevator, which turns out not to lead them to the pit stop, which means they have to run up the 400 (!) steps to the summit (like most of the other teams) After all that they're in last place, but it's a non-elim/TBC leg (with a new clue coming up instantly)... but the real TBC hook is whether they even want to keep racing after all the trauma they've been through today :-\
