The Amazing Race 30: Legs 6 to 12
Mar. 15th, 2018 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsBeen sitting on this long enough... Thanks to double episodes, more than half of the season plays out in four weeks :-O
Ep 6
1. Next stop, Prague, with double U-Turn in the offing at the Rudolfinum concert hall... Teams have been split into two flights, and we'll have to wait for the second group to see the U-Turn drama, so for now, a blind Detour, in which the options are called This or That... One involves moving beer kegs from one pallet to another to find a loaded keg, then connecting said loaded keg to a dispenser and making "The Perfect Pour" (two fingerwidths' height of foam), then delivering the keg to a party boat in the river (whew!) Other involves listening to lectures on the flat earth theory and answering a series of questions based on what they've listened to (the last of them being "Is the Earth round or flat?" LOL) #TeamOceanRescue (Lucas/Brittany) are bothered at the details they have to notice in the lectures and switch to beer, while #TheFireFighters (Eric/Daniel) grind it out after something like 9 attempts (and are still slightly ahead of #TeamExtreme [Kristy/Jen] at this point!)
2. Newly-engaged #TeamOceanRescue spend upwards of an hour to find the party boat, and #TeamYale (Henry/Evan) have flashbacks to the frites race in Belgium thanks to the handcart (this being reality TV, we get a video flashback) While this is going on, the rest of the teams come to the U-Turn, and #TeamBigBrother (Jessica/Cody) U-Turn #TeamWellStrung (Chris/Trevor) into doing both, prompting the ironic observation of being U-Turned under Dvorak's statue, and #TeamBigBrother will definitely need what time they can get, since they mistake a regular Czech-speaking lecture for the task and immediately switch to the beer (LOL) After making a perfect pour, #TeamIndyCar Alex/Conor manage to sneak a swig of the beer before keg-schlepping (remembers Gus of Gus/Hera trying the same from way back in S5 LOL)
3. #TeamWellStrung kick butt at the lectures and grind it out in apparently just 2 attempts, and even ham it up a little before answering the "round or flat" question HEH! After a clue pick-up at a beer spa (there's a joke about wondering what's making the bubbles in the bath LOL) we have a Roadblock, and the return of the Kafka phones that frustrated the Globetrotters and made Phil wait overnight (we get clips too :-)) This time around, contestants have to find phones with recordings of single words, and memorize those words and assemble them into a Kafka saying... perfect for contestants who happen to be there at the same time to help each other (or try to sabotage each other, like Brittany to Jessica, for taking her gnome in Tangiers) The saying turns out to be "The meaning of life is that it stops", which #TeamExtreme uses to be a bit philosophical about their race experience (hilariously, one contestant mistakes the recording of "life" for "wife" HEH)
4. Pitstop is at a park overlooking the river, and #TeamExtreme easily takes the leg and a trip to Perth, and Phil promises each team that there will be more surprises coming up... while at the other end of the order, despite #TeamWellStrung's best efforts, they still end up getting eliminated :-\ Warning, nothing but double-eps from here on out...
Eps 7-8
1. Next stop is Zimbabwe, where Phil announces that teams will swap partners until further notice, so #TeamBigBrother swap with #TeamExtreme, and #TeamOceanRescue with #TeamIndyCar, leaving just #TeamYale to pair up with #TheFirefighters, resulting in: Cody/Jen, Jessica/Kristi, Alex/Britanny, Conor/Lucas, Evan/Daniel, Henry/Eric. And the swap gets it own hashtag: #PartnerSwap (roll eyes)
2. First task under the swap: Row a boat, and find a canteen bottle holding their next clue... which turns out to be good for rowing champ Brittany, who's also teaching Alex how to row properly :-) Next up is a Detour between finding pieces of evidence of poachers on horseback, and 4wd driving through bogs...
3. Eric/Henry get stuck in the mud, and they spend a really long time on Eric winching out the jeep... while Jessica/Kristi are also stuck on having to put the evidence on a map in the correct position, and we're told that each attempt has more wrong entries (!)
4. Partner swap ends at the mat as soon as the 2nd swapped pair checks in... and Phil gives them a clue sending them back to the capital Harare, and we even get the usual B-roll and Phil patter like this is the start of a new episode... #TheFirefighters keep punning on their ride to the capital to the point where they joke about over using their quota :-)
5. First stop is a double U-Turn at a fabrics shop, and #TeamBigBrother and #TeamYale get U-Turned by #TeamIndycar and #TeamOceanRescue, followed by another Detour: Deliver mail at a uniquely-designed mall, and roll tires 1/2 mile through a busy market before delivering to a marked truck (they're told this is near a hardware shop)... Indycar initially take their tires to the wrong truck after missing the hardware shop turnoff, and only find out when it turns out the driver doesn't actually have their clue LOL.
6. Next stop is at Harare Park for a Route Info task: Get down the Zimbab-way, in which teams are asked to sing in Shona, and as usual, the judging standards start high and are subtly lowered later onwards, so this means that #TeamExtreme are stuck there for a while, to the point that everyone catches up (!)
7. Pitstop is at a Pedestrian Mall, where #TeamOceanRescue win a trip to St. Lucia ("Double honeymoon :-)") while #TeamExtreme take losing in stride ("Now you know our darkest secret :-)")... and #TheFirefighters get eliminated right, but also manage to fire off (heh) one last pun: "We didn't have any rhythm, so now we have the blues", and also manage to joke about not being good jewellers or printers either (huh, no flashback...)
Eps 9-10
1. Four legs to go, but only two weeks to air them... Next stop: Bahrain! After a task at a boat involving carrying wood, I'm picking up the action at a needle in a haystack task that involves matching a pouch of trinkets with trinkets in the bottom of lots of clay vases, and they're pretty detailed on this, needing to match (say) the colour of the hump on the camel. In a nice interlude, Jessica pets a cat, which of course prompts a flashback to the Tangier fish market :-)
2. Because of a missing passport issue (Zev/Justin say hello), #TeamOceanRescue are stuck behind at Dubai (!) and notes that the flight to Bahrain is only 1h15 (and it bemuses me that there's a shot of an Emirates plane, because on the first airing of the episode on my local broadcaster, this segment aired after an ad break with a commercial for Emirates LOL)
3. Next clue has been put in a small clay pot which they need to Hulk smash (Jessica: "Mazel Tov!") to find out they're heading to the Bahrain Endurance Village and a bunch of camels... Bahrain is hot, and Yale are so tired out after the search that it takes 4 attempts just to smash the clay pot LOL!
4. Camel task involves milking a camel (shades of Senegal?), and there's plenty of funny bits with 1) Indycar's camel trying to knee them while Alex is petting it LOL 2) A shot of a burping camel 3) Evan claiming that a camel's noise is similar to Henry in the morning 4) Jessica telling her camel "You're not clean", and 5) despite the task not actually requiring them to drink the milk, Cody drinking a swig of it anyway
5. Pit stop is at a lone tree in the middle of the desert known as the Tree of Life (reminds me of Winx Club :-)) and there's plenty of nice GoPro falcon footage, for the greeter is a falcon trainer :-) Indycar get $7500 each, and they've also won $5000 each earlier, so Phil suggests Conor can move out of Alex's house :-) Falcon craps during Yale's check-in LOL. #TeamBigBrother check in in daytime, which #TeamOceanRescue only arrive at nighttime and get a pretty emotional field-elimination at the woodtask boat, which ends with Brittany adding: "And most important, I still have the ring :-)"
6. We immediately cut to the "next" episode's prologue, in which they're heading to Chiang Mai in Thailand (aka the Rose of the North) to visit Royal Park Ratchapreuk (which I visited when it was still shiny and new way back in 2006 :-)) We also get the usual prologue confessionals, in which we learn that Yale want to win the race to pay for their Master's tuition... and #TeamIndyCar wonder what a
Song Thaew is: "is it like a spaceship?" LOL. It also amuses me a bit that they're immediately shown boarding the Bangkok Airways flight to CNX in BKK (skipping the BAH-BKK part of the trip)... That said, my local broadcaster ended up moving up the weekend rerun where I expected to catch the rest of the episode so that it ended when I was expecting the Thai part of the leg to start, and the rest of the weekend was pre-empted for Chinese New Year specials (!)
Ep 11
1. Hong Kong! From where I started looking in, there's a task involving tying up crabs, where #TeamExtreme are struggling in last, while the rest of the teams are at a Roadblock, smashing up some old monitors and other electronics to look for two halves of a clue while the non-participants have suitcases handcuffed to them (all the men are doing it, plus Kristi for #TeamExtreme) before then throwing paint all over them when done LOL.
2. Next stop, the Lan Kwai Fong district, to look for three signs corresponding to items on previous legs, and rearrange them into the combination of the suitcase (each team gets the same numbers, but arranged differently) The signs they're looking for are: The Washington Square Arch (leg 1), a Moroccan fez (leg 3), and a bull (leg 5). The latter two signs are in the proper red/yellow colours, but the arch sign (other than being confused with a more famous arch in Paris) is a green coloured happy hour advertising sign, so it's likely that at least one team would not pick up on it... like say #TeamIndyCar :-\
3. After unlocking the suitcase with their combos, it reveals two streetsigns that indicate that the Pitstop is a simple mat at the corner of Johnston and Wan Chai, where #TeamYale get first place, and it's also noted that only two teams had previously overcome a Speed Bump to finish first (I remember Jet/Cord being one of them) #TeamExtreme get in 3rd and ensure that they will have podium finishes in every leg, while the exact opposite fate of Yale ends up befalling #TeamIndy, who after starting in 1st in Thailand (as Phil mentions)... get a field elimination in front of this Thai grill (HEH)
Ep 12
1. Final stop: San Francisco, and it looks like they're riding a China Airlines 747 in upper-class there :-) It's a nighttime leg, starting at the statue of the "Say Hey Kid" Willie Mays at AT&T Park, which has been decorated with a celebration of the show's 30 seasons... and yet the teams never go actually inside, as the actual task involves grabbing baseballs from the nearby bay with numbers to form the number of HRs he scored (660) which is on an inscription on the statue... but none of them actually get it from there, and only #TeamExtreme had the foresight to have it Googled for them before going into the boats, while #TeamYale, after getting tons of attempts rejected by thejudge umpire, have to get their assistance midtask and #TeamBigBrother get it from listening in (!) Would that any of this mattered in the end :-\
2. Next stop is a Roadblock involving rope-rappeling up a pylon of the Bay Bridge, then doing a wire-jump inside the structure with lights tied around them (yeah, looks as weird as it sounds) Evan does this task for #TeamYale, and it's tortuous and puts them in last quickly... Next clue is a rebus, which the teams get "Golden Gate Factory" immediately, and bystander assistance reveals it to be a fortune cookie factory (Phil points out the fortune cookie was invented in SFO, not China ;-)) where the task calls for each teammate to each make a full tray of acceptable cookies (about 50 each) While boating to the factory, #TeamBigBrother make the natural mistake of referring to the Bay Bridge as the more famous Golden Gate... which ends up mattering about as much as anything else in this leg :-\
3. The only part of the task that ends up mattering is the last part, taking place on the USS Hornet battleship, in which teams search through the battleship to gather 12 plane part for assembling on the top deck in the latter half of the task, which ends up being a second Roadblock (usual "other teammate does it" rule applies): There are two pictures on each piece representing two different legs, and one combination of six parts will result in a fully-assembled plane having pictures representing each leg... and (as is the wont of reality TV) we get glimpses of some of the legs as contestants bring then up, including wood weighing in Bahrain and scorpions (!) in the CNX leg...
4. After over 2 1/2 hours (!) of swapping, checking, and more swapping, #TeamBigBrother are "cleared for takeoff" to go to the finish mat on the other end of the top deck and claim the prize (!!) #TeamBigBrother are happy to win (many of us not so much :-\) but Cedric Ceballos points out that anyone would be happy to win $1M ;-) #TeamYale is already disappointed to lose to #TeamBigBrother by just a few minutes (the only closer final leg margin... was also in SFO, where S2 came down to a footrace [!]), but just wait till they find out that Henry apparently switched past the correct combination between checks :-\
5. Incidentally, among CBS' reality shows, this is the 2nd time a crossover contestant has won one of them: Natalie (S21, 4th place) won a twin-gimmick season of Survivor (with her teammate Nadya being first boot!)
Ep 6
1. Next stop, Prague, with double U-Turn in the offing at the Rudolfinum concert hall... Teams have been split into two flights, and we'll have to wait for the second group to see the U-Turn drama, so for now, a blind Detour, in which the options are called This or That... One involves moving beer kegs from one pallet to another to find a loaded keg, then connecting said loaded keg to a dispenser and making "The Perfect Pour" (two fingerwidths' height of foam), then delivering the keg to a party boat in the river (whew!) Other involves listening to lectures on the flat earth theory and answering a series of questions based on what they've listened to (the last of them being "Is the Earth round or flat?" LOL) #TeamOceanRescue (Lucas/Brittany) are bothered at the details they have to notice in the lectures and switch to beer, while #TheFireFighters (Eric/Daniel) grind it out after something like 9 attempts (and are still slightly ahead of #TeamExtreme [Kristy/Jen] at this point!)
2. Newly-engaged #TeamOceanRescue spend upwards of an hour to find the party boat, and #TeamYale (Henry/Evan) have flashbacks to the frites race in Belgium thanks to the handcart (this being reality TV, we get a video flashback) While this is going on, the rest of the teams come to the U-Turn, and #TeamBigBrother (Jessica/Cody) U-Turn #TeamWellStrung (Chris/Trevor) into doing both, prompting the ironic observation of being U-Turned under Dvorak's statue, and #TeamBigBrother will definitely need what time they can get, since they mistake a regular Czech-speaking lecture for the task and immediately switch to the beer (LOL) After making a perfect pour, #TeamIndyCar Alex/Conor manage to sneak a swig of the beer before keg-schlepping (remembers Gus of Gus/Hera trying the same from way back in S5 LOL)
3. #TeamWellStrung kick butt at the lectures and grind it out in apparently just 2 attempts, and even ham it up a little before answering the "round or flat" question HEH! After a clue pick-up at a beer spa (there's a joke about wondering what's making the bubbles in the bath LOL) we have a Roadblock, and the return of the Kafka phones that frustrated the Globetrotters and made Phil wait overnight (we get clips too :-)) This time around, contestants have to find phones with recordings of single words, and memorize those words and assemble them into a Kafka saying... perfect for contestants who happen to be there at the same time to help each other (or try to sabotage each other, like Brittany to Jessica, for taking her gnome in Tangiers) The saying turns out to be "The meaning of life is that it stops", which #TeamExtreme uses to be a bit philosophical about their race experience (hilariously, one contestant mistakes the recording of "life" for "wife" HEH)
4. Pitstop is at a park overlooking the river, and #TeamExtreme easily takes the leg and a trip to Perth, and Phil promises each team that there will be more surprises coming up... while at the other end of the order, despite #TeamWellStrung's best efforts, they still end up getting eliminated :-\ Warning, nothing but double-eps from here on out...
Eps 7-8
1. Next stop is Zimbabwe, where Phil announces that teams will swap partners until further notice, so #TeamBigBrother swap with #TeamExtreme, and #TeamOceanRescue with #TeamIndyCar, leaving just #TeamYale to pair up with #TheFirefighters, resulting in: Cody/Jen, Jessica/Kristi, Alex/Britanny, Conor/Lucas, Evan/Daniel, Henry/Eric. And the swap gets it own hashtag: #PartnerSwap (roll eyes)
2. First task under the swap: Row a boat, and find a canteen bottle holding their next clue... which turns out to be good for rowing champ Brittany, who's also teaching Alex how to row properly :-) Next up is a Detour between finding pieces of evidence of poachers on horseback, and 4wd driving through bogs...
3. Eric/Henry get stuck in the mud, and they spend a really long time on Eric winching out the jeep... while Jessica/Kristi are also stuck on having to put the evidence on a map in the correct position, and we're told that each attempt has more wrong entries (!)
4. Partner swap ends at the mat as soon as the 2nd swapped pair checks in... and Phil gives them a clue sending them back to the capital Harare, and we even get the usual B-roll and Phil patter like this is the start of a new episode... #TheFirefighters keep punning on their ride to the capital to the point where they joke about over using their quota :-)
5. First stop is a double U-Turn at a fabrics shop, and #TeamBigBrother and #TeamYale get U-Turned by #TeamIndycar and #TeamOceanRescue, followed by another Detour: Deliver mail at a uniquely-designed mall, and roll tires 1/2 mile through a busy market before delivering to a marked truck (they're told this is near a hardware shop)... Indycar initially take their tires to the wrong truck after missing the hardware shop turnoff, and only find out when it turns out the driver doesn't actually have their clue LOL.
6. Next stop is at Harare Park for a Route Info task: Get down the Zimbab-way, in which teams are asked to sing in Shona, and as usual, the judging standards start high and are subtly lowered later onwards, so this means that #TeamExtreme are stuck there for a while, to the point that everyone catches up (!)
7. Pitstop is at a Pedestrian Mall, where #TeamOceanRescue win a trip to St. Lucia ("Double honeymoon :-)") while #TeamExtreme take losing in stride ("Now you know our darkest secret :-)")... and #TheFirefighters get eliminated right, but also manage to fire off (heh) one last pun: "We didn't have any rhythm, so now we have the blues", and also manage to joke about not being good jewellers or printers either (huh, no flashback...)
Eps 9-10
1. Four legs to go, but only two weeks to air them... Next stop: Bahrain! After a task at a boat involving carrying wood, I'm picking up the action at a needle in a haystack task that involves matching a pouch of trinkets with trinkets in the bottom of lots of clay vases, and they're pretty detailed on this, needing to match (say) the colour of the hump on the camel. In a nice interlude, Jessica pets a cat, which of course prompts a flashback to the Tangier fish market :-)
2. Because of a missing passport issue (Zev/Justin say hello), #TeamOceanRescue are stuck behind at Dubai (!) and notes that the flight to Bahrain is only 1h15 (and it bemuses me that there's a shot of an Emirates plane, because on the first airing of the episode on my local broadcaster, this segment aired after an ad break with a commercial for Emirates LOL)
3. Next clue has been put in a small clay pot which they need to Hulk smash (Jessica: "Mazel Tov!") to find out they're heading to the Bahrain Endurance Village and a bunch of camels... Bahrain is hot, and Yale are so tired out after the search that it takes 4 attempts just to smash the clay pot LOL!
4. Camel task involves milking a camel (shades of Senegal?), and there's plenty of funny bits with 1) Indycar's camel trying to knee them while Alex is petting it LOL 2) A shot of a burping camel 3) Evan claiming that a camel's noise is similar to Henry in the morning 4) Jessica telling her camel "You're not clean", and 5) despite the task not actually requiring them to drink the milk, Cody drinking a swig of it anyway
5. Pit stop is at a lone tree in the middle of the desert known as the Tree of Life (reminds me of Winx Club :-)) and there's plenty of nice GoPro falcon footage, for the greeter is a falcon trainer :-) Indycar get $7500 each, and they've also won $5000 each earlier, so Phil suggests Conor can move out of Alex's house :-) Falcon craps during Yale's check-in LOL. #TeamBigBrother check in in daytime, which #TeamOceanRescue only arrive at nighttime and get a pretty emotional field-elimination at the woodtask boat, which ends with Brittany adding: "And most important, I still have the ring :-)"
6. We immediately cut to the "next" episode's prologue, in which they're heading to Chiang Mai in Thailand (aka the Rose of the North) to visit Royal Park Ratchapreuk (which I visited when it was still shiny and new way back in 2006 :-)) We also get the usual prologue confessionals, in which we learn that Yale want to win the race to pay for their Master's tuition... and #TeamIndyCar wonder what a
Song Thaew is: "is it like a spaceship?" LOL. It also amuses me a bit that they're immediately shown boarding the Bangkok Airways flight to CNX in BKK (skipping the BAH-BKK part of the trip)... That said, my local broadcaster ended up moving up the weekend rerun where I expected to catch the rest of the episode so that it ended when I was expecting the Thai part of the leg to start, and the rest of the weekend was pre-empted for Chinese New Year specials (!)
Ep 11
1. Hong Kong! From where I started looking in, there's a task involving tying up crabs, where #TeamExtreme are struggling in last, while the rest of the teams are at a Roadblock, smashing up some old monitors and other electronics to look for two halves of a clue while the non-participants have suitcases handcuffed to them (all the men are doing it, plus Kristi for #TeamExtreme) before then throwing paint all over them when done LOL.
2. Next stop, the Lan Kwai Fong district, to look for three signs corresponding to items on previous legs, and rearrange them into the combination of the suitcase (each team gets the same numbers, but arranged differently) The signs they're looking for are: The Washington Square Arch (leg 1), a Moroccan fez (leg 3), and a bull (leg 5). The latter two signs are in the proper red/yellow colours, but the arch sign (other than being confused with a more famous arch in Paris) is a green coloured happy hour advertising sign, so it's likely that at least one team would not pick up on it... like say #TeamIndyCar :-\
3. After unlocking the suitcase with their combos, it reveals two streetsigns that indicate that the Pitstop is a simple mat at the corner of Johnston and Wan Chai, where #TeamYale get first place, and it's also noted that only two teams had previously overcome a Speed Bump to finish first (I remember Jet/Cord being one of them) #TeamExtreme get in 3rd and ensure that they will have podium finishes in every leg, while the exact opposite fate of Yale ends up befalling #TeamIndy, who after starting in 1st in Thailand (as Phil mentions)... get a field elimination in front of this Thai grill (HEH)
Ep 12
1. Final stop: San Francisco, and it looks like they're riding a China Airlines 747 in upper-class there :-) It's a nighttime leg, starting at the statue of the "Say Hey Kid" Willie Mays at AT&T Park, which has been decorated with a celebration of the show's 30 seasons... and yet the teams never go actually inside, as the actual task involves grabbing baseballs from the nearby bay with numbers to form the number of HRs he scored (660) which is on an inscription on the statue... but none of them actually get it from there, and only #TeamExtreme had the foresight to have it Googled for them before going into the boats, while #TeamYale, after getting tons of attempts rejected by the
2. Next stop is a Roadblock involving rope-rappeling up a pylon of the Bay Bridge, then doing a wire-jump inside the structure with lights tied around them (yeah, looks as weird as it sounds) Evan does this task for #TeamYale, and it's tortuous and puts them in last quickly... Next clue is a rebus, which the teams get "Golden Gate Factory" immediately, and bystander assistance reveals it to be a fortune cookie factory (Phil points out the fortune cookie was invented in SFO, not China ;-)) where the task calls for each teammate to each make a full tray of acceptable cookies (about 50 each) While boating to the factory, #TeamBigBrother make the natural mistake of referring to the Bay Bridge as the more famous Golden Gate... which ends up mattering about as much as anything else in this leg :-\
3. The only part of the task that ends up mattering is the last part, taking place on the USS Hornet battleship, in which teams search through the battleship to gather 12 plane part for assembling on the top deck in the latter half of the task, which ends up being a second Roadblock (usual "other teammate does it" rule applies): There are two pictures on each piece representing two different legs, and one combination of six parts will result in a fully-assembled plane having pictures representing each leg... and (as is the wont of reality TV) we get glimpses of some of the legs as contestants bring then up, including wood weighing in Bahrain and scorpions (!) in the CNX leg...
4. After over 2 1/2 hours (!) of swapping, checking, and more swapping, #TeamBigBrother are "cleared for takeoff" to go to the finish mat on the other end of the top deck and claim the prize (!!) #TeamBigBrother are happy to win (many of us not so much :-\) but Cedric Ceballos points out that anyone would be happy to win $1M ;-) #TeamYale is already disappointed to lose to #TeamBigBrother by just a few minutes (the only closer final leg margin... was also in SFO, where S2 came down to a footrace [!]), but just wait till they find out that Henry apparently switched past the correct combination between checks :-\
5. Incidentally, among CBS' reality shows, this is the 2nd time a crossover contestant has won one of them: Natalie (S21, 4th place) won a twin-gimmick season of Survivor (with her teammate Nadya being first boot!)
