The Amazing Race 32: Legs 4 to 7
Nov. 24th, 2020 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsEven with a different kind of race dominating the headlines, there's still time for a little TAR :-)
Episode 4:
1. Still staying in South America for now, this time heading to Asuncion, Paraguay... There's a bit of wheeling and dealing going on at the airport, where Will/James manage to get maps of Paraguay printed out for their fellow sort-of alliance members (that's what they're calling it), and use Gary/DeAngelo (NFL) to distract Kaylynn/Hayley (blondes) so that they don't notice... Meanwhile, Michelle/Victoria (Cajun Asians) aren't sure where Paraguay is, but are sure that Uruguay is in Africa LOL!
2. First stop is some place known as the Recycled Orchestra, for the Roadblock: Who's feeling instrumental? In this case, make a cello using a large discarded can (scrounged from an alloted mini landfill) as the body, to exacting standards, such as have the strings be 28 inches... But first, the blondes get detoured a whole lot, with their cabbie even having to get directions from a shifty-looking house (the underscore makes it feel like a horror movie) The alliance teams have no issues sharing knowledge on how to make the cello... and once they're done, teams deliver it to a classroom of students playing instruments also made from discarded junk (some resembling the original instrument more than others) and listen to them play :-)
3. Next stop is a local market, where there's a Yield in front of a "terere" stand, but we will still have to wait to see it in action, since no one uses their eggtimers :-\ There's a brief stop to make some "terere", a national drink of Paraguay, for refreshment during the rest of the leg, involving smashing up some leaves and boiling in water... (It's actually the ice tea version of the slightly more known yerba mate)
4. Detour between Stack Your Melons and Use Your Melon: Stack watermelons or dance with a bottle on your head... and if that sounds familiar, these were also tasks from the last time TAR came their way in what Phil Keoghan bills as the first ever double Switchback (and the remaining task involved assembling a string instrument as well) NFL (Gary/DeAngelo) and Will/James are the first two to get the info for the Detour, and both take either side... NFL's only issues with stacking the melons initially appear to be accidentally smashing the melons by throwing them into a nearby tree, but as with last time, the biggest problem with the stacking is keeping the pile from collapsing, and NFL's pile keeps doing that so many times, they're doing it well into the evening (!) that even Hung/Chee (who switched over from the other task) overtake them (!!)
5. Over at the bottle dance, Will/James apparently binged the season in question recently, and Will is a dancer, but even he's not so sure about the task, since he compares it to having to learn to walk again... Nevertheless, they only need three attempts to nail the task, and unlike last time, there's plenty enough bottles for everyone to complete the task without issue :-)
6. Pit stop is at Plaza Italia (there are plenty of Italian families in Paraguay apparently) and Will/James claim their 2nd leg in a row, and $5000 each... and there's plenty of footage of teams being surprised at their finishing placement, most notably the Cajun Asians (Michelle/Victoria) jumping from 6th to 2nd thanks to a great performance at the bottle dance :-) Eventually, the last two teams on the course are NFL (still stacking melons) and the blondes (using their melons)... and even though NFL check-in with a nice exit speech prepared, it's needless for two reasons: They're in 7th, and it's an NEL, as Phil Keoghan reveals to the blondes, and that means a Speed Bump next week...
Bonus: ...and speaking of bumping, the next leg below was originally slated to air the same night as this one, but was bumped in the US for extra election coverage (Thankful for that, since double eps make it more of a chore to catch up)
Episode 5
1. Heading to Europe now :-) This week's destination is Paris (ooh la la!), and while you'd probably expect to head into the opening after the take off from Asuncion, here, since it's a self drive, we spend a couple minutes on Will/James struggling with stick... Well, of course there's gonna be a team struggling with stick, and the beards, who have long escaped the airport garage, note there will always be a team struggling with stick :-) It causes major congestion and gets to the point that Leo(/Alana, nerds) races (heh!) over to get into their car and drive it to the side, in order to allow all the other teams to overtake the boyfriends while they figure it out... B-roll representing the 2nd flight's arrival is a now-retired Air France A380 :-)
2. First stop, a chateau in Chantilly for a Roadblock: "Who has an eye for art?" It's one of those costume party Roadblocks, in which a player has to match someone in one of many paintings to one of many costumed guests, and the catch is that there are only 9 matching guests (!) Hilarity ensues when Leo is talking to the camera that he's expecting Will/James to be a decent amount behind... and while he's doing that, they show up LOL! Meanwhile, the blondes are struggling to get out of town, but they won't be the only ones with navigational problems this week...
3. Next stop is a bakery within walking distance of the chateau to whip up some Creme de Chantilly and put it on pies :-) Riley/Maddison (beards) get their chef to show them his muscles, because whipping it takes a lot of arm strength :-) They also quip about throwing the pies at someone's face... and when they head off to deliver the pies in a nearby tent, they get assaulted by a ton of creme pies being thrown at them :-D :-D Beards tell Will/James and Leo/Alana about the creme pie assault, prompting the comment "Thank God for alliances" :-)
4. Back to Paris for a Yield... and another Roadblock: "Who's ready to step right up?" It's a carnival-themed roadblock: Win three games, get the next clue :-) Those three games are throwing a ball into a hole (Leo used to play baseball, and I'm presuming not as pitcher, as one of his first throw misses even the whole target with the hole in it LOL), some sort of skeeball derby thing, and hit cans with balls :-) Back at the chateau, we've got a confessional in which Gary reveals that he loves art, prompting DeAngelo to comment that "You don't strike me as a renaissance man" LOL. Aparna takes 15 attempts to get the job done, but are still at least ahead of the blondes... speaking of whom, they finally arrive at the chateau for their Speed Bump: Cleaning a pair of saddles, with a lady and her horse waiting to judge and the give the clue...
5. Back at the carnival, Hung/Chee manage to overtake Leo/Alana thanks to a first-try win by Chee on the skeeball derby... Despite his lack of experience with these games, Chee attributes his success to playing tennis and Hung backs him up further by saying he's got good hand-eye coordination, while Hung/Chee's success prompts Alana to quip that they're made of magic and fairy dust (LOL) Meanwhile, DeAngelo calls himself Chef Homeboy-Ardee for the cream-whipping task (LOLx2)
6. Pont Des Arts, and the beards win the leg and a trip to Vietnam :-) while Phil Keoghan quips to Will/James that the police department wants to revoke their licenses for not being able to drive stick (and they take it in stride LOL!) Go figure that the Yield still goes unused :-\ Between the creme whip and the carnival, the Cajun Asians get lost for 6 1/2 hours (!) trying to get to the next position (and we even see in a map that they manage to drive all the way to the Gare du Lyon train station)... to the point that the blondes actually beat them to the carnival, knock out the task, and are shocked to hear from Phil that they're not in last (!) So that leaves the Cajun Asians to be eliminated, with a confessional about how close they've grown during the race :-|
Episode 6
1. First part of a double bill takes the teams to Berlin (by train) for a mostly-night leg, starting at a clue pick up at the "East Side Gallery", part of the Berlin Wall... During the ride, the blondes (last to get a cab) talk about having to run get a cab, and the cabbie responds "Why don't you run faster? You don't look fat" :-D Clue pickup comes along with a vehicle: The "iconic" Trabant, which besides the usual problems with stick, also has issues with size (which Hung/Chee don't have problems with... hey, they said it themselves ;-)) There's a scene of the beards talking about how they expect the blondes to have problems... sure enough, it cuts to them flummoxed at how to drive LOL.
2. First stop is Teledisko, billed as the world's smallest disco, which is more like a photobooth with disco trappings (and potentially seizure-inducing strobe lights!) in which every team gets to dance to a song, and then get the next clue along with photos of their dancing... which leads them to a hotel, and Yield (again unused) before the Roadblock: Who wants to feel the wind in their hair? And the first thing I'm reminded of is this (liked the original CG movie, but abandoned the spin-off series pretty early on) and the task even involves climbing a tower ;-) Meanwhile, Will/James have to abandon their Trabant (yep, stick troubles for them again, though they were a bit self-deprecative about damaging the car beyond repair when they started), and run to the hotel on foot... while the blondes just push their car to the hotel :-D
3. Task involves running up 15 flights of stairs, then rope climbing down the building face first... while noticing lit up letters on an adjacent roof and unscrambling the word, which flummoxes DeAngelo and Maddison, who apparently haven't noticed the letters the first go... (Maddison compares the climbing to Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible; not the first time someone climbing down a building in a TAR task has done that) Hung essentially decides to help her fellow alliance by providing the other two with the answer (eyeroll) which she is the first to figure out by (get this) looking at the letters while she's being set up for the climb instead of during... Not surprisingly, the answer is "Sauerkraut" (and there's a genre-savvy moment where Aparna and Leo, ahead of only the blondes, figure it out over a chat, with part of their deduction process being "It's got something to do with Germany")
4. Next stop is a Detour between singing a German song (since it's about being a chicken, the singing includes chicken clucking and contestants sing wearing fancy suits with chicken leg outfits), or doing beer yoga (drinking beer and doing yoga poses, and teaching them to a class)... but first, looks like cracks are beginning to appear in the alliance, since NFL ends up getting a cab quite some time ahead of Hung/Chee... But the main drama revolves around the blondes having to do the climb thrice, and then they only get the word they need by asking some spa lady in a nearby building (!)
5. Pitstop on the streets of Berlin, where Phil Keoghan is accompanied by a dude with a rock-n-roll mohawk, and where NFL claim the win and $7500 each, and they sure owe a lot to Hung/Chee, who end up finishing 3rd behind the beards, while the blondes end up finishing last... for the second straight non-elim (!!)
Episode 7
1. It's a trip to the glorious nation of Kazakhstan (with a brief cameo from the now-defunct Tegel Airport), but first, we open with the teams shocked to see the blondes survive another NEL... So anyways, they head to a movie studio for both the Detour and the Speed Bump, with the clues being delivered in a bag by a guy on horseback... on fire (!) The Speed Bump clue is in a separate bag with their photos on it, and I wonder if they were allowed to keep it :-)
2. The Blondes' Speed Bump is apparently to glue a fake beard to each other's face (one has to wonder what the beards would have needed to do, add an extension?) before doing the Detour, which involves either performing a choreographed fight scene (Knock Down Guy, with limited spots available) and remembering details from a war scene being filmed (Great Khan's Spy), and this is where Leo/Alana drop down the order, as they struggle to count the spears used in the fight in the latter detour, since they're counting the ones attached to flags, and there's an explanatory confessional from the blondes pointing out they didn't count the flag-spears... resulting in them getting ahead of Leo/Alana (!)
3. Next up is a ride to a nomad village for a yurt decorating task, with the caption "There's no place like yurt" ... Everyone gets a camel carrying furnishings for a yurt (mostly mats) to set up to match an example, and the main trick to setting it up is to pick up a sheep skull from a couple ladies boiling sheep heads outside the set up area (and of course someone will be caught saying "We need to get a head")... All this is preceded with a Yield, and this time, we finally get to see it in action with Will/James egging the Blondes into yielding Leo/Alana by 20 minutes, with the boyfriends quipping to themselves "This isn't the Amazing Best Friends Race" LOL.
4. After the nomad adjudicator gives his thumbs-up to properly set up yurts as if to say "Very Nice!" (...and that's two more Borat references in this recap than the actual episode gives us) contestants head to a meat market for a clue pickup, leading to the pitstop at First Presidential Place (as Phil Keoghan reveals, it is believed the world's first apple tree was born here in Almaty, and the city name means "Place full of apples") Will/James take the leg and a trip to Vegas... and also get an ominous warning of the next leg being a double-length "megaleg" (Ooh! and they're being upfront about it too) Hung/Chee pick up their clue in 3rd ahead of NFL, and the editors rather conspicuously drop in a sound byte of Chee saying "Trying to beat Gary and DeAngelo" LOL, which they have reason to be concerned about, since despite the events of the last leg, Chee finds herself telling NFL about the sheep skull... Thankfully, at least this time they keep their advantage over NFL :-) The blondes have one of the merchants appreciate their beards, before picking up the clue and finishing in 5th (having overtaken Eswar/Aparna on the yurt), which means Leo/Alana get the boot in a pretty emotional exit :-\
Episode 4:
1. Still staying in South America for now, this time heading to Asuncion, Paraguay... There's a bit of wheeling and dealing going on at the airport, where Will/James manage to get maps of Paraguay printed out for their fellow sort-of alliance members (that's what they're calling it), and use Gary/DeAngelo (NFL) to distract Kaylynn/Hayley (blondes) so that they don't notice... Meanwhile, Michelle/Victoria (Cajun Asians) aren't sure where Paraguay is, but are sure that Uruguay is in Africa LOL!
2. First stop is some place known as the Recycled Orchestra, for the Roadblock: Who's feeling instrumental? In this case, make a cello using a large discarded can (scrounged from an alloted mini landfill) as the body, to exacting standards, such as have the strings be 28 inches... But first, the blondes get detoured a whole lot, with their cabbie even having to get directions from a shifty-looking house (the underscore makes it feel like a horror movie) The alliance teams have no issues sharing knowledge on how to make the cello... and once they're done, teams deliver it to a classroom of students playing instruments also made from discarded junk (some resembling the original instrument more than others) and listen to them play :-)
3. Next stop is a local market, where there's a Yield in front of a "terere" stand, but we will still have to wait to see it in action, since no one uses their eggtimers :-\ There's a brief stop to make some "terere", a national drink of Paraguay, for refreshment during the rest of the leg, involving smashing up some leaves and boiling in water... (It's actually the ice tea version of the slightly more known yerba mate)
4. Detour between Stack Your Melons and Use Your Melon: Stack watermelons or dance with a bottle on your head... and if that sounds familiar, these were also tasks from the last time TAR came their way in what Phil Keoghan bills as the first ever double Switchback (and the remaining task involved assembling a string instrument as well) NFL (Gary/DeAngelo) and Will/James are the first two to get the info for the Detour, and both take either side... NFL's only issues with stacking the melons initially appear to be accidentally smashing the melons by throwing them into a nearby tree, but as with last time, the biggest problem with the stacking is keeping the pile from collapsing, and NFL's pile keeps doing that so many times, they're doing it well into the evening (!) that even Hung/Chee (who switched over from the other task) overtake them (!!)
5. Over at the bottle dance, Will/James apparently binged the season in question recently, and Will is a dancer, but even he's not so sure about the task, since he compares it to having to learn to walk again... Nevertheless, they only need three attempts to nail the task, and unlike last time, there's plenty enough bottles for everyone to complete the task without issue :-)
6. Pit stop is at Plaza Italia (there are plenty of Italian families in Paraguay apparently) and Will/James claim their 2nd leg in a row, and $5000 each... and there's plenty of footage of teams being surprised at their finishing placement, most notably the Cajun Asians (Michelle/Victoria) jumping from 6th to 2nd thanks to a great performance at the bottle dance :-) Eventually, the last two teams on the course are NFL (still stacking melons) and the blondes (using their melons)... and even though NFL check-in with a nice exit speech prepared, it's needless for two reasons: They're in 7th, and it's an NEL, as Phil Keoghan reveals to the blondes, and that means a Speed Bump next week...
Bonus: ...and speaking of bumping, the next leg below was originally slated to air the same night as this one, but was bumped in the US for extra election coverage (Thankful for that, since double eps make it more of a chore to catch up)
Episode 5
1. Heading to Europe now :-) This week's destination is Paris (ooh la la!), and while you'd probably expect to head into the opening after the take off from Asuncion, here, since it's a self drive, we spend a couple minutes on Will/James struggling with stick... Well, of course there's gonna be a team struggling with stick, and the beards, who have long escaped the airport garage, note there will always be a team struggling with stick :-) It causes major congestion and gets to the point that Leo(/Alana, nerds) races (heh!) over to get into their car and drive it to the side, in order to allow all the other teams to overtake the boyfriends while they figure it out... B-roll representing the 2nd flight's arrival is a now-retired Air France A380 :-)
2. First stop, a chateau in Chantilly for a Roadblock: "Who has an eye for art?" It's one of those costume party Roadblocks, in which a player has to match someone in one of many paintings to one of many costumed guests, and the catch is that there are only 9 matching guests (!) Hilarity ensues when Leo is talking to the camera that he's expecting Will/James to be a decent amount behind... and while he's doing that, they show up LOL! Meanwhile, the blondes are struggling to get out of town, but they won't be the only ones with navigational problems this week...
3. Next stop is a bakery within walking distance of the chateau to whip up some Creme de Chantilly and put it on pies :-) Riley/Maddison (beards) get their chef to show them his muscles, because whipping it takes a lot of arm strength :-) They also quip about throwing the pies at someone's face... and when they head off to deliver the pies in a nearby tent, they get assaulted by a ton of creme pies being thrown at them :-D :-D Beards tell Will/James and Leo/Alana about the creme pie assault, prompting the comment "Thank God for alliances" :-)
4. Back to Paris for a Yield... and another Roadblock: "Who's ready to step right up?" It's a carnival-themed roadblock: Win three games, get the next clue :-) Those three games are throwing a ball into a hole (Leo used to play baseball, and I'm presuming not as pitcher, as one of his first throw misses even the whole target with the hole in it LOL), some sort of skeeball derby thing, and hit cans with balls :-) Back at the chateau, we've got a confessional in which Gary reveals that he loves art, prompting DeAngelo to comment that "You don't strike me as a renaissance man" LOL. Aparna takes 15 attempts to get the job done, but are still at least ahead of the blondes... speaking of whom, they finally arrive at the chateau for their Speed Bump: Cleaning a pair of saddles, with a lady and her horse waiting to judge and the give the clue...
5. Back at the carnival, Hung/Chee manage to overtake Leo/Alana thanks to a first-try win by Chee on the skeeball derby... Despite his lack of experience with these games, Chee attributes his success to playing tennis and Hung backs him up further by saying he's got good hand-eye coordination, while Hung/Chee's success prompts Alana to quip that they're made of magic and fairy dust (LOL) Meanwhile, DeAngelo calls himself Chef Homeboy-Ardee for the cream-whipping task (LOLx2)
6. Pont Des Arts, and the beards win the leg and a trip to Vietnam :-) while Phil Keoghan quips to Will/James that the police department wants to revoke their licenses for not being able to drive stick (and they take it in stride LOL!) Go figure that the Yield still goes unused :-\ Between the creme whip and the carnival, the Cajun Asians get lost for 6 1/2 hours (!) trying to get to the next position (and we even see in a map that they manage to drive all the way to the Gare du Lyon train station)... to the point that the blondes actually beat them to the carnival, knock out the task, and are shocked to hear from Phil that they're not in last (!) So that leaves the Cajun Asians to be eliminated, with a confessional about how close they've grown during the race :-|
Episode 6
1. First part of a double bill takes the teams to Berlin (by train) for a mostly-night leg, starting at a clue pick up at the "East Side Gallery", part of the Berlin Wall... During the ride, the blondes (last to get a cab) talk about having to run get a cab, and the cabbie responds "Why don't you run faster? You don't look fat" :-D Clue pickup comes along with a vehicle: The "iconic" Trabant, which besides the usual problems with stick, also has issues with size (which Hung/Chee don't have problems with... hey, they said it themselves ;-)) There's a scene of the beards talking about how they expect the blondes to have problems... sure enough, it cuts to them flummoxed at how to drive LOL.
2. First stop is Teledisko, billed as the world's smallest disco, which is more like a photobooth with disco trappings (and potentially seizure-inducing strobe lights!) in which every team gets to dance to a song, and then get the next clue along with photos of their dancing... which leads them to a hotel, and Yield (again unused) before the Roadblock: Who wants to feel the wind in their hair? And the first thing I'm reminded of is this (liked the original CG movie, but abandoned the spin-off series pretty early on) and the task even involves climbing a tower ;-) Meanwhile, Will/James have to abandon their Trabant (yep, stick troubles for them again, though they were a bit self-deprecative about damaging the car beyond repair when they started), and run to the hotel on foot... while the blondes just push their car to the hotel :-D
3. Task involves running up 15 flights of stairs, then rope climbing down the building face first... while noticing lit up letters on an adjacent roof and unscrambling the word, which flummoxes DeAngelo and Maddison, who apparently haven't noticed the letters the first go... (Maddison compares the climbing to Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible; not the first time someone climbing down a building in a TAR task has done that) Hung essentially decides to help her fellow alliance by providing the other two with the answer (eyeroll) which she is the first to figure out by (get this) looking at the letters while she's being set up for the climb instead of during... Not surprisingly, the answer is "Sauerkraut" (and there's a genre-savvy moment where Aparna and Leo, ahead of only the blondes, figure it out over a chat, with part of their deduction process being "It's got something to do with Germany")
4. Next stop is a Detour between singing a German song (since it's about being a chicken, the singing includes chicken clucking and contestants sing wearing fancy suits with chicken leg outfits), or doing beer yoga (drinking beer and doing yoga poses, and teaching them to a class)... but first, looks like cracks are beginning to appear in the alliance, since NFL ends up getting a cab quite some time ahead of Hung/Chee... But the main drama revolves around the blondes having to do the climb thrice, and then they only get the word they need by asking some spa lady in a nearby building (!)
5. Pitstop on the streets of Berlin, where Phil Keoghan is accompanied by a dude with a rock-n-roll mohawk, and where NFL claim the win and $7500 each, and they sure owe a lot to Hung/Chee, who end up finishing 3rd behind the beards, while the blondes end up finishing last... for the second straight non-elim (!!)
Episode 7
1. It's a trip to the glorious nation of Kazakhstan (with a brief cameo from the now-defunct Tegel Airport), but first, we open with the teams shocked to see the blondes survive another NEL... So anyways, they head to a movie studio for both the Detour and the Speed Bump, with the clues being delivered in a bag by a guy on horseback... on fire (!) The Speed Bump clue is in a separate bag with their photos on it, and I wonder if they were allowed to keep it :-)
2. The Blondes' Speed Bump is apparently to glue a fake beard to each other's face (one has to wonder what the beards would have needed to do, add an extension?) before doing the Detour, which involves either performing a choreographed fight scene (Knock Down Guy, with limited spots available) and remembering details from a war scene being filmed (Great Khan's Spy), and this is where Leo/Alana drop down the order, as they struggle to count the spears used in the fight in the latter detour, since they're counting the ones attached to flags, and there's an explanatory confessional from the blondes pointing out they didn't count the flag-spears... resulting in them getting ahead of Leo/Alana (!)
3. Next up is a ride to a nomad village for a yurt decorating task, with the caption "There's no place like yurt" ... Everyone gets a camel carrying furnishings for a yurt (mostly mats) to set up to match an example, and the main trick to setting it up is to pick up a sheep skull from a couple ladies boiling sheep heads outside the set up area (and of course someone will be caught saying "We need to get a head")... All this is preceded with a Yield, and this time, we finally get to see it in action with Will/James egging the Blondes into yielding Leo/Alana by 20 minutes, with the boyfriends quipping to themselves "This isn't the Amazing Best Friends Race" LOL.
4. After the nomad adjudicator gives his thumbs-up to properly set up yurts as if to say "Very Nice!" (...and that's two more Borat references in this recap than the actual episode gives us) contestants head to a meat market for a clue pickup, leading to the pitstop at First Presidential Place (as Phil Keoghan reveals, it is believed the world's first apple tree was born here in Almaty, and the city name means "Place full of apples") Will/James take the leg and a trip to Vegas... and also get an ominous warning of the next leg being a double-length "megaleg" (Ooh! and they're being upfront about it too) Hung/Chee pick up their clue in 3rd ahead of NFL, and the editors rather conspicuously drop in a sound byte of Chee saying "Trying to beat Gary and DeAngelo" LOL, which they have reason to be concerned about, since despite the events of the last leg, Chee finds herself telling NFL about the sheep skull... Thankfully, at least this time they keep their advantage over NFL :-) The blondes have one of the merchants appreciate their beards, before picking up the clue and finishing in 5th (having overtaken Eswar/Aparna on the yurt), which means Leo/Alana get the boot in a pretty emotional exit :-\
