The Amazing Race 33: Legs 1 to 3
Jan. 19th, 2022 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsAfter sitting out all of 2021 for obvious reasons, TAR is back for a 33rd season, filmed in two parts for those same reasons...
Episode 1
- Our local broadcaster spent a week promoting the two-hour premiere, mostly with a promo featuring footage from 32, but also with a promo in the last few days featuring new season footage saying "The longest pit stop is over" (I'd guess in reference to the break between seasons, more than the pause in racing), but on the day of, I tuned in at the promoted time to see they suddenly replaced the airing with a Dennis Quaid film, pushed TAR back a few hours and had to inform viewers of the change via an on-screen ticker :-\ (And this same network also had promos referring to the star of one of their new shows as "Jason Mamoa" :-\) But anyways...
- So we're starting in a similar fashion to S28, the social media season, where teams get a video message from Phil Keoghan telling them to head to London from their nearest airport, where presumably they'll be held up in a docking area on the airport grounds before being released to head to Trafalgar Square to look for red phone booths that have come to life (Phil: "Yes, you heard that right") In a nice bemusing touch, Kim/Penn (middle aged parents) "sing" the theme song, and randomly interpret the vocalization in the theme as "Oatmeal" (Pinkie Pie: "Are you crazy?")... before heading into the actual theme song :-D (Incidentally, we're getting new-style on-screen graphics for everything, though not really a fan of discarding the old yellow rectangle graphic with the two-sided arrow for Detours :-\)
- This season has also adopted the same format for team introductions from last season, which showing all the teams making their way to their nearest airports allows for extra time to get to know the teams without interfering with actual racing (with some of them meeting at the major hubs with the flight to LHR) Other teams of note are Ryan/Dusty (Ryan was wrongly convicted for 10 years; he later has a confessional about losing 10 years of his life confined to a cage, something that probably hits harder now for obvious reasons), Anthony/Spencer (two of the guys who attacked a gunman on a train to Paris and had their story immortalized in Clint Eastwood's "15:17 to Paris"; there's a confessional later quipping they didn't get much money from that film, despite actually appearing in it as themselves), Arun/Natalia (possibly S12's Ron/Christina 2.0, except with an Indian dad instead of Chinese; who also have a nice amusing moment with Arun explicitly referring to the 33rd season in the cab), Akbar/Sheri (educators who keep the Lights On at their New Jersey high school at night to prevent teen violence... and Akbar is rocking a James Harden beard ;-)) and Lulu/Lala (Spanish-speaking radio personality twins... nothing special, their name reminds me of one of our popular bands here :-))
- Each guy in a phone booth costume has only a few clues, so some have to run around looking for more than one phone booth guy to get a clue heading to Buckingham Palace (because, hey, why not? ;-)) for a clue pickup for a Detour, between Artist's Den (involves pasting up some paper on a wall, which turns out to be a puzzle of a flag art) and Digiben (involves finding three different "Bens" in London, the first of which is [of course] Big Ben, or rather a "Bobby" near the iconic clock tower, which would have been looking a little less iconic at the time with the scaffolding on it)
- With the Digiben detour, at least one team (married couple Connie/Sam) isn't even sure that "Bobby" was referring to a person and just randomly stumbles across a guy dressed as an old-fashioned cop and are they're like "Told you it was a person" ;-) They get a ticket with info pointing to the next location, a smaller clock tower known as Little Ben, where a promoter is waiting with info for the last location (thankfully, Ali G's not involved here ;-)) Digiben turns out to be a DJ in the Picadilly Metro Station, and assuming the big digital clock he's wearing as a necklace is accurate, it's well past 11pm as the first teams get their clues (while his B-roll was shot at just after 9pm ;-))
- At Artist's Den, Penn compares himself to the "Beautiful Mind" version of John Nash while putting together the puzzle... Meanwhile, Buffalo cops Michael/Moe just randomly paste up the paper and don't understand what they're doing wrong, and even those who do understand it's a puzzle have to paste the pieces without gaps to pass muster with the judge...
- After stopping at a fish and chips joint (because, hey, why not? ;-)) to pick up a clue from a helmet-wearing Faux-ris Johnson (just before the real one became one of the many prominent faces of the COVID situation; but here Raquel/Cayla [flight attendants, who've also just been to London a few weeks ago] haven't heard of him and Akbar/Sheri have to be told he's blonde and fat) and Faux Elizabeth (to which my Mom noted that if anyone tried to pull a similar stunt in our country, they'd be jailed), pitstop is at the British Natural History Museum, where after a bunch of cab-racing, Ant/Spen narrowly edge Ryan/Dusty and Raquel/Cayla to get a trip to the Turks and Caicos (Ryan brags that the race feels like freedom :-)), while Phil hopes that Kim/Penn will kick the younger team's butts as middle-aged representation...
- The last two teams at the art detour are Lulu/Lala and Michael/Moe, the latter of whom find themselves having to paste replacement pieces over their ripped original pieces to complete the task, but they're still ahead of LLLL until their cabbie drops them one street in front of fish and chips, and next thing you know, LLLL are safe, while bringing up the rear are Michael/Moe, who manage to exit with a brief song and not-dance (apparently singing's their thing :-))
Episode 2
- Straight on to a daytime leg beginning at the "Mail Rail", where the UK postal service uses a tiny underground railroad to deliver mail all around London for a Roadblock called "Who still gets mail?" Meanwhile, it bemuses me a little to note a double decker ad for Sonic the Hedgehog, released just before the pandemic reared its ugly head, while everyone's getting a cab
- Roadblock is a dumbed-down "needle in a haystack" task, in which teams search through a cart of mail to find the correct envelope... We say dumbed-down, because it's completely possible to find it in 15 seconds without needing much luck as demonstrated by Raquel: Just ignore the boxes and dig all the way to the bottom :-) The correct envelope is a plain brown envelope emblazoned with the show's wordmark... and this is where two of the other teams (Kim/Penn and Caro/Ray [couple from Love Island, another one of those reality shows we don't get here, and now ex-couple since the pandemic]) who found their envelope at the same time find themselves thinking that it couldn't possibly be that easy, which prompts them to do some sorting of the dummy envelopes, tearing open empty boxes and looking at the addresses and stamps just to be sure :-\ (and the mail train they ride to and from the task only comes at given intervals)
- Detour between Bullseye Mate (pub darts, because why not?) and Decorate (decorate cakes) Let's focus more on Decorate since a lot of the teams have chosen this one: Find the cakes decorated with two flags of EU member nations, and decorate two cakes in the same style (one of the cakes on offer is of Thailand :-)) To be fair, everyone at least chooses two European nations on their first go, but a few choose the UK (Raquel/Cayla note that they hadn't been aware that Brexit already took effect; as of filming it would have been just a few weeks) and some others choose Norway, like Ant/Spen because it was on their jacket (!) (thankfully, none of the teams submit UK+Norway first go)
- During the cake task and the cab ride afterwards, LLLL spend a good amount of screentime on talking about one of them breaking up with her boyfriend :-\ Pitstop is at a double decker bus (because, once again, why not?) parked outside a metro station, where Ryan/Dusty are first to get a quick cup of tea with Phil Keoghan... and as it turns out, the next clue, as revealed when LLLL finish last :-)
Episode 3
- The last leg to be completed before COVID put the race on pause for over a year heads off to Glasgow via overnight train, before having the teams do self-drive with manual transmission (turns out Ray actually practiced stick for a few weeks before coming on the race :-)) to a church-looking building called Oran Mor... cue inevitable montage of teams getting lost and/or struggling with the stick :-) And Caro/Ray spend a good amount of time getting into some conflict during the drive (perhaps foreshadowing their subsequent real-life breakup?)
- Roadblock at Oran Mor is "Who thinks they have this one in the bag?" Involves putting together bagpipes and blowing a single note for the length of a traditional song (hey, doesn't that last part sound familiar?) The real trouble is assembling the pipe according to the guide (and Spen claims that he wasn't taught how to do this in the army LOL) After Nat finishes the Detour, Nat decides to help some of the stragglers for a couple minutes, which Dad doesn't really approve of; we'll see how that pans out for them...
- Detour is between Kilt and Rebuilt: Latter involves "cooperage", in this case repairing a whiskey barrel, and former involves performing the classic hit "Donald, Where's Your Trousers?" (and those choosing this task get to wear their kilt with them all the way to the pitstop :-)) Kim/Penn do weird videos on YouTube, so not surprisingly, they do the song :-) but the next several teams are going with pounding the barrels (even the flight attendants, who boast about it... there's only one other all-girl team, so that's not much of a boast :-\), while the next team to try the song is LLLL... and then Arun/Nat decide to switch over to singing as well, even though Arun insists he won't be able to remember the song (also joining in on the Kilt action are Taylor/Isaiah ["Internet personalities", and also "married"] and Akbar/Sheri)
- Pitstop is the University of Glasgow Cloisters (with a strongman greeter carrying a 100-lb boulder), where a kilted Kim/Penn arrive in first and get a trip to Cape Cod, while at the Kilt Detour, it's a race between Akbar/Sheri and the struggling Arun/Nat to avoid elimination, finishing the task in that order, and both find themselves asking for directions a lot, until Akbar/Sheri manage to check in before Arun/Nat, who were really expecting to do better given their top-3 finish last week (S21's Amy/Daniel say hello... and seriously, we really need an early-boots edition, especially in light of this next paragraph)
- Normally the show would end after Arun/Nat's final confessional, in which he mentions Nat's then-upcoming wedding, which we'll assume was pushed back a bit, but in a special epilogue, we get to see the teams return to the Cloisters on February 28th, 2020 (a few weeks before most of us had an idea about how bad things were about to get; I myself only started with my current work-from-home situation mid-March), to have Phil Keoghan address them and (in a rare front-and-centre appearance) the filming crew about suspending the race due to the coronavirus situation going on, and Phil promises that "we will pick this race back up again and hopefully have all of you starting the race again"... 19 months later (around this past fall), the race resumes not from Glasgow, but St. Gallen in Switzerland... and although it had been reported that there were 7 teams at the restart, turns out it wasn't a simple matter of two teams of the remaining 9 dropping out, as four teams have dropped out: Ant/Spen, Taylor/Isaiah, Connie/Sam (pregnancy), and Caro/Ray (breakup), and on-screen it remains to be seen what's going on here... But according to RealityBlurred, it appears that Arun/Nat and Michael/Moe are coming back; in other words, still a chance for some more Indian-style Real Truth Flavor (tm Ron/Christina), with a side of singing Buffalo cops :-)
- In other news, last season's winners Will/James got married and went on a cruise to the Galapagos Islands... and gave their travel tips in an article on travel site The Points Guy (that article was written by a freelancer; ironically, one of their own in-house writers had to cancel her trip to take this same cruise due to problems in getting a PCR test in San Francisco)
Episode 1
- Our local broadcaster spent a week promoting the two-hour premiere, mostly with a promo featuring footage from 32, but also with a promo in the last few days featuring new season footage saying "The longest pit stop is over" (I'd guess in reference to the break between seasons, more than the pause in racing), but on the day of, I tuned in at the promoted time to see they suddenly replaced the airing with a Dennis Quaid film, pushed TAR back a few hours and had to inform viewers of the change via an on-screen ticker :-\ (And this same network also had promos referring to the star of one of their new shows as "Jason Mamoa" :-\) But anyways...
- So we're starting in a similar fashion to S28, the social media season, where teams get a video message from Phil Keoghan telling them to head to London from their nearest airport, where presumably they'll be held up in a docking area on the airport grounds before being released to head to Trafalgar Square to look for red phone booths that have come to life (Phil: "Yes, you heard that right") In a nice bemusing touch, Kim/Penn (middle aged parents) "sing" the theme song, and randomly interpret the vocalization in the theme as "Oatmeal" (Pinkie Pie: "Are you crazy?")... before heading into the actual theme song :-D (Incidentally, we're getting new-style on-screen graphics for everything, though not really a fan of discarding the old yellow rectangle graphic with the two-sided arrow for Detours :-\)
- This season has also adopted the same format for team introductions from last season, which showing all the teams making their way to their nearest airports allows for extra time to get to know the teams without interfering with actual racing (with some of them meeting at the major hubs with the flight to LHR) Other teams of note are Ryan/Dusty (Ryan was wrongly convicted for 10 years; he later has a confessional about losing 10 years of his life confined to a cage, something that probably hits harder now for obvious reasons), Anthony/Spencer (two of the guys who attacked a gunman on a train to Paris and had their story immortalized in Clint Eastwood's "15:17 to Paris"; there's a confessional later quipping they didn't get much money from that film, despite actually appearing in it as themselves), Arun/Natalia (possibly S12's Ron/Christina 2.0, except with an Indian dad instead of Chinese; who also have a nice amusing moment with Arun explicitly referring to the 33rd season in the cab), Akbar/Sheri (educators who keep the Lights On at their New Jersey high school at night to prevent teen violence... and Akbar is rocking a James Harden beard ;-)) and Lulu/Lala (Spanish-speaking radio personality twins... nothing special, their name reminds me of one of our popular bands here :-))
- Each guy in a phone booth costume has only a few clues, so some have to run around looking for more than one phone booth guy to get a clue heading to Buckingham Palace (because, hey, why not? ;-)) for a clue pickup for a Detour, between Artist's Den (involves pasting up some paper on a wall, which turns out to be a puzzle of a flag art) and Digiben (involves finding three different "Bens" in London, the first of which is [of course] Big Ben, or rather a "Bobby" near the iconic clock tower, which would have been looking a little less iconic at the time with the scaffolding on it)
- With the Digiben detour, at least one team (married couple Connie/Sam) isn't even sure that "Bobby" was referring to a person and just randomly stumbles across a guy dressed as an old-fashioned cop and are they're like "Told you it was a person" ;-) They get a ticket with info pointing to the next location, a smaller clock tower known as Little Ben, where a promoter is waiting with info for the last location (thankfully, Ali G's not involved here ;-)) Digiben turns out to be a DJ in the Picadilly Metro Station, and assuming the big digital clock he's wearing as a necklace is accurate, it's well past 11pm as the first teams get their clues (while his B-roll was shot at just after 9pm ;-))
- At Artist's Den, Penn compares himself to the "Beautiful Mind" version of John Nash while putting together the puzzle... Meanwhile, Buffalo cops Michael/Moe just randomly paste up the paper and don't understand what they're doing wrong, and even those who do understand it's a puzzle have to paste the pieces without gaps to pass muster with the judge...
- After stopping at a fish and chips joint (because, hey, why not? ;-)) to pick up a clue from a helmet-wearing Faux-ris Johnson (just before the real one became one of the many prominent faces of the COVID situation; but here Raquel/Cayla [flight attendants, who've also just been to London a few weeks ago] haven't heard of him and Akbar/Sheri have to be told he's blonde and fat) and Faux Elizabeth (to which my Mom noted that if anyone tried to pull a similar stunt in our country, they'd be jailed), pitstop is at the British Natural History Museum, where after a bunch of cab-racing, Ant/Spen narrowly edge Ryan/Dusty and Raquel/Cayla to get a trip to the Turks and Caicos (Ryan brags that the race feels like freedom :-)), while Phil hopes that Kim/Penn will kick the younger team's butts as middle-aged representation...
- The last two teams at the art detour are Lulu/Lala and Michael/Moe, the latter of whom find themselves having to paste replacement pieces over their ripped original pieces to complete the task, but they're still ahead of LLLL until their cabbie drops them one street in front of fish and chips, and next thing you know, LLLL are safe, while bringing up the rear are Michael/Moe, who manage to exit with a brief song and not-dance (apparently singing's their thing :-))
Episode 2
- Straight on to a daytime leg beginning at the "Mail Rail", where the UK postal service uses a tiny underground railroad to deliver mail all around London for a Roadblock called "Who still gets mail?" Meanwhile, it bemuses me a little to note a double decker ad for Sonic the Hedgehog, released just before the pandemic reared its ugly head, while everyone's getting a cab
- Roadblock is a dumbed-down "needle in a haystack" task, in which teams search through a cart of mail to find the correct envelope... We say dumbed-down, because it's completely possible to find it in 15 seconds without needing much luck as demonstrated by Raquel: Just ignore the boxes and dig all the way to the bottom :-) The correct envelope is a plain brown envelope emblazoned with the show's wordmark... and this is where two of the other teams (Kim/Penn and Caro/Ray [couple from Love Island, another one of those reality shows we don't get here, and now ex-couple since the pandemic]) who found their envelope at the same time find themselves thinking that it couldn't possibly be that easy, which prompts them to do some sorting of the dummy envelopes, tearing open empty boxes and looking at the addresses and stamps just to be sure :-\ (and the mail train they ride to and from the task only comes at given intervals)
- Detour between Bullseye Mate (pub darts, because why not?) and Decorate (decorate cakes) Let's focus more on Decorate since a lot of the teams have chosen this one: Find the cakes decorated with two flags of EU member nations, and decorate two cakes in the same style (one of the cakes on offer is of Thailand :-)) To be fair, everyone at least chooses two European nations on their first go, but a few choose the UK (Raquel/Cayla note that they hadn't been aware that Brexit already took effect; as of filming it would have been just a few weeks) and some others choose Norway, like Ant/Spen because it was on their jacket (!) (thankfully, none of the teams submit UK+Norway first go)
- During the cake task and the cab ride afterwards, LLLL spend a good amount of screentime on talking about one of them breaking up with her boyfriend :-\ Pitstop is at a double decker bus (because, once again, why not?) parked outside a metro station, where Ryan/Dusty are first to get a quick cup of tea with Phil Keoghan... and as it turns out, the next clue, as revealed when LLLL finish last :-)
Episode 3
- The last leg to be completed before COVID put the race on pause for over a year heads off to Glasgow via overnight train, before having the teams do self-drive with manual transmission (turns out Ray actually practiced stick for a few weeks before coming on the race :-)) to a church-looking building called Oran Mor... cue inevitable montage of teams getting lost and/or struggling with the stick :-) And Caro/Ray spend a good amount of time getting into some conflict during the drive (perhaps foreshadowing their subsequent real-life breakup?)
- Roadblock at Oran Mor is "Who thinks they have this one in the bag?" Involves putting together bagpipes and blowing a single note for the length of a traditional song (hey, doesn't that last part sound familiar?) The real trouble is assembling the pipe according to the guide (and Spen claims that he wasn't taught how to do this in the army LOL) After Nat finishes the Detour, Nat decides to help some of the stragglers for a couple minutes, which Dad doesn't really approve of; we'll see how that pans out for them...
- Detour is between Kilt and Rebuilt: Latter involves "cooperage", in this case repairing a whiskey barrel, and former involves performing the classic hit "Donald, Where's Your Trousers?" (and those choosing this task get to wear their kilt with them all the way to the pitstop :-)) Kim/Penn do weird videos on YouTube, so not surprisingly, they do the song :-) but the next several teams are going with pounding the barrels (even the flight attendants, who boast about it... there's only one other all-girl team, so that's not much of a boast :-\), while the next team to try the song is LLLL... and then Arun/Nat decide to switch over to singing as well, even though Arun insists he won't be able to remember the song (also joining in on the Kilt action are Taylor/Isaiah ["Internet personalities", and also "married"] and Akbar/Sheri)
- Pitstop is the University of Glasgow Cloisters (with a strongman greeter carrying a 100-lb boulder), where a kilted Kim/Penn arrive in first and get a trip to Cape Cod, while at the Kilt Detour, it's a race between Akbar/Sheri and the struggling Arun/Nat to avoid elimination, finishing the task in that order, and both find themselves asking for directions a lot, until Akbar/Sheri manage to check in before Arun/Nat, who were really expecting to do better given their top-3 finish last week (S21's Amy/Daniel say hello... and seriously, we really need an early-boots edition, especially in light of this next paragraph)
- Normally the show would end after Arun/Nat's final confessional, in which he mentions Nat's then-upcoming wedding, which we'll assume was pushed back a bit, but in a special epilogue, we get to see the teams return to the Cloisters on February 28th, 2020 (a few weeks before most of us had an idea about how bad things were about to get; I myself only started with my current work-from-home situation mid-March), to have Phil Keoghan address them and (in a rare front-and-centre appearance) the filming crew about suspending the race due to the coronavirus situation going on, and Phil promises that "we will pick this race back up again and hopefully have all of you starting the race again"... 19 months later (around this past fall), the race resumes not from Glasgow, but St. Gallen in Switzerland... and although it had been reported that there were 7 teams at the restart, turns out it wasn't a simple matter of two teams of the remaining 9 dropping out, as four teams have dropped out: Ant/Spen, Taylor/Isaiah, Connie/Sam (pregnancy), and Caro/Ray (breakup), and on-screen it remains to be seen what's going on here... But according to RealityBlurred, it appears that Arun/Nat and Michael/Moe are coming back; in other words, still a chance for some more Indian-style Real Truth Flavor (tm Ron/Christina), with a side of singing Buffalo cops :-)
- In other news, last season's winners Will/James got married and went on a cruise to the Galapagos Islands... and gave their travel tips in an article on travel site The Points Guy (that article was written by a freelancer; ironically, one of their own in-house writers had to cancel her trip to take this same cruise due to problems in getting a PCR test in San Francisco)
