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spiderbraidsFor 20 years, our local broadcaster broadcast TAR on the same day as the US, all the way from S2 (S1 was aired 6 weeks behind the US) until last season, S33 (!)... But this year, instead of the same treatment as before, they decided to air the show in February, and not only is it being aired 5 months behind the states, it's being aired as a weekday strip instead of weekly, which means they'll be done with S34 in just 3 weeks tops (!!)
Between this crazy scheduling choice and other circumstances, I'm not going to get to see remotely near the whole thing, so let's go over what I do get to see...
Ep 1
- This year, TAR is breaking with the usual routine: Instead of starting in the US (or even having Phil Keoghan send a message to the teams to head over to the first destination's airport like last season), the show opens in Munich, Germany, showing the teams riding a canal boat to the start point (shades of Survivor, perhaps? ;-)): Nymphenburg Palace
- And that's not all, as Phil also adds that this week's leg will be a "scramble", in which teams are allowed to finish the three tasks of the leg in any order, which conveniently allows me to see what all the tasks are in a short time: Roll a barrel through an obstacle course, saw a log, and smash a block of ice (that last one is presented as a Roadblock: "Who's ready to chill?") The idea is to get pieces of the pitstop clue to assemble... To top it off, one last twist: No non-eliminations this season (the math comes out to 9 legs, which seems a bit short for a whole season, so maaaaybe there'll be follow-on legs? [Answer: Yes, see eps 3-4])
- Among our teams: A team from Miami (aka Team Croquetta), a Big Brother US pair (one of whom does machine learning stuff; hey, so do I :-)), former NFL coach Rex Ryan and some guy named Tim Mann who's his golf partner (they call themselves Team T-Rex LOL), a pair of LA Rams cheerleaders, a pair of Korean-American identical twins who only found out about each other's existence one year ago (reads almost like a bad parody), a pair of military brothers, ballroom dance school owners, a dancer for Pitbull and her partner, a pair of motivational speakers (Rich/Dom, and their thing is saying "Love and Light" at the start of the leg), and a father-daughter (always gotta have a parent-child team, right?) from Jamaica (as they proudly wear on their shirts) One of the couples teams talks about seeing the world vicariously through TAR, and now they're doing it themselves :-)
- Right after Phil's go signal, the crew give a nice shot of themselves, as if to honor Kim/Penn's comment in last season's finale, and of what I saw of actual racing, the most entertaining part was the team from Miami smashing apart the ice like he's mad at someone LOL, while everyone else is busy pickaxing it methodically :-)
Ep 2
- According to the recap, Claire/Derek (Big Brother) won the first leg, while the first team to be eliminated is a team with someone named Aastha... anyways, Episode 2's a special 90 minute episode, so that means a earlier start time than normal (and more TAR for me!) We're still doing the group starts this season too :-) Next stop is Grunwalderhof in Austria, and since the race has always been strictly electronics-free, that means we get to see racers whip out old-fashioned maps for the drive, and these ones fold out incredibly big, LOL
- Rex seems a bit more mellow that his usual NFL coach style, and makes a quip about the "new Rex", but adds that this is just for Europe, and once he's home he'll be back to his usual self LOL. Glenda/Lumumba is a newlyweds team who plan to call their unborn kid Boom-Boom, so they're talking about how they're doing it for Boom-Boom :-)
- Childhood sweethearts Abby/Will and the Rams cheerleaders Quinton/Mattie get intro packages "this week", and as it happens, the cheerleaders get lost pretty quickly on the way to the Roadblock... This leg's Roadblock is "Who wants to call the cows?" which involves learning some sort of yodeling and the actions that go with it, and most teams need a couple attempts to get it done, but Glenda gets it done first go (!) Meanwhile, the military brothers are in the lead after the Roadblock...
- The first Detour of the race is in Innsbruck, and is between Bells Ringing (playing a song with bells), and Partner Swinging (a traditional wedding dance) The military brothers do the bells, and in spite of some issues with timing, they manage to knock this one out without seeing another team :-)
- Meanwhile, Big Brother arrived the first at the yodeling, but now they're fighting avoid following in the path of the very first Big Brother team, Alison/Donny from S5, and going from winning the first leg to being eliminated the next (ironically, Alison is now a producer for the show) After 6 attempts, Claire finally passes the Roadblock and notices the Rams cheerleaders' car as they're leaving, but there's still a whole Detour left (and about an hour of show left :-))
- Linton/Sharik (Jamaica father/daughter) are doing the dancing, and Sharik talks about how she taught her cheerleading and ballet moves to him, quipping that they've had the longest relationship on the show LOL, and Linton has a heartwarming confession saying that he grew up without a dad, so he wanted to be the best parent he could, DAWW (and they end up being the first to finish the dancing, even!) Meanwhile, Emily/Molly (the long-lost twins) have some confusion on how to differentiate between the "woman" and the "man" LOL.
- Managed to stick around long enough to see the Pitstop at the Hofburg Imperial Palace, and after a reminder from Phil Keoghan that there will be no second chances, i.e. non-eliminations, the military brothers win the leg, and interestingly, TAR has jumped from Travelocity to Expedia for the sponsored prizes, this week offering a trip to Peru (of course featuring Macchu Picchu :-))
Ep 3
- Part one of a megaleg takes the teams to Bologna, Italy, and we kick off with a Detour between Big Cheese (carry a big wheel of Parmesan on a cart to two restaurants) vs Head of the Class (listen to an anatomy lecture, and match up body parts to names on a diagram) Also, it's a stick shift self-drive leg, and you know what that means :-) Meanwhile, Rich/Dom are racing on their anniversary :-)
- Teams will set out on their Detours after parking at Piazza Franklin Delano Roosevelt (yes, there's a piazza named for not just a US president, but the one who was running the US during WW2)... The anatomy location "Teatro Anatomico" has a church vibe (tm one of the contestants), and contestants will have to listen to an 8 minute lecture, before matching up the body parts to names on a diagram in 90 seconds (and not the basic ones, we're talking words like "coccyx", "clavicle" and "metatarsal"), which makes for contestants having to repeat the exam again and again... except for teams that happen to have someone with a background in medical stuff, like Mattie of the Rams cheerleaders (who studied it in college), and one of the twins :-) (Childhood sweethearts go through even without a medical BG, LOL)
- Meanwhile, Rich/Dom not only get into issues with stick (there's always that one team, and of course one mentions it's a "classic" issue) but also navigation... Of course, the cheese task is more straightforward (and of course contestants use plenty of Italian words like "Grazie" and "Scusi", and I even heard a "Permesso" in there even), and three teams have already delivered the cheese by the time the cheerleaders are first to finish anatomy... it also doesn't help that the professor at anatomy keeps pronouncing "humerus" as "ee-merus" :-\
- Next stop is the Ducati factory for a Roadblock titled "Who's ready for a brake?" which involves installing a wheel and its brakes on one of their bikes, then the body panels... There's a demo on how to install, and this is important because it offers a tip on how to ensure that the wheel will spin :-) Military bros are first to arrive at Ducati, and when Big Brother shows up in 2nd, they quip that "If you see Marcus, you can't be in last" :-) And of course there'll be those who are good with mechanic stuff, like David (from Aubrey/David, the ballroom dance school owners) Eventually, the top 8 teams are doing this task at the same time, and one of them wonders where the other two are...
- ...and on cue, cut to Rich/Dom and Glenda/Lumumba doing the anatomy task, and as it happens, both teams end up getting it done at the same time LOL. Whatever, we're not really finished with this leg until "next week"... (or in our case, tomorrow :-))
Ep 4
- Part two begins with a drive out to Florence (or as the Italians call it, Firenze; of course at least one team mentions this fact, in fact we have three: ballroom, the cheerleaders, and Miami) Luis gives the show a great soundbite to end the pre-titles: "Twice the roadblocks, twice the tasks, twice the pain"... and each gets accompanied by a bombastic onscreen caption, LOL
- First stop is a Roadblock: "Who wants a chiseled body?" At first it looks as if the contestants will have to chisel a block of stone into a fancy sculpture, which of course flummoxes military bros, until they get going and notice that it's actually a pre-made sculpture encased in (relatively) easy-to-remove plaster, LOL. Michele (Luis/Michele, team Miami) quips that she majored in sculpture as other contestants come in :-D Of course, even with the simplification, there will still be some damage that they'll have to plaster up before it passes muster with the judge :-) Similar to Ducati, most of the teams are at it at the Roadblock at the same time... (according to Sharik, she took about 1 1/2 hours on the task)
- Detour is between Eye for Fashion and Window of Opportunity: The former involves visiting three different piazzas and remembering the outfits at a fashion shoot at each location, then finding the matching picture and matching them with the picture of the location (this will end up being important) The latter is a nod to Florence's history, where shops have long had tiny windows to pick up food to avoid spreading disease in a pandemic... the medieval bubonic plague pandemic, that is (of course they were useful during Covid, too :-)) Here, contestants will use them to pick up soup, meat, and biscotti, yum :-)
- Rich/Dom continue to be last, and only make it to the Roadblock after military bros and the twins have gotten their Detour clue (but are still at the Roadblock location strategizing where to go) and Dom is flummoxed by the chiseled body task and considers taking the penalty (which would be one of the most stupid ways of getting penalized, I tell ya) Even after Rich motivates her into pretending to be an awesome sculptor for 15 minutes (his words!) and even after re-reading the clue and finding out about the encased sculpture stuff, she still struggles mightily with it, and it wouldn't surprise me if I find out next Monday that they were eliminated... (then again, I just realized that Team T-Rex has gone extinct [pun LOL] even though they weren't looking very much in danger at the point I left off)
- Military bros and twins are doing the fashion task, and whereas the military bros have the wrong location at the first check (after only focusing on memorizing the outfits), the twins get it right first go, and make it to the Pitstop at Piazza Ognissanti first to get themselves an Expedia trip to Sydney :-)
Between this crazy scheduling choice and other circumstances, I'm not going to get to see remotely near the whole thing, so let's go over what I do get to see...
Ep 1
- This year, TAR is breaking with the usual routine: Instead of starting in the US (or even having Phil Keoghan send a message to the teams to head over to the first destination's airport like last season), the show opens in Munich, Germany, showing the teams riding a canal boat to the start point (shades of Survivor, perhaps? ;-)): Nymphenburg Palace
- And that's not all, as Phil also adds that this week's leg will be a "scramble", in which teams are allowed to finish the three tasks of the leg in any order, which conveniently allows me to see what all the tasks are in a short time: Roll a barrel through an obstacle course, saw a log, and smash a block of ice (that last one is presented as a Roadblock: "Who's ready to chill?") The idea is to get pieces of the pitstop clue to assemble... To top it off, one last twist: No non-eliminations this season (the math comes out to 9 legs, which seems a bit short for a whole season, so maaaaybe there'll be follow-on legs? [Answer: Yes, see eps 3-4])
- Among our teams: A team from Miami (aka Team Croquetta), a Big Brother US pair (one of whom does machine learning stuff; hey, so do I :-)), former NFL coach Rex Ryan and some guy named Tim Mann who's his golf partner (they call themselves Team T-Rex LOL), a pair of LA Rams cheerleaders, a pair of Korean-American identical twins who only found out about each other's existence one year ago (reads almost like a bad parody), a pair of military brothers, ballroom dance school owners, a dancer for Pitbull and her partner, a pair of motivational speakers (Rich/Dom, and their thing is saying "Love and Light" at the start of the leg), and a father-daughter (always gotta have a parent-child team, right?) from Jamaica (as they proudly wear on their shirts) One of the couples teams talks about seeing the world vicariously through TAR, and now they're doing it themselves :-)
- Right after Phil's go signal, the crew give a nice shot of themselves, as if to honor Kim/Penn's comment in last season's finale, and of what I saw of actual racing, the most entertaining part was the team from Miami smashing apart the ice like he's mad at someone LOL, while everyone else is busy pickaxing it methodically :-)
Ep 2
- According to the recap, Claire/Derek (Big Brother) won the first leg, while the first team to be eliminated is a team with someone named Aastha... anyways, Episode 2's a special 90 minute episode, so that means a earlier start time than normal (and more TAR for me!) We're still doing the group starts this season too :-) Next stop is Grunwalderhof in Austria, and since the race has always been strictly electronics-free, that means we get to see racers whip out old-fashioned maps for the drive, and these ones fold out incredibly big, LOL
- Rex seems a bit more mellow that his usual NFL coach style, and makes a quip about the "new Rex", but adds that this is just for Europe, and once he's home he'll be back to his usual self LOL. Glenda/Lumumba is a newlyweds team who plan to call their unborn kid Boom-Boom, so they're talking about how they're doing it for Boom-Boom :-)
- Childhood sweethearts Abby/Will and the Rams cheerleaders Quinton/Mattie get intro packages "this week", and as it happens, the cheerleaders get lost pretty quickly on the way to the Roadblock... This leg's Roadblock is "Who wants to call the cows?" which involves learning some sort of yodeling and the actions that go with it, and most teams need a couple attempts to get it done, but Glenda gets it done first go (!) Meanwhile, the military brothers are in the lead after the Roadblock...
- The first Detour of the race is in Innsbruck, and is between Bells Ringing (playing a song with bells), and Partner Swinging (a traditional wedding dance) The military brothers do the bells, and in spite of some issues with timing, they manage to knock this one out without seeing another team :-)
- Meanwhile, Big Brother arrived the first at the yodeling, but now they're fighting avoid following in the path of the very first Big Brother team, Alison/Donny from S5, and going from winning the first leg to being eliminated the next (ironically, Alison is now a producer for the show) After 6 attempts, Claire finally passes the Roadblock and notices the Rams cheerleaders' car as they're leaving, but there's still a whole Detour left (and about an hour of show left :-))
- Linton/Sharik (Jamaica father/daughter) are doing the dancing, and Sharik talks about how she taught her cheerleading and ballet moves to him, quipping that they've had the longest relationship on the show LOL, and Linton has a heartwarming confession saying that he grew up without a dad, so he wanted to be the best parent he could, DAWW (and they end up being the first to finish the dancing, even!) Meanwhile, Emily/Molly (the long-lost twins) have some confusion on how to differentiate between the "woman" and the "man" LOL.
- Managed to stick around long enough to see the Pitstop at the Hofburg Imperial Palace, and after a reminder from Phil Keoghan that there will be no second chances, i.e. non-eliminations, the military brothers win the leg, and interestingly, TAR has jumped from Travelocity to Expedia for the sponsored prizes, this week offering a trip to Peru (of course featuring Macchu Picchu :-))
Ep 3
- Part one of a megaleg takes the teams to Bologna, Italy, and we kick off with a Detour between Big Cheese (carry a big wheel of Parmesan on a cart to two restaurants) vs Head of the Class (listen to an anatomy lecture, and match up body parts to names on a diagram) Also, it's a stick shift self-drive leg, and you know what that means :-) Meanwhile, Rich/Dom are racing on their anniversary :-)
- Teams will set out on their Detours after parking at Piazza Franklin Delano Roosevelt (yes, there's a piazza named for not just a US president, but the one who was running the US during WW2)... The anatomy location "Teatro Anatomico" has a church vibe (tm one of the contestants), and contestants will have to listen to an 8 minute lecture, before matching up the body parts to names on a diagram in 90 seconds (and not the basic ones, we're talking words like "coccyx", "clavicle" and "metatarsal"), which makes for contestants having to repeat the exam again and again... except for teams that happen to have someone with a background in medical stuff, like Mattie of the Rams cheerleaders (who studied it in college), and one of the twins :-) (Childhood sweethearts go through even without a medical BG, LOL)
- Meanwhile, Rich/Dom not only get into issues with stick (there's always that one team, and of course one mentions it's a "classic" issue) but also navigation... Of course, the cheese task is more straightforward (and of course contestants use plenty of Italian words like "Grazie" and "Scusi", and I even heard a "Permesso" in there even), and three teams have already delivered the cheese by the time the cheerleaders are first to finish anatomy... it also doesn't help that the professor at anatomy keeps pronouncing "humerus" as "ee-merus" :-\
- Next stop is the Ducati factory for a Roadblock titled "Who's ready for a brake?" which involves installing a wheel and its brakes on one of their bikes, then the body panels... There's a demo on how to install, and this is important because it offers a tip on how to ensure that the wheel will spin :-) Military bros are first to arrive at Ducati, and when Big Brother shows up in 2nd, they quip that "If you see Marcus, you can't be in last" :-) And of course there'll be those who are good with mechanic stuff, like David (from Aubrey/David, the ballroom dance school owners) Eventually, the top 8 teams are doing this task at the same time, and one of them wonders where the other two are...
- ...and on cue, cut to Rich/Dom and Glenda/Lumumba doing the anatomy task, and as it happens, both teams end up getting it done at the same time LOL. Whatever, we're not really finished with this leg until "next week"... (or in our case, tomorrow :-))
Ep 4
- Part two begins with a drive out to Florence (or as the Italians call it, Firenze; of course at least one team mentions this fact, in fact we have three: ballroom, the cheerleaders, and Miami) Luis gives the show a great soundbite to end the pre-titles: "Twice the roadblocks, twice the tasks, twice the pain"... and each gets accompanied by a bombastic onscreen caption, LOL
- First stop is a Roadblock: "Who wants a chiseled body?" At first it looks as if the contestants will have to chisel a block of stone into a fancy sculpture, which of course flummoxes military bros, until they get going and notice that it's actually a pre-made sculpture encased in (relatively) easy-to-remove plaster, LOL. Michele (Luis/Michele, team Miami) quips that she majored in sculpture as other contestants come in :-D Of course, even with the simplification, there will still be some damage that they'll have to plaster up before it passes muster with the judge :-) Similar to Ducati, most of the teams are at it at the Roadblock at the same time... (according to Sharik, she took about 1 1/2 hours on the task)
- Detour is between Eye for Fashion and Window of Opportunity: The former involves visiting three different piazzas and remembering the outfits at a fashion shoot at each location, then finding the matching picture and matching them with the picture of the location (this will end up being important) The latter is a nod to Florence's history, where shops have long had tiny windows to pick up food to avoid spreading disease in a pandemic... the medieval bubonic plague pandemic, that is (of course they were useful during Covid, too :-)) Here, contestants will use them to pick up soup, meat, and biscotti, yum :-)
- Rich/Dom continue to be last, and only make it to the Roadblock after military bros and the twins have gotten their Detour clue (but are still at the Roadblock location strategizing where to go) and Dom is flummoxed by the chiseled body task and considers taking the penalty (which would be one of the most stupid ways of getting penalized, I tell ya) Even after Rich motivates her into pretending to be an awesome sculptor for 15 minutes (his words!) and even after re-reading the clue and finding out about the encased sculpture stuff, she still struggles mightily with it, and it wouldn't surprise me if I find out next Monday that they were eliminated... (then again, I just realized that Team T-Rex has gone extinct [pun LOL] even though they weren't looking very much in danger at the point I left off)
- Military bros and twins are doing the fashion task, and whereas the military bros have the wrong location at the first check (after only focusing on memorizing the outfits), the twins get it right first go, and make it to the Pitstop at Piazza Ognissanti first to get themselves an Expedia trip to Sydney :-)
