spiderbraids

Wondering where's 35? Well, the new TAR season began over here with the first 3 episodes being aired on consecutive days, and I initially dismissed this as the broadcaster airing the new season months behind the states as a weekday strip like they did last season, also initially thinking they didn't even get the season number right, billing it as season 36, since I was expecting 35... Until I noticed that after ep 3, they weren't airing the next episode the following week until Thursday :-/ Turns out that for the first time in years, there are two cycles of TAR being aired this season, and this is the 2nd of them, though ironically it was the first to be filmed... Confused yet? Given that local broadcaster didn't even promote TAR36 in any of their monthly promos initially and I only knew about it because I happened to notice it on the EPG, it reeks of them deciding rather suddenly to revert to airing TAR on a same-week-as-US basis :-\ Anyways, this season (as well as the unseen-around-here previous) is nothing but 90 minute episodes thanks to the writers and actors' strikes that consumed much of last year (and also on an unrelated note, nothing but elimination legs like the last two seasons), resulting in the show being aired in a later time slot than normal, which at least allows me to see how these legs end first go-round (though not begin)

Ep 1
- So anyways, our first destination is Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, and as I'm joining in, Maya/Rohan (siblings) are having trouble getting to the first clue box (they'll spend the better part of the episode just getting to that box!)... Said cluebox is "marked" with dudes swinging from a big pole known as the Voladores (flyers), and the Detour is between Pick Up and Pin Down... Former involves carrying wheeled rocking horses down cobblestoned streets to a designated drop off area with children and remove the wheels, and latter involves watching a mass masked-wrestling routine and matching up five pairs of combatants, and both are limited to 7 teams (Meanwhile, twins Anthony/Bailey see the pole first and briefly think they're supposed to climb it, before noticing the box LOL)
- Once again, we have team introductions spread throughout the episode... For example, Michelle/Sean are Double Dutch Aerobic instructors, Sunny/Bizzy are firefighters, Amber/Vinny are dating nurses, Chris/Mary are the obligatory parent-child team (widowed dad/daughter)... except that this time there are TWO of them, with the other being Angie/Danny, mother and son from Walla Walla :-) (That said, the unseen previous season had THREE [!])
- Inevitably, limits on teams means there are teams who wanted to do horses and end up having to do wrestlers instead, and those teams are Chris/Mary and Juan/Shane (fighter pilots) They're pretty far back at this point, but hey, at least they're still ahead of Maya/Rohan, who spend a really long time trying to U-turn their car out of a dead end a la Big Brother last season :-\
- During the wrestling task, we get slo-mo shots of the wrestling interspersed with the task, set to the Blue Danube of all things, LOL. Meanwhile we learn that Maya plays softball and Rohan swims; well, they're not the only competitive pair of siblings this season, as Anthony/Bailey also talk about how competitive they are in their intro
- After spending about 60 minutes on the Detour, the show has 30 minutes to spend on the Roadblock at some sort of rodeo: Who's feeling loopy? Turns out to literally involve jumping through (lasso) hoops (seven in sequence) while wearing a cowboy hat and a scarve... Biggest move in this task is Juan/Shane nailing the task in 2 goes and jumping (heh) from 11th to 4th (!) And while Double Dutch take 5 goes, some teams seem to get it done on the first go (!!) There's a pair of cousins Kishori/Karishma who forget the scarve and only notice after nailing the jumps on the 18th (!) attempt and not getting the clue (to be fair, the red scarves were on a red tablecloth, so easy to miss) Thankfully, they only need five more attempts to finally get the clue, and remain in 5th after the task
- Pit Stop near the coast, and Rod/Leticia (couple) are 1st, with Ricky/Caesar (boyfriends) 2nd, but after a confessional of R/L expecting a prize, all they get is a clue for the Iguana Bridge... Maya/Rohan never stood much of a chance, even after apparently nailing the loopy task the first time around (and this Maya is only one letter different from another sister who was part of a sibling-team first boot, LOL)

Ep 2
- Puerta Vallarta part 2 begins with a clue pickup at the Iguana Bridge (which turns out to look more like a staircase than a bridge) for a Detour at a park: Color Correction vs Balloon Collection... Latter is obvious from the name (though involves a bit of running around), the other involves finding a row of Mexican Day of the Dead festival flags (think Coco or The Casagrandes) with different colors from the rest (the sheer amount of flags make most of the teams who start this task eventually decide to switch to balloons; though to their credit, Sunny/Bizzy stick it out)
- Roadblock at another park: Who has skeletons in their closet? Put make-up on your partner's face to match a picture resembling the skeletal guys in Coco... also there are dancing girls in butterfly outfits and skeleton make-up checking the task :-) Kishori/Karishma and Double Dutch get to this task before the Detour thanks to quite a bit of getting lost (presumably assuming that the Iguana Bridge would look like, well, a bridge), and are well into the task when Juan/Shane show up and note that they've done a Detour prior to this, forcing them to run off to continue looking for the Detour clue pickup
- Teams have to wear butterfly wings to the Pit Stop, for real this time: Casa Kimberly, former home of legendary Hollywood couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton... Once again, Rod/Leti win 1st, edging out Ricky/Cesar, this time with an Expedia prize to Lisbon (Cooking! Fado and dinner! Wine tasting! Private Fatima tour!) Grandparents Derek/Shelisa are in 3rd, and Phil Keoghan quips to Derek that it looked like he just ran all 12 legs (and they've been married 34 years!)
- Chris/Mary also get plenty lost while looking for the Detour and wind up taking a break after Balloon Collection to they can appreciate the ocean view... and more importantly, for Mary to give dad some electrolytes, because dad refuses to be medically eliminated :-\ We also learn that they've been fans of the show since Mary was young, having been introduced to it by her late mother, and was a nice way to see the world from their single room apartment :-) Meanwhile, K/K even manage to screw up Balloon Collection by running all the way to the beach with balloons in tow :-\
- During the RB, Vinny quips that Angie is more OCD than the actual judge, while A/B quip "I'll take you to prom" after finishing the RB... and then have to ask around for the Pit Stop because they've never heard of Elizabeth Taylor LOL! Walla Walla make a comment about fighting for 12th... but that's last place :-\ And turns out that C/M aren't the only parent-child team where the parent is struggling under the heat, to the point where Danny has to continue painting mom's face while lying on the ground (!)
- Back to looking for the Pit Stop, and those wings really make it hard to walk on the sidewalk to the point that some teams briefly wander into the street, and it feels like a good part of the extra 30 minutes are being spent on Walla Walla, A/B, and the nurses trying to find the pit stop... Eventually, it's looking to be a foot race between K/K and C/M for survival, but Double Dutch (who finished the RB in 10th) are also struggling to find Casa Kimberly... to the point where K/K actually check in ahead of Double Dutch, while Double Dutch end up beating C/M... Mary's exit interview calls participating in the race a bucket-list item checked off, and they walk off to the strains of Latin music (and as with last year, local broadcaster fades out the show before the Bruckheimer credit)

Ep 3
- Colombia now, and I'm joining in during the Detour between cooking a meal of meat, rice, egg and plantains and presenting it properly to some local grannies (they're particular about arranging the food in a certain way and cooking the plantains well, based on the rejected plates), and stacking a glutload of stuff on a truck... Double Dutch and A/B end up switch from former to latter... and in fact, A/B end up switching back from cooking to the truck... and after A/B try stacking again and wonder if they'll be the first team to switch detours 4 times (pretty sure there've been others), decide to just switch back to cooking again, wow :-\ It starts raining during the task, and this will be important later :-) Meanwhile, local broadcaster put text up next to their ID saying "within 12 hrs of US", which confused me, since it definitely wasn't within 12 hours of when season 35 was aired in the US :-\
- After the clue, everyone gets to ride a tuktuk (hey, they call it that) to the Roadblock at a coffee ranch: Who's feeling picky? It's an Expedia Experience, where contestants get to pick red coffee cherries (which some teams have never heard of), then use a hand cranked device to husk the shell off... Ricky/Cesar are quite far ahead at this point, so they get to pick from the closest trees... Meanwhile the nurses have to push their tuktuk a bit to keep riding LOL. (This viewer has been watching long enough to remember season 8, AKA the family edition, where one leg saw a team eliminated trying to find a red coffee bean)
- After de-husking off enough beans to make a kilo, they're directed to look for Phil Keoghan on this very ranch, which they do in quick fashion, to win a trip to Cape Town (Cape of Good Hope tour! Penguins! Table Mountain! Shark cage dive!) to which they quip their win in this leg as a perfect date LOL.
- Sunny is doing this RB for her team, and she talks about dead grandma who died "yesterday" (I assume the morning of leg 1) and also adds that she doesn't drink coffee LOL. Karishma delegates this RB to Kishori because in her words, she's Danny Devito's height (turns out height doesn't make much difference in the picking part), and she later makes comments about appreciating how hard it is for food to get to the table... and Kishori later quips "Your butt looks great from here" LOL. Meanwhile, Expedia reminds us this is essentially a sponsored task by putting up their "Expedia Experience" banner up on screen for several seconds during the task LOL
- Whereas Ricky/Cesar take two goes to get their kilo, the nurses just grab a lot of beans and get the task done first go, and get to 2nd place and a first group start next week :-) Since we're running 90 minutes, a good chunk of the show is devoted to teams looking for Phil Keoghan after completing the RB, and hilariously Juan/Shane slide down a steep hill to beat Rod/Leti... for fourth place (with 3rd place Derek/Shelisa seeing this)
- Another extra time usage: Double Dutch trying to walk down the hillside staircase to the RB area, and Sean being very wary of the stairs (with this rain, I don't really blame them) and lack of anything to hold on, to which Michelle tells him "Don't look left" :-) A/B finally show up at the RB and while picking they quip about a bird that they notice LOL. After Walla Walla take 9th, it's a rainy final footrace... and Double Dutch just edge their way to the next leg, while after their elim, A/B sign off with "Dude, this is pretty chill" while looking at the view from the mountain, and I'm pretty sure they don't mean that it's cold LOL.

Ep 4
- Local broadcaster finally started mentioning the show in its promos for April, even showing a brief glimpse of the mass start on some beach, and playing up its supersized episodes :-) Anyways, we're in Medellin in Colombia, and I'm joining in so late, Amber/Vinny are reaching the Roadblock near the museum called "Who's feeling artsy?" which involves putting labels on a map to marking the locations of 12 statues by local artist Fernando Botero located in the immediate area... and Amber isn't exactly the most directional :-\ On their way to the Roadblock, Ricky/Cesar borrow their cabbie's phone to look up info on the Botero statues, while Angie quips that the cab looks like Danny's bedroom :-) Meanwhile, the Detour is between dancing and spotting rebus pictures on a graffiti and working out what it says, and Yvonne/Melissa and Karishma/Kishiori are finishing up the dancing on their 4th and 5th goes, while Sunny/Bizzy are struggling so badly with the grafitti rebus :-\
- Ricky/Cesar arrive at the task and learn that the map can be covered with window blinds saying "Taken", and although Amber doesn't know this, R/C honorably decide not to cheat :-) Both Amber and R/C get it out in one go (in that order), getting a clue for the pitstop on a bridge/park, but R/C use their Espanol skills to get directions first, while A/V are waiting for some woman to look it up on her phone, and Walla Walla have just shown up, so they decide to help Danny with the task, in the name of alliances
- After 31 attempts trying various permutations of "The world is smaller than I thought", Sunny/Bizzy switch to dancing for which they decide to do some extra training in order to get it out in one go... Back at the statues, Danny calls himself a superfan, and manages to knock it out in two goes, and mom brags about the "buffet of puzzles" they had today (so I assume they did the graffiti) Meanwhile, Shane and Rod are also working together, with Shane even helping Rod put a wrong label in its place after finishing his own side of the task
- Ricky/Cesar get $2500, and a Phil Keoghan quip that they were born to do TAR, which they brag that they're pretty flexible :-) Sunny/Bizzy get the dancing out in one, while in the middle of the pack Shelisa takes several seconds to determine that the diagram with pegs in front of her is a map LOL!, then precedes her first check with a fourth-wall lean saying this is when they'll show on TV how many she got wrong... and she got all of them wrong LOL! Turns out she mistook the checkered building in front as the museum, rather than the actual one behind her, and although she figures this out quickly, it seems to be a bit of an issue among the back teams... Speaking of, Karishma is artsy, but the task looks more suited for Kishiori :-\
- We spend about a minute on Rod/Leti and Juan/Shane having to complete to find Phil Keoghan; gotta fill those 90 minutes somehow, right? For a brief moment, Phil seemingly hints at elimination to the grandparents before revealing they're in 6th LOL. Meanwhile Sunny/Bizzy show up and manage not to mix up the buildings, because the one who's doing it previously had designs on being a landscape architect, and notices the two circles on the map... and end up finising the task ahead of Double Dutch and K/K (!!)
- Despite being amongst the not-particularly-directional, Karishma manages to get it before Double Dutch (after almost 20 attempts each) and make it to the Pitstop... Rounding out the leg is Double Dutch, finishing the leg after city lights have been turned on, and after their elimination, they decide to give Phil Keoghan a little Double Dutch lesson, which ends with one of their ropes hitting the camera and briefly sending it pointing upward right at the crewmember's head (the video distorts briefly at this point, though presumably done in post to avoid showing the crewmember), prompting Phil to quip: "That'll make the cut" :-D