TAR US 17 and TARA 4: Eps 3 and 4

[spiderbraids]

Asia:
Ep 3
1. Okay, so everyone flies back to Kuala Lumpur via AirAsia (of course) to visit the Axiata building (hello, another sponsor). Everyone's looking for a picture of a golden Buddha and then the local branding of the Axiata's cell-phone service (they're a multinational cell-phone operator). This then reveals that their next country is Sri Lanka, and since the next clue has the proper name of the airport on it, we get to see the teams trip up on the airport name. Rather bizarrely, with Manas/Sahil (India) we see one player randomly pushing the correct button while his partner was still reading the clue. How... Stella-like.
2. Everyone flies to Colombo via AirAsia (of course), and takes cabs heading to some temple, with some cabs apparently racing at 110 kph (just under 70 mph) to get to the temple. In the middle of the night. When it's not open until 7am. Everyone takes tickets, waits until 7am, gets a blessing, and then a route marker to the local market. Moving on...
3. Local market, and it's a detour between counting fish in a basket (somewhere around 1100 per) and moving ice blocks. Incredibly, some of the teams actually choose to count fish... and some of those teams actually get it right the first time. HUH.
4. Next task is to sell 30 bags of peanuts. We see Hilda trying to hog the peanut selling from Ivan. We also see at least one team stressing out while waiting for their cabbie to fill up with gas (shades of "Outta-Gas-Car" back in the American season 10), but the real problem most teams have with their cabbies is running out of money to pay them. This will be important later.
5. Roadblock and Yield at a textile factory. Sunaina/Dimple (India) are first at the Yield and immediately use it on Michelle/Claire (Malaysia) for trying to convince the air ticket saleslady in the previous leg to lie to them that the flight was full. Roadblock is to sew together a shirt. Incredibly, Hussein (/Natasha, Indonesia) uses this Roadblock to leapfrog all the way from 7th to 2nd place :-O while Michelle/Clair have a heavily-bleeped swear fest. (Yet another racer says the S-word and doesn't get anything [???])
6. Pitstop is at some park. Sunaina/Dimple get the win and a Sri Lanka vacation package, we see Manas/Sahil check in amidst a 3-team clustering... and then get un-checked in as they have to raise money (mainly from other checked-in teams) to pay their cabbie first. Alan/Wendy (Hong Kong) are last (and taking a bus to the park, to boot) but spared.

Ep 4
1. Next stop is a train ride to Galle, which the racers pronounce like Golly, Gale, of Gall, proving that you don't need a ton of letters to induce name-butchering. Everyone gets the same train in the morning, before heading to a clue box for the Roadblock: Unlock box using the year of the name change from Ceylon to Sri Lanka. Pretty much everyone gets the answer (1972) from a local, although at least one team has problems actually opening the lock. There's also an option for a Fast Forward, which takes us to...
2. A bus station, and the Fast Forward's getting a total head shave, replete with incredibly obvious pun on "Gall(e)" from the host in the description. Sounds familiar, except that Richard/Richard waste no time getting into the shaving. Heck, one of the Richards is asking the barber to use the clippers :-)
3. The others go to a Dialog service center and rummage through a pile of phones for one that says "Congratulations" for their next clue, which takes them to some other town. Here, Alan/Wendy take the first bus available to them, which stops at all stops. The other teams all take express buses, thus surprising Team HK when they discover all the teams are suddenly ahead of them.
4. Next task: get a picture of a mask, find person wearing said mask. It's a pretty chaotic task, but the thing I remember most about it is a shot actually showing a team being tailed by a single cameraman. Meanwhile, the Richards deal with the cops while heading to the pitstop at some beach... with a product-placed Hilton duck. Incidentally, the mask task also has Hilton ducks for the teams to take after they're done.
5. After the Richards have dealt with the cops, they're first place and they'll be getting $4000 from Hilton. The others have a Detour ahead: Climb across a rope line between coconut trees, or learn ten Sinhalese words (hmm, sounds familiar). One team actually gets the language task right the first time, while everyone else takes 2 or 3 attempts, or even switches back to the coconuts (not really a good idea, since it's a task only one team may perform at a time), while Natasha/Hussein quickly switch to the language after having some problems on the rope line. After all is said and done, Alan/Wendy are eliminated, still wondering how on earth everyone else overtook them on the bus.

America:
Ep 3
1. This week, we're staying in Ghana. First stop, a boxing training camp for a boxing Roadblock. Well, not exactly, since the task requires the player to wrap his (or her) hands, punch a speed bag, and jump rope, but not actually box. Anyways, we get another Jonathan/Connor (Team Glee) performance of "Please drive faster" to the cabbie, while Nat/Kat have apparently inherited Gary/Mallory's bad taxi luck (amusingly, we get a shot of a Ghana flag in Gary/Mallory's cab saying "Good luck"), getting a cabbie who refuses to turn around on their way to boxing, and later getting a cabbie who has to look under the hood on their way to their next destination. Amusingly, we're shown a poster saying "I hate to loose" (yes, with 2 o's) at the boxing camp, and we also see Team Glee having to re-do the jump rope again after trying to do a Double Dutch. Thankfully, it's no Jacobellis-sized mistake.
2. Next stop, some supply depot in the rural areas of Ghana. Task is to move a specified set (and amount) of tools and stuff to some school. Some of them actually get it right first time, Katie/Rachel mock KevJumba/dad for taking one wheelbarrow instead of 2, and Nick berates Vicki for also misreading the instructions. Ouch. Interestingly, unlike in similar tasks, the foreman tells the teams what they're missing, and it's been theorised that it's simply because it's so hot, they didn't want to risk the racers having to run around so much.
3. Next task, find Ghana on a map. Last season's Caite would probably have a field day with this. At one point (thanks to a 24-style splitscreen) we see four teams apparently doing it (and finishing it) at about the same time. Hilariously, Team Glee take several guesses to identify Ghana on a map, while quite a few teams get it the first time. Even funnier? Team Glee promote Princeton University's African studies program after they're done (they're from Princeton). Nick/Vicki take several guesses (of course), but taking the cake is Brook/Claire (Team Melon), whose first guess places it over Namibia (jack@$$)
4. Detour is between hitting a bike hoop across a soccer field (twice, each) and Ghanian word search, involving decoding sentences into Adinkra symbols and finding it on a grid. There's an obvious choice here, and the only team to complete the latter is Team Glee... but maybe that's only because they're the only team to even find the decoder board, which is just around the corner from the grid of symbols. Quite a few teams walk right past the board without noticing it, and at one point Brook/Claire (and a few other teams) draw a circle around some Ghanian school children (!), and Nick/Vicki rummage through their homework (!!) So, despite Team Glee's ill-advised Double Dutch and their repeated attempts to find Ghana on the map, they still finish in 1st by what appears to be a good margin, winning themselves $5000.
5. Anyway, everyone else hits bike hoops. Most of them take a while to get the hang of it, but that's nothing compared to KevJumba's dad hitting (more like pushing) his hoop very slowly across the soccer field, having to prop it up with his stick, having to get a medic check after the first pass, and then hitting his hoop back across the soccer field very slowly. Dad's to blame for slowing the team down and they both know it (dude's like almost 60, and the heat isn't helping), while Nat/Kat not only overcome their taxi troubles but also getting lost on their way to the pit stop and beat them to the mat. But KevJumba/dad are also spared, in an unusually early (for the US version) NEL, and Phil says they're also coming back the next day to help renovate the school. Uh... yay?

Ep 4
1. After we're shown the racers fixing up the school from the previous leg, they're off to the Arctic Circle (yikes!) More specifically, Kiruna, Sweden, prompting the beach volleyballers to comment on how they don't know many words in Swedish. Everyone's already been given tix via Frankfurt (what, no mention of Stockholm? Kiruna's a domestic airport), but a couple of the teams find an earlier flight to Kiruna (well, an earlier set of flights anyway, since they're still connecting through Stockholm) than those they've been given, with a much shorter layover, so we get to see some frantic running through Frankfurt airport. Getting the earlier connection are Nat/Kat, Gary/Mallory, Team Melon, and KevJumba/dad (who were apparently the first to find the earlier flight), while Team Glee comment that they're now in a 5-team race to avoid last place.
2. Kiruna, and the first task is to go to the summer ice storage room for the Ice Hotel to pick up their next clue (encased in ice, of course!), except for KevJumba/dad, whose Speed Bump consists of sitting 10 minutes on ice chairs. Sounds simple? Well, the chairs are made of ice, and KevJumba isn't making it easier for himself by wearing shorts. After getting through the 10 minutes without having to restart (apparently), we see Kev commenting "We should have brought gloves and buttpads" :-D We also have Brooke of Team Melon making a joke about the term "ice princess" :-D
3. Clue in ice sends everyone to a lodge for a Roadblock about training snow dogs. Ride wheel sled, grab flags, do penalty laps if necessary, get fur pelts, ride back to get next clue. Interestingly, KevJumba's dad notices a fake bear, apparently used to train snow dogs not to freak out while sledding :-) Jill/Thomas (hairdressers with Express Pass) manage to run down the wrong road to the lodge and bicker about it.
4. Next stop, a clue pickup at a train station that sends them to a detour between sleds and beds. The former is of course to ride a sled (a Tech Sled, more specifically) down a course in less than 1:58, while the latter is to pitch a traditional Sami tent, before putting fur pelt beds in it. KevJumba/dad (who are actually in the lead up to this point) immediately go for the tents, while other teams try out the sleds first. Cue amusing montage of sledders wiping out in the snow. We see Connor comment on Jonathan's inability to sled, with Jonathan thinking that he'd probably sled into Norway, and we also see Chad yelling at Stephanie (Peter Pan/Tink) for her sledding problems. Eventually, quite a few times eventually go for the tents, while Jill/Thomas use up their Express Pass.
5. Pit stop is the border with Norway. Nat/Kat get 1st place and a trip to Belize. The Express Pass helps Jill/Thomas into 5th, while Team Glee end up in last place, and since we've been told in the first episode (and reminded again this ep) that they're missing their graduation for this race, they take their elimination in stride with an a capella rendition of Pomp and Circumstance (AKA the graduation song). It's not the first time a pair of singing guys from New England got eliminated in the Arctic, but these guys lasted a bit longer.