The Amazing Race 19: Eps 1 to 3
Oct. 16th, 2011 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsThe Amazing Race turns 10 as it returns for its 19th (!) go-round. Let's get going shall we?
Ep 1:
1. This year's new batch of contestants includes Survivor winners Ethan Zohn (former cancer patient!) and Jenna Morasca, two Olympic snowboarders, some kid who sailed around the world in his teens and his dad, and some former showgirls, plus your usual couples and best friends teams. We start from some Chinese Buddhist temple in LA, with yet another starting line challenge with a penalty for the last palce team, involving searching through a bunch of umbrellas to find the letters that go with another set of letters, "WANPEI", to determine the first destination. A few teams (including the Survivors) figure out that it's Taipei, Taiwan, most seem to just copy off the other teams :-P
2. We get a bit of product placement with some Ford SUVs to drive to the airport, with a video of Phil confirming that they're heading to Taipei and telling them the two flights they may use. At some point, Kaylani/Lisa (showgirls) stop at a gas station to get directions and Kaylani somehow loses her passport. It's not at the gas station when they realize this and head back, so their only hope is for someone to turn it in at LAX... Shades of Zev/Justin, perhaps? We see Laurence/Zac (father and his world-sailing son; show bills them as "adventurers") have a little fun with the fact that their flight number has "007" in it :-D
3. Nighttime at LAX, and while the showgirls bicker over the missing passport, we see that the Survivors are not telling anyone they were on Survivor, but turns out everyone else knows anyway :-D Meanwhile, the showgirls manage to avoid Mac and Bloo's fate (not previous racers, but these guys), as some guy shows up at the airport with the passport and a tale about how some guy on Twitter told him to get it to LAX (full story here).
4. Maps now brought to you by Bing. Taipei, and everyone rides buses to some commercial district. We see Amani/Marcus (former NFL player and wife) trying to skirt around the truth about him being a NFL player :-) At the commercial district, everyone's been told to look up for their next clue. We see contestants looking at guys with red and yellow striped hats, and even a trash collector with red and yellow undies :-D Eventually (after it's ignored quite a few times), everyone gets the idea to look at a billboard screen with red and yellow balloons with Chinese letters, which many write down to show to locals, thus sending them to the Taipei Confucius Temple. "Hilariously", Bill/Cathi (grandparents) walk all the way to a tall building thinking that the clue might be there :-) Cindy (/Ernie, engaged couple) went to Chinese school for 7 years, and still has to write down the letters :-D
5. Temple, and Roadblock: "Confucius says, who's ready to play telephone?" Whoever's playing dials a payphone (in a bit of artifice, it's implied they're phoning 1-800-CONFUCIUS :-D :-D), memorizes (as in, without writing it down) a paragraph about making preparations and tells it to a monk. Most get the job done after several tries (we even get a montage of misses interspersed with a graphic of a gong saying "WRONG" :-D), but Liz/Marie (twins) seemingly take 100 attempts to do it, and Bill/Cathi taking 4 hours to look for the billboard clue is all that's keeping L/M out of last place.
6. Remember the starting line challenge with a penalty for the last place team? Showgirls finished last in that task, and so get an extra task called the "Hazard" (which might as well be a Speed Bump, like it was in Unfinished Business) where here one player bungee jumps into a mall. My mom said it looked dangerous as it runs the risk of crashing into the walls. Which is probably why the cord only reaches down 3-4 floors :-) One of them has jumped from the Stratosphere, so she's game :-)
7. Next task, head to some riverside park to participate in rowing a dragon boat. One player drums, the other rows... along with a team of others. Turns out Laurence was a coxswain for a British rowing team. Moving on...
8. The Martyr's Shrine is the pit stop, and Ernie/Cindy get 1st place and an Express Pass (yes, that's making a return as well). Showgirls show off their passports after finishing 9th, and bringing up the rear is Bill/Cathi, who are surprisingly not eliminated, for now at least, since the next leg will be the show's first (well, according to them anyway) double elimination leg. (Vipul/Arti and Bilal/Sa'eed would beg to differ, even if the latter was eliminated mid-leg...)
Ep 2:
1. Next stop, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Since I only managed to catch half the episode (no PVR at home, was occupied on both Saturday reruns I'd normally catch), we'll just gloss over the part I only got to read about: Roadblock involving spelinking into a cave and picking up a mask and a knife, and a Speed Bump involving untying rope that Bill/Cathi apparently call "Xmas lights from Hell" (I'd put a :-) here if I actually saw it) If/When I catch AXN rerunning this ep, I'll post my thoughts then.
2. We pick up at the Detour, involving raising money for an orphanage either by having people pay them to park their mopeds, or by dancing at a busy intersection. We see Jenna bickering at Ethan forgetting his clue after dancing and having to run back to get it, and mom basically said that the show really does bring out the worst in people...
3. In a strange twist, at the orphanage there's a sign saying everyone has to hand over their race money as well, and apparently 8 (!) of the 11 teams either ignore the sign due to lack of race colors, misinterpret the instructions, or fail to notice it altogether, resulting in Andy/Tommy (snowboarders) finishing 4th, but winning 1st place and a trip to Ireland, showgirls finishing 10th, thereby allowing Phil to screw with them for a moment before checking them in 3rd, and Ron/Bill (life partners/flight attendants) being eliminated along with the Survivors (!) Not the first time a "crossover" team has been eliminated as early as the 2nd leg (that would be Alison/Donny, Big Brother, then TAR5).
Ep 3:
1. First task in Yogyakarta involves recreating a 1940s bike patrol by dressing up in a scouting outfit and riding a bike. Andy/Tommy do a few wheelies, and even surf their bikes at one point :-D Ernie/Cindy brag about how much they've prepared for the race. Well, nothing prepared them for losing a pedal, plopping them from 3rd to next-to-last while the bike patrol guy's fixing it...
2. We see Bill/Cathi repeatedly saying "Team numba one" with an Asian accent to their cabbie :-D during a taxi race to the next destination, some farmside restaurant, and a Detour between planting seedlings in a rice farm, and carrying grass and taking sheep to a feeding shed. Snowboarders do the sheep one, and make a point of reading that each team is only allowed to use two buckets per team to fill a trough with water, and they notice Laurence/Zac using more than that (Snowboarders: "Read your clues, guys"). This will be important later.
3. Next stop, Borobodur temple, for a Roadblock involving counting various poses of the Buddha. 3 poses have 17, one pose has 18. Proves very difficult, and most of the players work together, except old guy Bill who rocks this Roadblock by himself :-) Again, missed a good chunk of the episode, this time thanks to AXN pre-empting the afternoon rerun with a re-broadcast of the finale of The Voice :-P
4. Laurence/Zac arrive at the mat first, but the bucket issue gets them a 15 minute penalty, resulting in the snowboarders winning their 2nd leg in a row, in spite of failing to actually arrive first in either leg (!) After a frantic montage of teams paying off their cabbies, the showgirls' little Twitter reprieve ultimately only lasts 3 legs, and they have an exit interview about how one of them is hoping her daughter doesn't see her as a failure. Cute.
Ep 1:
1. This year's new batch of contestants includes Survivor winners Ethan Zohn (former cancer patient!) and Jenna Morasca, two Olympic snowboarders, some kid who sailed around the world in his teens and his dad, and some former showgirls, plus your usual couples and best friends teams. We start from some Chinese Buddhist temple in LA, with yet another starting line challenge with a penalty for the last palce team, involving searching through a bunch of umbrellas to find the letters that go with another set of letters, "WANPEI", to determine the first destination. A few teams (including the Survivors) figure out that it's Taipei, Taiwan, most seem to just copy off the other teams :-P
2. We get a bit of product placement with some Ford SUVs to drive to the airport, with a video of Phil confirming that they're heading to Taipei and telling them the two flights they may use. At some point, Kaylani/Lisa (showgirls) stop at a gas station to get directions and Kaylani somehow loses her passport. It's not at the gas station when they realize this and head back, so their only hope is for someone to turn it in at LAX... Shades of Zev/Justin, perhaps? We see Laurence/Zac (father and his world-sailing son; show bills them as "adventurers") have a little fun with the fact that their flight number has "007" in it :-D
3. Nighttime at LAX, and while the showgirls bicker over the missing passport, we see that the Survivors are not telling anyone they were on Survivor, but turns out everyone else knows anyway :-D Meanwhile, the showgirls manage to avoid Mac and Bloo's fate (not previous racers, but these guys), as some guy shows up at the airport with the passport and a tale about how some guy on Twitter told him to get it to LAX (full story here).
4. Maps now brought to you by Bing. Taipei, and everyone rides buses to some commercial district. We see Amani/Marcus (former NFL player and wife) trying to skirt around the truth about him being a NFL player :-) At the commercial district, everyone's been told to look up for their next clue. We see contestants looking at guys with red and yellow striped hats, and even a trash collector with red and yellow undies :-D Eventually (after it's ignored quite a few times), everyone gets the idea to look at a billboard screen with red and yellow balloons with Chinese letters, which many write down to show to locals, thus sending them to the Taipei Confucius Temple. "Hilariously", Bill/Cathi (grandparents) walk all the way to a tall building thinking that the clue might be there :-) Cindy (/Ernie, engaged couple) went to Chinese school for 7 years, and still has to write down the letters :-D
5. Temple, and Roadblock: "Confucius says, who's ready to play telephone?" Whoever's playing dials a payphone (in a bit of artifice, it's implied they're phoning 1-800-CONFUCIUS :-D :-D), memorizes (as in, without writing it down) a paragraph about making preparations and tells it to a monk. Most get the job done after several tries (we even get a montage of misses interspersed with a graphic of a gong saying "WRONG" :-D), but Liz/Marie (twins) seemingly take 100 attempts to do it, and Bill/Cathi taking 4 hours to look for the billboard clue is all that's keeping L/M out of last place.
6. Remember the starting line challenge with a penalty for the last place team? Showgirls finished last in that task, and so get an extra task called the "Hazard" (which might as well be a Speed Bump, like it was in Unfinished Business) where here one player bungee jumps into a mall. My mom said it looked dangerous as it runs the risk of crashing into the walls. Which is probably why the cord only reaches down 3-4 floors :-) One of them has jumped from the Stratosphere, so she's game :-)
7. Next task, head to some riverside park to participate in rowing a dragon boat. One player drums, the other rows... along with a team of others. Turns out Laurence was a coxswain for a British rowing team. Moving on...
8. The Martyr's Shrine is the pit stop, and Ernie/Cindy get 1st place and an Express Pass (yes, that's making a return as well). Showgirls show off their passports after finishing 9th, and bringing up the rear is Bill/Cathi, who are surprisingly not eliminated, for now at least, since the next leg will be the show's first (well, according to them anyway) double elimination leg. (Vipul/Arti and Bilal/Sa'eed would beg to differ, even if the latter was eliminated mid-leg...)
Ep 2:
1. Next stop, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Since I only managed to catch half the episode (no PVR at home, was occupied on both Saturday reruns I'd normally catch), we'll just gloss over the part I only got to read about: Roadblock involving spelinking into a cave and picking up a mask and a knife, and a Speed Bump involving untying rope that Bill/Cathi apparently call "Xmas lights from Hell" (I'd put a :-) here if I actually saw it) If/When I catch AXN rerunning this ep, I'll post my thoughts then.
2. We pick up at the Detour, involving raising money for an orphanage either by having people pay them to park their mopeds, or by dancing at a busy intersection. We see Jenna bickering at Ethan forgetting his clue after dancing and having to run back to get it, and mom basically said that the show really does bring out the worst in people...
3. In a strange twist, at the orphanage there's a sign saying everyone has to hand over their race money as well, and apparently 8 (!) of the 11 teams either ignore the sign due to lack of race colors, misinterpret the instructions, or fail to notice it altogether, resulting in Andy/Tommy (snowboarders) finishing 4th, but winning 1st place and a trip to Ireland, showgirls finishing 10th, thereby allowing Phil to screw with them for a moment before checking them in 3rd, and Ron/Bill (life partners/flight attendants) being eliminated along with the Survivors (!) Not the first time a "crossover" team has been eliminated as early as the 2nd leg (that would be Alison/Donny, Big Brother, then TAR5).
Ep 3:
1. First task in Yogyakarta involves recreating a 1940s bike patrol by dressing up in a scouting outfit and riding a bike. Andy/Tommy do a few wheelies, and even surf their bikes at one point :-D Ernie/Cindy brag about how much they've prepared for the race. Well, nothing prepared them for losing a pedal, plopping them from 3rd to next-to-last while the bike patrol guy's fixing it...
2. We see Bill/Cathi repeatedly saying "Team numba one" with an Asian accent to their cabbie :-D during a taxi race to the next destination, some farmside restaurant, and a Detour between planting seedlings in a rice farm, and carrying grass and taking sheep to a feeding shed. Snowboarders do the sheep one, and make a point of reading that each team is only allowed to use two buckets per team to fill a trough with water, and they notice Laurence/Zac using more than that (Snowboarders: "Read your clues, guys"). This will be important later.
3. Next stop, Borobodur temple, for a Roadblock involving counting various poses of the Buddha. 3 poses have 17, one pose has 18. Proves very difficult, and most of the players work together, except old guy Bill who rocks this Roadblock by himself :-) Again, missed a good chunk of the episode, this time thanks to AXN pre-empting the afternoon rerun with a re-broadcast of the finale of The Voice :-P
4. Laurence/Zac arrive at the mat first, but the bucket issue gets them a 15 minute penalty, resulting in the snowboarders winning their 2nd leg in a row, in spite of failing to actually arrive first in either leg (!) After a frantic montage of teams paying off their cabbies, the showgirls' little Twitter reprieve ultimately only lasts 3 legs, and they have an exit interview about how one of them is hoping her daughter doesn't see her as a failure. Cute.
