TAR21: Eps 1 to 4
Oct. 25th, 2012 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsTime for another run for a million dollars... or two million, for one team in particular.
Leg 1:
1. Once again, they're starting in SoCal, in this case, on top of the Colorado Street Bridge. The reason for this will be apparent later. Besides/on top of the usual relationships, interesting teams this year include: married monster truckers (!), a lumberjack and his wife, a woman snowboarder with two prosthetic legs, a somewhat height-challenged teacher (though not as challenged as Charla) who's also a big fan of the show, a pair of Chippendales dancers, a rock star and a lawyer... and these "Fabulous" goat farmers. Also, the other main draw for this season is that the winners of the first leg will be running for two million dollars, instead of the usual one.
2. So the reason they're on top of a bridge is that to get their first clue and their backpacks, everyone will be rappelling down the bridge (!) Next stop, Shanghai, China, where the first task of the race is a Roadblock: "Who's ready to get paddled?" Basically, play ping-pong against a really skilled Chinese kid (shades of Beijing S1 much?), and score just one point. Oh, and just to show off how good he is, they have him switch to other things like a clipboard, a tambourine, and a frying pan. Kid ends up playing against Nadiya/Natalie (Sri Lanka-born twins) with a pencil box, and against Rob/Kelley (monster truckers) with the clue envelope (!) Oh, and most of the teams score their point when their opponent hits the ball out of bounds, while Josh/Brent (goat farmers) are the only team to beat their opponent on the first try ("I've never won a sports competition before" :-D)
3. Next stop is a Chinese restaurant, for a Double Roadblock: "Who's ready to go tubing?" As usual in this type of situation, it's the other player. This task involves eating frog Fallopian tubes (!!) Ryan/Abbie (dating couple) have this exchange: "Have you ever had Fallopian tubes?" "I have two, but please don't eat mine" :-D Rob(/Kelley) ends up having to eat two helpings after not following the rules (no eating with your hands) the first time :-P while Jaymes (/James, Chippendales), wary of the rules, licks some spilled tubes off the table (eww :-D) prompting him to comment: "Everything my mom told me how to eat, I threw out the window" :-D
4. Next, find a woman using an abacus on the Bund. Some of the teams actually know what an abacus is (R/A: "Why isn't she using a calculator?" :-D), while N/N manage to trip up on the word abacus :-D And the woman using an abacus is under an umbrella, apparently making her somewhat harder to spot. This ends up shuffling the teams around a lot. Eventually, Amy/Daniel (prosthetic legs/dating couple) find her first, and on the way to the pit stop, even tell Ryan/Abbie the general area of where to find her.
5. Pit stop is at a really tall signal tower on the Bund, and A/D's tip ends up biting them in the butt big time as R/A overtake them to win the leg (and a chance for $2m) by a few seconds. The race to avoid last/elimination is also a similar story: After a wild goose chase by the last two teams (even including a trip to a bank!) Rob/Sheila (lumberjack/wife) find abacus lady first, but the Chippendales (with their firm bodies and all) manage to overtake them to edge them out of the race.
Leg 2:
1. Next stop, Surabaya, Indonesia, where everyone gets bunched up at a bull-racing stadium, for what may well be one of this show's most pathetic tasks ever: In order of their arrival at the stadium, while a local races bulls, the contestants each ride (as opposed to drive) a pair of mopeds alongside (and they don't even have to go faster than the bulls to get their next clue!) I'm sure they're doing it like this to keep the contestants safe, but... seriously TAR? (In comparison, season 4 actually had bulls drag contestants through mud.)
2. The Roadblock (a single one this time) seems Pinkie Pie-inspired: not only is the clue pickup marked with balloons, it actually says, "Who likes to party?" In this case, contestants pedal a children's ride while making balloon animals and hats (!) Yes, they're having average Joes make balloon animals (and hats). Will (/Gary, teachers/big TAR fans) has a quite a bit of trouble on this task, not because of his height (he's the short one BTW), but because of his lack of skill at making balloon animals :-\ (And for some reason, no one else seems to be having much problems...)
3. Next stop is Wijaya Motors, a local motorcycle dealership, and this is when things get really screwy, as A/D (who had been in 2nd after the RB) and R/K both get cabbies who don't know where the dealership is (to be fair, how many people would be expected to know the location of a specific dealership in such a big city?), end up coming across a different Wijaya from the one they're looking for (turns out Wijaya is a pretty common business name in Indonesia), and have to ask around (A/D are even told "There is no information in Indonesia" :-\), dropping them to the bottom of the pack. Combined with Will's trouble at the Roadblock, it means we're bound to lose one of the more interesting teams early :-\
4. First Detour of the race, between carrying really long bars of ice to a fish market, or sorting fish and setting up a fish stall at said fish market. N/N set up the stall, everyone else does the ice. N/N worry about their sweaty makeup getting on to the fish :-D and after they're done and head to the pit stop outside the market (with a really long-nailed greeter!), Phil comments on them stinking like fish :-D What doesn't stink, though: N/N get 1st place and the Express Pass. What does stink: A/D get screwed by their cabbie so badly they end up finishing last and getting eliminated, so they don't even get to regret their first-leg mistake for long. Needless to say, fans are hoping for them to appear in another Unfinished Business season.
Leg 3:
1. Sticking in Surabaya for now, contestants take in a Roadblock at a local restaurant: "Who's ready to serve a balanced meal?" Everyone gets to carry 20 plates of food... on one arm (!) Chippendales are the first to finish, because the one doing it once had a job at a pancake house :-D Brittany/Caitlin (blonde best friends) talk about how tough they are, even quoting League of Their Own ("There's no crying in baseball"). Moving on...
2. Next stop, the train station, to stagger the teams on to two trains to Bangil leaving 3 hours apart, and everyone gets their clue from a vendor en route. It's a Detour between dancing with lion heads and getting eggs and holding flaming coconuts on top of their heads while some "magicians" use them to cook the eggs as part of a ritual (!) Goat farmers are the only team to choose to do this (the keyword being "choose", we'll get to that later): "Should we put this in our next cookbook?" :-D
3. We have a double Blind U-Turn at a big intersection (no one on the first train takes it) before the pit stop at a local high school, where R/A take their 2nd leg win and a trip to Fiji, just edging out Trey/Lexi (another dating couple). Self-proclaimed lone wolves James/Abba (rock star/lawyer) show up at the pit stop with a deliberately misspelled shirt: "BE DIPHERENT HI FIL!" :-D while the goat farmers are 5th, as the last from the first train to finish (thanks to the somewhat convoluted head omelet Detour)... before the other train has even arrived (!)
4. All of the teams on the 2nd train go do lion dancing. R/K U-Turn the teachers to do head omelets, while N/N accidentally run into the camera while getting their post-U-Turn clue :-D The real tension comes in the final segment when the teachers have to decide whether to U-Turn R/K or the blondes. They end up choosing R/K, who have actually checked in at the pit stop at this point (!) What ultimately matters, though is the blondes bleeding plenty of time looking for the U-Turn at the big intersection (or so the editing would have you believe), and then the blondes' pedicab taking the wrong road to the high school in a footrace (pedicab-race?) vs. the teachers to avoid elimination. Teachers check in, while the blondes blame their pedicabbie for costing them the race once he's realized his error. Eh, won't be missing them as much as A/D...
Leg 4:
1. This week, Bangladesh, for a Roadblock involving patching up the side of a bus, painting and sanding it, and removing the seats. They don't accept paint jobs that have more nooks and crannies than the Grand Canyon (tm Chippendales). Meanwhile, for the Fast Forward, James/Abba gather up rats (and make jokes of some of them being their ex-bandmates :-D), managing to pick up quite a few groupies along the way :-D
2. Next stop, a market for a "needle in a haystack" task (yuck), involving finding a race-marked dried fish in a sack of dried fish. After they've found their fish (seems like they all find theirs rather quickly), Detour this week is between pounding metal (to make a spike) and pounding cotton (to make a mattress). N/N do the former, while the Chippendales are so pathetic at the latter: "If your mattress says made in Bangladesh, hopefully it doesn't say by Jaymes and James" :-D
3. Pit stop on some island. James/Abba claim the leg and a trip to Antigua, and some of the teams have a bit of confusion on how they're supposed to get to the pit stop. They're supposed to ride a boat from one particular port to a specific spot, and then boat from there to the island. R/K go direct and get turned away by Phil to tag back to said spot. Rob chastises their cabbie for costing them a million (for the 2nd time in three legs!), but he turns out to be overreacting, as they only drop from 4th to 5th. The teachers spend the whole leg in last place before finally getting their long-overdue elimination.
Also, just before the start of TAR21, I got to see the cave-spelunking segment from TAR19 that I'd previously missed (coincidentally, also from that season's 2nd leg, also taking place in Indonesia, and also bumping off one of the expected frontrunners):
* So we have the teams heading to Yogyakarta by train, and then to the cave by taxis, prompting Marcus (/Amani, eventual 3rd place finishers) to comment how the Chattanooga Choo-Choo has nothing on here (juxtaposed with a shot of people riding the roof of the train :-D), and compare the mud road to the cave to the streets of Detroit :-D
* The Speed Bump for Bill/Cathi (the old folks) consists entirely of untangling a rope long enough to stretch between two palm trees :-\, and of course Bill compares it to Christmas lights. Nothing new here.
* Naturally, at least one team has no idea what spelunking is :-) Once in the cave, despite what contestants say about how dark it is, it proves rather easy to find the mask and dagger they're looking for, what with the light from above and a guy playing a traditional gong next to them... Cathi compliments Bill on being "63 and still running" when he comes out of the cave ahead of everyone else :-)
Leg 1:
1. Once again, they're starting in SoCal, in this case, on top of the Colorado Street Bridge. The reason for this will be apparent later. Besides/on top of the usual relationships, interesting teams this year include: married monster truckers (!), a lumberjack and his wife, a woman snowboarder with two prosthetic legs, a somewhat height-challenged teacher (though not as challenged as Charla) who's also a big fan of the show, a pair of Chippendales dancers, a rock star and a lawyer... and these "Fabulous" goat farmers. Also, the other main draw for this season is that the winners of the first leg will be running for two million dollars, instead of the usual one.
2. So the reason they're on top of a bridge is that to get their first clue and their backpacks, everyone will be rappelling down the bridge (!) Next stop, Shanghai, China, where the first task of the race is a Roadblock: "Who's ready to get paddled?" Basically, play ping-pong against a really skilled Chinese kid (shades of Beijing S1 much?), and score just one point. Oh, and just to show off how good he is, they have him switch to other things like a clipboard, a tambourine, and a frying pan. Kid ends up playing against Nadiya/Natalie (Sri Lanka-born twins) with a pencil box, and against Rob/Kelley (monster truckers) with the clue envelope (!) Oh, and most of the teams score their point when their opponent hits the ball out of bounds, while Josh/Brent (goat farmers) are the only team to beat their opponent on the first try ("I've never won a sports competition before" :-D)
3. Next stop is a Chinese restaurant, for a Double Roadblock: "Who's ready to go tubing?" As usual in this type of situation, it's the other player. This task involves eating frog Fallopian tubes (!!) Ryan/Abbie (dating couple) have this exchange: "Have you ever had Fallopian tubes?" "I have two, but please don't eat mine" :-D Rob(/Kelley) ends up having to eat two helpings after not following the rules (no eating with your hands) the first time :-P while Jaymes (/James, Chippendales), wary of the rules, licks some spilled tubes off the table (eww :-D) prompting him to comment: "Everything my mom told me how to eat, I threw out the window" :-D
4. Next, find a woman using an abacus on the Bund. Some of the teams actually know what an abacus is (R/A: "Why isn't she using a calculator?" :-D), while N/N manage to trip up on the word abacus :-D And the woman using an abacus is under an umbrella, apparently making her somewhat harder to spot. This ends up shuffling the teams around a lot. Eventually, Amy/Daniel (prosthetic legs/dating couple) find her first, and on the way to the pit stop, even tell Ryan/Abbie the general area of where to find her.
5. Pit stop is at a really tall signal tower on the Bund, and A/D's tip ends up biting them in the butt big time as R/A overtake them to win the leg (and a chance for $2m) by a few seconds. The race to avoid last/elimination is also a similar story: After a wild goose chase by the last two teams (even including a trip to a bank!) Rob/Sheila (lumberjack/wife) find abacus lady first, but the Chippendales (with their firm bodies and all) manage to overtake them to edge them out of the race.
Leg 2:
1. Next stop, Surabaya, Indonesia, where everyone gets bunched up at a bull-racing stadium, for what may well be one of this show's most pathetic tasks ever: In order of their arrival at the stadium, while a local races bulls, the contestants each ride (as opposed to drive) a pair of mopeds alongside (and they don't even have to go faster than the bulls to get their next clue!) I'm sure they're doing it like this to keep the contestants safe, but... seriously TAR? (In comparison, season 4 actually had bulls drag contestants through mud.)
2. The Roadblock (a single one this time) seems Pinkie Pie-inspired: not only is the clue pickup marked with balloons, it actually says, "Who likes to party?" In this case, contestants pedal a children's ride while making balloon animals and hats (!) Yes, they're having average Joes make balloon animals (and hats). Will (/Gary, teachers/big TAR fans) has a quite a bit of trouble on this task, not because of his height (he's the short one BTW), but because of his lack of skill at making balloon animals :-\ (And for some reason, no one else seems to be having much problems...)
3. Next stop is Wijaya Motors, a local motorcycle dealership, and this is when things get really screwy, as A/D (who had been in 2nd after the RB) and R/K both get cabbies who don't know where the dealership is (to be fair, how many people would be expected to know the location of a specific dealership in such a big city?), end up coming across a different Wijaya from the one they're looking for (turns out Wijaya is a pretty common business name in Indonesia), and have to ask around (A/D are even told "There is no information in Indonesia" :-\), dropping them to the bottom of the pack. Combined with Will's trouble at the Roadblock, it means we're bound to lose one of the more interesting teams early :-\
4. First Detour of the race, between carrying really long bars of ice to a fish market, or sorting fish and setting up a fish stall at said fish market. N/N set up the stall, everyone else does the ice. N/N worry about their sweaty makeup getting on to the fish :-D and after they're done and head to the pit stop outside the market (with a really long-nailed greeter!), Phil comments on them stinking like fish :-D What doesn't stink, though: N/N get 1st place and the Express Pass. What does stink: A/D get screwed by their cabbie so badly they end up finishing last and getting eliminated, so they don't even get to regret their first-leg mistake for long. Needless to say, fans are hoping for them to appear in another Unfinished Business season.
Leg 3:
1. Sticking in Surabaya for now, contestants take in a Roadblock at a local restaurant: "Who's ready to serve a balanced meal?" Everyone gets to carry 20 plates of food... on one arm (!) Chippendales are the first to finish, because the one doing it once had a job at a pancake house :-D Brittany/Caitlin (blonde best friends) talk about how tough they are, even quoting League of Their Own ("There's no crying in baseball"). Moving on...
2. Next stop, the train station, to stagger the teams on to two trains to Bangil leaving 3 hours apart, and everyone gets their clue from a vendor en route. It's a Detour between dancing with lion heads and getting eggs and holding flaming coconuts on top of their heads while some "magicians" use them to cook the eggs as part of a ritual (!) Goat farmers are the only team to choose to do this (the keyword being "choose", we'll get to that later): "Should we put this in our next cookbook?" :-D
3. We have a double Blind U-Turn at a big intersection (no one on the first train takes it) before the pit stop at a local high school, where R/A take their 2nd leg win and a trip to Fiji, just edging out Trey/Lexi (another dating couple). Self-proclaimed lone wolves James/Abba (rock star/lawyer) show up at the pit stop with a deliberately misspelled shirt: "BE DIPHERENT HI FIL!" :-D while the goat farmers are 5th, as the last from the first train to finish (thanks to the somewhat convoluted head omelet Detour)... before the other train has even arrived (!)
4. All of the teams on the 2nd train go do lion dancing. R/K U-Turn the teachers to do head omelets, while N/N accidentally run into the camera while getting their post-U-Turn clue :-D The real tension comes in the final segment when the teachers have to decide whether to U-Turn R/K or the blondes. They end up choosing R/K, who have actually checked in at the pit stop at this point (!) What ultimately matters, though is the blondes bleeding plenty of time looking for the U-Turn at the big intersection (or so the editing would have you believe), and then the blondes' pedicab taking the wrong road to the high school in a footrace (pedicab-race?) vs. the teachers to avoid elimination. Teachers check in, while the blondes blame their pedicabbie for costing them the race once he's realized his error. Eh, won't be missing them as much as A/D...
Leg 4:
1. This week, Bangladesh, for a Roadblock involving patching up the side of a bus, painting and sanding it, and removing the seats. They don't accept paint jobs that have more nooks and crannies than the Grand Canyon (tm Chippendales). Meanwhile, for the Fast Forward, James/Abba gather up rats (and make jokes of some of them being their ex-bandmates :-D), managing to pick up quite a few groupies along the way :-D
2. Next stop, a market for a "needle in a haystack" task (yuck), involving finding a race-marked dried fish in a sack of dried fish. After they've found their fish (seems like they all find theirs rather quickly), Detour this week is between pounding metal (to make a spike) and pounding cotton (to make a mattress). N/N do the former, while the Chippendales are so pathetic at the latter: "If your mattress says made in Bangladesh, hopefully it doesn't say by Jaymes and James" :-D
3. Pit stop on some island. James/Abba claim the leg and a trip to Antigua, and some of the teams have a bit of confusion on how they're supposed to get to the pit stop. They're supposed to ride a boat from one particular port to a specific spot, and then boat from there to the island. R/K go direct and get turned away by Phil to tag back to said spot. Rob chastises their cabbie for costing them a million (for the 2nd time in three legs!), but he turns out to be overreacting, as they only drop from 4th to 5th. The teachers spend the whole leg in last place before finally getting their long-overdue elimination.
Also, just before the start of TAR21, I got to see the cave-spelunking segment from TAR19 that I'd previously missed (coincidentally, also from that season's 2nd leg, also taking place in Indonesia, and also bumping off one of the expected frontrunners):
* So we have the teams heading to Yogyakarta by train, and then to the cave by taxis, prompting Marcus (/Amani, eventual 3rd place finishers) to comment how the Chattanooga Choo-Choo has nothing on here (juxtaposed with a shot of people riding the roof of the train :-D), and compare the mud road to the cave to the streets of Detroit :-D
* The Speed Bump for Bill/Cathi (the old folks) consists entirely of untangling a rope long enough to stretch between two palm trees :-\, and of course Bill compares it to Christmas lights. Nothing new here.
* Naturally, at least one team has no idea what spelunking is :-) Once in the cave, despite what contestants say about how dark it is, it proves rather easy to find the mask and dagger they're looking for, what with the light from above and a guy playing a traditional gong next to them... Cathi compliments Bill on being "63 and still running" when he comes out of the cave ahead of everyone else :-)
