Debbie put herself in a strong alliance but her attitude made her the first target in any flip. Michaela is just a bad player. She understands the mathematical aspect of the game but doesn't understand how to relate to anyone. But I'm starting to think she's the inevitable 3rd place finisher. As for the clue, she's on Survivor. Like Sarah said, you have to be constantly looking. Sarah drastically improved her chances of winning, but if anyone thinks *that* majority is going to stick together they haven't been watching Survivor later. However, Sarah has put herself in prime position to Natalie her way to the end. The game is still wide open for anyone but Michaela but I think Sarah made herself one of the favorites with Cirie and Culpepper. If I were to rank in order of (My opinion) likelihood of winning: Cirie Sarah Culpepper Andrea Tai (Large gap) Zeke Troyzan Sierra Aubrey (Large gap) Michaela
I agree Michaela has basically zero social skills. I find her too amusing to want her voted out, though. My wife also likes her.
Gripe about The Amazing Race tonight: I didn't get to see it because of how the simulcasting works when the same show is on at the same time on both an American and Canadian channel. The channel may be set to the American station, but we still get the Canadian broadcast (so we get Canadian ads). The problem happens when the next show isn't one shown on both channels... but some <unprintable word> forgets to switch off the simulcast. So instead of The Amazing Race on CBS, I was confronted with some stupid sitcom on the Canadian channel. I'm going to have to find some online site to see if anyone's posted it.
Wow. Italy is beautiful. The attitudes of some of the racers are not beautiful. They need to stop this double U-turn crap or just acknowledge that the show is becoming Survivor-not-on-an-island.
Or at least find some U-Turn alternative that is not necessarily a death sentence. The original Yield was not a death sentence. Like maybe, you don't have to do both sides of a challenge that could take hours each, but you get a slightly harder version of the Roadblock. Or, another team gets to choose which team member performs the Roadblock, or they get to choose which side of the Detour you do. They can keep a way for teams to screw other teams, just make it a penalty a little more reasonable that won't automatically knock them out.
Yep. This elimination had nothing to do with the team's ability or inability to do the tasks. It had everything to do with the other teams' spitefulness and "we only want to play with OUR kind of people" attitude. I got the impression from Phil's body language and tone of voice that he wasn't pleased about this.
This isn't the first time this has happened. That doesn't mean I like it though, I liked Vanck and Ashton and everyone else screwed them. Now we'll see them show their true colors and turn on each other.
Yay, he's gone! I have never liked Zeke, either last season or this one. That was a surprising Tribal Council. Tai showing up in the votes when they didn't show anyone putting his name out as a serious choice was unexpected. He'd better start seriously considering playing his idols - for himself, instead of giving them away. No sympathy for the one whining about how hungry she was. When you vote off the guy who was catching the fish, what do you expect?
Amazing Race question here: When do you suppose the Producers decide the current leg of the race will be non-elimination? Tonight's episode the team that lost seemed all but ready to go home, in fact they had already been saved at the last minute a few episodes earlier. So it cvame as a bit of a surprise to have them saved (again). Granted this time they'll have to deal with a speed bump, but I've seen teams overcome that depending on how in-depth it is. Too bad this couldn't have came last week and saved Vanck and Ashton.
The Amazing Race is, legally and technically speaking, a game show. They have to have their rules and twists in place before the game ever starts, or they'll run afoul of the same rules and violations that the shows in the '50s did, when they played favorites with specific contestants. The producers have the say over which teams they decide to show doing which tasks or having which conversations/meltdowns, but they can't just up and decide to save a specific team at the last minute. So yeah, this last team has been luckier than most ever are. But that's all it is - just luck. At least they stopped the crap about the NEL team losing all their money and having to beg from the locals.
The begging thing might be the dumbest change Amazing Race ever had. I hear the reason they introduced 'You're still racing' was that in one season, they realized after they planned a non-elimination round that begging was illegal in the country they were in. So 'This leg is not over' was their way of keeping number of teams the same without having anyone beg. I think they decide what legs are non-elimination in advance because they carefully plan all the tasks around having specific numbers of teams. But I wouldn't be surprised if I found out they used them to save the teams that are better TV. I'm not sure they are legally prevented from doing that. I know in Survivor first season Stacy sued the show over the way she was eliminated and it never went anywhere and since then they've had all kinds of disclaimers that are basically "We do what we want." (And it was pretty clear in that episode they steered the conversation to protect Rudy to avoid all three old people being the first three voted out.) Ugh, ANOTHER U-Turn next week? Don't they usually stick with two?
If that were the case, there would have been some excellent teams that would have been saved, but were instead eliminated because they came in last. Sometimes all it takes is a taxi driver who doesn't know where the hell he's going, and couldn't care less. They can't know in advance which teams are going to be better TV, and some teams that started out promisingly have turned out to be obnoxious. I heard something about that, but who knows how much is true. Rudy was rude and obnoxious to some of the players (okay, basically everyone), but he was in an alliance that didn't break until the final 3. As for all three old people being voted out first... BB basically demanded to be voted out. He threw a temper tantrum, announced he wanted to go home, and the others obliged him. So that was his own fault. I forget the name of the ukelele-playing lady, but I'm not surprised that some people found her annoying and voted her out. Of course, this was the season before the whole alliance thing became standard. Tagi had an unshakeable alliance that mowed down the rest of their tribe, and then the Pagong tribe (who decided to be honorable - and therefore none of them made it anywhere near the end). And to think that some of them actually thought this show was about survivor skills... I remember how the whole "luxury item" thing was really important to some people, and how the prize at one of the reward challenges was ONE SLICE OF PIZZA. As I recall, Gervais won that, and generously allowed the others to take a bite of that one slice before finishing it himself. Now the reward winners get mini spa vacations, with full-course gourmet meals...
Regardless of whether there were good reasons to vote those three individuals out, the way they originally marketed Survivor would look bad if the three elderly were the first three to go. I don't think Rudy willingly joined that alliance until after that vote. It was between Stacy and Rudy and at Tribal Jeff passed around a conkshell and told everyone to think about 'Strength'.
Sierra: "By the way Sara, just wanted to let you know if I get voted out, you will pick up a free immunity idol." Sara: "Interesting. Well, good thing nobody wants that to happen." Haha.
Yep. Sierra is both naive and an idiot. And once she sees the footage of this episode, she will feel like both (and deservedly so). I don't like Sarah, but holy crap, Sierra made a dumb move there. I would so hate to be on a road trip with that jerk (the red-headed bearded guy whose name I never bothered to remember). It puts me in mind of the trip I was on with my dad and great-uncle from Vancouver Island to Wenatchee, Washington. My dad was driving the Winnebago and I was in the front passenger seat. My dad never learned to think in metric, and our only road map... was in metric. So we got near the border, we're trying to find the right road to take not only to cross, but before that we were supposed to pay a quick visit to a relative in White Rock (or Surrey, don't recall which, at the moment). It got to the point where I was trying to convert between kilometres and miles in my head, keep track of north, south, east, and west, and make my dad understand that by the third time we passed the U-Pick raspberry farm, he should concede that I was right and he was wrong about the road we were on when we got off the traffic circle (he wouldn't listen to me, even though he was the one who decided I was to be the navigator). I'm glad Team Fun is still in the race. The losing team did have a point, though - they did try to help the team that U-turned them, and of course it's not a sportsmanlike move to turn around and be nasty. But when there's that much money on the line, sportsmanship goes out the window.
I am confused. Spoiler That backup plan seemed to come out of nowhere. Why Michaela? If they were going to flip it why not Sarah? So now we're going into a vote with three immunity idols + legacy advantage and six people. Next tribal will be weird.
Sarah probably decided to get rid of Michaela because she lost faith in Cerie and worried about an idol in Cerie's pocket. She probably took Tai's vote to make Cerie and Michaela think she was voting for Tai, and she figured that, if she couldn't trust Cerie, she couldn't trust Michaela either. There's also a decent possibility that Tai told Sarah to take his vote so that Cerie and Michaela would be blindsided.