Surviving the Amazing Race

[JirinPanthosa]

Scot and Jason were never going to take Tai to the finals. But it seemed to me his switch was motivated based on emotion and not strategy. He liked Aubry and felt exploited by Jason and Scot.

I can't imagine anybody bringing Tai to the finals. He's both the nicest guy there by a wide margin and the only one who has ever actually suffered.

My guess to what happens next week is a split vote, 3-2 Tai and Jason, Tai plays his idol, Jason goes home.

Anyone's game right now. Cydney and Aubry seem like the most likely to get votes besides Tai, Julia seems least likely. Joe's a guy everyone likes but didn't do much. Michelle hasn't made enemies but also didn't make big moves. I could see any of Cydney, Aubrey, Michelle or Joe winning. I guess Tai could get on an immunity streak and still win, and Jason and Julia still have time to make some brilliant game move.

Whoever wins is going to be whoever pulls a Natalie and comes out of nowhere to dominate the endgame.

 

[Timewalker]

I've just watched the Ponderosa videos. Debbie still won't shut up. The guys want to vote her out of Ponderosa...

 

[Timewalker]

One unremarkable team eliminated from the race, and Julia voted off on Survivor (yay!). Tai got really lucky this time. How many more opportunities does he have to use his idol?

I'm honestly surprised that his chicken is still alive - I'd have thought for sure that Jason would have killed it and cooked it for lunch the next day.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think I may finally quit Amazing Race. Last couple seasons have been kinda lame and increasingly gimmicky, and I don't know what originally possessed them to introduce the U-Turn. But it just pisses me off that there is a mechanic in place that inherently penalizes better teams. Let Survivor be Survivor and let Amazing Race be Amazing Race. The best team gets targeted for being the best team and the team that got saved by non-elimination twice and the Tantrum Queen are still in.

Tai has gotten about as far as I expected him to. Even if he makes final four, he would need to win immunity to make final three no matter who he is with.

 

[Timewalker]

Is it going to be a final three or final two? I saw rumors of it just being two, on one of the Survivor: Ponderosa YT pages.

I'm not at all sorry to see those jerks eliminated from the race tonight.

As for gimmicks, it could be worse. Remember the seasons when the non-elimination leg team got all their money confiscated and they had to beg strangers for money at the start of their next leg? At least the U-Turn isn't designed to humiliate the players.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

When it was just the Yield, you only lost 30 minutes and you still had a fighting chance to get back in. The U turn can set you back *hours*, and is physically impossible to recover from unless somebody makes some terrible wrong turn. Kurt & Brodie did not lose the race, they got voted out. The U turn is the Blue Shell of Amazing Race. Nobody knows why they added it, nobody likes it that much, it only penalizes the best teams, but they still keep it in every new game for reasons nobody understands.

What makes you think those two are jerks? The only unlikable team left to me is Dana & Matt.

I hadn't heard final two though it wouldn't be that surprising since they did it just a couple seasons ago in Tony's season. I did hear though there were three medical evacuations this year, and only two happened so far.

 

[Pegaritaville]

When Tai asked Aubrey if he should play his idol, I think Aubrey should have said yes. It would have gotten the idol out and she could always say that she really wasn't sure how the voting would go.

As for AR, I still don't really care who wins. I still haven't bothered to remember any of the team's names.

 

[Timewalker]

I don't disagree that it would have been smarter for her to tell him to play it. After all, that's one of the key strategy points at this time - how to get rid of the idol. But on the other hand, if he'd played it, he would have been safe that time. And nobody but Tai knows what his advantage is.

Kurt & Brodie did not lose the race, they got voted out.

I doubt TAR designs these things knowing that they're impossible. They could have made up the time, and while they wouldn't have come in first, they wouldn't necessarily have come in last. After all, the woman who's always whining and complaining couldn't even recognize a clue when she was holding it, so there's always a chance that another team will either have a bad taxi, a vehicle breakdown, or do something stupid.

And while the U-Turn is a skunky thing to do to people, it is within the rules of the game. At least this time they did it to a team that was consistently strong, instead of kicking another team down that was already in no danger of winning.

I've always gotten the "arrogant jerk" vibe from Kurt and Brodie.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't think the teams were wrong for using the U turn (Except if it's personal which it was not in this case). I think the show is wrong for making it an option.

To make up for a U turn when nobody else is U turned you need somebody else to make a horrible mistake.

At the very least they should add a rule that you can't U turn any team that has already been through. That way two teams compete to survive it.

It was probably in Aubry's interest not to lie to Tai. Right now the idol holder trusts her the most and if she lied it would taint the final vote for her.

 

[Timewalker]

The problem with prohibiting people from U-turning a team that's already been there is that they don't necessarily know who's been there. They'll know if a team used the U-turn, but not if a team was there and decided not to use it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Easy to fix, have them take their picture out of the box when they pass.

 

[Timewalker]

It's part of the game, though. Some people have U-turned teams, not realizing they were already ahead of them, and didn't U-turn the team that wound up beating them.

 

[Pegaritaville]

It was probably in Aubry's interest not to lie to Tai. Right now the idol holder trusts her the most and if she lied it would taint the final vote for her.

True, Tai does trust Aubrey and that's an asset to her, but between the idol and the advantage, Tai has a lot of power. And she could have claimed telling him to play the idol was an honest mistake and she really did think he was in trouble.

 

[Timewalker]

Oh, dear. Tai burned his advantage, and it backfired. It's so obvious that he wanted Michelle gone (he is correct that a well-rounded player can be dangerous, as she's good at more than one kind of challenge). At least he's still got his idol. But he's only got one more opportunity to use it, doesn't he?

I'm glad Jason is gone. He was a physical threat to the others, and that stunt with the axe, machete, and putting out the fire is something that should never be rewarded as good gameplay.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The whole 'Act like an ass to make people want to sit next to you in the finals' strategy is a good strategy with some groups but this is a group that votes emotionally.

Tai's bad at calculating moves but it may actually be helping him in the game because he's unintentionally doing what Jason tried to do. He's perceived as less of a jury threat than before. Although the whole Cydney/Aubry/Joe block seems pretty strong right now.

 

[Timewalker]

Am I remembering correctly that there is still one more medical situation coming up that will pull someone from the game? Joe wasn't doing so well in the reward challenge. He looked completely exhausted.

Tai's ideas aren't bad, but he is bad at figuring out who to trust and when to keep his mouth shut.

I'm amazed that his chicken hasn't been killed and eaten yet. That bird is a more interesting part of this season for me than most of the players.


Regarding last night's episode of The Amazing Race: I'm okay with two of the teams that made it, but I sincerely hope that the team with the whiny, complaining woman (I don't remember her name - Dana?) doesn't win.

The mom, though... looks right at the word "minaret" and keeps pronouncing it "minuet." There's a hell of a difference between the two - the first is an architectural feature, and the latter is a kind of dance.

 

[Timewalker]

So I take it that they didn't do the second challenge or have tribal council this time.

I was right about Joe, but for the wrong reason. And this would have been Tai's last chance to play the idol, so this turns to be a season when all the idols go home unplayed.

It really is anybody's game at this point.

 

[Pegaritaville]

Although I felt kind of bad for Joe, I'm glad he's out. He did very little in the game other than latch onto the right people. All of the remaining players are more deserving of a shot at the final.
I wonder what will happen to Mark the chicken? Will he make it to the end and if so, what will become of him?

 

[Timewalker]

Mark the Chicken will probably end up as somebody's dinner. Even if he survives to the end, I don't think Tai would be allowed to take him home (quarantine regulations vary for different kinds of animals). So he'd have to leave Mark behind, and his best hope would be for a local family to adopt Mark as a pet (but I doubt that agreement would last long).

Mind you, at this point it wouldn't surprise me if someone has facetiously considered voting for Mark the Chicken to win the million dollars!


About last night's Amazing Race finale... I'm disappointed. I really wanted the guys to win. But their floundering around at the start when they couldn't find the clue box, and needing so many tries to get the clue, really made it impossible for them to catch up.

 

[Aldo]

I'm a (relative) long time viewer of the Amazing Race but I've never really discussed it online before.

My big problem with the finale (any of the finale's, really) is that they usually involve large scale challenges that only one team can do at a time, making it impossible for any team to pick up time. A few seasons ago they did something I think in Vegas where they had to the top of a Hotel and put light bulbs in, and then perform a magic trick with a Magician, not really any skill involved in that last bit, and extremely hard for anyone to catch up.

In this season's finale, when Matt completed the first challenge right away I knew they had it in the bag, since there really was no way for anyone to catch up.