The Amazing Race S30E04 & S30E05 "Gotta Put Your Sole Into It"

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This is the first season I can remember where I actually have liked every team so in some respects it makes it harder when teams get eliminated. I'm not a fan of the head to head, but at least the way they are doing it seems fair. If you get their first you have multiple times to win your head to head and if you get there late you have a very limited number of times.

As for driving a stick, I THINK I remember seeing them show the stick and it was manual (either that or they mentioned it was manual.) As an aside, I've always been surprised that the car manufacturers have never standardized where the gears or on a manual transmission is. I've never driven one, nor do I have a desire to, but I always figured it would be confusing and potentially dangerous if you drove one and then drove a different one and you've conditioned yourself to to it one way and the "new" car has it a different way. I do enjoy my paddle shifters though

 

Pretty much the only thing that's ever different is the position of Reverse and what sort of interlock it has, if any, to prevent accidental selection. I've never seen a modern car that didn't have a diagram showing the shift pattern on or around the shifter.

 

A printed pattern showing that you have to push the stick down might help, or it might add confusion.

 

Have they even shown them in airports yet? I can't remember seeing them the last couple of episodes.

 

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I have a problem with the genius gal and sailing... sailing dynamics is a standard high school physics problem in vector dynamics that everyone who has ever taken an SAT (or equivalent) has thought about. Eventually she said something like "I had to go all the way down and then over...." Even though all of them have never sailed (if they haven't) there's some good old fashioned logic you bring to the party. I saw NONE exhibited there. And they weren't racing, just trying to get from point a to be... even if they paddled!

 

Airport footage is usually boring unless there are limited number of seats on a flight and the teams are jostling for position. I think a couple episodes ago, we saw all the teams in the airport talking about not knowing which team out of the final two had been eliminated and then the one team walked up and they all hugged. But when they're all going to be on the same flight and end up in a virtual tie after the plane lands, then there's really nothing interesting to show in the airport.

 

OMG! I couldn't believe those poor guys-I held my breath, thinking they were going to get hit or run over or the one guy was going to fall flat on his face when he braced himself against that wall to push the car-they are lucky they did not get injured-that was coo coo bananas crazy!

 

How is it any different than one of those needle-in-a-haystack searching challenges. There have been ones in the past where the team arriving first simply cannot find it and leave in last. Granted, it is not RIGHT before the mat. But it had the same impact.

 

How does it work for the last few teams? Because there really is no reason for the last 2 teams to compete against each other. Unless maybe there is an additional wait time for the team that ends up in dead last.

 

What makes you say the bolded?

 

Yep, the team that loses the final Face Off has to turn over an hourglass and wait it out before they can keep going. I suspect it's like 15 minutes or so.

 

Interesting. I think I would like it a bit better done this way and in the middle of the leg.

 

And not every team that came in last at the face off has come in last in that leg, so I think it works better as just another challenge in the middle of the leg rather than being the definitive determination of the order in which teams check in.

 

The talk about no airport scenes reminds me of yet another thing that's been lost along the way with TAR like the shots of the 12 hour pit stops and sleeping on the ground and Phil's accent. Any actual route planning. You used to see teams planning routes and getting better stopovers and stuff, and now it's just like ho hum, we all showed up at the airport at the same time.

 

I liked this head to head better than the first. There was more of a learning curve so that teams could realistically improve after a few tries. On the first one, it felt like the team that lost just got more tired with each go making it somewhat of a disadvantage to get multiple tries.

 

They've changed the way they do the pit stops. In the early days, the teams all stayed together and got to mingle and get to know each other. But now they sequester them so the teams never see each other during the down time. This is why they frequently don't know which team came in last and got eliminated until the next leg when they all meet up at an airport or challenge location.

As for the route planning, I think there are relatively few legs where the teams actually have a real option on which flights/routes to take. Most of it is planned out by the race. But I agree that those legs when the teams show up to an airport and are presented with multiple options of how to get to the next destination and they all take various routes is very fun to see and I wish we'd have more of that.

 

Yeah, I just miss the "cozier" nature of the earlier seasons, I guess. I should have added to my original list: money mattering. We used to see people sleeping outside or teaming up with other people to get a hotel room as cheap as possible, now they all just stay at hotels off screen.

Now they are all well rested and even have enough downtime to get their teeth fixed.

 

I haven't watched TAR from the beginning, only for the past several seasons. Lately it seems as if there are challenges which have been, let's say inspired by, the presence of particular teams in the race.

In this episode, we had #TeamOceanRescue and a sailing challenge.

In another season, there was a team who had to do a Speed Bump and their task was to wash an elephant. In the stand-up pieces later, one of them was saying how she loved elephants so it had been a great experience to have that as their speed bump.

I can think of other examples but it's awkward thinking of how to word them without getting spoilery. Haven't you ever said "it's too bad that [team name] isn't here, they would have been good at this?" late in the season after that team has been eliminated?

Maybe 'something for everyone' was too strong a statement, but I do think the producers have that season's cast in mind when they design some of the Road Blocks.