Amazing Race 12

[Spiderman]

Well, we taped this episode but forgot football usually runs over, so we only taped from 8-9 and missed a whole bunch - in fact, we figured it wasn't even worth watching when I forwarded past 15 minutes of 60 Minutes. So hopefully it comes On Demand or we missed out of the first episode...

 

[Spiderman]

Still haven't seen the first episode but got to see the second...

So it's hard to form any attachments yet.... just wondering why the Goths said the others were surprised that they got so far where they did at the end of the first leg (i Guess)... just because they look weird?

Usually there's an all-guy team, but not this time...

Why, oh why did they have to show the grandfather stripping down for the Roadblock... and a "thong" type thing, no less... ARGGG!

 

[EricBess]

There is one all-guy team, they just aren't very dominant. It's the kid and his grandpa. There are three all-girl teams this time. Well, two now.

I agree that it's very early to have an attachment, but we are glad that Kate and Pat were eliminated this week. Any team that is way too mushy with public displays of affection and so forth is going to be irritating, but when it's a lesbian couple, I personally don't want to see it.

A few other early impressions:

The "goths" are a bit odd. I've a few friends that would argue that they aren't goth, just freaks, but I guess "goth" means different things to different people. They do seem to really being enjoying the game and getting along, so either way, I'm not going to hold it against them and I actually feel like they are one of the teams earning their place instead of just happening to get in before everyone else. I hope they continue to do well.

Lorena and Jason, who won this week, had a few relationship issues last week with not listening to each other and going the wrong direction. Either there weren't as many opportunities this week or they just managed to pull it together.

Rachel and TK were a bit odd to watch. He was the guy that couldn't tie a knot, but then he made a comment about how they were having problems because "she couldn't figure out what she was supposed to do." I didn't understand that. Then when she traded places with him, the task was finished almost instantaneously... I'm pretty sure he's not the brains of the operation...

Jennifer and Nathan are the dating couple. He apparently cheated on her at one point, so they are coming on the race to see if they can patch things up and pull together...So far, I'm not holding out too much hope for them in either endeavor. Neither seems to show the other any respect.

 

[Spiderman]

I meant an young all-guy team that usually flirts with one of the young all-girl teams

I don't mind the PDAs, but Kate and Pat just seemed weak overall, on how they played/ran the race.

I saw some of the relationship arguing, just not the first tme around to see how serious it is.

One thing that I got reminded of was the Asian father-daughter team. I'm getting a bit turned off by him already - although the young kid was rude at the ticket counter, I don't think the father should have "told him off". And, he's "yelling" at his daughter for "making he wrong decisions" and vacillating, yet he's not really doing anything - in fact, during the Detour, he was first complaining about the Hoisting and then when she chose the Hunt it, he was complaining about that. Just do it already...

 

[Spiderman]

Man, our cable went on the blitz so I had to call to get it reset and all of our DVR recording options were also reset... so we missed Sundays

 

[EricBess]

Are you going to try to catch it online?

 

[Spiderman]

You mean the whole episode or the highlights? Do they have the whole episode online (and the first one since we missed that too)?

 

[EricBess]

Hmm...I've seen full episodes of the Amazing Race for previous seasons, but it looks like they aren't running full episodes this time. I found full episodes for Survivor. Just click on the "Video" link from CBS's Amazing Race page (start at www.cbs.com) and then click on "All Shows" and you'll have an option for full episodes.

It looks like you can get just about everything that happened during the episode if you follow the "Reality/Alternative" link to the Amazing Race webclips, but it's broken up into a lot of different files.

Basically, Jen and Nate got an earlier flight to Paris, but everyone was on the same connecting flight to Africa. The second flight to Paris was delayed, so there was some tension, but in the end, everyone just barely made the connection, much to the disappointment of Jen and Nate.

They caught a train to the middle of nowhere, where they had to milk a camel. That was basically the bottle-neck for this leg. Some teams managed fairly easily, but for some, they couldn't avoid the kicks from the camels or keep their camel's still, so when their camel ran out of milk, they had to wait until everyone else was finished so they could use one of the other camels.

That split the teams with the brother/sister, two sisters, two blondes, and Lorena and Jason (who won last week) all having trouble. The brother/sister and blondes finished soon after they were able to switch camels, but the sisters, Mariana and Julia, and the dating couple (Lorena and Jason) were really struggling. It was a road block, so only one was doing it. Lorena was really freaking out and losing it completely. It was a bit pathetic really, but I'm sure she must have been lacking sleep.

After they finished with the camels, they had to lead 4 camels to a village where they would either try to learn 10 native words or teach a native teenager 10 English words. The brother/sister were the only ones with-it enough to each take 5 native words. Everyone else tried to have both players memerize all 10. In the end, that was enough for the siblings to come in first again (they won the first leg also).

Meanwhile, the sisters finally finished with the camel. Then, the defining moment of the episode happened when the sister who had been milking the camel, feeling bad for Lorena, told her to switch to a camel that had a child with it because they were more docile.

That was enough advice for Lorena to finally manage the task and they ran their camels to catch up. It all came down to the memorization and Jason and Lorena managed to take the lead and get to the pit stop first, eliminating Mariana and Julia.

It was a major case of no good deed goes unpunished. If they had just moved on without saying anything, Lorena would still be trying to milk the camels to this day and Lorena and Jason would have been eliminated instead.

 

[Spiderman]

Wow, thanks for the recap. I'll have to look around to see if it's worth it to view it online. Survivor is On Demand so missing those episodes don't matter as much... I wonder why Amazing Race isn't the same.

Taped last night's episode but haven't seen it yet (hopefully it's on there )

 

[Spiderman]

Finally saw Sunday's episode...

It didn't make much of an impression on me. Maybe it's because we've missed two of the episodes already, but I'm still not "attached" or rooting for anyone yet - I just don't know them well enough.

The U turn was "eh", I didn't really feel for the team that got U-turned, so it was hard to buy into the "anticipation" of whether they could still catch up.

 

[EricBess]

Yeah, I don't think they could have caught up anyway. They were too far behind from the beginning. this was another one of those episodes where nothing truely mattered because one team was so far behind and there were never any oportunities to catch up.

I did think that the blondes, who already come across as blondes, became even more blonde in this episode. After all, they intended to U-Turn the team that was right on their tail, but they instead U-turned a team that has a resemblence physically to that team.

I thought the idea of the U-turn over a yield was rather interesting. Neither of the two detours really seemed to take much time as long as you thought them through and did them right. I suppose if you are completely without rythm, but I got the impression that everyone that got stuck for 10-minutes didn't really do much planning. And I think the blondes got a pass on that because of their looks, because their dancing was less impressive than some that did get stuck.

Anyway, getting back to the U-turn, it's kind of cool in a way the yield never was. It can still be a 1/2 wait, like the yield was, but it's more in the player's control, so they could actually turn it into a 15-minute wait if they hurry.

Of course, you don't really get an impression for how far away from each other everything is, so it could also take 1/2 hour just to get there and back for all we know.

I would hate to see a U-turn end up a death sentence (someone going from second to dead last, just because of the extra task, for example), but it's certainly more interesting than a Yield.

 

[Spiderman]

You know, I thought the blondes intended to U-turn the team that was right on their heels and was kinda wondering why they U-turned the last place team, but like I said, I don't know them well enough yet to know who's who, so I let it pass

I think the U-turn gives the team the "illusion" that they're in control of their fate or time delay, while a Yield was simply waiting

And yeah, I wasn't too impressed with the blondes dancing either.

 

[EricBess]

Yeah, they meant to U-turn the team on their heels. They just either didn't get a good look at which team that was of they weren't careful.

 

[EricBess]

Nothing really exciting this week.

Clearly, Jenifer and Nathan have communication issues. They can't even count posts without arguing with each other and getting in each other's way.

You have to admire Ronald and his hernia, yet he keeps going. I'm not sure if I like them much, though. He and his daughter seem to be in completely different words. They try to respect each other, but they don't really seem to understand each other. It's a bit frustrating to watch.

When Nicolas realized halfway through that he had counted gates, he kept his head and didn't let it get to him. My wife's first reaction was that he had to start over. They tend to be a bit stand-offish with some of the other teams and it nearly cost them at the airport.

I wasn't sure what the roadblock had to do with being a good listener, though. Yeah, they had to "listen" and know where to take the clue, but it seemed like it had more to do with being lucky enough to not have to go to the hair salon, since no one on the street seemed to know where that was.

I'm certainly not upset or surprised to see the blondes gone.

 

[Spiderman]

You pretty much summed up our views too

I'm not exactly sure what Jenifer and Nathan's problem is, but I've only seen 2 episodes. I mean, Jenifer wanted to count the posts a certain way and certainly nothing should have stopped Nathan from doing it his way, but I guess his counting out loud disturbed her (and there were apparently lots of other distractions going on!)

Agree about Ronald and his daughter. When they were trying to book tickets, I think he had good ideas like checking other airlines, but communicated them in an "abrasive" or not so friendly way. I have the same problem in real life

Nicholas did keep his head after miscounting and that was good. Not sure why he had so much trouble trying to find the hair salon though. Was he asking everyone he came across and no one knew where it was until that one girl? Or was he just wandering around for a couple of hours? And he was a bit "unfriendly" at the airport, but c'mon, it IS a race. It's the same thing when the blondes didn't want the others to know their airplane seats. I thought that was a reasonable request and an unreasonable expectation of the others to think they had a "right" to know it.

You know, maybe a future twist in the game is that teams HAVE to give another team(s) a clue or something to foster "friendly gamemanship"

Yeah, not sorry about the blondes leaving either

 

[EricBess]

So, it comes down to a stupid error at the airport. Once again, they try to make it seem like it was closer than it was. They were at least close enough that they could see the previous team on the zipline, so they must have made up a decent amount of time. I wasn't paying attention to see how much later they were landing than the previous teams.

The three that got on the second flight battling it out was interesting. I think, however, that the best play from this week was Kynt and Vyxen specifically asking about how long the layover was and choosing the flight that got there a few minutes later (effectively "the same time"), but had a larger layover window. That turned out to be very important for them since the two teams that took the flight that left earlier ended up having to reschedule.

It's interesting that with 6 teams, there were 4 different flight plans by the time all was said and done. I don't think they've ever made a point about the economy class tickets before. Maybe it's never been an issue. However, I can't help but wonder if they would have been better off just keeping their business class flight (they wouldn't have even realized if they hadn't asked) and taking whatever penalty came. After all, it would be really lame if they got to Phil and he said, "you are disqualified" or even "go back to Prague".

From a show perspective, I'm not even sure there would have been a penalty. After all, if there is no footage where someone actually says "business class", then it's a tough sell to the viewers.

Jennifer and Nathan need to go, though. How can someone be so whiny about second place? Nathan doesn't give her a lot of support, granted, but I think this may be the first time that it's the woman that is causing most of the problem.

 

[Spiderman]

Finally saw this one (good thing Survivor was on last Sunday or there'd be two shows to catch up

Yeah about the airport errors, but this time, it wasn't the airlines fault but the teams who were jumping out of line to try to get faster tickets. On one hand, it could pay off (and I think it did for a couple of teams) but for others like the bro-sis team, it didn't. This wasn't a case where they were all standing in the same line and the later ones got bumped 'cause the flight was full.

Kynt and Vyxen definitely played it smart.

I think the penalty for business class probably would have been waiting at the pit stop for x time (30 min?) or something. They've done that before when teams didn't follow instructions about transportation and it was too far back to do over (unlike Jenn & Nathan). But I bet the require economy because there are more seats available at business (and more expensive, since the show foots the airline bill )

You don't reallt row facing forwards, do you? *I* always thought you face backwards like the father tried to do and the daughter was all wrong... I think you just get more power that way, if the front is even feasible.

 

[EricBess]

That's actually a good point. In this case, at least the airport errors were due to fault and not JUST due to lack of availability. It's much worse when only one team doesn't make the flight because it's full and then they never have a chance to catch up.

And yeah, it would have been interesting to see, but I bet the brother/sister team would have been much better off had they either not discovered or ignored their error.

I noticed that about which way to face in the boat too, and as far as I know, you are correct. I don't know of a rowwing style that requires facing forward.

 

[Spiderman]

Well, the penalty for the bro-sis team would have been x time waiting at the Pit Stop, it would have been close, since the second-to-last team seemed pretty close to the others.

I can't remember what flight they would have been on - if they were on the leaving-earlier-but-got-delayed flight, I think they would have lost anyway. If they were on Kynt & Vyxen's flight, maybe...

 

[EricBess]

I didn't notice what time they got in or how much later it was than the other group that was before them, but I got the impression that they made up a lot of ground.