'The Amazing Race' on CBS HD - Page 6

Since it didn't offer them an advantage or (thus far) change any order of arrival, they might just call it "No Harm, No Foul". I'm sure the Rules Committee has been locked up in a secret location going over the tapes


You mean all taxi's aren't yellow?
(Perhaps I should have been more in the spirit of the race and said a rogue Tuk Tuk)

It's more a case of disasters can happen to other teams and thus save your ass.

In previous seasons we've seen a team roll a Land Rover, get stopped by police, skip stages, lose their passports and money, etc, etc. And as long as there are still travel legs, some team can still get just as lost as Kent and Vixen were and end up in last place.

It's hard to tell how far back the Goths are, but it can't be more than an hour or so. Just as the Cowboys were able to get back into it on the first/second episode, there will probably a challenge that will require a long wait time (flight, place doesn't open till 6am, etc.)

I was stunned at how mean the Chinese father really is. He has some serious temper issues. Throwing a rock at the bus was a classic momment for me. He does make for some entertaining TV.

The producers have always insisted that the NEL's and double legs are pre-planned. If they weren't, they'd be opening themselves up to game-fixing lawsuits, so I'd be very surprised if it wasn't true.

Besides, there have been a number of situations over the years where one team has ended up 24 hours or more behind -- a couple of them in the finals. It happens, despite all the planning that goes into trying to keep the race suspenseful.

Plus, it looks like from the previews that a double U-Turn is coming up, which some team in the front that doesn't understand strategy (I'd bet on Margie and Luke, or Jamie and Cara) are sure to use if they can on some perceived race enemy who isn't necessarily at the back of the pack.

I agree, before the fannypack disaster, I think K&V were less than an hour behind Zev & Justin.

Umm........... We missed the show Sunday, and forgot to record it on the DVR. But didn't Jamie & Cara get eliminated a couple of weeks ago?

No, Mel & Mike (the Father Son team) couldn't finish the last task as they were too cold in the mud. Jamie and Cara got there way later, but found a frog right away and passed them.

The really sad part was that Jamie and Cara got to the mud pit so late, it was dark and we never really got to see the playboy bunny frolicking in the mud. Major disappointment.

Oh, I didn't intend to imply that about the NEL's and double-legs. What I meant to say was i thought the cliff-hanger (not showing the final pit stop) for this leg was a last minute decision to add suspense.

After all, if K&V can't find that fanny pack (which if I heard correctly, has their passports in it) then K&V's race is over and whatever happens to the other teams is moot.

But if that lost fanny pack has K&V's passports in it and they can't find it, then they're done.

Usually they can't do this because the show is planned so far in advance that they can't change pit stops or extend legs at the last second.

Usually the only changes to the show are in post-production when they'll decide to not air a certain challenge. Over the years there have been several detours and roadblocks that went unaired because when they aired the ep for that leg, so much time was spent on showing something that they decided to cut out a portion for time...

OK this show is more like The Amazing Races. If every player is brought together in the middle of a race, it's not really much of a race any more. The Goths couldn't have done worse last week yet all that was erased since all teams had to wait several hours to get on the same train. I'm finding it hard to root for any team since it doesn't appear to make any difference how good they are.

bump .. could not resist ..

It's always been that way .. I'm sure much of it simply can't be avoided due to transport schedules ..

One of the other aspects is who comes in first at each leg and wins the prize for that leg ..

Lost eye candy - had to wait a bit to see how much was being exposed when she took her top off during the dinasour building challenge.

Not much, but "some." As I mentioned before, the producers put in many "Bunching Points" throughout a season. Google "bunching points," it comes up a lot re: TAR. These points do what Scowl says, they completely erase leads and let teams catch up.

It's not due to transport schedules (most of the time) considering how much control TAR producers have over how the show goes [if there is a barrier, they can always change the leg, change the pit stop, whatever]

I don't support it, but they do these bunching points to make the show less predictable. Without the train bunching point, everyone and their grandma knows Kent and Vyxsin were toast. Now with the bunching point there is added drama.

I don't like it one bit, but I can understand why the producers do it: it's not for the teams sake, it's for the audience. On the AI forum we talk about how predictable the results would be if fans voted contestants off with negative voting (vote for you want gone), and then that predictability will result in a decline in ratings in the results show because everyone knows who will go home. With the audience watching TAR with bunching points, they have no idea who is going home, so they reason that people watch because of the suspense.

It's also for camera crews because filming is a nightmare if a team is day behind such that one crew is one continent, and the other is on the previous continent.

http://www.sff.net/people/adam-troy/...zingrace_2.htm

Without bunching, you could easily end up in a situation where one team was so far ahead that the whole rest of the race was a foregone conclusion. I think the producers realized this way back in TAR 1, when the third place team finished a full 24 hours behind. If two teams had been stuck, then they would have had no finale.

It's not just a matter of making who gets eliminated more suspenseful, but who ultimately wins. Thus, bunching.

I hope one thing is certain from the discussion here of the flaws of TAR: that it is completely and utterly ridiculous that TAR always (until last year) wins the Emmy for "Best Reality Competition."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ama...series)#Awards


I'm sorry, but that was a joke that it won every single Emmy in this cat from 03-10. There were, for example, some (not many, but some) really good seasons of Survivor that trumped TAR and TAR with its flaws should never be the Best Reality Competition anyways. TAR is a good show, consistently, but it's not like every TAR season trumps every season of every other competing reality competition program.

TAR won because the Emmys aren't decided by popular vote, but by people in the industry, and the industry chose to recognize and reward what a logistical nightmare that TAR is to execute and produce. And it's produced very, very well, with high levels of professionalism. You can count on one hand the number of times you've seen a crew person in a shot, for example.

The difficulty of producing TAR just can't be compared to to, say, Survivor, which is in a closed off, private environment, or one of the studio shows, like AI, DWTS, Project Runway, etc. TAR is at the mercy of foreign governments, international air travel, weather, and potential natural/manmade disasters, not to mention the whims of cab drivers and people on the streets. It's a lot harder to produce an entertaining, exciting show in those circumstances than any other show on the air.

There's also a sense that TAR is by far the "classiest" of competition shows, which is why, when it finally lost, it was to Iron Chef rather that Survivor or AI.

Yeah but my beef with that is that it's not the standard for anything else. So "Best Reality Competition" is all about who is good at technically producing a show, but "Best Comedy" is not? "Best Drama" is not? It's definitely inconsistent between categories. Think about it, with that standard, BSG should have been nominated and won some Best Drama emmy's because of the work it takes to get that show going (as opposed to Mad Men or Breaking Bad, for example). "Walking Dead" should be a shoo-in for Best Drama this emmy season (remember it was nominated for GG Best Drama) because it takes a ridiculous amount of work to pull it off compared to other dramas on TV.

As to your last point about it being "classy," IMHO, I think there's your real reason for the wins, even though TAR has its own smut as it likes to play up internal drama in teams, there was a season that every time you saw the teams name, you saw under it "Dating 12 years, virgins." Not to mention they love to cast teams that are insensitive to other cultures and insensitive to the lack of english speakers around the globe rather than cast "worldly" teams. They also love to play up those insensitivities in the broadcasts. Stuff like that is typical reality tv fare, not some noble exception. But somehow in the industry, Jamie & Cara berating a cab driver for not speaking English (best example of this I can think of, but there are many others) is somehow classier than a verbal fight on Jersey Shore or Real World. IMHO, it's not.

I don't see any comparison between Jersey Shore & TAR .. it's totally different entertainment .. Jamie & Cara as well as any other contestant is under extreme pressure and stress ..

Jersey Shore is simply bad behavior in a thinly disguised ploy to get young folks to tune in for the shock value alone .. I'll take TAR any day ..

So will I, but I'm suggesting that TAR isn't as high-brow compared to other reality shows like some would have it portrayed.

It's pretty easy to tell, for example, that TAR casting is just like any other reality show casting: it's all about personalities they want on the air. Let's not kid ourselves: it's not like TAR ever has a season where all the teams are very "worldly" and intelligent and battle it out for the prize. They look for teams that will provide drama, just like how any other reality show does casting. Think about this some more. They could cast a team that between them knows 5 languages, another team that are a bunch of geography buffs, etc, etc. Nope, instead they simply look for drama. And that's fine for a reality show, but let's not allow ourselves to get fooled into thinking that somehow this is some immensely classy show that has nothing in common with others in its genre.

As to Jamie and Cara under extreme stress, all the teams are under extreme stress every season of TAR, but they don't all let their stereotypes and issues bubble to the surface.

That and when she was "humping" the bone to try and get it fully seated were the highlites.

And I must admit I'm surprised that K&V got that fanny pack back and only got a 30 minute penalty for the flight. And why didn't the penalty apply at the first pit stop they encountered after the infraction? Can anyone recall this situation ever occurring on a previous season (i.e. a penalty on a "your still racing pit stop" leg)?

That's exactly what it really is. Because they need to keep the teams close throughout, the real focus is on racing to avoid coming in last in the individual legs up until they get to the finale. It's really more about being consistently good (and lucky) enough to stay out of last place and avoiding elimination. Coming in first is mostly just a bonus (winning prizes etc), and bragging rights until the very end.

Maybe it's my memory but it seems like they have generally put most of the bunching points at the beginning of legs which is not too bad. I'm much less of a fan of mid-leg bunching points like last night though because it effectively made last week's show mostly irrelevant and of no consequence...


ron

Well, if there are "degree's" of classiness, then TAR gets my vote as one of, if not the best, of the classiest .. much of it due to Phil, IMO .. and yes, drama is required, otherwise, many would not watch ..

There are so many angles to the whole reality TV thing anyway .. on the Idol thread, don't dare post it's a singing competion (which I think it is) .. because many will get riled up and call it a popularity contest ..

You've got to admit that Race is less drama filled than any other I can think of ..

I think TAR looks for a good cross section of contestants myself. Unlike many other shows, I really don't think they put any particular emphasis on "drama potential" at all especially, but rather on bringing in interesting and diverse personalities/types. As far as Jamie and Cara go, it seems to me that the large majority of teams ultimately end up showing signs of stress in their behavior toward each other and the locals to varying degrees. I'd say the teams that are not affected by the stress and frustration are much more the exception than the rule really.


ron

Because it wouldn't/couldn't have made any difference ... everybody would still have to wait on the train.

Yeah, but I'm disappointed because it makes it more of a random contest. You can be first, then last, then middle then first again, all in one episode. Why even bother to pay attention to who's ahead of who?

That's a great explanation. The goal isn't to be first. The goal is to stay out of last place as often as possible.

That's what perhaps you don't get, most TAR fans don't pay attention to who's ahead of who throughout most of an ep. They just watch the show and see how each leg finishes out. Although during an ep the show will say "Currently in First Place," most fans know not to put any stock into that unless it is right before the pit stop, and even then, it could be a non-elimination leg so you never know at the end of each ep if the final team is going home, unless Phil clearly says the last team to arrive WILL be eliminated (most of the time he says "may").

In terms of the teams themselves caring, that's a bit different. They don't know if a bunching point [or exactly when the pit stop] is coming or not so they need to care just to avoid being last.