Matt & Redmond 3.2
Tara & Joey 3.4
Becca & Floyd 4
Vanck & Ashton 4.4
Liz & Michael 4.4 (spared by the NEL in Norway)
Brooke & Scott 5.8
London & Logan 6.2
So, once again, may I state that you should take these statistics with a pinch of salt because there have been so many close finishes on the pit stop in this season so far, but these statistics give you a good indication as to the relative strength of the teams so far. No surprises here, Matt & Red are still out in front but only by a little ahead of Tara & Joey. Given some of the very close finishes, I would probably rank them as equally strong - Tara & Joey did pull off a hat trick by finishing first twice in a row in these two episodes and well done to them, in particular to Tara, who had to tell Joey to shut the hell up with his negativity whilst looking for the royal doors in Zanzibar. Like seriously dude, you've got such a brilliant partner, I hope you realize just how amazing this woman is. Respect to Tara! And despite being statistically the strongest team so far, Matt & Redmond have yet to win a leg so far despite their best ever finish in Norway in second - so yes they are strong of course, but let's not assume that victory for them is a foregone conclusion. I am also surprised at how London & Logan are still at the bottom of the pack - they seem to work rather well together, no major arguments, they both are physically fit for the demanding challenges and somehow, they are still just that little bit slower than the rest? But let's go back to Zanzibar in leg 4 where it all began.
The word you're looking for is 'sorry'. Is that not in your vocabulary?
Boy that scene between Matt & Red confronting Ashton was hard to watch. Matt claimed to have gone to them "to be nice" - but without offering as much as an apology to try to put things behind them, how were you ever going to be nice and achieve any kind of reconciliation? Again, it was a shocking lack of people skills - look Matt is a snowboarder, I get it. I'm a former gymnast, I know what sports like that do to you when you spend hours every training pretty much on your own. It is a solo sport, you zone out, you block out the world and you focus on your performance. It is the complete opposite of a team sport, I wouldn't fault Matt for lacking the kind of 'people skills' to resolve a situation like that. But Redmond? A motivational speaker who totally lacks 'people skills' to try to resolve a conflict like that? Oh dear. But enough on Redmond's shocking lack of people skills to handle a situation like this - I have covered this enough on my last blog post. Guys, just say sorry and move on - you have nothing to gain by having another team hate you like that on the race. Believe me, I deal with difficult situations at work all the time and sometimes I do say "sorry" even when I don't mean it, just to be able to move on with the situation and solve the problem before me.
Let's look at the ferry time table between Zanzibar and Dar Es Salaam. They are not that regular: most of the teams were on the 12:30 pm ferry, whilst Shamir & Sara were on the 4 pm ferry. So even though Liz & Michael had a substantial lead coming out of the Lock detour, having missed the 9:30 am ferry, they had to wait ages for the 12:30 pm ferry, effectively allowing everyone else (with the exception of Shamir & Sara) to catch up. The seven teams who arrived in Dar Es Salaam on the same ferry effectively had a fresh start, any advantage that the teams had in finishing the detour in Zanzibar more quickly was effectively written off. Now is that fair? I don't think so. What may have been more interesting would be allow teams to contemplate taking a domestic flight from Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam: the ferry is the cheaper and preferred route but the crossing does take two hours. The flight on the other hand, is just 20 minutes - the distance as the crow flies is 46 miles / 74 km. Not far at all but there are at least 50 flights a day between Zanzibar and Dar Es Salaam - teams should have been allowed to roll the dice and choose between flying and using the ferry. Zanzibar airport is about 8 km from downtown Zanzibar and in Dar Es Salaam, the airport is only about 15 km from the airport to the downtown area, so it would have been an interesting gamble given that both options would have taken about as long, but it would eliminate the scenario with seven teams all stuck on the same ferry. That was massively unfair to the teams like Liz & Mitchell who did well in Zanzibar - but good grief, how could they have gotten the first part of the Mercury House task so wrong? Michael took the clue "another bites the dust" so literally, yikes.
Liz & Mitchell made a classic error - they asked a random stranger on the street for directions and that led to them wasting precious time finding Mercury House. Without that mistake, perhaps they may have even caught the earlier ferry! The challenge with places like Tanzania is that there is clearly a language barrier: the local language is Swahili (you do here some phrases like 'Asante' and 'Hakuna Matata' on this leg) and the locals speak some English, but how well they speak it depends on their level of education. If you stop a random stranger on the street, you have no idea whether they will be able to understand you and help you. The sensible thing to do would be to go to a hotel or travel agency. ask someone who is used to dealing with tourists and clearly able to speak English well - especially if they are sitting in front of a computer and able to look anything you need up on Google! That's something that Vanck & Ashton as well as Matt & Red did, avoiding the mistake that Liz & Michael did. Joey did realize the extent of the language barrier in Tanzania in the taxi pretty quickly. Shamir & Sara did commit that fatal error by asking random strangers in the street for help when looking for the three royal doors - oh dear. I have seen too many episodes of American contestants on TAR asking totally the wrong people for help or directions when on the race, like haven't these people ever left the US before and traveled to a third world country? Clearly not, otherwise they would have known better.
Brooke was so angry with Scott for giving Becca the spare key in the Lock detour, but that bought their team a lot of goodwill - goodwill that she badly needed when she struggled at the roadblock in sheet metal roadblock. Scott had little choice at that point really - refusing to give the key to Becca would have made an enemy at that point and in this race, you want to make allies and friends, not enemies. How many of you noticed that Becca was waiting in line, just behind Joey to present her ladle strainer to the inspector? Joey didn't stop to help Brooke - Becca did, costing them precious minutes and effectively, Becca did just give up first place in order to help Brooke, costing them the prize of US$10,000. Ouch. Now you can put a price on Scott's generous gesture in Zanzibar! But more to the point, team fun did have their Express Pass at that point and they didn't use it in the end, now that was dumb. Becca should have taken one look at the sheet metal challenge and said, "this is the perfect time to use the Express Pass" and they would have earned US$5,000 each thus. Remember how in TAR S22 E4, Jessica & John were eliminated in leg 4 with the Express Pass in their pockets? That was stunningly stupid. The first rule about having an Express pass is to use it, not waste it.
Brooke is beyond annoying.
Oh one look at social media and you would see how everyone hated Brooke's behaviour in Dar Es Salaam. She was so negative and kept crying, putting herself down - this always surprises me when contestants are taken out of their comfort zones on a challenge like this. Duh, haven't you racers ever watched at least a couple of episodes of TAR before? You should expect to be taken out of your comfort zone to do things you either suck at or scare the hell out of you. If you don't like the thought of being taken out of your comfort zone, then simple: don't go on programmes like TAR. I get it - Brooke is a criminal defense attorney, she doesn't work with her hands, she has a white collar job. I have seen so many racers encounter much more difficult road blocks and detours in the TAR history without giving up, with a much more positive attitude. Cormac & Nicole from TAR Canada S2 E5 come to mind when Nicole struggled with the biathlon challenge but was determined to finish it despite clearly being in last place. And who could forget TAR S6 E3, when poor Lena spent over 10 hours unrolling bales of hay to find her clue in Sweden. Nicole's and Lena's valiant struggles with the challenges brought many TAR fans to tears, whereas most of us just wanbed to see Brooke eliminated (I'm already being very kind with my words here - she has been called so many vile thing on social media mind you) after the way she so negative in Dar Es Salaam; but she wasn't the only one who was incredibly negative.
Where do I begin? Joey was a real pain, dragging Tara down when he kept saying stupid shit all the way when looking for the three royal doors in Zanzibar and Tara deserved a Nobel Peace prize for resisting the urge to stuff one of those wooden carvings into his mouth to shut him up. Shamir was unbelievably annoying with Sara but we expected nothing less from him after what happened in Brazil in leg 2. Ashton for some reason, wanted to run out into the confusing streets of Stone Town, Zanzibar whilst Vanck was trying to do a Google search on those doors - like seriously, Ashton, just calm down and trust Vanck for crying out aloud. But the most shocking fight was when Liz & Michael turned on each other towards the end of the leg in Alesund, Noway. Good grief. I was expecting them to have reached the top of Mount Aksla sooner than the rest given that they drove, but they descended into a nasty blame game when they arrived last. Given how well they worked previously in having won two legs already, I was shocked not so much at how badly they did (hey, anyone could've made those mistakes) but how nasty the quarrel got. Ouch. Guys, so many fans like you as a team, I hope you can patch things up before the next leg. But the bottom line is, being negative is the first step for a team to disintegrate: the only team which have avoided this kind of nasty negativity so far are London & Logan and let's not underestimate how vital that is in TAR. Well done London & Logan!
More bad planning in Norway by the TAR production team.
In leg 5 in Alesund, Norway, Becca & Floyd did the fast forward and had a lot of fun, it wasn't something difficult skill wise - during a tandem skydive, the instructor takes complete control and you just have to enjoy the ride. However, the helicopter ride to meet the instructors seemed to take forever and eventually, at the end of the skydive, they landed right back at the Høgsteinen fyr lighthouse, where they started. The question I want to ask is this: why weren't the skydiving instructors there, at the lighthouse when they started the Fast Forward? Why did they have to fly them so far across the fjords just to meet the skydiving instructors? I'm sure a helicopter ride above the Norwegian fjords would be a breathtaking experience, but it seemed completely pointless and took so long that it deprived Becca & Floyd of a first place finish. Now that felt quite unfair. Was this some kind of deal with the Norwegian tourist board just to showcase the beauty of the fjords to the American viewers? They could have won the leg if the other teams struggled with the challenges in Alesund, but they didn't - neither the climbing challenge nor the detours took that long. The two teams in the kayaks seemed to be searching from within a fairly limited area, which ensured that they finished 1-2 in this leg.
Well, there are so many instances where teams have attempted a difficult fast forwarded and failed. Some fast forwards have been notoriously difficult: most recently in TAR Asia S5, the fast forward in E5 involved eating your way through a vast quantity of rice cakes to find a coin embedded in one of them - cue overeating induced vomiting scenes. Poor Alex & Will just couldn't stomach it and despite a valiant effort, they had to give up when they just couldn't eat anymore. There have also been three instances where teams who won the fast forward still arrived last at the pit stop. More to the point, a fast forward shouldn't be a free pass that comes so early in the leg that whoever gets to it first is guaranteed an easy victory: I like to see a fast forward with two or more teams competing at the same time to finish a very difficult task - such as in TAR Asia S2 E10 when Marc & Rovilson had a show down with Colin & Adrian on Elizabeth Bridge in Budapest Hungary for the fast forward when they had to count the number of fence posts on the bridge - all 2377 of them. It was a difficult and tedious task but more to the point, any number of teams could have attempted the task all at the same time. Now that's a good fast forward. In Alesund, the moment Becca & Floyd got to the helicopter first, no other team could have attempted it. This is once again, more bad planning on their part.
What is Norwegian Rakfisk and just how bad is it?
Upon arrival at the lighthouse, the contestants had to finish a serving of Rakfisk before they could get their next clue. There are far worse things in Norway to eat than Rakfisk - they could have served them another gross dish called Surströmming (a far more vile version of fermented fish, but even though that is consumed in Norway too, it is strictly speaking of Swedish origin) or even Hakarl (fermented shark meat), which again, whilst consumed by some in Norway, is strictly speaking an Icelandic dish. Or my favourite in the Nordic region has got to be Supersalmiakki - a kind of salty liquorice made with Ammonium Nitrate, for some reason some Northern European countries have developed a taste for that kind of saltiness in candy and this was developed in a time when sugar was a rare commodity from a far away land. There are plenty of Youtube videos about unsuspecting victims trying Supersalmiakki for the first time. According to Wikipedia, Rakfisk is a Norwegian fish dish made from trout or sometimes char, salted and fermented for two to three months, or even up to a year, then eaten without cooking. I could list so many more gross things they have made contestants eat over the history of TAR - clearly some contestants found Rakfisk harder to stomach than others, but it really wasn't that bad. I'd love to see Supersalmiakki featured in a future TAR episode!
The biggest "you can't be serious" moment came from Joey & Tara who found the clue in the kayaking challenge and could neither understand it or figure out what to do with it - they had to ask Matt & Red for help before realizing what to do next. Good grief. Why did they choose to help Matt & Red by sharing the clue with them? Why didn't it occur to them to ask any of the Norwegian people for help by simply paddling to shore, it was not like they were miles out in the sea! Anyone who has ever seen a few seasons of TAR will know that the clues can be somewhat cryptic at times - such as in TAR Asia S2 E9, when one of the clues came in the form of a Hungarian 1000 Forint note which had the picture of a fountain on it. The contestants had to identify the fountain, then make their way to it. Likewise in TAR Asia S1 E7, the clue came in the form of a Thai 2 Baht coin and the contestants had to identify the temple depicted on the coin then make their way to it. Joey & Tara were already given the name 'Aksla' - what else did they need? A map with directions? TAR is never that straightforward, what did you expect? And good grief, Joey is a cop - good luck to anyone who needs him to investigate a crime. A cop who can't figure out clues, a motivational speaker with no people skills - what next America? A president who can't... let's not go there, I'll leave the politics out for now.
Think about that poor Norwegian boy on the pit stop map witnessing Liz & Michael's breakdown
What must the poor kid be thinking? The two Norwegian adults probably knew exactly what to expect - after all, Norway had two seasons of their own Amazing Race! It only ran for two seasons in the period of 2012 - 2013 and it was a shame they gave up on it after just two seasons. Norwegians tend to speak English very well, when I was in Norway, practically everyone (apart from one old lady whom I met) spoke English flawlessly. So the poor kid must have understood every nasty insult that Liz and Michael traded at the pit stop, good grief. I hope one of the adults whispered to him in Norwegian, "you just stand here, don't worry about those crazy Americans arguing, it has nothing to do with you. You're doing a great job and you are going to look so good on TV." I can think of other big fights on the pit stop mat, such as in TAR S14 E9 when Margie & Luke had that big fight with Kisha & Jen on the pit stop mat in Guilin, China - goodness me, I bet that those two elderly Chinese greeters were incredibly confused as to what the hell was going on. And whilst we are on the topic of ugly fights at the pit stop, there's this one from TAR Philippines S2 E2 which started out quite cordially as Luz & Chen were eliminated and then it goes downhill quickly (see video below).
Oooh. We are off to Northern Italy for the next leg and more interestingly, there will be another U-turn in Italy. We have already seen how the double U-turn in leg three eliminate one of the strongest teams on the race, Seth & Olive. You know how this works - you always try your best to take out the strongest threat in the race if you want to win a million dollars. Could someone please send a memo to Matt & Redmond as they seem surprised and upset when they were U-turned the last time? Just take it on the chin and accept it as a compliment that others see you as a threat if you get U-turned. This is really TAR 101, duh. My prediction came true in E4 when Shamir & Sara got eliminated and E5 was a non-elimination leg. It will be a hard one to call for leg 6 because of the U-turn, nobody will bother U-turning one of the weaker teams, so will that save the weaker teams whilst the stronger teams like Matt & Red, Becca & Floyd or even Vanck & Ashton have a target on their backs? It seems like Tara & Joey did get to the U-turn first in the previews, so at least they will be safe. Or will the team that got U-turn simply U-turn a weaker team, to ensure that the weaker team will be eliminated? This is highly unpredictable as the U-turn is a huge game changer - it boils down to whom Tara & Joey choose to U-turn and I hope they do U-turn Matt & Red, just because their reaction would be just priceless. Oh and they are also statistically the strongest team so far of course, I'm sure everyone has noticed that.
That's it from me on this double episode. Do let me know what you think about the race so far. Thanks for reading.
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