Buongiorno! Ciao, come stai? We have come to the end of the mega-leg in Italy and after two roadblocks and two detours in two cities, very sadly we had to say goodbye to Rich & Dom. It was heartbreaking as like so many of you, I wanted to see them live to fight another day whilst I cannot ignore the elephant in the room a moment longer - Sharik has gotten a lot of heat on social media over her bad attitude in this leg and I will get round to Sharik in due course, but let's start with the average statistics for now and see where the teams stand after the end of this mega-leg in Florence, Italy.
Average statistics after leg 4 in Florence, Italy
Marcus & Michael: 3
Derek & Claire: 4
Emily & Molly: 4.33
Glenda & Lumumba: 4.66
Linton & Sharik: 5.33
Abby & Will: 5.66
Quinton & Mattie: 6
Luis & Michelle: 6.33
Aubrey & David: 8.33
Rich & Dom: 9.33 (eliminated in Florence)
Emily & Molly's epic triumph in Florence
But first, let's talk about how Emily & Molly's win in Florence - I knew they were going to do well in this leg after finishing the last roadblock at the Ducati factory in second place, but they were up against a very strong team Marcus & Michael who didn't put a foot wrong in Florence and this did take me by surprise as Emily & Molly only averaged 6th place in the first two legs. I thought they were one of the teams who were going to be in the middle of the pack but they certainly proved that they had a great combination of brains, tenacity and determination to win. When the tasks on the legs are fairly easy and straightforward, there will be an element of luck that determines the outcome, such as traffic conditions when traveling from one location to another. However the Ducati factory roadblock was the mother of all tasks on TAR and that allowed the twins to jump to the front of the pack. I do adore these two and what an incredible story they have about being twins separated at bith and I have really warmed to these two. Thus with the elimination of Rich & Dom, I really want them to win as they have a great attitude and I think we have grossly underestimated these two until this leg.
Sharik's meltdown and lame bullshit excuses.
You should see the amount of abuse that Sharik has received on social media because of her attitude on this leg of the race; whilst I would never condone cyber bullying, I do have to ask the question: has she even watched an episode of TAR before? Did she think that they were going to just give her a million dollars for doing very fun and easy tasks, as if it was a holiday? Did she even know what the heck she was signing up for? And of course, Sharik didn't had no idea what the heck TAR was all about, then why did the stupid casting directors cast her in this season then? The fact is the viewers enjoy watching the teams who try really hard and have a good attitude, why we shout angrily at the TV when we see racers throw tantrums and complain the way Sharik did. I thought she was being extremely selfish because she didn't care about her father at that point - how did he raise a child with such a horrific attitude? When I see such badly behaved kids, I always point the finger of blame right back at the parents. There is a big TAR following and there are so many diehard fans who would give a kidney just to have that chance to take part in TAR, yet Sharik took this opportunity for granted. The more she tried to give excuses to justify her appalling behaviour, the more lame it sounded - for crying out aloud, I'm not buying any of her bullshit excuses. If you have anxiety issues, then going on TAR is not going to fix it - seek proper medical attention to do something about those problems - making an utter fool of yourself on reality TV (and then getting a ton of abuse on social media) is a really bad idea. Imagine if she applied for a job a few years later and the gatekeeper at the compny said, wait a minute, I recognize you from TAR: yes you were the racer who totally cracked under pressure in Florence and threw that massive tantrum like a dumb brat! Not what I wanna be remembered for, no.
Do we have bad days at work? Of course we do, I've had my fair share of bad days at work over the years but one thing we learn to do as mature adults is to reign in our feelings. Therefore during a difficult meeting, I might ask an understanding to step into the corridor with me, so we could have a quiet word in private and I can rant, cry, scream all I want before stepping back into a meeting with a calm face and say, "right, let's pick up where we had left off please. Are you ready to continue looking at the new plans in section C?" But would I rant, cry and scream in front of the client? Of course not. It is called being professional and not making a total idiot of yourself in front of people who matter. Was Sharik oblivious to the fact that there was a camera crew pointing a camera in her face? Did her father not warn her, "if you act like this, everyone in America is going to think that you're a total ***** and you're going to get so much hate on social media." I have done reality TV before and it is so important to watch what you say in front on the camera as people will judge you - it's harsh and you can't say, "oh you don't know me, you caught me on a bad day." Well I have news for you: people don't care about being harsh or getting to know you, if you are caught on camera behaving badly, then you will be judged and hated. Sharik is still a student and perhaps she has done some part time jobs before, but I would have thought that most sensible adults would have the common sense to maintain some level of composure and decorum in front of the camera. Many on social media have pointed out that there's a huge difference between having a real mental health issue about anxiety and behaving like a brat throwing a tantrum. Sharik has no excuse, she is just a stupid brat.
Don't blame Sharik, blame TAR's incompetent casting directors for this huge mistake.
Whilst I can spend the next few paragraphs telling you exactly what I think about Sharik's toxic and selfish behaviour, ironically there is someone else I want to blame! I want to raise the point that it is the responsibility of the casting team to test the applicants thoroughly before agreeing to cast them on the race to make sure that we know how they would react in stressful situataions. Can you imagine if half the teams simply said, **** this, I'm quitting when confronted with a difficult challenge on TAR? That would be a nightmare worst case scenario which the right casting ought to be able to avoid, but in this case, I'm saying that as much as Sharik's poor behaviour was appalling, I blame the casting team for allowing this to slip through the net in the first place - she should have never ever been cast in the first place if she was such a nasty piece of work. I applied for a British reality TV show earlier this year and was actually cast in it, only to have to pull out at the last minute when I couldn't get out of an important work commitment in time for the start of the filming. Nonetheless, I was subjected to a very thorough psychological examination by a team of experts throughout the casting process to examine how I would function under very stressful situations. The interviews were long and they even did various role play situations with me; this was only for a small British production that wasn't even going to be seen outside the UK (population just 67 million). TAR is seen by not just a huge number of Americans but by other fans all over the world - thus the question I have to ask is this: what on earth were the casting directors on this season doing when they decided to pick someone like Sharik to join the race? The casting directors really messed up badly and it is important to direct some anger and hate towards them as well. Are their casting directors complete idiots who are very incompetent?
Have I (along with thousands on social media) been too harsh on Sharik?
No, the answer is an emphatic no. This is not a reality TV programme following Sharik around her daily life in New York and judging her for the challenges she faces in real life, she has voluntarily agreed to take part in this process and even if she doesn't know enough about what to expect on TAR, I do think there is definitely a duty of care on the part of the casting team along with the production team to brief all applicants about just how difficult and stressful TAR could be. How could this fall through the cracks? Nobody on social media was attacking her for failing to complete a difficult task and taking a penalty - the issue here was the way she behaved with her father by throwing that tantrum like a total brat; so she definitely deserves every bit of abuse she is receiving now on social media. Fans of TAR are very sympathetic when it comes to racers being pushed to breaking point on very difficult tasks on the race, but this wasn't even a particularly difficult leg and Sharik was the only one kicking up such a big fuss over the sculpture roadblock. Fans of TAR will remember another villain of TAR: Jonathan of Jonathan & Victoria from TAR S6 - the reason why Jonathan was so hated was because he treated his then wife Victoria (they divorced after the race and everyone was like thank goodness Victoria finally saw the light) so badly including constantly insulting her and even shoving her roughly at one point; so part of the reason why so many of us are lining up to judge and insult Sharik at this point is because of the way she treated her father. He deserved better than that as a team mate - he was really let down by Sharik's appallingly bad attitude and we hate seeing racers being so unsupportive on TAR. Okay, that's enough about Sharik, let's talk about something else.
How far did the team have to walk from Villa Bardini to the center of Florence?
According to Google maps it was about 1 km (1.6 miles) between Villa Bardini to the locations of the detour - that is a 14 minute walk but faster if you ran of course. Production wouldn't have allowed the teams to drive to the center of Florence as parking would be an absolute nightmare there and sending them on foot might be more tiring but it's the most sensible way to explore the lovely historic center of Florence. Oh I absolutely adore Florence, you must put it on your bucket list.
This detour had a twist to it that caught some teams out!
The food delivery side of the detour was quite a lot more straight forward as the teams simply had to bring the three items to the table in exchange for their next clue whilst the teams memorizing the items of clothing from the three fashion shoot had to match the clothing to the location. Of course, it can be argued that this is a classic brain vs muscles detour: the teams memorizing the outfits from the fashion shoots don't need to carry those items of food through the streets of central Florence and thus could actually run a lot more quickly through the streets whilst it would have been nearly impossible to even walk fast carrying a bowl of soup and a platter of cured meats; though I believe the small packet of biscotti could have been bigger and heavier to make that side of the detour even harder in order to balance out the level of difficulty on the detour. Marcus & Michael along with Rich & Dom struggled to remember some of the locations of the fashion shoots and that cost both teams dearly: Marcus & Michael came in second to Emily & Molly because of that mistake and Rich & Dom narrowly lost out to Linton & Sharik as they had to go back to one of the locations. It does look like that element of the detour was clearly defined in the clue, so I'm afraid those teams who rushed through that task without taking note of the locations of the fashion shoots paid a high price for not reading their clues thoroughly enough.
Who will win next in Jordan?
Yes the racers are off to a brand new country never visited by TAR US before - Jordan! I like the way there isn't a particularly obvious frontrunner and I'm looking at the top four teams at the moment, they are all statistically quite close to each other and that's the kind of situation we like in TAR. It gets a bit boring when there's just one team that's so strong their victory then becomes a forgone conclusion as they win leg after leg after leg. Certainly, I would love to see Emily & Molly triumph again in Jordan but I think any of the top four teams have a very good chance. Mind you, both Glenda & Lumumba and Derek & Claire struggled in Italy, but they performed well in the first two legs. Even strong teams can make mistakes and have a bad day, so I think they would certainly do well in Jordan. Then again a lot of that will depend on the kind of tasks they face in Jordan, we didn't get much from the previews though. We know they are going to Petra - we see the Great Temple of Petra which was featured in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We see horses, camels and racers digging in the sand with what looks like a metal detector (sounds just like the kind of roadblock that Sharik would give up on). No, unfortunately we didn't get that much from the previews so your guess is as good as mine!
Who will be eliminated next?
Well it is clear that I want to see Sharik gone, so it's not even "I wanna see Linton & Sharik eliminated", but it's just her after that display of shocking immature behaviour on this leg. In the first three legs, they had performed decently because it was Linton doing all the roadblocks but this cannot go indefinitely as the race progresses. This rule was implemented after season 3 when Flo & Zach won despite Flo doing only one roadblock whilst Zach did ten - fans did complain that it came across as massively unfair that one racer can effectively carry a very weak partner throughout the process and that's why teams are forced to do an equal number of roadblocks throughout the race. Mind you, Flo also got a lot of hate for her terrible attitude on TAR S3, but luckily for her that was way back in 2002 and social media was not as unforgiving back in those days. So as we're going into leg 5 and Linton has three roadblocks already, whilst Sharik has only done one. By the end of leg 6, that ought to be a ratio of 3:3 not 5:1 and hence I don't think Sharik is going to survive another roadblock. This episodes in Jordan were filmed in early June 2022 and the average temperatures there exceed 30 degrees everyday and can even hit 40 degrees - it can get blisteringly hot in Jordan in the summer; can you actually imagine Sharik doing a physically demanding task in that heat without screaming, "I quit! Daddy I wanna go home now!" But if it is not Linton & Sharik, then statistically it would point to Aubrey & David. They haven't been near the front of the pack and are statistically the weakest team. They have been a lovely team to watch on this season, I hope they survive.
Can't get enough? Don't forget there's TAR Canada and TAR Oz!
So if your weekly fix of TAR isn't enough, then I'd highly recommend watching both TAR Canada and Australia as the 2022 seasons of both of these franchises have been awesome. TAR Canada S8 was ran domestically only, but TAR Australia S6 did travel all over the world including to some exotic locations like Turkey, Colombia, Belize and Morocco; and in case you've not seen these seasons, I'm not going to give away spoilers (and really, I'm not here to talk about those seasons). But I truly enjoyed those two seasons, it was shocking how some teams got Covid during the filming and had to go into quarantine then rejoin the race. Even the host of TAR Australia Beau Ryan got Covid mid-race and had to go into quarantine in Greece. It certainly messed up both seasons to a certain degree given that it was arguable if they dealt with the whole quarantine issue fairly and how teams were effectively penalized for getting Covid after they were hit with additional tasks to rejoin the race when they got out of quarantine. I hope that Covid doesn't rear its ugly head in TAR US S34 and mess things up! All episodes of TAR Canada and TAR Australia are available on Dailymotion for free.
Okay so that's it from me on this leg, I have confirmation of my trip in late November so that's going to make blogging in that period a bit more complicated, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Do you think I have been way too harsh on Sharik or totally fair to her? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Many thanks for reading.
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