Hello again everyone and I hope you guys have enjoyed the grand finale of TAR S35 in Seattle. This is a city I have visited many years ago and I remember how my ears popped as I was riding the lift to the top of the Space Needle. Greg & John won as predicted but it was so much closer than I thought - I thought that they would win this quite easily but that evidently wasn't the case at all. Joel & Garrett came incredibly close to actually winning, if not for that one unfortunate mistake on the memory challenge right at the end and they were literally just a few minutes behind Greg & John when they got to the pit stop mat. So let's look at the average rankings of the final three teams, at the conclusion of TAR S35.
Average rankings after leg 12 in Seattle, USA
- Greg & John = 2.75 (winners of TAR S35)
- Rob & Corey = 3.16
- Joel & Garrett = 4.33
What might have been for Joel & Garrett
If Joel & Garrett had managed to pull it off by winning this season, then they would be amongst the winners with one of the lowest average. That record is held by Josh & Brent, the winners of TAR S21 (from back in 2012) - they were the true underdogs of that season having never won a single leg until the finale. Even Joel & Garrett managed to win one leg in this season when they triumphed in E10 in Stockholm, so their average is still slightly better than Josh & Brent's despite Joel & Garrett not winning this season. I was really cheering for Joel & Garrett in this final leg, so I suppose it was just my personal desire to see the underdogs triumph for a change rather than see the strongest team predictably win yet again.
How pointless was the walk around the roof of the Space Needle?
It was a fun task to do but there was absolutely no skill involved, the racers were all securely strapped to a safety wire so there was no way they could fall off the edge even if they actually tried to jump off the edge. That whole task felt fairly pointless as there was no way the teams could perform that task faster or better to overtake the team in front, it just felt like a advertisement for the Seattle and the Space Needle and thus this final leg really only began with the scramble. This was 'scramble' format last seen in TAR S34 E1 in Munich, Germany - I wondered if we would see it again in this season.
Did it come down to the order the teams chose to perform the scramble?
Well I checked, it is 12.4 miles (20 km) from the glassblowing studio to Kenmore Air Harbor, whilst it is 14.8 miles (23.8 km) from the trapeze circus school. Thus Rob & Corey actually did it in the right order by finishing with the glassblowing task and had the shortest drive to the final memory challenge. However, they got so lost on the way and wasted a lot of time so they arrived there in last place with little hope of making up for lost time. It was a terribly costly mistake to make that late in the game. The difference between the two options is just 2.4 miles (3.8 km) and thus it wasn't that significant.
How would I have picked the order to do the scramble?
You have to locate the three locations on the map and do them in a straight line, either east to west or west to east - that's exactly what the three teams did. I would be tempted to start with the easiest one just to get that out of the way and leave the most difficult one to the end. The teams had the addresses and could probably guess what the nature of the task was - like, "gee, what do you think we'll be doing at the glassblowing studio? Glassblowing perhaps? What else could it possibly be?" Given that I've done trapeze before and I'm a gymnast, I'd start at the circus school and then finish at the glassblowing studio, as I've never ever done glassblowing before. That is simply the kind of logic I used when I had to do exams at university - you always answer the questions that you are most confident first, get those out of the way so you know you will definitely get the marks for those right answers before going onto tackle those that you are less confident about. Getting the easier tasks out of the way first also helps you build momentum and confidence in the process. I note that Rob & Corey chose to do the glassblowing task last as it is closest to central Seattle and they were guessing that they would do the memory challenge closer to there; it was another logical way to approach that decision.
How much core strength is required for the trapeze task?
I have seen some people complain on social media that the trapeze task is too physical and that gave Greg & John a massive advantage over the other teams. Allow me to offer my opinion on this issue as an older man who is currently 47 years old: firstly, you don't lose all your core strength the moment you become older - how fit you are and how much core strength you have is directly related to the amount of exercise that you do. I am a gymnast (please see my videos here on Instagram, I still train today), I am a former national champion gymnast and I also volunteer as a gymnastics coach at my alumni's gymnastics club. I have met 18 year olds with very little core strength despite the fact that they are young enough to be my children, but that's simply because they have not done enough exercise over the last few years. If they do continue to come to the training sessions and subject themselves to an intensive training regime, then sure they can build core strength. Should you wait till you get cast on a show like TAR and have a cool million dollars on the line before you start thinking about doing any exercise? No, we should all watch our weight, stick to a healthy diet and exercise regularly as the reward of that is your good health and that is priceless. The task at the circus school wasn't so impossibly difficult that one of the teams couldn't do it - in fact they all managed to complete it, although the younger racers like Greg, John and Corey found it easier. In any case, it wasn't purely about strength: you had to get your knees over the bar within the first swing in order to perform the catch on the second swing. If you wait till your third swing, then you would have run out of momentum to complete that catch. There's an element of physical dexterity to get your body into the correct position quickly enough, within a limited time frame in order to complete the task successfully. So you could have a ton of strength and muscles, but if you're simply uncoordinated (or for want of a better word, just clumsy), then this skill is still going to be hard for you. So if you have been lucky enough to go on TAR, it would make a lot of sense to lose a lot of weight before the race if you are indeed overweight - that's not me fat shaming fat people, that's just me stating the obvious since we all know there are plenty of physical tasks on TAR. If you don't like that, then please apply for a reality TV programme Big Brother or Traitors instead where very fat, unfit people won't be at a disadvantage.
Was Greg & John's victory ever in doubt?
Well they did struggle quite a lot with two of the tasks: the glassblowing task and the roadie task. Perhaps it was good editing but I'm sure even they weren't confident of victory halfway through that leg. Still, they won this season fair and square by acing the memory challenge at the end and congratulations to them. I even predicted correctly last week that they would win, given that they went into the final leg as the strongest team statistically. Still, that is the nature of the game - after all, statistics never lie! Therefore, I should always park my feelings at the door and just look at the statistics.
Greg & John did have two bad legs though.
Yes, if you looked at their track record on this race, they never finished outside the top 3 apart from in legs 3 and 4 when they struggled to 8th position in both legs. Incidentally, both of those legs were in Vietnam and I am still wondering why they performed so poorly in Vietnam. They performed well in the legs in Thailand and India. But even strong teams can run a bad leg once in a while due to fatigue or plain old bad luck, hence they were very lucky those two bad legs happened earlier in the race, when there were still other weaker teams to keep them away from that dreaded last place.
Did I originally think that they would be the favourites to win?
Honestly, no. I tend to play favourites based on whether I like a team or not and at the start of this season, I picked three teams this season that I really like: Alexandra & Sheridan (eliminated in E1), Jocelyn & Victor (eliminated in E4) and Rob & Corey (3rd position). I didn't "like" them at the starting line. I'm not great at picking winners, I just pick the teams that appeal the most to me and I hope they win, so let me be the first to admit that's not the most logical way to pick a winner!
How hard was the memory challenge?
Actually I didn't think it was hard at all, given it was fairly straightforward. Greg & John had little difficulty completing it and it was just so unfortunate that Joel & Garrett mixed up "who wants to be above it all" and "who wants a bird's eye view" - yes the two are rather similar of course, but surely that should have been obvious from the start. Given that I am applying for the British version of TAR (it is admittedly quite different, but it's the closest thing that we have in the UK to TAR), my partner and I practice these problem-solving puzzles on a daily basis where we learn to solve puzzles under pressure with a time limit. We learn to communicate calmly and listen to the other party's reasoning for wanting to try a certain strategy; this is what you need to train before you go on TAR. It is no different from an athlete training day and night for months, even years before making it to the Olympics and I got the impression that they panicked when their first guess was wrong. There have been far more difficult memory challenges in previous seasons and admittedly, I'd have liked to have seen something a lot more complicated in this season only to give Rob & Corey a fighting chance to try to catch up.
TAR S35: we didn't have a villain team, did we?
I came across some posts on social media commenting on how there really wasn't a team that was portrayed as the villain team, that nobody liked. Well, in some seasons there were really cutthroat teams who made enemies with other teams. We didn't really have a lot of conflict this season compared to previous seasons. I know some of the other teams were not that fond of Robbin & Chelsea and of course, Steve & Anna Leigh were U-turned in leg 6 but that was only because they had just won leg 5, it wasn't because the other teams hated them. In fact, most of the conflict we had this season was when teams fought amongst themselves rather than with other teams. Most notably, we saw teams Steve & Anna Leigh and Morgan & Lena crumble under pressure and start arguing when things went wrong. I simply didn't like Steve & Anna Leigh this season but I still don't think they were 'villains'. Even if some fans didn't like them, they were not hated by the other teams. When they were finally eliminated in leg 11, I was actually so happy. But then again, TAR isn't a popularity contest at all and hence it really shouldn't matter how popular the teams with the viewers or the other racers.
Can I just get this off my chest?
I know I have said this already in a previous post but good grief, even after 12 episodes and an entire season, there are still idiots on social media referring to winners Greg & John as "the black brothers" or "the African American team". How can you watch episode after episode and not remember their names? It is just Greg and John - it is as easy as it gets. It's not like they have names which were particularly long or hard to spell (like Iliana or Malaina from this season). I'm just baffled as I pay attention to such details even when I watch a TV programme. When I am in a meeting at work, I would remember what was discussed and you could say to me, "hey Alex, in that meeting we had with Joseph last Wednesday, when did he say phase 1 of the project would be completed? And how much did he say he was looking to raise for phase 2? What was his deadline for that? What else do we need to do for Joseph before the next meeting?" I would need to remember details like that as part of my job and I don't think I have a particularly great memory, I just make sure I pay attention so I am able to recall the important information pertaining to my clients. I am always focused when I am at work, but I contrast this to this worker I saw at the airport on my way back from my trip to Romania - her job was literally to stand at passport control and say to the people in line, "go to counter 11, go to counter 6 etc". You could tell that she hated every aspect of her job and wished she was somewhere else but had no choice but to be there. Just from the tone of her voice (never mind her body language), you could tell she was so miserable. Her reaction to that situation was to put as little effort into her job as possible, she made no effort to hide her feelings and I couldn't help but notice her demeanour even from a distance in a crowded airport. So people like that are used to doing as little as possible at work and thus when they watch a TV programme which they supposedly like (why else would they comment on it on social media afterwards), they are still unable and unwilling to even pay attention to what they are watching as they have that habit of doing as little as possible at work everyday so how else would they fail to remember the names of Greg & John?
Why do people take part in such reality TV programmes?
I recently watched another series: Squid Game the Challenge, if you enjoyed the original Squid Game and/or you like reality TV programmes of this genre, then I do recommend it. So a quick summary of the original series of Squid Game (which was a South Korean fantasy drama), a total of 456 contestants, all in dire financial hardship, were invited to take part in a deadly competition where there is only one winner to take home a grand prize of approximately US$35.1 million. The catch is that when a player is eliminated, they are executed on the spot, often in a gruesome manner like being shot in the head. The players are given a chance to leave the game in episode 2 but most return given that they would rather take that long shot to win that huge prize money than face their problems in the real world. So in the casting for Squid Game the Challenge where the players play for a prize of US$4.56 million, most of the players (though not all of them) are poor. There was a player who admitted was living from pay check to pay check, another one has a very disabled child and desperately needed the money to pay for the specialist care that his child requires. Many of them admitted to having terrible, poorly paid jobs that they hated and debts to clear. Some of these people are really poor and winning that prize money would really change their lives as the money would at least allow them to leave the jobs they hated, solve some of the most pressing needs their families are facing and just stop them having to worry about how to pay all their debts. Ironically, the player Mai Whelan who won the US$4.56 million grand prize isn't poor - she actually has a good job and a happy family. But Mai won the game against all odds because she was smarter than most of the other players she was up against and was extremely good at planning her strategies in the game. Thus the smartest player won, not the poorest or the most desperate one - desperation from one's hardship can only do so much for you in a game format like this, you still need brains at the end of the day. Mai even felt guilty about winning as knew she had deprived other players who were much poorer and needed the money more than she did. But if the game was about helping poor people, why not just give the money to charity then and distribute that prize money to those who are most in need? Unless of course, these TV programmes formats just want to exploit the desperation of the very poor working class people living in poverty.
I was personally confronted with this issue.
Actually, this was an issue that I was confronted with as I am applying to be on a reality TV show in the UK with a record prize of £1 million (US$1.27 million). I applied with my husband and modestly aside, we are quite rich, we both run our own companies and are very successful professionals in our respective fields. we live in a nice big house in north London, we don't need to go on a programme like TAR to travel around the world - just in the last month alone, I've travelled to five countries on holiday and was skiing the moment the season season started in Italy. I've been to 76 countries so far. So when you have all these people on Squid Game the Challenge or TAR saying things like, "winning that money would change my life", I had to admit in the interview, "winning a million pounds wouldn't change anything, it would bring me great joy and satisfaction in having achieved something incredible of course and I'd be doing it for the validation but I am not poor, I really don't need that prize money. I'd do the programme even if the prize was just an apple or if there was no prize at all. Instead of debts, my husband and I have a very substantial portfolio of well managed investments for our retirement so when you already have a couple of million pounds in that portfolio, adding one more to that really doesn't change the situation much for us. I actually came from a very poor, working class family, I know what it is like to be poor and I would not recommend taking part in a reality TV show to try to solve one's financial hardship - that would be as bad as a poor man blowing what little life savings he has on lottery tickets in the hope that he will hit the jackpot. I had built a successful career for myself over the years by becoming extremely good at what I do - that is a far more pragmatic and sensible way to approach the challenge of getting out of poverty. Do you want to cast a strong and intelligent team who have a realistic chance of winning the grand prize, or do you want to cast a poverty stricken team who are so desperately poor but have little chance of winning because they are just not that highly educated, not well travelled and simply lack the kind of experience to thrive in this process? I don't need the money but you need brilliant contestants who will have a realistic chance of getting through this very difficult game, so you need me more than I need the money." I have said my piece, but I am sure they'll still continue to cast some very desperate poor people regardless.
Let's talk about TAR S36
I'm sure most of you knew that S36 was filmed before S35, but CBS decided to switch the two around and so the season we have just watched is actually the one most recently filmed whilst S36 was filmed after S34. The reason the two seasons were switched around was that each episode in S35 was edited to be 90 minutes long (with ads) per episode whilst each episode in S36 is only 60 minutes long (with ads) - due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, it was more useful to have longer 90 minute episodes to fill the schedules when they were short on fresh programmes during the strike. Here are some basic facts about S36, it will resemble S34 as it was still filmed under Covid restrictions, hence the racers will travel from country to country in a chartered jet. The countries visited are only in Central and South America and they have visited two countries for the first time: Barbados and the Dominican Republic. Barbados is the only English speaking country they visit on S36, all the other countries are Spanish speaking so I will be very interested to see if they cast any Latinx teams on this season as anyone who can speak Spanish will have a massive advantage in this season whilst the teams who don't speak any Spanish will be in big trouble. It will be released on the 13th March 2024. I'm really looking forward to that season as I have been conferred 'honorary Latino status' by my former colleagues - I speak Spanish fluently, I have worked for Peruvian and Colombian companies before. I have also travelled a lot throughout Central and South America so I will be glad to guide you guys through that season with my Latino insight and experience. I had assumed that a lot of Americans would have at least visited places like Mexico or the Dominican Republic due to the proximity to America, but that is simply not true - some Americans have little or no desire to visit that part of the world and if they were to travel, would head on over to Europe or Asia instead. My business partner in New York has been to really exotic places like Bhutan and Mauritius, yet he hasn't even set foot in Mexico. It's not as if he doesn't have the money to travel, but he just prefers different destinations for his holidays. So I'd like to see if there are any teams who will be totally out of their comfort zone the moment they reach the starting line in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
So finally, what other programmes are there to enjoy in the meantime?
If you like TAR, I recommend the following programmes which are similar - I have already talked a lot about Squid Game the Challenge. I also particularly enjoy the Traitors and that's a franchise which has expanded worldwide. English speakers can enjoy the versions from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and of course, the USA. There is of course, the Mole, there is a 2022 American season but the Dutch version is available online with English subtitles. I also really enjoy Jet Lag, an online series available for free on Youtube, it has a much lower budget and only two teams but it is still very good fun. From the UK, we have Race Across The World which is a worse version of TAR given that they are far less competitive and tend to cast terrible teams who will simply break down and cry the moment they are taken out of their comfort zones. There is also Road to A Million, a new show on Amazon Prime which is a British production that is actually quite good in terms of the challenges and they do have a huge budget, but again, suffers from poor casting - yes I'm once again talking about casting directors giving in to the temptation of casting desperately poor working class people hoping to win a lot of money to solve their problems in life but don't really have the requisite skills to thrive in what is ultimately a very demanding game. The team that performed the best in season 1 were really the only ones who were very credible, whilst the rest of the teams just made me roll my eyes in disbelief in how awful the casting was: it was like, "this poor working class couple don't have the money to travel the world, let's see what happens when we take them out of their comfort zone, take them halfway around the world and put them in a foreign country where they don't speak the language." I feel it is so unfair as this kind of format is really setting people up to fail rather than succeed and I'd much rather see great teams perform well rather than weak teams simply break down and cry when they fail miserably. It is the difference between a programme like The Voice, where only credibly contestants who can perform well are allowed onto the show and programmes like American Idol/Pop Idol where some awful auditions are recorded for comedic purposes, only for us to mock them for failing so badly. Is that what the viewers really want? Should reality TV be about this kind of public humiliation? I am going to post two clips below - one from The Voice Italy with the famous nun sister Cristina stunning everyone with her brilliant audition and the "Ken Lee" audition from Music Idol Bulgaria, so which do you prefer?
So that's it from me for now. Happy holidays, please feel free to leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
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