Hola and welcome back to another series of TAR! We have only waited two and a half months since the end of TAR S35 and now we have a brand new season. I was in two minds whether or not I was going to continue doing the reviews of each episode for this season as I am traveling a lot this year but after watching the first episode, I thought I'd give it a go. For those of you not familiar with my reviews of TAR episodes, hello my name is Alex, I'm 47 and I live in London. I'm a huge fan of TAR and I travel more than the vast majority of people out there. I've been to 78 countries so far and just in 2024, since the beginning of the year, I've been to Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg and Belgium: all that in just about ten weeks. In the last 6 months, I've travelled to a total of 11 countries. I've got a lot more travels planned for this year so when I watch an episode of TAR, my first reaction would usually be, "oh yeah, I remember that place, I've been there." Furthermore, I am also in the process of applying for the British version of TAR which is different but still, it involves teams of two racing around the world, solving puzzles along the way to win a grand prize. I still don't know if I would be selected for the next season but at least that has given me a taste of what it is like to go through the casting process for this kind of reality TV show. Normally I start each blog post with an average ranking but at this stage since we have only had one episode, here are the current standings after leg 1.
Current standings after leg 1 in Puerto Vallarta
- Rod & Leticia 1
- Ricky & Cesar 2
- Derek & Shelisa 3
- Juan & Shane 4
- Michelle & Sean 5
- Yvonne & Melissa 6
- Angie & Danny 7
- Anthony & Bailey 8
- Sunny & Bizzy 9
- Kishori & Karishma 10
- Chris & Mary 11
- Amber & Vinny 12
- Maya & Rohan 13 (eliminated in Puerto Vallarta)
The seasons 35 and 36 switch
As you may probably know already, CBS filmed this current season first, then they filmed S35, but decided to air S35 before S36. The actual filming dates for this season was October to November 2022, thus the winners have been known for a year and a half already. You have got to feel for these racers, it must be so exciting going on the race but then to have to wait this long before having the chance to see it on TV must be torture. The decision to postpone this season was to give CBS more time to re-edit the whole season to create longer 90-minute episodes (as opposed to the usual 60-minute episodes) as a result of the 2023 writers' strike. As this episode was shot back in 2022, there will be some elements of it which will remind you of S34, such as the chartered planes and some people wearing face masks as Covid was still a thing then. Watching this makes me realize how much I appreciate getting normality back after the pandemic!
A lot of leaks on social media
A lot more information about this season has already been leaked on social media (whether deliberately or not). Whilst I have no idea who the winners of TAR S36 are, it has been widely discussed how this is only a central & south American season as the teams do not venture out of the Americas at all. This makes S36 resemble some of the old Latin American versions of the race when teams from Latin American counties ran their TAR only in these countries - that ran for 6 seasons from 2009 to 2014. In my posts, I'm going to be using some information which has already made its way onto Wikipedia, please don't accuse me of releasing spoilers here, as it is all information that is already in the public domain.
One assumption I had made (and I was wrong)
Since I knew the race was mostly going to be run through Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, I had just assumed that the teams who didn't have at least one racer who spoke Spanish would be eliminated and teams who had some Spanish language skills would dominate the season. Well, that wasn't really the case in this first leg in Puerto Vallarta. Rod & Leticia who won this leg didn't seem to have any Spanish skills at all, but they managed to navigate their way efficiently through this leg with what little they had and both the detours as well as the roadblock were tasks that did not involve any kind of Spanish language skills. The team that got eliminated did have one Spanish speaker - Maya does speak some Spanish. The order of the teams in this leg didn't seem to have that much correlation to their ability to speak at least some Spanish. I always roll my eyes at Americans who don't speak any Spanish though, Spanish is my fourth language and I'm totally fluent in it despite the fact that my Spanish is entirely self-taught. I perfected by Spanish by working for companies from Colombia and Peru to earn my honorary Latino credentials over the years. In my current job, I have a Mexican colleague and we head up the Latin American desk together dealing with projects all over Latin America which are run entirely in Spanish, not bad for someone who has never taken a class of Spanish before. Yes, so that does give me the right to be a total bitch about monolingual racers who go on TAR without bothering to learn a single foreign language. I rolled my eyes whenever any of the racers spoke in English to the locals instead of even attempting to speak Spanish - but nothing could be compared to that one moment in this episode that has well and truly gone viral.
Maya & Rohan's 300 point turn
When Maya & Rohan drove down a one way street, instead of simply reversing back out of that street which would've been the obvious thing to do, they decided to do an epic 300 point turn in that narrow street, reinventing the three point turn. Look, CBS has shared moment that relentlessly on social media and it is fair to say that Maya & Rohan have been roasted on social media for that moment of folly. Even people who didn't watch the episode are lining up to hurl abuse at Maya & Rohan, so I am going to be nice here. It just seems like a complete lack of common sense here, look we can all be human, give in to a moment of panic and make some bad decisions. It can happen, but the whole point about working in a pair is when one person panic, the other can step in and help find a solution calmly. But instead, Maya & Rohan just seemed to wind each other up and neither were willing to take charge of the situation - if they were at home, I'd imagine they'd be yelling for their mum or dad to step in to help already, but on the race, they didn't have that luxury. Neither were willing to step in and calm the other party down and that say a lot about their sibling dynamics and the fact they are the youngest team in this season meant that they simply lacked the emotional maturity to deal with such a stressful situation. At times, it sounded like they were both throwing a tantrum at the same time because their parents would respond to that kind of behaviour. There were so many instances when Maya could have used her Spanish language skills to ask the locals for help but she didn't - that's why I am glad to see the older teams in the season doing well as TAR is not simply a physical race that will always favour young racers but it is about having the social skills to cope with very stressful situations and solve problems under pressure. There are plenty of weaker teams at this early stage of the race, but given their navigational woes and that 300 point turn, there was just no way that Maya & Rohan could've survived this leg. They had already hit the self-destruct button very early in this leg and therefore there was no coming back from that.
How hard was it to get from the pit start to the second location at the Malecón?
According to Google maps, it is a a relatively short drive of approximately 10.2 km (6.3 miles) and would take about 30 to 40 minutes depending on traffic and the precise you take. On the map, it doesn't look that far but I am just amazed at how some teams (notably Maya & Rohan) simply gave into blind panic and argued without stopping to ask for directions. Ironically, this has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to speak Spanish given that Maya does speak Spanish - the other team that got lost was Juan & Shane and Juan speaks Spanish as well! This just left me shaking my head as some teams who didn't speak any Spanish at all managed to navigate successfully, so these two teams had no excuses at all.
Which detour was easier?
It was the choice between Pick 'Em Up a very physical challenge carrying two heavy rocking horses through the hilly streets of Puerto Vallarta and Pin 'Em Down a memory challenge where the teams had to watch a Lucha Libre wrestling match and do a memory test regarding the masks the wrestlers wore. I would have definitely gone for the memorization detour, given it was evidently very hot in Puerto Vallarta, any kind of physical task would have been a lot harder given the heat exhaustion involved. Whilst it may have seemed a lot more straightforward, there was still a roadblock ahead and I would have picked the less physically exhausting detour to conserve my energy for the rest of the leg. The memorization challenge wasn't too bad, I would not have expected to have got it on the first attempt, but none of the teams who tried that detour were stuck there for long - I was surprised that more teams had picked the more physical side of this detour.
Should Mary have helped Juan & Shane?
Oh they made a big deal out of this in the edit, so Chris & Mary were the first to realize that there were no more rocking horses left and had to switch detours - on their way down the hill, they ran into Juan & Shane. Mary decided to be nice and informed them about the situation, this helped save Juan & Shane save some time and they eventually finished the leg in a respectable 4th place despite a slow start whilst Chris & Mary finished the leg in 11th. I think it was a storm in a tea cup as it would have made little difference, it is evident that Juan & Shane are a strong team and even if they had wasted a bit more time finding out for themselves that there were no more rocking horses, it would have probably made little difference to the outcome of the leg. Juan & Shane were never going to win this leg, but they were never going to be eliminated, so Mary might as well have used the opportunity to build some goodwill with Juan & Shane by helping them. After all, it was inevitable that Juan & Shane were going to overtake Chris & Mary anyway, so why not take the opportunity to connect with another team and try to make an ally out of them? So I think she definitely did the right thing.
Why is there an elimination in this leg?
Yes even I was a bit surprised when Phil eliminated Maya & Rohan as the other teams had to keep on racing, there wasn't even a prize for the team that came in first. Nonetheless, I just rolled my eyes and thought, Phil please put these two out of their misery now as they're really having a bad day. Eliminating them was the kindest thing to do at that point.
Well, I am looking for teams who speak Spanish, teams who are physically strong and also have shown that they can cope well under pressure - the following teams stand out for me. I think Ricky & Cesar could do very well as they tick all three boxes, as do Juan & Shane and Yvonne & Melissa. So those are my pick for the three teams that will make it to the finals as I don't wanna be wishy washy and try to say something nice about every team, I am trying to pick three finalists.
Oh boy this is when I am gonna offend people and apologies in advance: Chris & Mary will probably be eliminated next since Chris is 60 - he's the oldest racer in this season and I'm not saying that age is necessarily a factor here, Derek & Shelisa are 57 and 55 respectively but they look a lot more fit than Chris and I would never worry about Derek not being able to complete a physical challenge given just how strong he looks. As an older racer, if you know you're never going to keep up with the younger teams, you should always make strategic decisions to your advantage - yet Chris & Mary picked the far more physically demanding side of the detour despite the fact that Chris would have really struggled to complete it. The fact that they were forced to switch detours was a blessing in disguise, but that really bad decision is why I think they would not last more than one or two more legs. The other team that I think will not survive long has to be Kishori & Karishma - we have already seen the youngest team Maya & Rohan crack under pressure and self-imploded in this first leg. This is the second youngest team on the race and I sense the same kind of immaturity from them, case in point: during the roadblock, Karishma rushed into the roadblock without reading the clue properly - there were only two items of costume that the racers had to wear when performing this roadblock, the hat and the handkerchief. Karishma was the only one who made that silly error and that dropped them from 4th place to 10th place - they only got away with it because we are so early in the process that there are still plenty of other very weak teams around but if this kind of mistake happened in a later leg, it would lead to elimination. Finally, the last team that I think would not last long is Angie & Danny - I'm sorry but Angie is 55 and they just both come across as white Americans who haven't travelled much and would really struggle when taken out of their comfort zones. Puerto Vallarta is a very tourist friendly city in Mexico, hence I think Angie & Danny would really struggle once the race moves on to a far less tourist friendly location in Latin America.
Why are there such weak teams in this season?
Having been through the process myself here in the UK, I am left puzzled at the casting this season. For my casting process, I had a trial day in London where I had two tests, one was a physical challenge that was done outdoors in a park, the second was a mental challenge that was done indoors. I think they were trying to figure out if my team could stay calm under pressure and solve the puzzles within the allocated time or if we would just freak out, shit ourselves and start crying. Those challenges were meant to push us to the very limits and they have footage of me collapsing on the pavement gasping for breath after they shouted, "okay time's up, stop what you're doing." My question for you is this: as a viewer, do you want to see people like Maya & Rohan self-destruct under pressure and make really bad decisions? Is there an element of slapstick humour when teams make mistakes and we get to laugh at just how stupid they are when they mess up like that? Or would we prefer to see teams who have a realistic chance of actually doing really well in this process taking part? Every season, we always seem to get our fair share of 'joker teams' who will self-implode under pressure early in the process and I think that's a really bad choice on the part of the casting directors. Can you imagine if you watched the 2024 Paris Olympics and we see at the starting line for the marathon, "Jessica is a 45 year old teacher from Boston, she hasn't quite trained enough for the Olympics as she is a busy mother of three holding down a full time job." Then we cut to Jessica having a mental breakdown at the side of the road after half an hour, crying like a baby before being carried off into an ambulance. No, that would make a mockery of the Olympics - there would be amateur sports events for people like Jessica to take part in but why are there 'joker teams' in TAR who are simply set up to fail? Do the fans want to see more 'joker teams' in TAR as they represent ordinary folks who will suck at this difficult process?
Who is going to win the next leg? Who is going to be eliminated?
Given that this is a keep on racing mega leg, it is between the two teams in the lead so I'm going to pick Ricky & Cesar given that Cesar has a distinct advantage having lived in Mexico. As for the team that will be eliminated, I would have to say Chris & Mary. They are already at the back of the pack and we get a sneak peak at Chris collapsing in the unforgiving Mexican heat in the next episode - I'm sorry but it all points to Chris & Mary being eliminated next. Okay, so that's it from me on this episode, what do you think? What do you think of the start to TAR S36? Do you have any favourite teams yet? What do you make of the way the internet has mocked Maya & Rohan? Has it all been needlessly cruel or is all this just part and parcel of reality TV culture? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment