Hello everyone and we have just witnessed what was probably one of the most controversial eliminations on TAR history. There will be so much to discuss and I know there are a lot of strong feelings about this and I urge you all to do some proper research on the topic instead of just reading the random crap people are posting online. I have done my research and hope to present what I have found here in a rational and calm manner despite the fact that like so many of you, I was not happy at all with what happened. But first, let me begin with the average ranking statistics after leg 8 in Barbados.
Average ranking statistics after leg 8 in Bridgetown
- Ricky & Cesar 1.37
- Rod & Leticia 3.37
- Juan & Shane 3.5
- Amber & Vinny 4.62
- Angie & Danny 5.25 (eliminated in Bridgetown)
- Yvonne & Melissa 5.62
It was no surprise at all that Ricky & Cesar won again and this is their 5th win this season, this pair has never finished outside the top 2 and are certainly the favourites to win this season. It irks me that they are receiving a lot of hate on social media for being too good, they have dominated this season and some viewers feel like it would be a more interesting season if there wasn't such a clear frontrunner. Once again, that comes down to the format of the season where teams are set off in groups with a 15 minute interval between each group - this is a dumb idea as it allows teams at the front of the pack to keep their lead whilst making it extremely hard for those at the back to ever catch up. Juan & Shane have once again shown that they are probably the best team to challenge the supremacy of Ricky & Cesar in this season but we can't go any further without talking about what happened with Angie & Danny and their camera crew.
What actually happened with Angie & Danny?
Too many people have expressed their opinions on social media without actually doing any research into what actually happened, so please let me assure you that I have looked up interviews that Danny Butler has given various sources and pieced together exactly what happened. I will start with the facts then I will let you know about what happened in Barbados on this leg. They teams drove around Barbados in these little cars which had no space for the crew (made up of one cameraman and one sound technician) in the back, so the crew had to follow the teams in a separate vehicle. The teams were informed not to lose their crew and to always wait for their crew. Danny & Angie were in 2nd place when they were driving from Rihanna's childhood home to Long Bay Beach, they approached a roundabout in central Bridgetown. In Barbados, they drive on the left side of the road as Barbados was a former British colony. I know this confuses a lot of Americans if they are not used to it. The majority of the world drive on the right whilst those that drive on the left are mostly former British colonies such as Barbados. This can be particularly confusing for Americans like Angie at roundabouts, as the traffic is circulating clockwise and she would have been used to the opposite back in the USA, with the traffic in the round about circulating anti-clockwise. Whilst Danny was trying to direct her to find the correct exit, she got confused and made an illegal turn at the roundabout - the crew realized Angie's mistake and chose not to make the same illegal turn as her. Angie then noticed within moments that they had been separated from their crew and Danny desperately tried to radio them through the walkie-talkie but to no avail as they were already out of range. Danny then told Angie to drive onto the next location despite the fact that she suggested that they needed to wait where they were, which wasn't an unreasonable suggestion as the crew might have seen where they were going and had a good chance of finding them. They drove onto the next location at Long Bay and were told to wait for their crew - their crew just never showed up and after waiting 45 minutes, the production team decided that Angie & Danny should be assigned new crew and so they were then allowed to continue onto the detour at the beach. However, Angie & Danny were very unlucky - they had picked the slower detour whilst Juan & Shane arrived, blitzed through the faster detour and eventually, they fell to last place and got eliminated. So whose fault was it and were Angie & Danny treated fairly by the production team?
Should Angie have been punished for breaking the law with that mistake?
Whilst she did make an illegal turn at that roundabout, it was an honest mistake made my a confused, flustered driver who was under stress at that time and it was never her intention to cheat - this was not some kind of short cut they took to save time. Furthermore, instead of gaining time from that mistake, they lost a lot of time when they got separated from their crew. Hence I feel it would be unfair to give her a penalty for that mistake as penalties should be reserved for teams who deliberately break the rules to try to gain an advantage, such as by exceeding the local speed limit when driving.
The TAR production crew totally ****ed up
This is the part that is seriously ****ed up, I think production were hopelessly incompetent and this whole episode was seriously unfair to Angie & Danny. They hired a local driver for the crew so there were three people in that car, but the local driver got lost trying to find his way from that roundabout to Long Bay. Now for those of you not familiar with Barbados, let me tell you how ridiculous this situation is, now feel free to look this up on Google maps yourselves. The roundabout in question was near Chamberlain bridge and it is called the Ena Walters roundabout. From there to Long Bay beach, it is 14.5 km (9 miles) and depending on traffic, it should take you about 20 to 25 minutes to drive that distance. The local driver couldn't find his way to Long Bay and eventually, after 45 minutes, the production crew got tired of waiting and assigned Angie & Danny a new crew. Now this was so stupid. Sorry for the swearing but at least I am censoring myself here. If you were to look at the map of Barbados, it is a tiny place and the teams never left Bridgetown. It is a small town with only 110,000 people - it is absolutely tiny. What is the point of getting local driver who gets so hopelessly lost despite having access to Google maps? Like how hideously stupid is this driver? It is one thing for the racers to get lost when they don't have access to technology but for the local guy from Barbados to get that hopelessly lost - what the **** is going on? Did you hire the most directionally challenged idiot in all of Barbados for that job? A more competent driver would have easily found his way to Long Bay within 20 to 25 minutes but no, after 45 minutes, that idiot was still lost on an island which is really so tiny. Like how do you get lost in an island that small? Barbados is only about 18 km (11.1 miles) wide from East to West and 25 km (15.5 miles) long from North to South. Now some people have argued, this is TAR, racers have had bad luck before when they get into a taxi and the taxi either breaks down or the driver gets lost - that kind of thing is just bad luck on the race. Yes, but that's the kind of bad luck when racers have to flag down a random taxi in the street. Angie & Danny had no control over whom the production crew hired for the job and thus it's the difference between you missing your flight because you overslept (that's your fault) and the flight being cancelled because the pilot overslept (that's the airline's fault). The airlines would be held responsible to fix that situation but in this case, Angie & Danny were made to pay the price for the crew's incompetence. Phil should have realized that and made it a non-elimination leg. That would have been a simple way to have made things right after their mistake.
It wasn't rigged, it wasn't a stitch up, but this is still bullshit.
The production team has totally ****ed up as we want to see racers be treated fairly on the race and the whole issue with the crew following the team in separate cars was bloody stupid from the start. You might argue that it was Covid-protocol back in 2022 not to have the teams travel in the same car as the crew as they could not have been socially distanced in that confined space, but those little open top cars were completely impractical in the rain and the racers got so wet. They were filming in November 2022 in Barbados - for crying out loud, October and November are the two wettest months of the year in Barbados, you were in the middle of the rainy season. How little research did the production crew do for the planning of this leg? Why were the teams given only walkie-talkies to keep in touch with their crews in the other car then? Why weren't they given mobile phones for emergencies? Hindsight may be 2020 but how much would it have cost them to give the racers a phone to use only in emergencies if they got separated from their crew? Imagine if Danny had a phone instead of that walkie-talkie, that whole situation could have been resolved so much more quickly. Now you might argue that Angie should have been punished for making an illegal turn at that roundabout and thus she had broken the law in Barbados, but there are usually set penalties in these cases when Phil makes the team serve out a predetermined time penalty on the pit stop before allowing them to check in. The production team seemed totally unprepared to deal with the situation and just left Angie & Danny waiting whilst they were just paralyzed by indecision - yes Angie made an illegal turn at that roundabout but the crew were also hopelessly incompetent in this case. I have read some people on social media going as far as to claim that this show is rigged and they engineered this to get rid of one of the strongest teams to ensure that Ricky & Cesar will win this season, I don't think that's true at all; now firstly, a big budget American programme like that would never be rigged to produce a certain outcome. That would be downright illegal but if we were to ignore that, why sabotage a team that went into this leg as the second weakest team statistically and had never won a leg? The only Rod & Leticia and Juan & Shane have beat Ricky & Cesar to win a leg in this season - Angie & Danny have never really been a threat., they were at best the likeable underdogs of the season. Hence no, the process has not been rigged at all, but what we are seeing is the product of terribly shoddy work on the part of the production crew.
Angie & Danny handled the situation with grace but what was the alternative?
I honestly have no idea how Angie & Danny kept their cool in this situation but they had little choice in the matter. The fact is when racers take part in TAR, they have to sign a contract that basically says, "if we mess up and make stupid mistakes that results in an unfair outcome, you can't sue us and we reserve the right to make any final decisions on the outcome of the race, even if our hideously stupid and incompetent crew makes dumb mistakes." They would get a lawyer to dress that up in legal English and that means that even though Angie & Danny were treated very unfairly, they had signed a contract which was a waiver, that lets CBS off the hook even in such a situation. This is pretty standard when it comes to all reality TV shows, but in most cases, they would realize how bad it would look if something did go terribly wrong and there would be some attempt to rectify the situation .How do you make a multi-million dollar reality TV progamme when you hire the most incompetent and useless idiots on your crew? Look, I work in finance, I know it's a different industry but I have seen how stupid idiots get nice roles because their rich daddy has called in a favour or two and yeah, that kind of nepotism stinks but that's often how incompetent idiots end up in important jobs. I run my own business, I take pride in my work and my clients would desert me if I was terrible at my job and failed to deliver for my clients. There would be dire consequences if I was bad at my job, so I am left shaking my head wondering if anyone on the production team was punished for this episode or would they simply say, "oh we'll just never hire that idiot driver if we film in Barbados again." In post-production, they spliced in a line of Danny saying, "oh our crew is here" when they were finally allowed to continue racing, but Danny has confirmed that he never said that as his original crew never arrived - that line was spliced in from another part of the show and you never actually see him saying it, it was to give the viewers the impression that their original crew did show up at Long Bay when the truth is that idiot drivers was probably lost for hours and never showed up. Maybe if they were filming in somewhere like Turkey, Bulgaria or China, then there might have been a massive language barrier with the local driver but they speak English in Barbados for crying out aloud. It was evident that there was little or not attempt to fix the problem in this case and I'm going to share with you a case study from another reality TV programme I'm watching for you to compare how such a situation should be dealt with fairly.
How Physical 100 S2 addressed a technical problem in a fair way.
I'm a fan of the Korean reality TV series Physical 100 when teams have to compete in extremely physical challenges to be crowned the person with the perfect physique in all of South Korea. In one of the challenges in S2 E7, the teams had to traverse a set of monkey bars whilst pushing a load along with their feet in front of them - the load was suspended on a set of rails and there were three teams in each race and the slowest team would be eliminated. However, in the middle of one of the races, the suspended load on one of the rails was jammed - no matter how hard the contestant tried to kick it, the load simply wouldn't budge. One of the screws holding up the load had fallen out of place and jammed the entire device, this was a technical fault that only affected one team and not the other two so the team that encountered the technical problem simply couldn't finish the race whilst the other two teams blitzed through the course with no problems. So the production team conceded that they had built a device that fell apart during the race - it was entirely their fault and the team that had the misfortune of being placed in the lane with the faulty device shouldn't be penalized for that. So that team was given two hours to rest before restarting the race, but this time, it was just a time trial. That meant the two other teams who had successfully competed the race did not have to do it again and the team who had to redo the race was simply trying to beat the time of the first two teams. It wasn't a perfect solution given that the team who got to redo the race actually performed better the second time round - they were actually in last place when the technical malfunction happened and looked like they were going to finish last. But having a chance to redo the race gave them the chance to avoid mistakes that were made the first time round and improved their performance. You could also argue that the team that was bumped to last didn't realize what was going on and the contestant was given the false impression that he was safely in second place when the technical malfunction happened. Regardless, the solution was not something that was merely decided by the production team - an impromptu meeting had been called between production and the team captains, so it was a group decision that all team captains decided would be fair and they would accept the outcome. This was important as the viewers can then see how transparent that process was and it felt fair. At least the production team of Physical 100 tried their best to fix a technical problem that they caused in a fair manner and TAR did not do that.
Can we talk about something else please?
I found this leg weird to begin with - the teams started in the heart of Bridgetown but drove to the middle of nowhere in some suburban neighbourhood to play road tennis? Yes it is unique to Barbados but why make them do it in the middle of some unattractive suburb? Surely they could have easily picked a more beautiful location for it like the famous Hunte's Gardens or the Andromeda Botanic Gardens? Furthermore, the teams encountered some very heavy rain on the way to the roadblock - what if it was raining that heavily when a team was trying to play road tennis? Would they have had to simply wait for the rain to stop (and what if it rained non-stop for hours)? This is why I know I am completely justified when I say that the production crew planned this whole leg so badly and I know I can do a much better job than these idiots. Barbados is also famous for its distilleries producing rum, surely that would have been a more interesting location to visit than Rihanna's house - like I get it, she's the most famous person from Barbados but quite honestly, her childhood home was a bit of an anti-climax as the teams did nothing there apart from just picking up a clue. Furthermore, you could have easily done a roadblock or a detour in the distillery in the pouring rain as it is indoors! As for the choice of the detours on Long Bay beach, they felt terribly unequal - Juan & Shane were able to blitz through the more physical side of collecting the seaweed whilst the others were spending a lot of time building a complex fish trap with wooden sticks and wire mesh. I was shocked at how many teams picking the fish trap over the more straightforward seaweed collection side of the detour. But remember the heavy rain? What if the teams got to the beach and it was absolutely pouring with rain? Why did they plan everything outdoors knowing that it was the rainy season in Barbados? You can't just say, oh the racers will get wet in the rain - during a tropical thunderstorm (which are very common in Barbados in the rainy season), there is the risk of lightning and as a standard health and safety precaution, you will have to get everyone out of the rain in an open space like the beach to a safe place if there is the risk of lightning. There are also some stunningly beautiful caves in Barbados, why not explore those instead as you are at least safe from lightning in the caves? I certainly know much more about Barbados than the stupid idiots who planned this leg - I'm shaking my head.
Do you think you could've done a better job?
This reminds me of something that I encountered back in 2010 when the Youth Olympic Games were held in Singapore, my hometown where I was born and spent my childhood (I have lived in the UK since 1997). Some of the aspects of the games were poorly organized, especially the gymnastics event which drew a lot of criticism from gymnastics fans worldwide. As for former national champion gymnast from Singapore, I was part of the many voices who criticized the poor organization, especially the way the international broadcast was handled when they assigned two commentators who knew very little about gymnastics and essentially talked complete nonsense over the broadcast. One of them even had a really strong Asian accent and kept mispronouncing a lot of words in English. The people in Singapore were proud to host such a major sporting event and were aghast that I would dare to criticize aspects of it - so one of them actually challenged me, "if you think you can do a better job, you should come back and do it for free rather than criticize us all the way from London." I knew I was far more intelligent than the stupid idiots they assigned for the job. So in 2011, I went back to Singapore and volunteered for the Singapore Open (an annual gymnastics competition) and as I knew one of the organizers, I was able to help out in many aspects of the competition and was even roped in to do the live commentary since I can can speak 7 languages fluently. Furthermore, as a former national champion gymnast, I had a really profound technical understanding of the sport and thus I was absolutely brilliant at my job. A lot of people assume that in such circumstances, these armchair critics cannot do a better job but I had proven in 2011 that I was able to do a much better job as I knew for a fact that I am definitely more intelligent and skilled than the people they hired at the 2010 Youth Olympics Games. The organizer of the 2011 Singapore Open confessed to me that because it was an event with the word 'Olympics' in it, the local organizing committee centralized a lot of the planning and excluded the gymnastics community from the planning stages, that led to the wrong people being hired for the job and the embarrassing mistakes that ensued as a result. The reason why I chose to share this story is because many of you assume that the production team for TAR had done their best and couldn't have done better - I beg to differ, if I was part of the production team, I would have done a much better job and thus I do feel I have the right to hold them to account and criticize them like this.
What next for Danny Butler?
I'll admit I didn't think that Angie & Danny was a strong team at the start of this season but now I am upset they are eliminated under such circumstances. However, they came across as very likable on this season and many of us loved the way they had a great relationship. I hope Danny will be cast in another reality TV programme like Netflix Mole or The Traitors in the future as he clearly enjoys the limelight and I really hope to see him again in another programme soon.
Who will win the next leg and who will be eliminated next?
We're off to the Dominican Republic (DR) next, another country that I know very well and given that it is a Spanish speaking country, it will be a Ricky & Cesar vs Juan & Shane showdown again. In the previews we see Melissa struggling with a roadblock, we see Amber & Vinny cracking under the pressure again and we see Rod struggling with a baseball task (oh yeah baseball is big in DR). Amongst these three teams, any of them could go and I am going to guess that it will be Rod & Leticia's time to go because Yvonne & Melissa don't face a language barrier in the DR, Vinny speaks a little Spanish but Rod & Leticia speak virtually no Spanish at all - they also struggled in this leg in Barbados and were only spared elimination because of what happened to Angie & Danny. Statistically, Yvonne & Melissa are still the weakest group but at least they have shown some improvement in the last two legs, so I think Rod & Leticia will be eliminated next and Ricky & Cesar will once again beat Juan & Shane. I think the final three teams will be Ricky & Cesar, Juan & Shane and probably Amber & Vinny. Okay, this was hard work writing this and I'm exhausted - I certainly hope that the next episode would be less controversial and a lot more fair. Have I been too harsh? No, if this was some kind of student film project produced by inexperienced teenagers, I'll be a lot more forgiving if they made silly mistakes. But this was supposed to have been a prime time American reality TV show and that's why I think everything I have said in this post has been justified. Alright, that's it from me on this episode. Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment