Hello здравей как си? I hope you guys enjoyed this episode in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. As we're getting to the business end of S37, there are no more weak teams left and we had to say goodbye to Melinda & Erika after this leg whilst Brett & Mark chalked up another win. The average ranking statistics haven't changed much after this leg, let's take a look at where the teams stand after E8. Interestingly enough, it wasn't the weakest team that got eliminated in this leg.
Average ranking after leg 8 in Sofia
- Carson & Jack 2.75
- Alyssa & Josiah 3.125
- Jonathan & Ana 3.25
- Brett & Mark 3.875
- Melinda & Erika 5.25 (eliminated in Sofia)
- Han & Holden 5.875
Was the outcome of this leg surprising?
Not at all, the teams had a rest period and continued racing from the last pitstop in Elin Pelin, hence the teams at the front of the pack had a considerable lead and hence the order was never going to change that much in this leg. To put things in perspective, Alyssa & Josiah set out at 7:34 am, Brett & Mark set out at 8:10 am, Jonathan & Ana set out at 8:33 am; so even amongst the first three teams, it was practically guaranteed that Alyssa & Josiah were going to get the express pass as it was highly unlikely that the other teams would even want to attempt it, given how far behind they were. Han & Holden set off at 9:47 am, by which point Alyssa & Josiah had already completed the fast forward. Melinda & Erika set off at 10:06 am and finally, at the very back, Carson & Jack had a lie in and they set off at 11:15 am - so that's 1 hour and 9 minutes behind Melinda & Erika and 3 hours 41 minutes behind the team in first place. But the big story in this episode was Carson & Jack's incredible comeback, to jump from not only last place, but to overcome that massive deficit of over an hour and leap to 4th place ahead of two teams, wow! If they hadn't set out so far behind the leading teams, they could have challenged for first place in this leg. Carson & Jack are still statistically the strongest team in this season despite their poor performance in leg 7, but we're getting to the point where the weaker teams are all gone now.
Did we like this express pass task?
It's not something I have done before but at least there was an element of fear involved in walking over hot coals, though it is something that has been done in many different parts of the world. It is not unique to Bulgaria; though I wondered if it was too easy. It was a small detour from Lake Ariana, just 4.2 km (2.6 miles) away and it was not on the way as it was to the north of Sofia, whilst Lake Ariana was in the south-east of Sofia. The place where they did the fast forward was just a generic event venue called Fabrica 126 and typically, it is used for concerts, art events, exhibitions and thus I was a bit surprised - Sofia is full of beautiful, historic buildings which would have made a lovely backdrop for this task; yet somehow they picked a venue like this? Fabrica means "factory" in Bulgarian and this is a disused old factory. I am glad though that Alyssa & Josiah had to make a difficult choice between going for the fast forward and winning this leg, as I feel like the express pass is such a useful tool that it should come at a price and we can now put a price on it: US$15,000 - that was the prize for the winning team Brett & Mark. So yes, it does seem like quite a high price to pay for that express pass and they came close to using it during the cipher challenge at the university but thankfully, they didn't. The task did take a while because there was also a safety briefing, a demonstration and there would have been a medical examination at the end of it, just to make sure that the racers didn't sustain any injury to their feet whilst doing this firewalk - none of that were shown in the final edit but it did drop Alyssa & Josiah to 2nd place when they re-joined the race and they never had any realistic chance of challenging for first given just how brilliant Brett & Mark were in this leg.
More pointless tasks at Lake Ariana and the visit to the museum of socialist art!
Whilst I acknowledge that the the production team was trying to showcase an element of the local Bulgarian culture, the Jordan Day task at Lake Ariana was totally pointless as it was so straightforward that the teams simply left in the order they arrived in - the teams simply waded into a shallow lake, picked up a cross that the priest had just thrown into the water and that's it, there was absolutely nothing that could have possibly gone wrong there. The only aspect that made a tiny difference was whether teams would spend a few minutes changing into swimwear before wading into the pond or if they would just jump right in, get wet and presumably have to spend the rest of the day uncomfortable in rather wet clothes. Whilst I love discovering the local culture (hey, I have visited Sofia and had a lovely time there), this task was way too easy and they needed to have introduced some kind of difficulty into this task. The men in the water were singing, so why not make the teams learn a short passage to sing in Bulgarian and make them perform it in the water, before allowing them to get the next clue? Likewise, another pointless task was the visit to the museum of socialist art - I actually visited that museum when I was in Sofia. But the teams literally just walked into the courtyard there, picked up a clue and left at once. I actually spent ages there learning about Bulgaria's communist era and I would have made the teams do a task like this there, in order to make them spend more time there and mess up the order. I would give the teams a photo of a smaller, lesser known statue in the courtyard and the teams would have to search amongst the vast number of statues in the museum, identify the name of the person depicted in the statue before they can receive their next clue. This would introduce an element of luck to the process which is what you need in order to change the order of the teams. We do not like tasks which are just so straightforward that they do not allow the order of the teams to change.
Did you spot something wrong with the Klek shop?
I like the idea of introducing the Klek shops (klek means 'knee', as the shops are at knee level) to the viewers, but usually the shutters would not be closed like that - the shop needs to attract customers and thus the shutters would only be shut like that when the shop was closed. Besides, different Klek shops sell different items: cigarettes, snacks, ice cream, drinks, booze, vapes etc so there would be some signs and advertising telling potential customers what they could buy there. Still it was amusing to see the racers struggle to identify the klek shop even if they were standing right in front of it.
How hard was the cipher task at the university?
Well, such ciphers are a staple in escape rooms, so if you have ever played an escape room before, you would have automatically picked it up and examined it from all angles. Heck, given that I speak Russian I would have simply tried to translate it directly from Bulgarian to English. Quite frankly, I was amazed at how so many teams struggled this task as it never occurred to them to simply pick up the cipher to see what was on the other side. Of course, hindsight is 2020 and it would have been extremely obvious what needed to be done to solve that task. It is the kind of situation where you get to see how a racer reacts to stress - some stay come whilst others go into blind panic. I must say, I wasn't impressed by a few racers who did just crumble under pressure, but I want to make clear that I am only comparing them to the other racers who handled that situation a lot better. There were some racers who were trying to figure it out whilst some simply threw their hands in the air and said, "I don't know, you do it, I can't do this." At least if you kept trying, you may stumble upon the answer but it is very unfair on your partner if you simply expect them to come up with the answer whilst you choose to sit this one out. The use of the cipher was a nice touch and yes, they were translating from Bulgarian, though once the teams lifted up the cipher, they could solve it so quickly and the task required no knowledge of Bulgarian at all.
Was it wise for teams to help each other?
Firstly, helping another team under these circumstances is completely allowed within the rules of the game, it's just a question of whether it would be advantageous to do so as you may have little or nothing to gain by helping the other team. Jonathan & Ana chose to help Alyssa & Josiah - I think that was not a smart move because Alyssa & Josiah have the valuable express pass and if they had been stuck there any longer, they might have been forced to use it to get out of there but instead, Jonathan & Ana chose to help them to buy some goodwill. Would this decision work out well for Jonathan & Ana? No, I don't think so because you can't try to buy goodwill this late in the game when there are so few teams left - the time for trying to befriend the other teams and form alliances has long gone. As for Han & Holden ditching Melinda & Erika, well - that's a moot point because of the taxi debacle, Han & Holden had no idea that Melinda & Erika would be eliminated regardless so they did what they had to do to survive another leg though if they really wanted to be ruthless, they could have left without telling them to turn the cipher around, hence at least we know they felt really guilty!
Melinda & Erika didn't cheat! They made a silly mistake and would've been punished for it.
I get so frustrated reading the crap on social media - I do my research on social media because I wanna know how people reacted to this episode but goodness me, some of the crap that's been written by complete idiots out there. Quite a few people accused Melinda & Erika of cheating, that's completely false as they didn't set out to break the rules or cheat - they had simply misread a clue and if they hadn't arrived last anyway, they would have been given a penalty for that mistake and would have dropped to last place regardless. It is important to judge teams fairly in reality TV, it is clear that there was a complete absence of any intention to cheat or break/bend the rules for any kind of personal advantage. After all, if they had known the consequences of taking a taxi, they would have never done it. There are so many idiots on social media I swear, after 8 episodes, you'd like to think that these people can at least remember the name of the racers but no, they were calling Melinda & Erika "the mother and daughter" team and one person even referred to Carson as 'Carter'. Good grief, these idiots can't even watch an episode of TAR and remember any of the details - can you imagine how terribly they would perform if they actually went on the race and had to do a task which required attention to detail? Yet these same people want to judge the racers so harshly? This is why I write my blog and have my say here, because I just do not have the time or willpower to correct each and every one of these idiots on social media.
As someone who has experience in the industry, please allow me to explain that you can't cheat in plain sight, not whilst there are camera crews capturing every single moment of what you are doing on the race. It is just not possible in this genre of television, you can't cheat like that unless you're trying to pull off something that is already permitted within the rules of the game. For example, when teams encountered that difficult task at the university when they had to use a cipher to translate a bible verse, the teams were allowed to help each other within the rules of the game, that's not considered cheating. But if you have a roadblock where one member of the team has to complete a task, the other member is allowed to witness and even encourage the team member doing the roadblock, but the non-participating team member is not allowed to help by offering ideas or suggestions that may help the team mate completing the roadblock. If that rule is broken, then there would be a penalty imposed on the team. So basically, it is impossible to cheat and get away with it - not when your every move is being scrutinized and captured on camera. However, it is clear that so many viewers don't understand the rules of TAR and make all of these ridiculous assumptions that are all completely wrong, that is mostly why I write my blog for an informed audience, who understand how TAR works as I do not have the energy to engage the idiots on social media and so I recommend you do not do that, as it would take years off your life I swear.
What would have been the penalty for Melinda & Erika?
It would have been a two hours penalty, as they took taxis four times instead of using public transport, each infringement of the rule would have been a 30 minute penalty. So from the moment they took their first taxi, their race was effectively over at that point. But it seemed pointless and even cruel imposing that penalty when they came in last, especially as it started raining heavily as they were at the pit stop, imposing that penalty wouldn't have made a difference in the results of that leg anyway, so that's why Phil didn't bother talking about it but had they not been last, that penalty would've been imposed and they would have fallen to last as a result. I'm sad to see them go, I was very fond of Melinda as the oldest racer in this season and they were a very likable team, but I'm afraid they are in a season with some very strong teams.
Hypothetical question: would Melinda & Erika survived this leg if they didn't make that taxi mistake?
Ooh, this is a completely hypothetical question but my guess is no - public transport in Sofia is actually very good, I used it when I was there and it was very reliable. All you had to do was ask for directions and there would usually be some helpful young person around who spoke English well enough to give you directions. Thus by that token, Melinda & Erika probably didn't save that much time taking those taxis. Moreover, they really struggled with the cipher task at the university, so Melinda & Erika would have been hoping for with Han or Jack to have had a complete breakdown whilst trying to complete the dance detour to give them that vital chance to catch up; however, that was not the case at all as both Han and Jack learnt that dance really quickly and performed it well. Thus I'm afraid that even without that silly mistake when they misread their clue, their struggles at the cipher task would've dropped them to last place regardless.
You can't script that - are you the woodchopper guy?
Carson & Jack ran into the woodchopper guy from the previous leg, it was the man who weighed the wood they had to carry in the detour. Do you know what this tells us? The guy is an actor and not a real farmer from Sarantsi farm, but I suspect most of you knew that already. The production team needs to get reliable people to be a part of the show at these tasks and most of the time, they'll just go through the local actors agencies to get some reliable actors who will gladly be an actor for the day and get their face on American TV - imagine the kind of difficulty you might run into if they had engaged a real Bulgarian farmer who doesn't speak a word of English and has never ever worked with a TV crew before. It would cause all kinds of problems but if you hired an actor who speaks English well but can still look the part of a typical farmer in Bulgaria then the shoot would be a breeze. So I am just surprised that Carson & Jack didn't realize that he wasn't farmer at all, why was this guy taking a bus in downtown Sofia instead of working on his farm in Sarantsi?
One of the Bulgarian dancers who was participated in the detour contacted one of the fan groups of Facebook and she said that she couldn't watch TAR in Bulgaria but wanted to see if any of the fans in America or anywhere else could help record a small clip of that portion of the episode so she could try to spot herself. Loads of people gave her links to download the episode so now she could not only watch it but also share it with all her fellow dancers in Sofia. She also received loads of compliments from the fans telling her how amazing her dance performance was and that was such a nice thing to see on social media. So for all my misgivings there're some nice people out there on the TAR social media!
A difficult roadblock to showcase more local culture.
I liked this roadblock because it was difficult, that meant teams who had the skill to pick up this very complicated Bulgarian dance routine quickly could get out of there quickly, whilst the other slower learners could potentially fall behind. Mark aced it on the first attempt and I expected nothing less of him, this gave them their second win of this season - they won leg 5 in Bali, Indonesia. Whilst the dance did look difficult, most teams took either two or three attempts to get through that roadblock - Melinda aced it on the first attempt, though I can't help but feel that the producers knew that they were going to get eliminated anyway because of the mistake with the taxis, thus there was no point in keeping them there for any longer than necessary as their fate was sealed the moment Holden completed that dance roadblock. Hence whether she completed it in one, three, five or eight attempts, it would have made no difference.
Jonathan's behaviour seemed to have improved on this leg?
This was something that was picked up on social media and my response to that was, hang on, let's not jump to any conclusions yet because we had six teams racing in this leg and that means they would have had many hours of footage to edit into a one hour episode. Just because you didn't see him being mean and nasty to Ana in this leg doesn't mean it didn't happen - now you could turn around and say, oh you can say the same thing about any team but let's compare this to another team like Alyssa & Josiah. We have never seen Josiah act in a selfish, abusive or rude way towards Alyssa in the entire race, that is because we can conclude that it is not in his nature to do so and even if we are not seeing every minute of their journey in Bulgaria, we can conclude that what we have seen so far is representative of the way they relate to each other. But right from the very first leg, we have already seen Jonathan behave in a rather nasty and abusive way towards Ana; there comes a point when the producers in the editing suite may think, oh let's not show that heated argument they had because that's going to come across very badly, we don't want the viewers to be all talking about it, let's try to show them in a more positive light. So even when you see these interviews that the teams do to the camera, these are often prompted by a producer. Thus for example, since Ana did the dance detour, a producer could aks Jonathan a question like, "how did you feel watching Ana perform that dance detour?" Then Jonathan would be prompted to include that question in his answer by starting his sentence with, "when I watched Ana perform that dance detour, I felt ..." So I am just reminding you that there is a lot that happens in the edit that is controlled by the producers.
Did this leg do Sofia justice?
On this occasion, yes I think so - I liked the way a lot of local culture was featured and it is great when teams have to use local public transport. You know my usual bugbear though, I hate it when there are pointless tasks where teams do something so simple and straightforward that they simply leave in the order they have arrived in and there were two such pointless tasks in this leg. Still, they had the pitstop at the most iconic cathedral that Sofia is very well known for - all tourists who visit Sofia will visit the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral so it was nice to see the teams finish there. I hope this episode will persuade more tourists to visit Bulgaria as the last episode certainly didn't do much in terms of promoting Bulgaria as a tourist destination to the viewers - Sofia is an excellent location for a city break and I truly recommend it to anyone visiting Europe as I had such a good time there. There is a rather decent ski resort Mt Vitosha within the city limits - hence it was wonderful experience overall, as I did not have to choose between a city break and a skiing holiday.
Who will be eliminated next? Who will win the next leg?
Well I did predict the outcome of this leg quite accurately but the next leg will be harder to predict as it is more than likely that all the teams will be on the same flight to Naples, Italy. Thus I am expecting a reset, as all teams race out of the airport at the same time, eliminating any time advantage the teams at the front of the pack would have had. In the previews, we see Han & Holden struggling with a mozzarella cheese making challenge and Carson struggling with some dough at a pizza oven. Statistically, Han & Holden are a lot weaker than the other four teams, so it would be obvious that they would be my pick for the next team to be eliminated next and that outcome has already been suggested in the previews . As for the winner, it would be hard to say especially if there was some kind of hard reset due to the flights. Each of the top four teams have all won two legs so far, on top of that, none of them are that consistent with at least one bad result so far - Brett & Mark finished 9th in leg 2 and 7th in leg 4, Alyssa & Josiah finished 7th in leg 3, Jonathan & Ana finished 8th in leg 5 and Carson & Jack finished 6th in leg 7. I'm just going to apply some logic and pick Alyssa & Josiah as the winners of the next leg for the simple reason that they have an express pass which they can use, so if they do encounter a really difficult challenge, they can just use their express pass to skip that task whilst the other teams don't have that luxury, that's a big advantage at this stage of the game. I'm excited that they are heading to Italy for the next leg - I'm going to Italy (again - I've been there many times) for a short break in the Abruzzo region in the second week of May, I've been busy booking my accommodation and planning my trip! So as always everyone, many thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment