Γεια σε όλους, πώς είστε; hello everyone. Oh this leg has created quite a lot of furore online and I read quite a lot of the anger online - many people were angry that the strongest team got eliminated in this leg but more to the point, this leg was full of surprised. Most of all, with Jack & Chelsie finishing 2nd in such a tough field where there were no more weak teams left. Last week I had correctly predicted that Jag & Jas would win in Athens but honestly, I would have never in a million years guessed that Tucker & Eric would be eliminated - what a shocker. This is the 4th visit by TAR USA to Greece, having last been there is S9, S29 and S33. This is their 3rd visit to the Greek capital Athens, they went to the Northern Greek city of Thessaloniki instead in S33. I love Greece, I have worked in Greece quite a long time ago and thus I speak a little Greek - not fluently of course but enough of the basics to get by in Greece when I needed to get stuff done at work. I've travelled a lot around Greece so yes, I am fully qualified to guide you through this episode in Athens. But first, we shall look at the average ranking statics after this shocking leg in Athens and we have so much to deal with.
Average ranking after leg 9 in Athens
- Jas & Jag 2
- Tucker & Eric 2.33 (eliminated in Athens)
- Joseph & Adam 4.66
- Izzy & Paige 5.11
- Kyland & Taylor 5.33
- Jack & Chelsie 6
What led to Tucker & Eric's elimination?
So let's deal with the shock of the strongest team going into this leg getting eliminated - what went so wrong for Tucker & Eric in Athens then? Let's analyze all the things that went wrong for them. Firstly, they got U-turned right at the start, which was exactly what they expected as the strongest team going into this round. They did perform both sides of the detour flawlessly with great efficiency though, so by the time they got to the Sisyphus challenge, they were in 3rd place which was stunning given that they had done both sides of the detour. They completed the very physical challenge of rolling that giant ball up the hill effortlessly and then they went into the roadblock in 3rd place out of six teams - they were only slightly and quite far ahead the rest of the teams. However, that's when it all fell apart. Tucker attempted the roadblock to memorize the Greek alphabet and he was the slowest to complete the task, leaving them in last place. If only Tucker had been just a little bit faster, they would have survived to fight another day but sadly, he crumbled under the immense pressure. He did manage to complete the task in the end, so it wasn't so difficult that it was totally impossible for him but it seems it was more a question of keeping calm under pressure to perform which he just didn't manage to do. Clearly, it was quite a hard task and it favoured some racers who had the right kind of skills to memorize something like the Greek alphabet but this is really nothing new on TAR as there are so many different kinds of memory tasks. So all I can say is hat Tucker wasn't well prepared for this aspect of the race, he should have played a lot more memory games in the run up to the race if he knew this was one of the challenges he may have to deal with on the race.
Is it fair to criticize Tucker for not being well prepared given how well he excelled until this leg?
I think so as I've been there and done that myself. I was on 007:Road to a Million S2 here in the UK and it was a chance to win £1 million and that is about 1.33 million in US dollars. That's a lot of money at stake there. What would you do in this situation if you had the chance to win that much money? I prepared, I did so much to make sure I could solve anything they threw at me during the race to maximize my chances of winning. You shouldn't leave anything to chance if you're serious about maximizing your chances of winning - you can't be good at everything but at least you can do your research and turn up at the starting line very well prepared. Here's a video below for you about my preparation process.
Having said that, I do feel sorry for Tucker though.
I can totally relate to what it was like to be given something that was so far out of your comfort zone, I aced certain challenges in the process and got by in others - I was particularly good with heights challenges as they just really wanted to scare the hell out of the contestants by making us do two heights challenges to push us to the limit, but I enjoyed them both. After I bungee jumped, I was like, that was so cool, can I do it again? Then we had to do a scuba diving challenge at a dive site so far into the Atlantic ocean outside the Bahamas, before I even entered the water, I was already vomiting violently as I was so extremely seasick and some people just get more seasick than others. So there I was thinking, why couldn't they just make me do something else that I'm good at, like why couldn't they have made me do a skydive as I'm great with heights but I get violently seasick on water? I swear I couldn't stop throwing up, even after we got back onto shore I was throwing up on the beach, in the carpark - like I was so ill I couldn't even stand up. The fact is the tasks in these shows are selected way in advance and so you can get unlucky sometimes when you encounter something you really struggle with. For Tucker, it was memorizing the Greek alphabet and for me it was getting so seasick during a task.
Was it rigged? Was it unfair?
I've read a lot of talk on social media about how this leg was rigged - that's totally untrue. Just because you didn't get the results you wanted doesn't mean it is rigged. Firstly, the producers will not rig a task like that just to produce a certain result. There are too many moving parts to rig the outcome of a leg anyway, it is too unpredictable and chaotic. For a while, I thought Jack & Chelsie were doomed when they got so hopelessly lost in Athens just trying to find the olive shop and I thought, that's it they're going home. But then it turns out that Chelsie was absolutely brilliant at the detour and her stunningly good performance allowed her team to jump into 2nd place, their best ever finish (they had never finished higher than 5th place so far). All these things like the teams getting lost in Athens if they get bad directions or how fast they find a taxi or how efficient their taxi driver may be - all those things are totally beyond the control of the producers, that element of unpredictability is what makes this kind of unscripted reality TV competitions interesting. After all, the race is taking place in the middle of Athens, this is not a controlled environment like a closed set in a studio but it is quite the complete opposite - this is a vibrant, crowded, chaotic European city with 3.6 million inhabitants. Thus when a racer gets bad direction or fails to find a taxi quickly, that's totally out of the control of the production team. The fact is the producers simply cannot predict just how good or bad the racers would be at the roadblock because they cannot predict which racer would choose to do the roadblock and so a lot of it depends on the racer staying calm under pressure to complete the task as it was an intellectually challenging task. Given how well Tucker had performed so far in this season, everyone was shocked at how poorly he performed at this task and that would have been impossible to predict. Furthermore, whether or not Tucker & Eric would have been eliminated would have been determined by how poorly or well the other teams performed and hence there are just way too many moving parts in this game to try to engineer a certain outcome.
But the U-turn was inherently unfair, it was a popularity contest.
Yes and no. U-turns have always been a part of TAR but I feel like you need to earn this privilege by getting to the U-turn board first. So when the teams were just voting at the start of the leg in Athens, I had already expected both Jas & Jag and Tucker & Eric to be targeted. What I did not expect was Taylor & Kyland to be U-turned too because statistically, at the end of the last leg, they were the 5th strongest team out of 6 teams left so why would you target them? Why not target the third strongest team at that point which would have been Adam & Joseph? But no, instead the votes seemed to play out along the lines of friendships and alliances with any concept of strategy blown away in the wind. I honestly don't see any sense in U-turning Taylor & Kyland as they are statistically a lot weaker than the other teams with the exception of Jack & Chelsie. Now there's no concept of fairness here, it's an opportunity to level the playing field by the weaker teams forcing the stronger teams to perform both sides of the detour. Now if you were to address the root of the issue, then it boils down to casting in the first place because if all the teams were equally strong, then you wouldn't need to level the playing field at all. But since they have clearly cast some stronger teams with some weaker teams in this season, then they had to use a device like the U-turn to address that apparent unfairness to give the weaker teams a chance. So I have always said this - why bother casting weak teams then? Can we have a season when all the teams are equally strong so it will feel fair from that perspective? Jas & Jag can get U-turned and still win the leg in style, how is this fair from a casting perspective then? So we have to go back to the casting, to address the actual root of this problem.
A big mistake on the part of Adam (though he got away with it)
Adam cast the deciding vote to force Taylor & Kyland into the U-turn but when you pit a weaker team like them against two of the strongest teams of this season, they're unlikely to win. Whilst we know that was not what happened, I would not have done that if I had been in Adam's position. I would have spared Taylor & Kyland knowing that they're not that much of a threat and let the two strongest teams fight it out for survival. The basic principle would be to always keep the weakest teams around whilst trying to get rid of your stronger opponents. Yeah, both Adam and Joseph didn't really understand how the system worked. Joseph was utterly useless and refused to choose, so I don't think these two have what it takes to survive much further - you need to be prepared to throw your opponents under the bus in order to gain an advantage over them to win and you need to sacrifice any notion of friendship or loyalty to other teams in that process.
What kind of speed bump was that - one vote?
Many of you on social media have proposed that Joseph & Adam should have been automatically U-turned instead of simply being given just one vote during the U-turn vote. If that had happened, I don't think the outcome would have changed but it might have come across as a lot fairer, because Joseph & Adam's speed bump penalty didn't affect them.
Is it that hard to navigate the streets of Athens? So many teams got lost.
Actually no, I have spent plenty of time in Greece and I don't think it's that different or difficult - after all, Athens is a modern European capital city and most of the people speak enough English to help you with directions anyway. I think the younger generation have become way too dependent on technology for navigation, I note that both Izzy & Paige and Jack & Chelsie got some directions to the olive shop but they couldn't even follow those directions they had been given.
Do Greek people speak English?
Actually surprisingly well for two reasons. Firstly, they have a good education system there and they accept that only Green and Cypriot people will speak Greek, without English you cannot communicate with the rest of the world so English is an important part of their education system. Students are taught English from primary school and many parents will send their kids to get additional English lessons as it is seen as such a vital tool to get a better job in the future. Even at university for example, if you are a Greek student studying at a Greek university and the main language of instruction is Greek so you're writing all your essays in Greek and presenting your projects in Greek to your professors, you are still expected to be fluent enough in English to access research materials in English. Thus well educated Greek people will speak English really well. The second reason is that there are so many tourists in Greece and so English is the default lingua franca for the local Greeks to communicate with tourists from all over the world. But then again, in my travels around Greece, I have encountered plenty of Greek people who speak very little or no English at all, this is probably because they never paid attention during English class at school and ended up settling into a job where they don't have to deal with foreigners and so they don't really need to use English in their everyday lives. But this tends to be in the smaller villages in the countryside rather than in the middle of bigger cities like Athens or Thessaloniki.
Detour: Music or Olives?
It was evident that the busking task was a lot easier because once you got to the square, there was a TV crew filming you and people would naturally be curious and gather. Ten euros (US$11.52) really isn't that much to collect under such circumstances. Whereas the olives task did slow some teams down, especially since three of the black olives were quite similar. I probably would have chosen to do olives given that I like olives though - which would have been a bad choice!
What's the point of that Sisyphus task?
A lot of TAR viewers know about ancient Greek mythology but this was not a good task for TAR as it was too easy. Sure it required some effort to roll the giant ball up the hill but otherwise the task was so straightforward - the teams simply departed in the order they arrived in. The giant ball was not even so heavy that some teams would just get stuck there.
Was the roadblock too difficult? Was the hint misleading?
The hint for the roadblock was just "who is the alpha?" One might assume that concept of alpha males might be something to do with strength challenges but of course, in this case this was quite the opposite as it was a memory challenge. But these hints are often misleading or at least cryptic - this has led teams to pick the wrong member to do the task and perhaps Eric might have been better at this, we don't know but I don't think this roadblock was too difficult. Nobody took a penalty, everyone completed it and it's just a question of how good you are when it comes to memory challenges like that. Some people have argued that Tucker has dyslexia or some other form of learning disability but this is nothing more than a theory that people have used social media - Tucker himself has never mentioned anything to that effect but has graciously accepted his defeat on this task. You don't need to speak Greek to complete this challenge you just need to have a really good memory and a knack for performing under pressure. We have had racers with all kinds of disabilities on TAR before, so hypothetically, even if he did have dyslexia, he should have anticipated something like this.
How far was the pitstop in Kotzia Square from the roadblock location at the Dora Stratou theatre?
It was only 3.6 km (2.2 miles), yeah it was actually quite near so that taxi ride would have been only about 10 minutes or so, depending on traffic. My point is that this wasn't a huge distance unlike the last leg in Bucharest where the taxi ride took 25 minutes to get to a pitstop that was 14.5 km (9 miles away). Now that was a long enough journey for the order of the teams to change - Jas & Jag managed to win that leg because Tucker & Eric's taxi somehow got lost. However in this case, it was a much shorter journey, thus the chances of anything dramatic happening during that taxi ride was very low.
The other teams were really glad to see Tucker & Eric gone.
Yes, we saw four teams on the pitstop mat (with the exception of Jas & Jag) celebrating their demise and for good reason - they were a super strong team and had an excellent chance of winning if they had made it to the finals. Having said that, I really doubt any of the other teams stand a chance against Jas & Jag in the final though, at this stage we can just assume that Jas & Jag will definitely win this season - just take a look at the average ranking statistics at this point.
How close were Tucker & Eric to the pitstop when they got out of their taxi to run?
This is when I have to base it on my own experience to explain this part. Often in this kind of sequences the edit will try to make it look like it is really close, just to make it exciting for the viewers when in reality, it wasn't even close. In 007: RTAM S2 E3 in Vienna, my team won that leg by a landslide, I even noted that we were officially faster than the next team by 11 minutes 38 seconds. However, in the final edit, it made it look like we beat the others by seconds, like it was so close you couldn't call it and had no idea who had won. Like come on, 11 minutes 38 seconds. I could have done what Tucker & Eric did in Prague, I could have gone for an ice cream, shopped for souvenirs and still won that leg with ease. I always get frustrated when I talk to people who have watched the show and they wanna tell me what they saw, what they remembered and I'm there trying to tell them, no no no it wasn't like that at all, listen to me, I was there. I am amazed just how many people are naive enough to believe that they are actually watching an accurate representation of what happened when it is obvious that they have too many hours of footage to squeeze into each episode, so what you are viewing is a highly edited version of events. My point is this: if Tucker & Eric were that close to Taylor & Kyland, then why didn't we see any of the other teams when they were running up to the pitstop? The other teams were all gathered there as they checked in one after another, talking to Phil about how the day had turned out. If they had still been there, I think the production wouldn't have hurriedly chased them away - no, they would have allowed the other teams to stay there and react to Tucker & Eric's elimination. This is why I am led to believe that Tucker & Eric were actually much further behind than portrayed and there was actually no realistic chance of them making it to the pitstop before Taylor & Kyland.
Did Tucker & Eric reveal anything else to the media that wasn't seen in the episode?
They revealed just how bitter the arguments were during the U-turn vote and that Phil even tried to step in to restore some order - I'm sad to see them go as I think the finals will be a lot more boring without them, as Jas & Jag are just going to finish like half an hour ahead of the other teams and it would be boring like that, when it is a forgone conclusion.
What will happen in the next leg? Who will win and who will be eliminated?
The teams are off to Milan, Italy next. Jas & Jag are going to win - that is a safe assumption to make. We see two teams in trouble: Taylor & Kyland are on a later flight on their own to Milan whilst Adam succumbs to the heat. I find it hard to believe that they would put just one team on a much later flight, leaving them no realistic chance of catching up with the others, so I am going to ignore that for now. But would they give away a spoiler like that in a preview? Again, it seems unlikely. So I am going to guess that it will be Jack & Chelsie who will be next to go in spite of their good performance in this leg. Now you might be saying to me at this point - they are here to stay, I know you don't like them but why do you keep predicting that they will be eliminated next? Well, they are the weakest team statistically though we're getting to the point where they are closing the gap with the next few teams. Secondly, it wasn't like they ran a flawless leg in Athens - they got so terribly lost on the way to the detour and wasted so much time finding the olive shop but Chelsie got lucky at the roadblock when she was given a task that suited her skills perfectly. The chances of them messing up again is high, so I'm just going on their track record so far and I'm assuming that they wouldn't give away the outcome in the previews.
I just have to bitch about this ridiculous comment on social media.
Look, I don't want to repeat the really offensive words that I read because this idiot wrote something that expressed two points: he didn't like Jas & Jag and he thought Tucker & Eric deserved to win the season. He used some quite racist language to refer to Jas & Jag, that's why I refuse to cut and paste what he wrote. Firstly, the entire season was shot this spring from March to April and so it's not the finale has yet to happen. It's not like they are currently in Europe shooting this and the race is currently in progress - no, it has been concluded a long time ago and the fact that we still don't know the final outcome doesn't mean we have a say in the outcome. I hate to be mean but I wanted to tell this idiot that his opinion doesn't matter, nobody cares what he thinks and his opinion doesn't matter to anyone, just because you shout about it on social media doesn't mean anyone is actually listening - his hatred for Jas & Jag wasn't going to change the outcome anyway. In any case, was this idiot hoping that Jas & Jag would stumble upon that comment on social media and get upset because one random person out there (whom they have never met and will never meet) doesn't like them? Hell no, in fact Jag has won BB S25 - he is no stranger to reality TV and as someone who has also done reality TV, allow me to share a personal perspective. I got my fair share of hate as well on social media after people watched my season but so what? Because I understood the genre, I took part knowing that my objective was simply to be a part of something I had been a huge fan of all my life and also to win some prize money, hopefully having some fun along the way. And I achieved all of those objectives, so I can't complain. But at no stage was I ever trying to please the viewers or win some kind of popularity contest - heck, being openly gay and Asian, I know I was going to face a lot of homophobia and racism; sure enough, there was a lot of it but if I knew that was going to upset me, if I was that afraid of it, I would have never taken part in the first place. I can simply shake it off and say, yeah you may hate me but I'm the one who took part in that show, I got to travel all around the world, won a whole lot of money and if you don't like me, actually I can live with that because I'm not interested in pleasing you since I don't even know you in the first place. I am far more interested in pleasing my friends and family, people in my life whom I actually know and I'm sure Jas & Jag would feel the same way.
As for all the haters out there, I have this to say to you.
No one is really that interested in what or who you hate. The world is a grim enough place already, most of us will come onto social media to look for something that is entertaining, interesting and fun, so your hatred is definitely not of interest to the vast majority of normal people out there. If you really want the attention of others, then try talking about what you like, what you love and what you're passionate about and that will come across as far more palatable to most of us on social media. I'm here talking about TAR because I do genuinely love TAR and many other programmes from the same genre of reality TV. If you go onto the internet to spread hate and look for other haters to share in your hate, it is just going to be a downward spiral as you are never going to feel good about sharing that hate. If you are looking for an activity that will make you feel better about yourself, hate is never the answer. Sure there will be things in life that we don't like, but to respond with hatred by lashing out is never the answer. Often the answer is simply to accept that whilst you may not like a certain character on this season, other people may like them and such is the nature of entertainment - if you don't like this person or this show, then just go pick something else to watch instead of spreading hatred online. But I get the feeling that these haters are desperate for attention online, so I have this advice for you: find something that you do like, that you love, that brings you a lot of joy and if you don't have something that you love so much that you would rather focus your energy on, then it is time for you to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself what really makes you happy in life, because hatred is never going to give you that joy which is missing in your life. We are all responsible for making choices in life that will maximize our wellbeing and you owe it to yourself to turn away from hate.
Oh I have to warn you about my travels next week.
Yes I have to fly to Vienna for work early next Friday morning and I'll be away for six days in total. Usually I get my episodes here in the UK on Thursday so unless I rush out a post for you on Thursday night before I go to Vienna, you might have to wait a whole week for me to post. I will get back to London on Wednesday the 3rd of December so I may just wait till that weekend before doing a double episode post - we'll see. I actually only have one working day in Vienna but since the company is paying for my flights to go there, I want to make a holiday of it since I love Vienna so much. I filmed there last year for one episode (and hey, we won that leg in Vienna) so it will be nice to revisit some of those locations. I have also rewatched some episodes from past seasons of TAR where they visited Vienna (three times in total, though not recently) and I shall also be checking out those locations as well. But I used to be such a geek when it came to visiting these locations featured in TAR, so you can imagine what it is like for a superfan like me to actually get to do something like that and now I can say, oh in S2 E3, I was here, in Vienna, I was sitting right there, on that park bench by the Opera House when I was given my next clue. Yeah I hate to beat my own drum, but this is why you should read my blog and let me guide you through this season because not only have I been there and done all that before, I also do travel a lot. I was traveling through three countries in Asia when this season started and I'll be on the road again.
Alright guys and so that is it from me for now on this exciting episode in Athens - as always, many thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment