TARA S5 E9: Don't hate the player, hate the game

Selamat pagi, apa kahbar? Well that was one episode that left a lot of people very upset and I'm going to try to make some sense of the situation. I am of course super pleased that my favourite team Eric & Rona won in Banyuwangi - I had actually looked into visiting that part of Eastern Java back in 2013 when I had to make my way from Jogjakarta to Bali, but decided that the journey took way too long (14 hours by train from Jogjakarta to Banyuwangi) and flew instead. But let's start with the statistics and see how things stand now that Treasuri and Louisa have been eliminated:

The wonders of Eastern Java 

And here are the statistics after leg 9

Yvonne & Chloe 3.44
Eric & Rona        3.67
Parul & Maggie  4.11
(Treasuri and Louisa despite being eliminated still have an average ranking of 2.44 at this stage.)

At this stage, it does seem that Yvonne & Chloe are statistically the strongest team left - but poor Chloe has hurt her ankle back in Singapore and with each leg, that ankle is just getting worse. It certainly has affected their performance in Banyuwangi when they limped into third place and it was really only because of the yield and the double U-turn that they are still in the race. How well Yvonne & Chloe will fare in the final leg in Bali will depend on how much running and other physical activities there will be. On the other hand, the sulfur challenge at Ijen Volcano seemed to have been a task made for Eric and he powered through that with ease: if the finale includes more challenges like that, then Rona and Eric will almost definitely have a huge advantage over the two other teams in the finals.

My prediction for the finals:

1st: Eric & Rona
2nd: Yvonne & Chloe
3rd: Parul & Maggie

Yvonne & Chloe have struggled through the last two legs whilst Eric & Rona have breezed through the last two legs. I'm still not convinced about Parul & Maggie despite them having survived this far - they have yet to win a leg and they are up against two very strong teams. I'm going to go with the statistics and say that the winners will probably be Eric & Rona, given that poor Chloe is already injured. But anything can happen - if the challenges do not require the racers to run/jump/climb a lot, then Yvonne & Chloe will still have a good chance, but perhaps I'm biased, I have liked Eric & Rona from the very start as they are so well prepared and I want them to win. Those of you big fans of TAR will remember how Michael and Scott (TAR US S25) were a very strong team until Scott twisted his ankle very badly at the start of leg 3 - the injury eventually led to the team being eliminated as the poor guy could barely walk. I have had my share of ankle injuries before and believe you me, they are nasty. You may also recall how in TAR S22, Dave and Connor had a really good start until Dave tore his Achilles tendon whilst running to the pit stop in leg 2 - despite having won two legs (along with a 3rd and 2nd place finish), they were forced to drop out of the race by leg 5 because of the injury - so as much as I adore Yvonne & Chloe, I fear poor Chloe's unfortunate injury may cost her the victory in Bali.

That's my sprained ankle from a few years ago - it was horrible.

Was this leg fair? To have both a Yield and a U-turn back to back? 

I would argue that it was massively unfair but I blame the producers, not the racers. Treasuri and Louisa were doomed from the start when they arrived third at the coffee shop. And there was little skill involved in getting to the coffee shop from the railway station - all teams got off the same train at the same time, ran into a carpark in the train station and jumped into taxis. Now one would have thought that being local, Treasuri and Louisa would have been able to speak to the taxi driver in Indonesian and convinced him that he should have driven a lot faster to help them (talk about having home ground advantage in Indonesia). But they seemed pretty laid back in the taxi as they were passed - in hindsight, that was a big mistake but maybe they thought that yelling "CEPAT-CEPAT!"  at the taxi driver was crass.

It was clear that Treasuri & Louisa were the strongest team by far after having won four legs and had a huge target on their backs at this stage - there have been yields in previous legs but none of the teams wanted to use the yield for fear of offending the others. In fact, the footage of the teams reaching the yield and choosing not to use it hit the cutting room floor until now, when finally the Filipino teams decided to get rid of the strongest team in the race. In previous episodes of TAR (and I include US, Asia, Canada, China Rush, China, France, Australia/Oz vs NZ), there has never been both a yield and a U-turn back to back. It is a double whammy and even a team as strong as Treasuri and Louisa could not recover from that once the Filipino teams decided that they would rather race against Yvonne & Chloe in the final leg. You do have to feel sorry for Treasuri & Louisa, they are exemplary racers who raced with integrity. They always supported each other and never fought - I would not have been surprised if they had won TARA S5, but think about it, why would the other teams just hand them the grand prize in the name of being nice? It's a race after all and there can only be one winning team.  Hopefully there will be plenty more seasons of TARA and they can race again in the future (along with other very strong teams that didn't win, like Marc & Rovilson of the Philippines).

Same game different rules?

The U-turn should come after and not before the detour.

Furthermore, some TAR fans have questioned the way the producers have placed the U-turn board the moment the racers got the detour. Typically, in other TAR episodes, the racers would only get to the U-turn board after they had completed their detour. This meant that the team with a target on their back could at least have a fighting chance, by working super hard to complete the detour as fast as possible in order to avoid getting U-turned. Placing the U-turn board before the detour has only been done once before in TAR S27 E10 (credit to Jake Samejon for pointing that out to me - Jake is also a huge fan of TAR just like me). Despite the fact that Treasuri & Louisa were already yielded and were the last team down from the volcano, they still had a fighting chance if the U-turn had been only available after the teams had completed the detour, then the results would have been different as Treasuri & Louisa actually completed their first road block before Eric & Rona. Like many TAR fans, I feel that this was massively unfair to Treasuri & Louisa and I blame the production team for this. I do wonder if the Asian TAR production team know as much about how TAR is done elsewhere and if they have done their homework.

One side of the detour was much harder than the other?! 

It was pretty clear that decorating a horse was going to be a lot easier than racing through a muddy padi field, wrestling two grown men dressed as bulls. Again, I blame the producers - surely if you have two detours, they should be of about the same level of difficulty. Typically, you should have a choice between one task which just requires hard labour but little skill - it may take a while but you will definitely complete it if you are willing to work your butt off; then you have the other one which requires a lot of skill and is hard to master, but those who have a flair for that skill may do well in such a task. It then becomes a gamble: do you want to try the one that requires a lot of skill or do you want to play it safe and do the one that merely requires hard labour? This was the case in HCMC, when Treasuri and Louisa chose the badminton task over the flower market task. In this case, it was evident that the horse decoration detour was so much easier than the other one - they should have at least provided four horses so at least teams could choose between the two.  I also note how in Vigan during leg 6, making the sausages was a lot harder than the karaoke task. What were the producers thinking? This just comes across as really poor planning by the producers.

Word of the day: Juara.

We've heard this word used by Treasuri and Louisa a lot: Juara. Despite speaking mostly in English in front of the camera, that's one word they are quite fond of. It means 'champion' in Bahasa Indonesia. Did you know that the national language of Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia, comes from the Riau region near the southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsular and Singapore? Whilst that means that Bahasa Indonesia is mutually intelligible with Malay, it also means that it is not the mother tongue of the vast majority of Indonesians. So for example, Louisa lives in Jakarta where the local dialect is a form of Western Javanese known as Betawi and that is radically different from standard Indonesian. For my Chinese-speaking readers, think about the difference between Mandarin and Hokkien - that's how very different it is. However, the language used in education and business is usually standard Indonesian and rarely Betawi. Oh and I continue to be impressed by Rona's effort to speak Indonesian - amongst the four Filipinos left, she's the only one who actually speaks the language, the others barely say more than 'terima kasih'.

Mormons don't drink coffee? Mormons tak bisa minum kopi? 

I was kinda surprised to learn that Eric and Rona couldn't drink the coffee because of their religion. Talk about a strict religion. I get it - it is a stimulant, caffeine works wonders. I love drinking coffee in the morning. Strict Buddhists also follow a very strict diet too that avoids onions and garlic - every religion have their own dietary rules. I got curious about this so I did a  little reading online and was even more surprised to find out that it is okay for Mormons to drink cola drinks (like Diet Coke) but not coffee and tea? Talk about confusing. In any case, this is one aspect of TAR that I adore - it opens our eyes up to different cultures, different countries and different religions. It can be so educational!

Mormons are not allowed coffee!

I can't feel my toes!!

Was there any point in making the racers hike 3 km up that volcano? Okay, I get it, you want to show the viewers the natural beauty of Indonesia and the majestic Mt Ijen. Surely a nice sequence of panoramic shots will do, you know, a montage featuring the racers admiring the blue sulfuric lake. Making them hike up that mountain in the heat was just evil. I am not fond of challenges where the racers are merely subjected to hard labour or have to run long distances - I prefer something that involves skill rather than stamina. There have been plenty of skill-based challenges in the last episode in Jogjakarta, so it was disappointing to see them make the racers run up this volcano until poor Rona can't feel her toes. Lactic acid does horrible things to the human body, poor Rona. 

Don't hate the player, hate the game. 

Given that the two Filipino teams have used the yield and the U-turn to get rid of the strongest team in this episode, I learnt that both teams have received a lot of really nasty, vicious hate mail through social media. I have been shown some of the evidence and I was shocked. Good grief, it was nasty. It made my criticism of JK's behaviour seem like a walk in the park in comparison. I agree that Treasuri and Louisa were victims of a poorly structured leg - the U-turn board should only have been available after the detour, not before. But who do you blame for that? The two production companies Sony Pictures Television and AXN Asia have a lot to answer for - if you're not happy, then complain to these two companies but how can you blame Eric & Rona or Parul & Maggie for Treasuri & Louisa's elimination under such dubious circumstances? Why are people blaming the Filipino teams? Such is the unforgiving nature of such reality TV - the jingoistic nature of pitting the countries against each other only fuels this kind of trolls. Let's just hope all this blows over soon, it's been a tough few days for both the Filipino teams since that last episode.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.,

So who do you think will finally win TARA S5? And do you think that Treasuri and Louisa were so very unfairly treated by the producers in this leg? Please let me know what your thoughts are and many thanks for reading. Terima kasih!