TAR Oz S4 E2: Oh dear, I blame the producers

Hello again guys and 안녕하세요! TAR fans are in for a real treat with two episodes a week so let's begin by seeing if some of the predictions I had made after E1 were correct. I was right about Tom & Tyler winning the second leg and also about the nuns being eliminated - I was also right about Tom & Tyler encountering a taxi driver who doesn't speak English and the language barrier coming back to haunt them. Okay, I have a lot to bitch about this episode, but first I always do "average ranking statistics" in all my TAR recaps which will give you a very good idea of how strong a team is as we progress through the race. Of course, this being only the second episode, it is still very early days in this series and so we are only taking the average of two placings but you'll be amazed how useful this will be after a few more legs!

Average ranking after two legs

Tom & Tyler: 1

Viv & Joey: 2

Hayley & Mikayla: 3

Tim & Rod: 4

Jasmine & Jerome: 5.5

Chris & Adrienne: 6.5 

Femi & Nick: 7

Rowah & Amani: 8

Sid & Ash: 8
Judy & Therese: 10 (eliminated in Cheorwon)

So how do I feel about those statistics at the moment? Well, Tom & Tyler are exactly where I thought they would be - being physically extremely strong, they have a massive advantage over the rest of the teams but what about Tim & Rod? They look just as strong as Tom & Tyler, if I had biceps like them I would rip all the sleeves off my shirts too, so it can't be only about having huge muscles because both Viv & Joey and Hayley & Mikayla are fit but not super strong, it is that combination of brains and brawn that have kept them in the top three thus far. But why isn't Jasmine & Jerome doing better then, why are they stuck in the middle of the pack? And another two teams that are not doing as well as I thought are Femi & Nick as well as Rowah & Amani - gosh, what's gone wrong with them so far? Even Beau commented to our two Korean greeters at the end of leg 1 that Femi & Nick are very strong and have big biceps - it was their muscles that did narrowly save them from elimination at the end given that they were the last dock their canoes after the white water rafting challenge but managed to run up those stairs ever so slightly faster than the nuns. If TAR had decided to make the pit stop on the river bank rather than at the pavilion up the hill, then Femi & Nick would've been eliminated in this leg.

Did Judy & Therese even have a fighting chance to stay in this leg? 

Actually, the nuns had every chance to do well in this leg of the race. The teams set off in the order in which they arrived at the last leg, so they weren't that far behind the teams that finished at the back of the pack. It didn't take them that long to complete the counting task at the fountains in Cheonggye Plaza and they definitely chose the right detour - sure they could have done in faster but they were still in with a fighting chance as they arrived at the white water rafting challenge practically at the same time as Sid & Ash. The edit made it look as if they lingered a long time at the Imjingak ribbon prayer fence to pray, but were they really wasting a lot of time there? I am afraid so - they fell from 7th to last by the time they got back in their taxi because they stopped to pray. I can understand how praying could help - such as during the drone challenge when they got very frustrated, praying kept them calm and helped them focus. Remember that Femi & Nick did beat them by no more than just seconds at the very end in the foot race to the pavilion, hence the nuns really needed a buffer of no more than 30 or 45 seconds at most. Would they have still been in the race if they had done what the other teams did, by simply rushing through that ribbon prayer fence without thinking too much and focusing on the race? Well, probably, but hindsight is 2020. Given that there was no way they were going to do that obstacle course, the nuns probably did the right thing in choosing the drone challenge (which was last done in TAR Asia S5 E7) which was not physical at all. Shucks, what a shame - I think all the viewers truly loved them and embraced them, they were so likable. 

Yet another terrible decision by the production team!

We've already seen some dumb, illogical decisions on the first leg by the production team and in the case of the Duroowell Bootcamp challenge (ie. the obstacle course), there was a major flaw in the design of the course given that there was only one obstacle course, that means teams were going to go onto the course in the order they arrived. So if the team in front of you is slow and struggling, you have no choice but to wait it out or switch detours - you weren't allowed to overtake the person in front of you unless they fell off and that was exactly what Sid did by trying to shake the rope and force Amani to fall off, in order to overtake them. Was it a nasty, mean thing to do? Of course it is, shame on Sid, may he feel the hatred of Australia and TAR fans on social media and may karma come and bite him in his obese ass soon. But was it against the rules? If there was a way to overtake the team ahead without actually sabotaging them, then I think the teams would have taken it - so the teams pretty much departed in the order they arrived. So you have to feel bad for Tim & Rod who were clearly very strong but didn't overtake the teams in front because they were fourth in line to do the obstacle course. Now had the nuns done the obstacle course and let's assume that they didn't linger that long at the ribbon prayer fence, then they would have at least kept one team behind them waiting for ages. We last saw a logistical problem like that in TAR US S31 E7 where the teams who chose the abseiling challenge in Switzerland had to go down one team at a time, so there was no overtaking and a lot of waiting - that's just really bad planning. You need to give teams a chance to make up time on a challenge; as in the previous leg, teams could do the dumpling wrapping or cup stacking challenge on their own without waiting for other teams to complete it - allowing them to make up lost time. 

Thus if you want to highlight the fact that South Korean men have to serve military service and make them do some kind of bootcamp type challenge - then you need to structure a challenge where the teams can complete without getting in line, waiting for the team in line to finish (or fall off) before they can even attempt the detour. The bottleneck arose at the part of the obstacle course which involved the ropes - it wasn't even that special, such physical challenges have been featured in other TAR episodes before, such as in TAR Latin America S3 E6 in Santiago, Chile, where one side of the detour featured a very similar rope based obstacle course called an 'air trail' course in the Sports Mall complex. But at least in that episode, the other side of the detour was a rock climbing challenge which was also convenient located within the Sports Mall, within shouting distance - so if you do see a racer absolutely petrified and stuck on the air trail, you could have easily switched to the other challenge without just waiting for that person to either give up or complete the course. (Mind you Rosario of team Ecuador cried, totally freaked out, gave up and took a penalty for those of you who remember that episode.) So at least in that episode, the producers did manage to avoid a 'traffic jam' situation by making it easy to switch detours, but in this episode, teams like Tim & Rod had little choice but to wait it out. Surely there must have been so many other physical challenges that they could have made the teams do without involving the part of the obstacle course with ropes: it looks good on camera, but the logistics of it all made it completely unsuitable for TAR. So that's clearly a very poor decision on the part of an inexperienced production team who doesn't understand how TAR works! 

Detour: Flying drones or obstacle course? 

This depends on a number of factors: I would choose the drones because I have had some experience flying drones and let's not forget, this was filmed in August 2019 in South Korea, that's during their summer when it would have been so hot. I would much rather fly a drone than to do a physically demanding detour in that summer heat. How difficult was the drone challenge? Well, it didn't look too hard because I had seen drone experts do far more difficult obstacle courses for their drones with ease, but you need to have an entry level challenge for TAR that even the nuns could complete after some practice. But then again, the obstacle course didn't look too difficult - not a single contestant fell off the rope section of the course and despite Sid deliberately trying to throw Amani off the ropes, she managed to hold on. Likewise, even Chris who is overweight and the oldest racer in this season made it through with hardly any problems at all - so either he is deceptively strong (which I doubt) or the course is actually really easy. But of course, the producers are going to try to make it come across as if the course was super difficult: cue the trainer angrily barking orders in Korean for added drama, racers like Femi and Nick complaining about how tough it is and Amani breaking down in tears after she made it through the mud crawl. Yeah, but I couldn't help but think that if someone as obese as Chris could do it, then even the nuns probably could have done it too and it probably wasn't that hard. We seem to see a trend here where the challenges in this season of TAR Oz (cup stacking, flyboarding) are so much easier than the American/Canada versions.

How I would have structured it instead

There are two ways to make a challenge difficult, so let's take obstacle course for example: you can try to make the teams complete a very difficult course or you can offer them a relatively easy course but they have to complete it within a certain time. The latter of course, would remind you of the cup stacking challenge from the first leg when the sequence was fairly straightforward but the challenge was to complete it within 8 seconds - note that when this similar challenge appeared in the American version, they had to do it in 7 seconds. Nonetheless, the teams were allowed to take their time on the boot camp obstacle course and there was no penalty for being very slow, even if it meant holding a team behind you up. If you insist on using that particular obstacle course, then each section should have a strict time limit and if a team exceeds that time limit, they would be sent to the back of the queue. That would have added more suspense and drama to the challenge given that it would introduce the potential of mixing up the positions of the teams. Heck, these kinds of obstacle courses are actually pretty suitable for another TAR classic - the head-to-head as it is known in TAR US or the face-off as it is known in the TAR Canada. Thus you can make two teams race each other on the obstacle course, the winner continues racing, the loser stays to take on the next team that comes along. Essentially, TAR is more entertaining when it is unpredictable, when you make it possible for teams ahead to fall behind and for teams behind to catch up - the producers of TAR Oz failed to realize that. See what I mean about not putting these producers on a pedestal? They do make some idiotic mistakes when they don't understand TAR as well as us fanatical hardcore fans. 

You're comparing this to a lot of other episodes of TAR, aren't you? 

Yup, TAR is a huge franchise that started in 2001 in the US but it has since spread to all over the world, being a massive TAR die hard fan, I've seen practically every season in every franchise with only a few exceptions of episodes that have been impossible to get hold of. I speak several language as well so am able to watch them without subtitles. But the fact is there are some episodes which have been wonderfully, expertly put together and others which had been utterly frustrating for the fans to watch because of the bad decisions by the production team. I refuse to accept that just because we are fans of TAR, we should just pretend that every decision made by the production team is perfect and beyond reproach - I actually know some racers and even people who have worked on the production teams before and there have been some really terrible mistakes and decisions made along the way. Given the nature of the show, you can't say, "oh let's go back and reshoot this scene when they were doing the detour." No, you just have to review the footage that you did get, then try to edit it in a way that makes sense in post-production in order to make the best of a bad situation when something that you had planned clearly didn't work out the way you had hoped. And of course, the hardcore fans are not fooled, perhaps the casual fans who only watch TAR once in a while would not judge the production team too harshly, but believe you me, we do have the right to kick up a massive fuss when the production team fuck up - there's no other word for it because it not only pisses us off as viewers, but it is also very unfair to the racers taking part as well. 

How hard is it to count to 364?

TAR is very fond of counting challenges - for example in TAR Latin America S6 E13, the racers had to correctly count a large amount of poker chips in Guayaquil, Ecuador in order to receive their next clue. And there are so many examples of challenges where the team have to climb something like a tower or a castle wall (as in TAR Oz S3 E8 in Dubrovnik, Croatia where they had to count the stairs to a tower in the old town of Dubrovnik, as well as most recently in Kampala, Uganda in TAR US S31 E6 where they had to count the number of steps on the stairs in the Uganda National Mosque minaret) and count how many steps on the stairs they had just climbed to get their next clue. One would imagine that counting is actually one of the easier tasks but as you witnessed in this episode, it is often a case of more haste less speed: the more teams try to rush through the task, the more they are prone to silly mistakes. Viv & Joey forgot to use the calculator they had in Joey's bag. Rowah and Amani started getting flustered with each other whilst trying to finish the task quickly, then Sid & Ash just had a complete meltdown and left that task in last place. A lot of racers keep saying that this is a test of their math skills but really, it isn't - it is just simple counting and you're doing no more than adding some numbers up, that's the kind of math that a 7 year old can do. TAR producers love counting challenges because teams can get flustered and make silly mistakes over what seems to be a relatively easy task. You want a real math challenge, how about TAR Canada S7 E7 when teams were hit this challenge: "teams had to solve an algebraic equation. They had to drop a tennis ball from a balcony, then use a stopwatch to measure the time it took to reach the ground, represented by the value t. Using this and the value g for gravity, they had to determine on a chalkboard the value of d, representing the distance from the balcony to the ground." Two teams nearly took a penalty over that much harder maths challenge!

Anyone else found the name DMZ ironic?

Is it just me or does anyone else find the name of the DMZ - the demilitarized zone - somewhat ironic? It is one of the world's most heavily guarded borders by two countries technically still at war, it is technically impossible to cross from one country to the other across the DMZ. If you wanted to visit North Korea from Seoul, you would have to travel via a third country (either Russia or China) in order to enter North Korea. As you saw in the episode, the presence of the military is everywhere there and it is a rather tense if not somewhat poignant place to visit - it is of course, one of the top day trips out of Seoul for visitors and if you do go to Seoul, it is definitely something you should do. I can see why the nuns wanted to linger for a moment to pray there, but sadly that spontaneous gesture did eventually cost them so dearly.

The list of sabotages by Sid & Ash

This list will keep growing with each subsequent episode until they get eliminated, but let's try to keep track:

1. In E1, after taking a wrong turn on their way to Nam San Tower, Sid tried to send three teams the wrong way as they backtracked their way to Nam San Tower, in an effort to slow the others down. This failed: none of the other teams believed Sid & Ash as they realized that Sid & Ash weren't with the others in the Nam San tower observatory earlier.

2. In E1, during the dumpling making detour, Ash suggested stealing the nuns' dumplings and Sid then executed her plan. The nuns were too trusting and had both walked away from their table, leaving an open goal. This succeeded: the nuns were none the wiser, they probably didn't even realized what had happened (they hadn't counted their dumplings at that point) until they watched the promos for TAR Oz S4 when that famous dumpling stealing moment was first revealed.

3. In E2, during the boot camp detour, Sid lied to Femi & Nick that they had to take two tyres each up the hill - the sign at the tyres clearly stated, "get two tyres up the hill to the next part of the course". This is bizarre because they really only needed to carry one tyre each up the hill, so actually, Femi & Nick did carry out the task correctly, initially at least. The Sid managed to convince them that they were wrong and to go back down the hill to take two tyres each. This succeeded: In fact it was Sid & Ash who had made the mistake, but in convincing Femi & Nick to turn around and get two more tyres, they lost crucial time, lost their place in the queue for the rope section of the obstacle course and fell behind Sid & Ash. They should have done what the other teams have done: developed a healthy distrust of Sid & Ash!

4. In E2, during the boot camp detour, since there was no way for a team to overtake a team in front of them unless the team in front fell off. So Sid deliberately shook the rope in an effort to knock Amani off the rope, so they could overtake Rowah & Amani. This failed: Amani somehow managed to hold on regardless - showing us true determination and grit.

It looks like Sid was entirely responsible for 3 of the 4 sabotages so far and the dumpling theft was a joint effort because it was Ash who suggested it, but it was Sid actually did it. Currently, their sabotages have a 50% success rate. What is interesting is that the two times they succeeded, it was down to the fact that the other teams (Judy & Therese, Femi & Nick) trusted them enough. Mind you, Jasmine & Jerome did try to warn the nuns as they entered the dumpling restaurant but they were just too careless and trusting. I'd like to see if Sid & Ash would try to continue sabotaging the others in the coming legs because it is pointless to sabotage the others if you fail - you're just going to make enemies and the others are going to hate you. However, with a 50% success rate, they may just decide that this is a tactic well worth pursuing. Or maybe I am overthinking this - maybe it isn't a tactic at all, maybe they do behave like that in real life and this is just them being themselves in the race, that they are the kind of people who would steal from nuns in real life and then just laugh about it as this is how they seek attention on social media. Certainly, social media has been pretty unkind to Sid & Ash so far, but interestingly enough, they have been careful not to overstep the line and risk a penalty whilst sabotaging another team. Remember if no rule is broken, they can get away with it. In fact teams are rarely penalized for bad behaviour for it makes good TV: remember the notorious money 'theft' incident in TAR US S21 E6 in Dhaka when the twins Natalie and Nadiya saw another team drop the money they had for the race and decided just to pocket the cash? Many viewers saw that as an act of theft, the production knew about it but there was no penalty for it.

Don't hate the player, hate the game? 

Given that TAR doesn't penalize racers for 'cheating' in the examples that we have seen from Sid & Ash, when do players get penalized then? Well, racers will get hit with a 2-hour penalty for failing to complete a roadblock or detour. Racers will also be given a time penalty (which could be 15, 30 or 60 minutes) at the pit stop for failing to follow instructions. A classic example would be TAR US S16 E1 in Valparaiso, Chile when Brent & Caite didn't follow the instructions they were given, they walked to the next location on foot rather than taking the funicular railway as instructed. Hence they were given a 30 minute penalty for disobeying the instructions, even though they would have taken far longer to have walked to the next location had they taken the funicular railway (I was actually in Valparaiso just 2 months ago, in August). Despite the fact that their 'mistake' didn't save them any time or give them any advantage, they were still punished. Then in that same leg, Dan & Jordan lost a paintbrush whilst doing the painting task - they still completed the task with one brush but the producers decided to punish them with a 15 minute penalty - at which point I start to wonder if there's a producer making these rules up as they go along? However, there seems to be absolutely no penalty for acts like stealing another team's taxi, acts of sabotage like deliberately trying to mislead another team, persuading a worker at an airport, train station or bus station to give the other racers wrong information - all those seem perfectly acceptable within the rules of TAR. Where do you draw the line? The only crime that racers are punished for regularly is speeding, which is clearly illegal and dangerous. Heck, I even learnt that in TAR China S4, a racer punched a producer during the leg in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam when he got extremely frustrated - did the racer get disqualified? No, the whole episode was totally censored - this is China after all, I only knew of the story as I knew someone on the production team. Good grief.

The most hated racers from TAR history, ever? 

Let's compare Sid & Ash to Dave & Irina from TAR Canada S7 who were undoubtedly very much the most hated team in a recent series of TAR from anywhere in the international franchise. Now most of the reason why Dave & Irina were so hated was because they were a very strong team - well, sorry, let me paraphrase that: Dave was an extremely strong racer whilst Irina tagged along for the ride making Dave do most of the hard work. Dave cheated once during the ten legs that they did run but that wasn't the main reason why they were so hated: it was mostly because Irina went out of her way to be bitchy and nasty to the other racers, particularly to Aarthy. Yes, reality TV can be very harsh and if you want to act like the bitch whore from hell with an attitude in front of the camera, then be prepared for everyone watching the show to hate your guts and it got so bad that they even received death threats as a result. But despite all the theatrics and the display of bad behaviour, actually, Irina didn't cheat during the race (unlike her race partner, Dave). She was very rude but she wasn't a cheater. Let's compare that to the situation with Sid & Ash, they didn't actually say anything bitchy, racist or nasty to anyone so far and had been rather polite - they actually have quite a lot more class than Dave & Irina even though judging by their actions, they are actually a lot more devious and prepared to do anything to stay in the race. Will they tone down their antics or will they take the sabotaging to a whole new level in the next leg? That depends on how well they perform in the next leg: if they are at the back of the pack, they may get desperate and start sabotaging again.

Speaking of nasty behaviour

I was appalled at the way Chris & Adrienne lost their temper at their taxi driver at the DMZ. The guy doesn't speak English, he doesn't know the way - shouting and screaming at him isn't going to change anything. It is their own fault that they are dumb monolingual Australians who are hopeless at communicating in Korea. At least Tom & Tyler kept their cool when they couldn't communicate with their taxi driver - losing your temper at your taxi driver certainly makes you look very bad on TAR. You're just making a bad situation worse - how is throwing a tantrum going to make things any better? Good grief. Many people dislike Sid & Ash now, but I definitely dislike Chris & Adrienne now and wanna see them gone.

Which teams have made the most dumb mistakes so far?

A good way to ascertain how weak the teams are would be to see how many seriously big mistakes they have made so far - we have seen how a major mistake with the wrong postcard led to the elimination of Alana & Niko in leg 1 and the nuns' unfortunate decision to linger at the DMZ prayer ribbon fence did lead to their elimination in leg 2. Allow me to clarify: this is not about being plain stupid per se, I'm not calling anyone stupid - I'm just demonstrating how teams have made terrible mistakes when they cracked under pressure. TAR does require teams to keep calm under pressure for these challenging tasks. Thus let's just focus on two other teams who have made some seriously stupid mistakes so far:

Femi & Nick - 2 mistakes: Getting so hopelessly lost on the way to the first task in Seoul during E2 despite having asked for directions numerous times on the way and then falling for Sid's trickery during the boot camp detour with the tyres.

Sid & Ash - 4 mistakes: Getting hopelessly lost on the way to Nam San Tower in E1 (lacking common sense about where an observatory would be), taking a long time to find the clue at the time capsule, then in E2 having a complete meltdown over the counting task, then picking up two tyres each at the boot camp detour when they really only needed one each.

We need to talk about Beau.

Maybe because I am a Brit rather than an Australian - I just don't get it, do you Aussies actually find him funny? On the TAR Oz website, Beau has been described as a 'loose cannon', I'm not sure that is a compliment. Even if I don't want someone like David Attenborough to host TAR, you can go too far the other way when you go with someone like Beau Ryan who comes across as an ignorant, monolingual buffoon who is totally clueless about all these countries he is visiting. He is at best fun but silly - I am not sure what segment of the Australian audience he is appealing to but that can't be a huge segment, like "ignorant, lowly educated Australians who have never and will never leave the country"? Take Phil Keoghan for example, he has done so many seasons of TAR, he has worked on the National Geographic Explorer series - he has an air of authority about him, put him in Africa and you know he has been there and done that many times before. Whereas Beau can't even pronounce most of the place names in Korea right, no I'm not impressed. Whilst I'm at it, I'm also not impressed with Jon Montgomery, the host of TAR Canada who may be an Olympic Gold medalist but he just doesn't know that much about the countries he is visiting. Allan Wu who has done a lot of the Asian and China TARs is also just as bad - making the gaffe of proudly shouting "un dos tres, vamos!" (Spanish for 'one, two, three, let's go!') when they were in France in S2 E6 of TAR China. Good grief and none of the production corrected him, "No Allan, that's Spanish and we're in France for fuck's sake! Wrong language dude!" We have to go way back to the TAR Latin America S1 to S3 to find another host that has the right combination of gravitas, knowledge and charisma: Harris Whitbeck. So I refuse to put TAR hosts on a pedestal - some of them are truly awful and I just don't like Beau and don't even get me started on the very awkward hugs on the pit stop in Seoul which many people have been talking about on social media!

Who will be eliminated in the next leg? 

We are heading to Vietnam for the next leg and based on the average rankings and the number of stupid mistakes so far, I must say it would be either Femi & Nick or Sid & Ash who will be eliminated next. Look at the sheer number of rookie mistakes that Sid & Ash have made so far - it is almost as if they had made no effort to do any homework by watching some of the many old episodes of TAR to understand how the race works. They may have tried sabotaging the other teams but they are really struggling at this point, but it is hard to decide which team is weaker. Both of them have gotten hopelessly lost before and they're equally useless when it comes to navigation. Femi & Nick were only spared elimination because they were up against the nuns of E2, if they were up against any other team they would have surely been eliminated already. Neither team seem particularly race-savvy, so I am guessing that it would be either of them. So I am guessing it would be Femi & Nick as I suspect Sid & Ash would find a way to stay in the race by any means necessary. But for their rude behaviour at the DMZ with their taxi driver, I would be delighted if Chris & Adrienne were eliminated in the next leg. But also, we have to talk about Rowah & Amani as well - I do like this duo very much, but unfortunately their performance has been rather poor so far and they are always at the back of the pack. Unfortunately, this is not a popularity contest and so they really need to pull their socks up if they don't want to be flirting with elimination in Vietnam.

Who will win the next leg in Vietnam? 

I would say that the pattern is pretty clear so far - the current top 4 teams have been super strong and consistent so far, so I am going to predict that little will change in the top 4. Okay, they may swap places between like 2nd and 3rd amongst themselves but they will remain at the top of the pack. The weaker teams outside the top 4 will slowly get picked off one by one over the next few legs until we have the top 4 left. Therefore, I am going to pick Viv & Joey as the winner for the next leg in Vietnam but really, any of the teams in the top 4 have what it takes to win it. Viv & Joey they are of Vietnamese origin (their surname is Dinh - that's a Vietnamese surname) and I am hoping that they do at least speak a bit of Vietnamese? Mind you, I have Vietnamese-Australian friends who have grown up in Melbourne and I speak more Vietnamese than they do - so I'm not going to assume that they do speak any Vietnamese at this point, let's see. But then there's Jasmine & Jerome - I don't quite know where they belong yet. Should I place them in the top tier with the top 4 teams so far or would they be picked off sooner rather than later? I'm going to watch them closely in the next leg and try to decide. It is still early days after all in this season. They are not weak, they have avoided major mistakes so far but they are up against such strong competition in this season - simply being just above average simply isn't enough to win.

Okay, so that's it from me on this episode. I am so sorry it took a while, I had a lot to discuss and damn it work keeps getting in the way of my blogging! I am looking forward to the next two episodes in Vietnam next week - a beautiful country that I have visited and enjoyed immensely in spite of the logistical challenges I encountered there. I am looking forward to the next episode! Do let me know what you think about the season so far please and many thanks for reading!