TAR S32 E8 + E9: The mega leg in Hyderabad

Namaskaram, namaste! So we have had a two-hour long treat to a race through Hyderabad and whilst the episode was a visual feast for the eyes, I was left disappointed by this episode not so much by the production crew but by the teams themselves in this leg because they weren't strategic and I had really hoped for this to be Eswar & Arpana's moment to shine - it wasn't unfortunately. There is so much to unpack in this double-episode, but let's see what has happened to the average rankings because something interesting has happened after Riley & Maddison stormed to victory in Hyderabad. 

Average ranking after leg 8 in Hyderabad, India

• Riley & Maddison 2.57
• Hung & Chee 2.75
• Will & James 2.87
• DeAngelo & Gary 4.62
• Eswar & Arpana 5.5
• Kaylynn & Haley 6.5 (eliminated in Hyderabad)

Oh wow, look at that: Riley & Maddison are now the strongest team, having knocked Hung & Chee off the top for the first time, Hung & Chee are still the second strongest team but they had a tough time in Hyderabad, after changing detours and losing a lot of precious time. But apart from Hung & Chee and Riley & Maddison swapping places at the top of the leader board, all the other teams stayed exactly where they are after the previous leg and so it does seem pretty clear which three teams are probably going to race to the finish line. After all, the statistics rarely lie at this stage but what is at least interesting for me as a mega-fan is that it isn't clear at all which team is going to win as there is virtually nothing between the top three teams. Earlier in the season, I had assumed that Hung & Chee would be the team to win this season given how strong they had been, but given the mistakes they made on this leg, it shows that they are only human after all and a lot will depend on the tasks they are assigned. We found out that they lacked the hand-eye coordination to complete the video game task that was in fact harder than it looked, but actually none of the other teams that attempted that detour gave up and switched; I did wonder if it was worth changing stations to see if it was just that particular station that was the problem or if the mechanics of the game was exactly the same in all the stations.(After all, good workman never blames his tools?) However they then breezed through the two roadblocks on this leg with ease and grace. I think this sets us up for a very exciting final because we now have three very credible teams at the top: Riley & Maddison have always been calm and consistent in this season, never dropping below 4th place and they are certainly more consistent than Hung & Chee and Will & James - who have both finished way down in 6th place after they have made some errors. 

Why did the teams gang up on Kaylynn & Haley? 

Kaylynn & Haley were yielded by Will & James and Riley & Maddison, giving them a 40 minute deficit that they were unable to make up. It turns out that it wouldn't have mattered anyway since their taxi driver from hell already doomed them when he couldn't find the building where the Platina building where the Swiggy office was located. Nonetheless, Kaylynn & Haley were statistically the weakest team: after the previous leg in Almaty, their average ranking was way down at 6.57, which was so much lower than the next weakest team still in the race who were Eswar & Arpana at 5.57. As much as I like Kaylynn & Haley, they were not a strong team - they had trouble navigating, they didn't seem to speak any foreign languages and they struggled when it came to difficult tasks (such as unscrambling the letters to form Sauerkraut in Berlin). They really only survived this long because they benefited from the two non-elimination legs in the season as well as the epic meltdown by Michelle & Victoria in Paris. So why did the teams gang up on them? It made no sense, given that Hung & Chee are a super strong team and they had a really hard time at computer game, having to switch detours, surely that would be the moment the other teams to conspire against them and say, "this is our chance to get rid of one of our strongest opponents, let's yield Hung & Chee twice and take Kaylynn & Haley with us to the next leg". But instead I was left confused when Riley & Maddison yielded Kaylynn & Haley specifically to save Hung & Chee and I'm like, guys, seriously? This is seriously going to come back and kick you in the butt as Hung & Chee are going to be your strongest competition in the final, you are going to regret passing on the chance to eliminate them in Hyderabad. 

What will happen after the 'mine five' alliance crumbles?

The fact is even if none of the teams used the yield, Kaylynn & Haley would have been eliminated anyway since they were so far behind after their disastrous taxi ride to the Platina building. The whole point of using the yield (along with the U-turn) is to try to force a result that wouldn't otherwise naturally occur, such as by ganging up on a very strong team and eliminating them from the competition. I have talked about some of the strategies used by the teams in previous seasons in a recent post here. Don't get me wrong, I really like Hung & Chee very much because they are such incredibly good racers and there was a part of me that was relieved that Riley & Maddison were intent on making sure they survived to race the next leg, but one needs to analyze the situation carefully: it does look like a rather foolish choice on the part of Riley & Maddison. Either that or they are so confident that they are going to win this season that they have the luxury of taking their new best friends Hung & Chee along for the journey. The irony is that both Leo & Alana and Kaylynn & Haley were targeted by Will & James because Leo & Alana chose to help Kaylynn & Haley in leg 2 in Bogota, Colombia hence Will & James decided that this alliance was a threat in the game and then conspired to get these two teams out. So even if Will & James do go on to win this season, it would be in spite of this alliance rather than because of this alliance - this 'mine five' alliance is crumbling anyway and the teams are now conspiring against DeAngelo & Gary. During the roadblock at the stunningly beautiful Falaknuma Palace, Gary was effectively on his own and received no help from any of the other racers in the alliance. Nonetheless, they still managed to finish 3rd in this leg and thus it will be interesting to see if the other teams will try to force them out in the next leg by deliberately helping the weakest team Eswar & Arpana. 

Eswar & Arpana barely survived in India. Oh dear. 

Many of us were hoping to see this team rise to the occasion and win this leg in India, but in the end they barely survived this leg, finishing 5th out of 6 teams in Hyderabad. So what went wrong for them? Firstly, they had no advantage when it came to communication with the locals such as the rickshaw drivers (that was the only point in the leg when speaking the local language would have been a big advantage) - their parents are from Chennai where the local language is Tamil whilst the languages spoken in Hyderabad are Telugu and Hindi/Urdu (two versions of the same language, written with different scripts but still mutually intelligible). Even if they were fluent in Tamil, they would have not helped them at all in Hyderabad - they ended up speaking in English with the locals just like all the other racers. Tamil is spoken by 81 million people (mostly in India and Sri Lanka) but it is not mutually intelligible with either Telugu or Hindi/Urdu. There are 121 'major languages' in Indian and 1599 other/minority languages recognized by the government in India, not to mention thousands of dialects and foreign languages also spoken; there are 22 official languages but even the most linguistically gifted of all Indians can manage no more than 5 or 6 so what most people do is default to English to communicate with someone from a different part of India. However, it is estimated that only about 10.6% of Indians are fluent in English despite the fact that it is the prestige language associated with higher education and business and the more popular lingua franca is Hindi/Urdu, which is spoken by 57.1% of the population. Therefore the only advantage they have is having been to India several times before when they were younger but clearly that didn't ultimately help them much at all.

And this is why I don't look at social media.

Good grief. I had to stop looking when I saw an American comment about Eswar & Arpana not being able to speak "Indian" as if there is one language called "Indian" - I don't even want to interact with ignorant people like that. India is one of the world's most linguistically diverse countries with so many languages from different language families. And before you ask, yes of course I speak Hindi - would you be surprised if I didn't? Heck, I speak practically every language in every country visited in this season: Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Russian and Hindi - the only ones I don't speak are Guarani (from Paraguay), Kazakh and Telugu. In fact Hindi is the world's third most spoken language (including those who speak it as a second/foreign language) - my Hindi is at basic, conversational standard and I don't even try to read/write in Hindi, but nonetheless, you should how surprised Indian people are when I start speaking to them in Hindi. Most Indian people are very surprised to encounter any non-Indian people who can speak even a little Hindi (or any of the many other Indian languages) and they are happy to use English to communicate with foreigners especially since they already do use English to communicate with Indian people from other parts of India. I was disappointed to see that Eswar & Arpana didn't speak Hindi or Telugu - I'm not even Indian and I speak some Hindi, they were born in India for crying out aloud. But then again, I speak 25 languages and they probably speak only two - English and Tamil. You can see why I do raise the bar rather high for these racers and I do get on my high horse and judge them; but would you rather hear me bitch about them, or speak to an ignorant American who really knows nothing about India? 

The mega-leg is really nothing new. 

Many of you on social media have pointed out that the mega-leg is really not that different from a "keep on racing leg", "super leg" or "double length leg" whereby Phil simply gives the racers their next clue immediately when they get to the pit stop mat. It has already been done in S6, S7, S8, S9, S10, S14 and many more times in TAR Asia, Latino America, Australia, China and Vietnam as well. So as to why CBS chose to market it as something brand new that has never been done before is puzzling because it has been done before - albeit not recently, as S14 (won by Tammy & Victor) was shown way back in 2009, that was 11 years ago. Did they not think that people would simply look it up on the internet and realize that Phil was basically lying about it being something new? It was a fun double episode with loads of awesome content, shot in a fascinating and beautiful location - so why did they feel the need to make this ridiculous claim about the 'mega-leg' being something not done before? Again, it is another very dumb decision on the part of the production team. 

Previous visits to India by TAR 

As a Hindi-speaker, I adore India and so does TAR! TAR US is very fond of India, having visited India in 12 seasons, making it the second most visited country in Asia after China (they visited China in 14 seasons) and the joint-second most visited country with France, which they also visited in 12 seasons. Of course, India is a massive country and this is in fact their first visit to Hyderabad. They have visited many other cities in India on previous seasons like Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai, Kochi, Varanasi, Agra, Jaipur and of course, Eswar & Arpana's hometown of Chennai in S10, which was part of the reason why Eswar & Arpana really wanted to be on the race, after having watched S10 when they were kids. 

Was this a well constructed leg? 

Here's my criteria for a really good TAR leg: firstly, I am stuck at home as London is still under lockdown. I want the episode to take me to colourful India, this has got to be a feast for my eyes. And certainly, I got that from this episode - well, it is hard to go wrong on that front when you are doing an episode of TAR in India. The Taj Falaknuma palace was stunning, showing us the true splendour of Indian high society - it was such a contrast from the bustling bazaar at Charminar where the teams dd their detour. Secondly, I want to see something new, rather than something recycled from previous seasons. I particularly enjoyed the roadblock at the Qutb Shahi Tombs where the racers had to identify the right turban based on an augmented reality feature on a tablet - that was definitely something original and innovative, combining new technology and India's rich cultural heritage. Finally, I want to see tasks whereby teams are able to overtake other teams if they are able to perform it faster, better or more efficiently. So for example, the teams doing the bangles side of the detour were able to do exactly that - those teams that worked faster could overtake another team still sifting through the piles of bangles. But when Hung & Chee got to the dentures side of the detour, they were stuck behind Eswar & Arpana and had to wait for them to finish - there was no way for them to overtake Eswar & Arpana because the producers didn't set up enough stations for them to perform the detour simultaneously. That was awful planning on the part of the production team as they could have easily arranged for at least two stations at the dentists, so at least two teams could perform the detour at the same time. Two out of the three boxes were ticked - it was slightly above average. 

What is this fascination with dentures on TAR? 

There are so many beautiful, exotic and fascinating aspects of Indian culture that would make a fantastic detour on TAR - you're in an Indian bazaar, you have everything from a stunning array of spices, to colourful Indian dresses like saris, to more kinds of tea that you can imagine, to florists turning flowers into these incredible floral garlands, to quaint Indian handicrafts, to exotic Indian vegetables that most Americans would never come across in their local supermarket like the ridge gourd, fenugreek, natal plum, mangosteen and taal - otherwise known as the ice apple (trust me, that is incredibly delicious), not to mention all that incredible Indian street food - the possibilities are endless. But what do they do? They choose to go for the yuck factor by getting the racers to stick their hands into the mouths of the locals and encounter all kinds of saliva oozing out of their mouths - oh I can't imagine anyone doing that after the Covid-19 pandemic! I did wonder, was this really the best choice of a task in an Indian bazaar? I get it, there are many dentists there but so what? We have dentists in every country in the world and dentures are certainly not uniquely Indian, so why do a denture-related task when you're in this amazing Indian bazaar? It was a bizarre and poor choice on the part of the production team. Mind you, just last year on TAR Australia S4 E11, there was a roadblock in Bangkok where a team member had to fit three pairs of dentures on locals - again, they were in Bangkok for crying out aloud, that is such a beautiful and fascinating Asian city and they chose to do a roadblock with dentures? Seriously? What is this fascination with dentures and making the racers deal with large volumes of strangers' gooey saliva? Nope, that's not what we want to see on TAR. 

Who will win the next leg and who will be eliminated next? 

We have three very strong teams left - Riley & Maddison are the strongest team at this stage but they have only won two legs so far like Hung & Chee; the team with the most number of wins are Will & James, but as mentioned earlier, Riley & Maddison are the most consistent team. So I am going to say that Riley & Maddison are mostly likely to win the next leg in Siem Reap, Cambodia but it could easily be Hung & Chee or Will & James as well. DeAngelo & Gary have won one leg in Berlin, but they got a lot of help from Hung in that leg - I certainly hope she has learnt her lesson by now and will no longer be that generous. Riley & Maddison have made it clear in this leg they have no intention of helping DeAngelo & Gary anymore and from the previews, it does look like DeAngelo & Gary will be the target of the double U-turn, but of course, we don't see who actually got U-turned. At least at this stage, we have seen that at least two of the teams left (Will & James and Riley & Maddison) are not afraid to get blood on their hands and use the yield and U-turn - so I hope that the double U-turn will get used and they won't just chicken out when they get to the U-turn board. I would say that DeAngelo & Gary are on the chopping block next week but it really depends on which other team is behind them when they get U-turned. Eswar & Arpana are indeed the weakest team left and if they are stuck in a battle for survival with DeAngelo & Gary, the statistics suggest that it would probably be DeAngelo & Gary who will come out on top. I do like Eswar & Arpana but one should always park one's emotions at the door and rely on statistics. My heart wants DeAngelo & Gary eliminated next, but my mind tells me it will probably be Eswar & Arpana if we are purely guided by the statistics. 

How am I different from other vloggers, bloggers and podcasters who talk about TAR? 

Unlike a lot of them, I have actually been to most of these countries visited on TAR. I have not been to all of them, but after having visited 71 countries (damn Covid-19, I had such big plans for traveling this year and they have been shelved for now), I feel like I am in a much better position to comment on the episode compared to others who may not have even set foot in that part of the world before and I always try to make my posts very educational and informative. Secondly, I have watched more TAR than most of them because they don't speak 25 languages like me - that has allowed me to watch so many more other versions of the international versions of TAR; for example, I watched the Ukrainian version of TAR because I speak Russian; half the teams spoke Russian (instead of Ukrainian) anyway and the two languages are close enough for me to understand a lot. This has allowed me to have deeper insight into how TAR can be done in other countries, whilst most of the others have only seen English versions of TAR from places like Australia and Canada. I also refuse to put the producers on a pedestal - only one other commentator, podcaster Michael Harmstone is equally critical of the terrible production quality of TAR S32 and it feels like some of these American vloggers are practically worshiping the gods of TAR as if they can do no wrong. Lastly, I am harsh and critical of the racers (even if I am friends with quite a number of them on Facebook) whilst some of these other American vloggers treat them like reality TV celebrities and put them on a pedestal; in sharp contrast, I am often quite harsh, but I am always fair. 

So that's it from me on this double episode, I'm sad to see Kaylynn & Haley go as they were a genuine delight to watch on this season. I'm so looking forward to the next episode! Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.