Mabuhay, kumusta ka? In this leg, the teams raced from Siem Reap in Cambodia to Manila, the capital of Philippines. This season has proven to be extremely predictable and I did once again managed to predict the outcome of this leg correctly, but it wasn't hard to figure this lot out. There were no direct flights from Siem Reap to Manila, so the teams traveled via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific. Riley & Maddison were the first to depart at 2 pm from Angkor Thom, but when they get to the airport, we find out they are all on the same flight. So as Hung & Chee checked in, we could see on the screen of the computer that they were all on a flight that departed Siem Reap at 19:15 and arrived in Hong Kong at 22:55; Hong Kong is actually one hour ahead of Siem Reap and that flight is actually about 2 hours 40 minutes. Given that they arrived that late in Hong Kong, they probably had a very uncomfortable night curling up in the corner of the airport in Hong Kong, ready for their connecting flight to Manila very, very early the next day. This means that by the time the teams arrive in Manila, they would have had a very exhausting, long journey. Mind you, DeAngelo & Gary departed at 3:55 pm so even if they did manage to somehow find a connection via another city like Bangkok or Phnom Penh, they still would have arrived in Manila either at sunset or at night and if the production team had planned a City Sprint in the day, then I suppose they wanted the teams to arrive in Manila in the earlier part of the day. There is so much to talk about in this episode. But first we will see what the statistics tell us about the teams going into the finals after this leg in Manila.
Average ranking after leg 11 in Manila, Philippines
- Riley & Maddison 2.2
- Will & James 2.6
- Hung & Chee 2.8
- DeAngelo & Gary 4.5 (eliminated in Manila)
Am I surprised with the outcome of this leg? A little, we knew that all the remaining teams were just going to gang up against DeAngelo & Gary from the beginning - heck, that was the original plan in the previous leg. They did surprisingly well in this leg as well, after a good start they were in second place to Riley & Maddison when they got to the high-heeled race but managed to jump into first place in Chinatown. Things went wrong by the time they got to the last challenge at Mehan Garden with the band but otherwise they were still in third at that point, ahead of Hung & Chee who had slipped to last at that point after a disastrous taxi ride. Had that task been a lot more straightforward, then they could have easily cruised their way into the final, knocking Hung & Chee out but that was one of the hardest tasks we have seen on TAR. It would rival the finale in TAR S30 in San Francisco when teams were struggling with the last roadblock on the USS Hornet which involved assembling a model airplane with the 12 parts representing various things that they had encountered in each part of the race - basically everything the teams did prior to arriving at that last roadblock became totally irrelevant as the task took so ridiculously long that it came down to which team could simply put it together in the right combination first as none of the teams could figure out that final puzzle and it came down to simply a process of elimination, trying different combinations and asking for a check. This felt quite similar as I do think that expecting a team to remember what they heard in Asuncion and Paris was really quite a big ask given that the music played no part in the task they completed there - so they probably barely even noticed the music, never mind paid enough attention to it then.
So DeAngelo & Gary have the right to be so angry?
Well yes and no. It was evident that DeAngelo was very angry with the rest of the teams for choosing to collaborate at the last task, effectively sealing their fate at that point. A lot of people on social media also complained that this made the episode predictable and that this kind of alliance shouldn't be allowed - there is nothing in the rules against teams working together and in fact, this has always been a part of TAR over the years. They certainly benefited from working in an alliance with the other teams earlier and that was the only way they could have won leg 6 in Berlin. Without Hung's (extremely generous) help, there was no way DeAngelo & Gary would have won that leg - so it does feel a bit two-faced and hypocritical to now complain about alliances: they were happy to be an alliance when it was in their favour but angry when other teams choose to do the same without them? Thus a more valid complaint in this case is the fact that this task was crazy difficult, impossibly difficult - the concept of it is interesting of course, but there's a difference between the piece of music from leg 1 (in Tobago) and in leg 5 (in Chantilly). In leg 1, the music was a pivotal part of the roadblock as the racer had to learn to play the song "Day-O" on the steelpan - it would have left a deep enough impression on the racer's memory but in Chantilly, the string quartet wasn't even a part of roadblock where the racer had to match the party guest to the painting - it seems they were just there to create some atmosphere, so DeAngelo & Gary could claim that this task was impossibly hard compared to all the other tasks they had to do in Manila and if it had been a far more reasonable task that was not so crazy difficult, they would have beaten Hung & Chee to the pit stop at Lapu-Lapu Circle.
Is DeAngelo being a sore loser?
I actually think so. Sure losing sucks, especially given the manner in which they saw the other teams work together to deliberately exclude them at the last challenge - but then again, an alliance is like any other kind of relationship. You have got to take care of it, nurture it and not neglect it - it does come across that DeAngelo & Gary were taking a lot for granted rather than taking the time to try to speak to the other teams about forming a further alliance. They went into this leg assuming that it was every team for themselves, that the 'mine five' alliance was the last alliance in the game but clearly that was a wrongful assumption to make. Sure I recognize that this season is radically different because of the way alliances have played such a major role in determining the outcome, but then DeAngelo & Gary have only themselves to blame for not being a lot more proactive in seeking new alliances beyond the 'mine five' - they were naive and at least Gary tried his best to deal with DeAngelo's anger on the pit stop, but DeAngelo is still active on social media standing by his initial reaction with Phil. I have to say this in all fairness: DeAngelo chose to take part in TAR knowing exactly what he was letting himself in for, he knew the risks and difficulties he had to face and none of the other teams broke any rules - he was beaten fair and square. Just because he didn't like the outcome doesn't mean that there was anything wrong with what the other teams did or that the producers had somehow shortchanged him. This does remind me of Trump's reaction after losing the 2020 election, but that's another topic for another day. If I was going to do Reality TV, I would be very careful what I say to the camera, especially if I was quite emotional or angry - you can't take it back!
They gave up and took a penalty?!
I note that no other team gave up on a task in this season apart from DeAngelo & Gary - this was just done as a gesture of protest in anger and in response to what happened - if they had stuck with the task, they could have still completed it.
But was this the right decision to gang up against DeAngelo & Gary?
My regular readers will know where I stand on this issue: no, for a simple reason. They were the weakest team at this stage and by a pretty long way - they have had their moments of brilliance but the statistics never lie. They were lucky to get this far and I was surprised they even made it past the first three or four episodes as I thought they were one of the weaker teams - I would have expected Michelle & Victoria, Leo & Alana or even Eswar & Arpana to do better than them but certainly DeAngelo & Gary have proven me wrong over and over again on this season; let me be the first to say that I stand corrected, I was wrong to have written them off early in the season. It's not that I have anything against them - I just thought they didn't stand a chance against all these other very strong teams in this season. However, in TAR, you really want to take the weaker teams with you into the final leg rather than take your strongest opponents with you into the final leg, only to see them take home the grand prize of a million dollars whilst you try your best to smile as you hide your disappointment. Hence it made complete sense for Hung & Chee and Will & James (both teams figured the order out at the same time by reading the clue again) to have shared the answer with DeAngelo & Gary, that would have allowed them to shut out the strongest team at that stage, Riley & Maddison. Oh that would have set up a far more unpredictable finale with the strongest team shut out right before the finals (think TAR Australia S4 E11 and TAR Asia S5 E9) - so the question really is if Hung & Chee and Will & James are going to really kick themselves for deciding to stick to their alliance rather than stab Riley & Maddison in the back? Heck, for a million dollars and the chance to win TAR, I would have totally stabbed the strongest team in the back and then helped the weakest team, now that's called strategy!
But wait, was that last task really too difficult?
Well, when the Hung & Chee and Will & James read the clue again, they managed to figure out where they had gone wrong so they did get it right in the end. I think there is a place for really difficult challenges but I think the timing of it was wrong: the teams got stuck so long at that challenge that anything they did prior to arriving at that last challenge at Mehan Garden was rendered irrelevant. What I would have done was simply started with that super difficult challenge instead, so even if you were the last team left there, you would still have some hope, just in case they would have another equally difficult task or a team might get a taxi driver from hell and get totally lost. It was frustrating to see DeAngelo just give up knowing that they were eliminated the moment Hung & Chee ran out of there to the pit stop. If this had been the first task, I don't think they would have given up and taken a penalty. Sure he would have been just as angry, but at least he would have kept on trying and I'm surprised Phil didn't walk to the gardens to eliminate them there.
What's this about Manila being the texting capital of the world?
I don't doubt that Philippines was one of the first countries to embrace texting but is that is such a random fact and one that is somewhat misleading. So I did my research, texting was really only launched in Philippines in 1995 - this was later than in some European countries and texting became very popular only around 1998. Now compared to what was happening in Europe and North America, it was not as if Philippines was so high tech that they were a few years ahead of their counterparts in the West - rather, texting became popular this is still a relatively poor country and calling your friends on their mobile phones back then was expensive, but texting was affordable at only 1 peso (the equivalent of 2.3 cents in USD). But the technology wasn't invented in the Philippines - various companies in Europe and America had already been working on the technology since the mid-1980s and the first text message in the world was sent in the United Kingdom on the 3rd December 1992. Certainly today, texting has gone into decline given that we have so many other online messaging services from Whatsapp to Snapchat to Messenger to Wechat. I checked this on Wikipedia and found out there was a time around 2000 when it was claimed that each Filipino person sent on average at least 6 text messages a day, with over 600 million text messages a day for a country with 100 million people. But even they thought this was a bizarre claim given the global decline of texting. I thought at first that there would be a task on this leg of the race involving text messages, but that wasn't the case - so as to why they chose to include that fact is confusing at best. There are other things Manila is famous for rather than text messaging - which isn't unique to Manila or Philippines at all.
The City Sprint is nothing new.
Was this a well-constructed leg?
Hell no - it was awful, just terrible. A well-constructed leg would consists of tasks that are difficult enough to mix up the order such as in leg 1, when the teams had to learn to play a short tune on the steelpan - a badly constructed leg would be full of very simple tasks that do not give teams the chance to overtake the team ahead of them, so teams simply depart in the order they arrive in. So this problem arises if you design a detour or a roadblock that only one team can perform at a time, the other situation when this could happen is when the task at hand is so simple that each team gets through it in the same amount of time: so in Manila, this happened with both the 500 meter race in high-heels as well as finding the lions with the clues in Chinatown, both tasks were just so straightforward and simple. DeAngelo & Gary struggled through that task but it didn't affect their ranking at that time as the course was so short. The task in from of the central post office to feed the horses wasn't that complicated either (but somehow DeAngelo & Gary managed to mess that up). Then we have tasks where the outcomes are completely random such as getting the clue from the dancing traffic policeman in that busy junction - whether or not you got the clue or not was completely random, depending on which lane your jeepney was in and where the dancing traffic policeman was standing at that time: factors which were all out of the racers' control. All the teams spotted him instantly but it felt completely unfair that Hung & Chee and Will & James were denied the clue due to no fault of their own. I've already complained about the last task with the four pieces of music being too difficult - so this was hands down the worst leg on this season and will go down in TAR history as one of the worst legs ever designed. The TAR production team has hit a new low with this City Sprint and I am disappointed.
How would I have improved this leg?
Firstly, I would have made the teams learn a routine from the dancing traffic policeman and given the element of skill involved in learning a dance routine under pressure, that would then separate the teams. Then as for the race in high heels, I would make the teams learn a list of of something to do with Manila (former Filipino presidents, famous local landmarks, local dishes etc) then they're not just running in heels - they're also doing a difficult memory task at the same time and that would make it a lot harder, once again, separating the teams. As for the task in Chinatown, good grief - that was way too easy: I would have either hidden the clue in a much harder place to find or at least make the teams learn either a lion dance routine (or learn to play the drums accompanying the lion dance, which was a detour in Singapore from TAR S16 E9). Likewise, for the task involving feeding the horses in front of the central post office, I would have made the teams search a much, much wider area around the vicinity to locate all the ingredients for the feed. Furthermore, I would have thrown in loads of red herrings that weren't supposed to go into the feed to confuse the racers and give instructions only in Tagalog, the local language so the racers would have to ask for help from the locals in order to complete the task. Then finally with that last task, I think it is an innovative idea, but what I would have changed was to make sure the teams had some reason to pay attention to the music in the previous legs, so it would have been a lot more reasonable to expect them to know the song when they hear it. So in Chantilly for example, they could have made the other racer not participating in the roadblock sit down right by the string quartet in a designated waiting area, so that other racer would have to listen to that song over and over again, whilst waiting for their partner to finish that roadblock.
Do people in Manila speak English?
The answer is yes, of course they do! There are two official languages in the Philippines - Tagalog, which is the first language for about a quarter of the population but spoken as a second or third language by the majority of the country and English, which is part of their American legacy, after having been occupied by the Americans for 48 years. Oh you'll be amazed how English-speaking Philippines is, along with other South-East Asian countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei (those were former British colonies). In the Philippines, English is spoken by most people to varying degrees of fluency - it is hard to count the actual number of people who speak English there because you will get different numbers depending on where you decide to draw the line. It is the prestige language, the language of further education and business, so if you're a graduate and work as a lawyer, doctor or engineer, then your English would be excellent. But if you're encountering a street vendor or taxi driver in Manila, chances are they would still speak some basic English - so you would be able to conduct a simple transaction like buying some food in a supermarket entirely in English with the cashier, but don't expect to have a profound conversation about complex issues (like "do you think alliances should be banned in the Amazing Race?"). That it is why I totally cringed when Hung spoke to the policemen in an exaggerated manner, getting on her hands and knees to pose like a lion. I was appalled - please, they will not hire illiterate, uneducated folks to work in the police, there are standards in the Philippines and most of all, she is Asian-American for crying out aloud. I found what she did rather condescending and if she wasn't Asian, I could have accused her of racism.
Who was your greeter in Manila?!
Did you see that fat guy who was the greeter in Manila? Who the hell was he, it looked like they forgot to arrange for a greeter and just dragged some random fat guy off the street and asked him, "hey do you wanna be on American TV? I'll give you US$50 to say 'welcome to Manila' to the racers when they step onto the mat." This fat guy wasn't even wearing anything special - contrast this to the mesmerizing dancer in Siem Reap who greeted the racers at the pit stop, she was wearing a lovely traditional costume and she even did a little dance routine to welcome the racers. Do you remember leg 7 in Almaty, Kazakhstan when the teams raced to the pit stop, first there were ten beautiful women showering them with flower petals, then there was a full traditional Kazakh orchestra and a massive troupe of dancers in such colourful costumes performing this stunning routine (in the freezing cold may I add). Did the production team just blow the entire budget on leg 7 in Kazakhstan and had no budget left to do anything for the pit stop in Manila? But this fat guy did nothing, he even looked a bit bored - what were the producers thinking? Was he a member of the local production team?
So who is going to win this season?
I think all three teams in the finale are very strong so I shall put my emotions aside and default to the statistics: Riley & Maddison will win, with Will & James second and Hung & Chee third. I know that one of my favourite podcasts has picked Hung & Chee as the winner for a bizarre reason: they were were given a 'heroes' edit' and all previous winners were always shown in a very positive light, portraying them as 'heroes' so the producers can market their winners as likable characters, rather than controversial ones. I don't know - I think that may be reading too much into it but I shall stick to my guns and say my pick for the season's winner will be Riley & Maddison. To be honest, in the past, I have watched finals when I really hate a team and didn't want them to win the grand prize but thankfully, I don't think I have hated any team this season. There were weak teams that left early in the process but that was no reason for me to dislike them. But given DeAngelo's attitude in Manila, I think he will be remembered as the villain in this season - frankly I have nothing against Gary who took losing in his stride. So I will watch next week's finale and enjoy it thoroughly, knowing that I will be happy no matter who wins because I do like all three teams. This is a far cry from recent seasons like 29, 30 and 31 when there were teams I really hated so much and couldn't wait to see them eliminated. Gosh, compared to some of those nasty characters back then who even personally attacked me on social media because I criticized them on my blog, DeAngelo is mild mannered in comparison. So thankfully, the cast this season has most certainly lived up to my expectations and if they had replaced DeAngelo with someone more bland, it would have made this season more boring. We do need conflict for reality TV to be exciting and DeAngelo certainly provided plenty of that.
So that's it from me on this episode, I'm sure we're all looking forward to the finale next week. Who do you think is going to win this season? So what do you think of DeAngelo's exit? Leave a comment below please, many thanks for reading.
*Yes I have been made aware of how Riley & Maddison stabbed DeAngelo & Gary in the back - I've seen the reports on social media, that wasn't shown in the episode, it hit the cutting room floor which I thought was a questionable decision. Why are they trying to "protect" Riley & Maddison from looking like scheming liars who are willing to do anything to win?
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