Hello everyone! I was wondering if I was going to blog about this season of TAR but when I saw that the first two legs were run in London, I simply couldn't resist. So for those of you brand new to my blog, hello my name is Alex, I am 45, I live in London and I am a massive fan of TAR. I have blogged about TAR in previous seasons and I shall do the same for this season. I am going to use a quick fire Q&A format with shorter answers to present my thoughts on the season. I did visit some of the locations that the first two legs were filmed after watching the episode and you can check out that content on my Instagram. But first, let's start with the average placement statistics which are always a very reliable guide.
TAR S33 average statistics after E2
- Ryan & Dusty 1.5
- Raquel & Cayla 3.5
- Anthony & Spencer 4
- Connie & Sam 4.5
- Kim & Penn 4.5
- Caro & Ray 5.5
- Arun & Natalia 6
- Akbar & Sheri 7
- Taylor & Isaiah 8.5
- Lulu & Lala 10 (spared elimination in London at the end of E2)
- Michael & Moe 11 (eliminated in London at the end of E1)
Q: Why are you blogging about TAR?
A: I find the interaction on social media really shallow - it is frustrating. It's usually just people saying, "I hate this team, I want them gone" or "I love this team, I want them to win." There's very little analysis about how they performed on the episode, never mind any attention paid to whether the production team had put together a good leg. I want to create a more thoughtful analysis here to discuss the details of the episode and I believe there are hardcore fans of TAR who will appreciate that. Furthermore, I have visited 72 countries already and thus on any season on TAR, I would have visited a rather large number of the locations, especially in Europe thus I can also provide some useful insight on those locations.
A: Yes actually, I had a friend from America messaging me but because of the time difference, I was always getting messages like, "two hours ago, the racers were seen in Trafalgar Square." So no, I didn't manage to actually see the race first hand despite it being in my city again. Good grief, in TAR S31 E11, the race literally came to my neighbourhood. They raced through Camden Market and I live in Camden, the market is just a short walk away from where I live and yet I had absolutely no idea they came through my neck of the wood; by the time I found out, it was way too late unfortunately.
Q: Did you like the choice of locations?
A: Well, I see people on social media split on this issue. Some felt let down because of the very unimaginative nature of the choice of locations: these were some of the most popular tourist destinations (and tourist traps) in London - TAR has visited the UK before and have chosen far more quirky, unusual locations such as in S42 E11 when they went to North Wales - now that was well and truly off the beaten path. But was there anything that wrong with these locations as long as they provided plenty of entertainment value for the viewers (who are mostly in America anyway)? I might have expected something like that in the earlier seasons but not S33; I can see why the fans are frustrated by these choices.
A: As a Londoner, I felt that this episode was put together by a very old American person who has never visited London before but has read all about London growing up - hence the woefully outdated cultural references. The red phone boxes for example - yes it is a British icon but they are disappearing from the streets of London these days as everyone has a smartphone. We even have public charging points and free wifi for homeless people to charge their phones for crying out aloud, nobody actually uses a public payphone these days. As for the word 'bobby' to refer to policeman, most of us would know the reference but that's again, extremely dated and a word that has not been common usage for over a century. We tend to use the word 'cops' or coppers' to refer to the police and us British people do consume a huge amount of American media anyway, so whilst our accents are still different, there has been a huge merging of our vocabulary in the last 20 years, as our English becomes Americanized - not "officially" per se, but at least at street level.
Q: So you don't use words like 'nosh' and 'bobbies'?
A: No generally, we don't. If you said 'nosh', I would know it refers to eating, having some food. But would I use that word? No, again, it is a rather old-fashioned word that has fallen out of use by younger people here in the UK. But this is TAR at the end of the day, they wouldn't present a vision of London to the American viewers which focuses on how just very Americanized London has become, rather they would treat it like a travel proramme and focus on those differences.
A: Oh yes it is, I checked. From Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace is 0.8 miles / 1.3 km on foot, then from Buckingham Palace to Parliament Square that's 0.7 miles / 1.1 km on foot, then from there to Little Ben in Victoria, that's another 0.8 miles / 1.3 km on foot. So in total, they walked/jogged/ran 2.3 miles / 3.7 km through the streets of London with all their bags before they were allowed to get a taxi to Piccadilly circus. That's a really long distance to run but of course, the teams could have easily asked the locals for directions instead of wandering around aimlessly - what language do you think we speak here in England? I rolled my eyes in disbelief when there were teams who failed to asked for help from the locals: haven't they watched this programme before? So even if the teams were smart and asked for some help with directions, that was still a really physically demanding task but evidently the easier side of the detour.
Q: Banksy was featured in the Artist Den side of the detour, what did you think of that task?
A: I actually went to the venue yesterday after work as it was walking distance from my office in Mayfair. It's just an event space that you can rent for anything you wanna put on, so it's not like it is a permanent, dedicated artist den where people create street art. At least that featured a more contemporary aspect of British culture, but I felt that the task was unfairly complicated and even the teams like Kim & Penn who did rather well on that task could only come in fourth on that leg. The judge could have been a bit less strict on this task to try to even things out between both sides of the detour.
A: Well they were unlucky, first they were already near the back of the pack when they arrived at Trafalgar Square and that was purely down to the taxi - not their fault at all. But their bad luck continued as they picked the harder of the two detours, which they struggled with. Somebody had to be eliminated on the first leg and it turned out to be the team with the worst luck, rather than the team with the poorest communication skills or made silly errors. So sorry guys - bad luck!
Q: Which team did you think was going to be eliminated instead?
A: Firstly, Akbar was really nasty to Sheri - you need to encourage, not scold or belittle your partner on TAR. His communication skills were terrible for someone who works in education for crying out aloud. You don't get the best out of someone by constantly putting them down and blaming them! I felt so bad for Sheri and she deserves better than that. Being so mean to her isn't going to make her run faster, it is just going to hurt her feelings - that was painful to watch I swear. Teams like that often self-destruct when the going gets tough. The other team that I thought were very weak turned out to be Lulu & Lala, after all, they did get a good start but fell to the back of the pack by the end of the leg - again there's just so much negativity going on with these two. You need to encourage yourself when you're under stressful situations, these two are so very pessimistic and that just doesn't help at all when you're at the back of the pack.
A: No, they didn't. I suppose a reason could be that the Natural History Museum would be open to public on that morning so it would have been tricky to do any kind of filming whilst the staff were preparing to open that museum. Instead, they chose a quiet churchyard that was just off High Street Kensington which was just over a mile/1.6 km away, that churchyard would have been very quiet and thus it would have made filming easy and the teams were just a very short walk away from Kensington High Street, a major road where they could have easily found a taxi to their next destination.
Q: But wait, Anthony & Spencer did struggle to get a taxi there.
A: Oh that was crazy, allow me to give you some insight into this as I used to live in this neighbourhood years ago and so I know the streets in that area quite well! What the footage in the episode doesn't show you is just how far they ran/walked to try to find a taxi because when they were complaining, "there's nobody working! Why? For what reason?" By that point, they had already gone from High Street Kensington to Cromwell Road, a distance of 0.8 miles (1.3 km) and that's why they had lost their lead due to the lack of local knowledge. You see, High Street Kensington is a shopping street whereas that stretch of the Cromwell Road is actually part of the major A4 highway leading into and out of central London. If they had simply asked a local, "where's the best place to find a taxi?" Then the advice would have been, wait here on High Street Kensington, you're bound to find one sooner or later. Anthony & Spencer panicked, ran in the wrong direction and that's a classic example of, why didn't you just ask a local for help, especially since you're in an English speaking country? All other teams did the sensible thing and found themselves taxis very close to where they had set off.
Q: What did you think of the two guys overthinking the roadblock at the Postal Museum?
A: Well what can I say, Penn and Ray have already taken a lot of heat on social media over their mistake so I am not going to jump on that bandwagon. All I can say is that if you are going on TAR, you need to do your research by watching all the previous seasons and realizing that the tasks can be really that straightforward. My favourite reality TV programme is a Dutch show called some years back - the puzzles on Wie Is De Mol are a lot more complicated and are never easy. I would say that this is a lesson about choosing whom you build alliances with in TAR - always try to work with someone who would know what they are doing, rather than turning it into another case of the blind leading the blind unfortunately.
A: Aah I liked it actually, very much so because there was a twist to it! I hate straight forward tasks where teams rush in, do a simple task and leave in the order they arrive in - I love it when there's a potential mistake they could make and thus totally change the order, just to make things a lot more unpredictable. A number of teams thought the UK and Norway were in the European Union and of course, they're not. Amongst the 12 cakes that the teams had to choose from, only two: France and Germany were actually part of the European Union. The other side of the detour was more straightforward; it did require a certain level of skill when it came to playing darts. So yes, these were both good detours.
Q: Do British people actually like darts?
A: Well, I don't think so - sure some people play darts here in the UK but you can say the same thing about any sport from tennis to hockey to gymnastics to water polo. Some people in the UK do gymnastics but is it a popular sport? No it isn't. By the same token, some people in the UK play darts, but is it a popular sport? No, not by a long way. Apart from football (or as you Americans call it, soccer), the two other sports which are both popular and very British are cricket and rugby. If they wanted to continue the theme of British stereotypes, they could have created a cricket task like the one in TAR S20 E9 in Kochi, India. I am left rather puzzled as to why they chose a darts challenge. Fun fact: the Flight Club where the darts task was held is actually just a stone's throw from Little Ben, like it is a minute's walk away, you can see that junction where Little Ben is from the entrance to the Flight Club, but they didn't show that in the episode because London is such a massive city, thus it makes no sense to do two tasks on two different days in the exact same location.
A: The unaired task in E2 could've been interesting: the teams were sent to the Orbit tower in the Olympic park in East London to receive a clue. I went to the top of the tower during the 2012 Olympics and it is one of the newer landmarks in London. Oh and when they wrote "climb" to the top of the tower in the Wikipedia page, it's nothing to do with rock climbing or anything dangerous/difficult like that. Like all other tourists, I walked up a very, very long flight of stairs to get to the top of the tower and those stairs were no more challenging than the stairs in the office building where I work. A lot could have happened on their way to the Olympic Park in East London as that's an awfully long way - interestingly enough, the cake decorating task was a lot nearest the Olympic Park (5.2 miles by taxi) than the darts task (9.9 miles) in that detour, giving those that chose the cake decorating task an advantage in terms of a shorter distance to travel. As to why this task hit the cutting room floor, I don't know - quite frankly, it makes little sense to organize all of it only to ditch it.
Q: Who do you think is going to win this season?
A: Based on the statistics so far, definitely Ryan & Dusty. Raquel & Cayla stand a good chance as well as they are really well traveled as cabin crew. I am in two minds about Anthony & Spencer as they won the first leg but struggled in the second leg. Apart from them, I think it is still early days and a lot of it will depend on what kind of tasks they make the teams do. As Kim pointed out, the younger teams definitely have a major advantage when it comes to the more physical aspects of the race, but there have been a good mix of physical and mental challenges in the first two legs. I was wrong on the previous season when I predicted that Hung & Chee would definitely win, but let's see - Ryan & Dusty are definitely a super strong team who will be the ones to beat. I know it is early days still, but my instincts are rarely wrong.
Q: Who do you think is going to be eliminated next?
Well definitely Lulu & Lala, I am sorry ladies. Their performance in the first two legs have been poor and I'm not a hater, it's nothing personal - I merely judge the teams by how they perform on the race. I'm also looking at two more teams who have communication issues: Akbar & Sheri and Caro & Ray; I'm far less worried about Taylor & Isaiah even though they struggled through the first two legs, but they are communicating really well. Therefore, I think it will probably be Lulu & Lala who are next to be eliminated, but we'll see if another team self-destructs under pressure when they get to Scotland. I have been to Glasgow many times, it is an interesting city - so this should be a fun episode coming up next.
Q: You know the filming was suspended at the end of that leg, right?
A: Yes, they pulled the plug on filming that season in February 2020 because of the pandemic and all the teams were flown back to America - filming only resumed in September 2021 and you can read all about the strict conditions that they operated under; I'm sure that would be covered in later episodes so you can look out for them soon. Hats off to the production team at CBS for being determined to finish filming this season under such difficult conditions - I was also delighted that many of my favourite programmes including Wie Is De Mol (the Netherlands), De Mol (Belgium), the Apprentice (UK and Australia) and of course TAR Australia also managed to pump out new content during the pandemic. Let's hope that they will be casting for the next season of TAR soon, even if future seasons may be somewhat different but as hardcore fans, we understand why that is a necessity of course and we salute CBS for what they have achieved.
Okay, so that's it from me on this double episode, please do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading guys.
Aaaah here's one more point I forgot to add in the post: why was the Boris Johnson double in the cafe wearing a cycling helmet whilst eating? Boris Johnson is our current lame duck prime minister who is highly unpopular because of the poor handling of the pandemic and a large number of political scandals, but nobody wants to oust him in the middle of the Omicron wave as that's the last job you want, trying to steer the country out of troubled waters during the Omicron wave and get blamed for not doing a better job. Before he became prime minister, he spent time as an MP and was also mayor of London (he was a terrible mayor, I hated him then, I still hate him now) - but during that period, he cycled to work a lot and was often pictured in a suit and tie wearing a cycling helmet. Back then, he wasn't that important so he didn't have assistants running after him going, "sir please let me take your helmet before you go into that press conference." So he became associated with walking around with that cycling helmet on his head during that period (2008 - 2016), though he has obviously stopped doing that after he became prime minister in 2019. Yes the look alike in the cafe bears a stunning resemblance to the real Boris Johnson but I just rolled my eyes in complete disbelief when I read on Facebook someone asking if that was the real Boris Johnson. And I'm like, as if the prime minister of the UK would have time to participate in a reality TV programme that is barely heard of in the UK, don't you think he has better things to do if he was running a country in the midst of a crisis: coronavirus (yes that was in the early days of the pandemic already) + Brexit can wait, oh I must take part in this American TV show called The Amazing Race! But no, I chose to ignore that comment and not take the bait. This is exactly why I would rather have my own say here rather than engage with random people on social media because that is the level of discourse there.
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