Hello guys and we have finally reached the end of TAR S34. I must say this finale was somewhat predictable but nonetheless, congratulations to Derek & Claire for winning this leg and the season. They were the favourites going into the finale with the best average ranking and they were the only team that ran a perfect leg in the finale. Emily & Molly got very lost on the way to the Gibson guitar store whilst Michelle wasted precious time waiting for Emily to abseil before descending and of course, they ignored the black keys on that keyboard in the memory challenge, unfortunately dropping them to last place. Not that it really matters but let's look at the final average ranking statistics at the end of this season.
Average ranking statistics at the finish line of TAR S34 in Nashville
Derek & Claire: 2.7 (winners of TAR S34)
Emily & Molly: 3.8
Luis & Michelle: 3.3
Could the outcome have been any different?
Possibly. There was a twist to the memory challenge in that it involved a really complex challenge to play the 11 notes in the right order within the time limit of 11 seconds. There was quite a long period when all three teams were there at the same time trying to finish that task but of course, it is the kind of process where you need some practice time before getting it right. The odds were always with Derek & Claire since they did arrive there first and had the luxury of more practice time than the other two teams. But nonetheless, it wouldn't have been impossible for the other two teams to catch up though - it would have just been really difficult to remain calm under pressure. It was a case of more haste less speed. My heart sank when I saw how physical the tasks were on this leg - Emily had to climb up that bridge and then carry those heavy guitars around on that bad knee, she is a super woman to bravely fight through that pain without complaining. She is definitely my favourite racer in this season and for them to finish second despite her injury is unreal.
What if Marcus & Michael was in the final?
I'm sorry to say this and I mean no disrespect to the other two teams in this final, but I did think Marcus & Michael were probably the only other team who were strong enough to challenge Derek & Claire but it was a shame that they got eliminated before the final. Us fans really want to see a much closer, unpredictable final, which would be more exciting.
Was this a good finale?
Yes, I think so, there was a good mix of physically demanding tasks, attention to detail, a bit of navigation and I loved the final memory task with the orchestra. It was pretty epic, so well done to the production team for pulling that off. The final memory task has got to be difficult enough as that's the final test between the winning team and the million dollar grand prize, it can't be too easy but then again, it can't be so ridiculously difficult that all the teams are stuck there for ages unable to complete it. This finale task required a high level of coordination and physical dexterity but it was ultimately down to skill, not luck. There was also plenty to showcase what Nashville is most famous for - the whiskey, the country music scene, the Gibson guitars. So yeah, overall I am very happy with this finale, even if my favourite team didn't win.
Let's talk about our winners Derek & Claire.
They met on Big Brother 23 but never made a huge impact there, finishing 10th and 8th respectively. Derek then went on to take part in The Challenge: USA, where once again, he fizzled out early, finishing 9th out of the 14 men competing that season. They are the second Big Brother team to have won TAR, following in the footsteps of Cody & Jessica from TAR S30. Derek is also Chinese-American, he is following in the footsteps of other Chinese-American winners of TAR US like Tammy & Victor, the siblings from TAR S14 and Kat Chang of team Nat & Kat from TAR S17. What can I say, the statistics never lie - that's why I put aside my personal feelings about them and always look at the average rankings to see if a team is likely to win or not. You can't argue with the statistics - they went into the final leg as the strongest team and ran a perfect leg, whilst the other two teams made mistakes. Thus hats off to Derek & Claire won this great victory.
Let's talk about Caroline & Jennifer
The teams picked up the clue at the Gibson guitar store from Caroline & Jennifer, who raced in two seasons: TAR S22 when they finished 4th and TAR S24 when they finished 2nd. I was relieved that the racers remembered them - it would have been so awkward if they were so engrossed in the clue that they failed to recognize them. But at least it does show that the final three teams are truly fans of TAR to the point where they would recognize a team like Caroline & Jennifer.
What will we remember this season for?
Oh I think it has got to be the really unfair Covid elimination in Amman back in E6 when Abby & Will were eliminated at the start of that leg after they tested positive. I just roll my eyes and think, how is this still a thing? But of course, this season was filmed way back in May and June this year, so the Covid protocol may have been quite different back then. I applied for a reality TV show recently (I am not allowed to divulge details but fingers crossed - it is for a big UK production). One of the producers called me up and gave me this long speech about why she has got to ask me whether I am vaccinated or not and the reasons why the production team had to ask that question. I could tell she had to read from a script and that script was full of legal, formal language. At the end of it, I simply said, "yes I am fully vaccinated, do you need to see prove of my vaccination status?" I appreciate the challenges that the production team must face trying to do this season as we emerge from the pandemic but I hope no other team in the future will have to face what Abby & Will went through as that's just plain unfair. Look they weren't the strongest team and I don't think they would have made the finals, but they deserved a fair crack at winning the race rather than get eliminated under such unlucky circumstances.
How do I feel about the casting for this season?
I have two major complaints: firstly, the casting. You're gonna hate me for saying this, but I think it is pointless to cast some very weak teams only for them to be eliminated in the first few legs. I feel that the playing field has got to be even: either cast only very strong, very credible teams or have a season where every team has some kind of weakness or disadvantage. Whilst I would say the top half of the field in this season was quite strong, the bottom half was significantly weaker and that just doesn't set things up well for a good season as you just know which weaker teams are going to be eliminated first, then you're waiting for the real race to start when only the stronger teams are left. On one hand, yes of course you need to make sure you have a diverse cast to include ethnic minorities, older racers, disabled racers, LGBT racers etc but on the other hand, good grief, when you cast two very fat older guys like Tim & Rex, I was amazed they made it to leg 2 given how unfit they were compared to the other racers. My second complaint was about the casting of Sharik who gave up midway through leg 3 and threw a massive tantrum. Why didn't the casting directors foresee this in advance - what went so terribly wrong in the casting process that this actually slipped through the net? This was a huge mistake, you should never cast someone like that to fall apart so spectacularly on the race. She was just wrong for TAR.
When will we have our next season of TAR?
Well TAR S35 has already been filmed between October to November 2022, there is some information on it on Wikipedia if you're curious. I am somewhat disappointed in the route in that it is only around Latin America and nowhere else, so it's going to give any Spanish speaking teams a massive advantage since they only visit one English-speaking country and the rest are Latin American countries. This would make it rather similar to the old Latin American TAR from years ago when they visited only Latin American countries. But otherwise, there is still plenty in there to make TAR S35 interesting enough for you TAR fans. I will be keen to blog about that season given that I've been to many of the countries featured in S35, I speak Spanish fluently and I do have honorary Latino status since I do work for a Latin American company - yup, I have a Spanish speaking work environment. It is a badge of honor I wear with pride, I'm the only non-Latino in my company and I am the only person who doesn't speak Spanish as a mother tongue/first language; yet I am expected to just keep up with the rest at work and boy, I can talk for hours about what it is like being an English-speaker in a Spanish-speaking work environment. It's beyond just having to do everything in another language but adjusting to another culture as well. So we still don't have a broadcast date for TAR S35 but I'm guessing it will be at least in the spring of 2023. There will definitely be a TAR Canada next year as well and the casting has started for the next season of TAR Australia.
What other programmes are there to watch in the meantime if you like TAR?
These are just my personal recommendations but for what it is worth, check out the new season of The Mole USA 2022 on Netflix - this was a classic series that was very popular back in the 2000s where there were multiple versions of it running in so many countries. The format was originally started in Belgium way back in 1999 and it is highly popular in both Belgium and the Netherlands, but for a while there were versions of the franchise everywhere from the UK to Australia to Germany to France to the USA to Spain. Then it kinda ran out of steam, disappeared but the latest 2022 USA version was brought back by Netflix with a strong cast, big budget and shot in Australia. I have watched it and loved every moment of it. Then there's a great new series called The Traitors - again, another format imported from the Dutch speaking part of Europe The series is already popular in Belgium and the Netherlands, but I have watched the 2022 Australian version which was brilliant. I am currently watching the UK version and it is great, though I must say, it really pains me to watch it as I was offered a role in the pilot then pulled out when I could not get time off work to do it. I knew that if I didn't do the pilot, then my chances of being cast in season 1 was low. But I have been contacted for another programme and fingers crossed, I will get through the casting process and be able to get time off work to do it. If you do have other great reality TV programmes that you've enjoyed this year, then please let me know your recommendations!
Okay so that's it from me for this season, once again, it has been a pleasure sharing my thoughts with you on my favourite reality TV programme. Happy holidays and hopefully, this would have inspired you to read some of the other pieces I have written on my blog, especially the series I am currently writing, sharing my stories from my recent trip to Dubai. I'm spending Christmas in London and then the first week of January in Italy, skiing in the Dolomites. Keep on exploring this beautiful world my friends and be well. Feel free to leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
Hi Alex, are you enjoying the snow in London? Hope the blizzard didn't affect your commute and daily activities.
ReplyDeleteOh because I work for a Latin American company, my office is in Peru so I don't commute to Peru for work, I work from home. So the weather doesn't affect those of us who work from home, but I did get some skiing done yesterday: I don't know why people always view snow as such an inconvenience, I am a big kid in the snow. I even built a snow dog in my garden (a snow man is so unimaginative).
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DeleteThanks for sharing the pictures! The scenery is lovely. I enjoy the snow too but watching the reports from sky news, it seems the weather has impacted the air travel and logistics in UK.
ReplyDeleteMy bad. You probably mostly head out for gym class or groceries.
Yeah I get the feeling that bad news makes people watch the news more - so they focus on the bad side of snow weather. Sure there's some disruption to travel with flights being canceled as the airports are slow to clear the snow but if you head on out to the nearest park, you will see loads of kids having fun building snow men and having snow ball fights. I am a big kid when I went skiing in my local park with my two crocodiles and my panda. I told my hubby he could bring one kid but he insisted on taking two crocodiles, then his bag fell apart when we were out there so I was skiing with two crocs and a panda on my back - talk about being a big kid having a lot of fun in the snow! As for logistics, well you might turn up at the supermarket and realize, oh they have no cucumbers as the delivery was delayed, but you just get other kinds of vegetables instead. As for my daily routine, I do meet clients for meetings but otherwise it is mostly the supermarket and the gym that I go to on most days.
DeleteDo you remember the last time London had a white Christmas? I have the impression that it's normal to for central Europe to experience snow in the weeks leading up to, but it's rather rare to actually snow on Christmas day.
ReplyDeleteI have lived in London since 1997 but the only time since 1997 there was a white Christmas in London was 1999 and I spent that Christmas in Paris instead. But rather than rely on my memory, I just looked up the records online. I had a huge struggle with this with my mother a few years ago when I had to scream at her, "you are wrong, you are ignorant, you know nothing about weather and geography so just stop making fucking ridiculous assumptions and listen to me!" My mother made the assumption that at the start of winter, it would get colder until mid-winter, then as you approach spring, it would get warmer. NOT TRUE. So what are the chances of the 1st July being warmer than the 1st January? Yeah it will be 100%; What about the 1st September being warmer than the 1st January? Again, probably 99.99%. Then what if we go to the 1st November vs 1st January? That figure than falls to about 60% - like it will probably be warmer but I wouldn't be that sure. The closer the two dates are, the harder it will be to predict which day would be colder. Then what if we took two dates which are very close: would the 15th December be colder than the 7th December? My mother insisted that 100% 15th December would be colder and I had to say bullshit, you can't tell when the two days are that close together. For instance, it's going to drop to -6 this Thursday and it'll be the coldest day of the year then by next Monday, it will be +14 degrees as the wind will change direction. The northerly wind brings cold and snow, whilst if the southerly wind brings warm weather and rain. It's entirely down to wind direction and that's completely unpredictable which direction the wind will blow from on a certain day. The length of the day can play a part - ie. we have much longer days in the summer than the winter, so the sunshine can warm the earth up in the northern hemisphere during summer to create these warm days. But wind direction can determine whether I get -6 or +14 in the coming days. Sorry for the rant, having an uneducated mother who spouts bullshit every time she opens her mouth can be a frustrating experience.
DeleteNot at all. I very much appreciate the explanation and tapping on your "expertise" for a topic I don't know much about apart from experiencing a couple of winters during my time in Germany. And we have had snowfall as early as October!
ReplyDeleteRecall you planned to visit your family this year. Was there a change of plan due to work plus your acting commitments?
Sorry about that rant, allow me to just deal with it in a technical matter. There are two main factors that determine how cold/hot the day is: the amount of sunlight hours and the wind direction. In late June, the sun rises at 4 am in London and sets close to 10 pm, we get so much sunlight and when the sun shines on the ground for 18 hours a day, it warms it up a lot, so this summer we had 40.3 degrees, a brand new record for the UK. In the winter, the opposite happens, the sun rises at 8 am but sets at 3:30 pm, so when we have only 7.5 hours of sunlight a day, it is not enough to keep the land warm and the temperature can plummet during the long, cold nights, especially if there is little or no cloud cover. So already, we've had -17.3 degrees this week in Braemar, up north whilst in London we're expecting -6 tonight and into Thursday. So based on sunlight hours alone, yes summer is hotter than winter. But then from day to day, whether it rains or snows, whether it is hot or cold, that's mostly dependent on which direction the wind is coming from and thus I have also seen snow in October when we've had a massive blast of wind from the north and I've had shorts whether in February when we've had a blast of wind from the south. We will see a +20 degree shift in temperature from this week to next week because the wind is swinging around.
DeleteAs for Singapore, you know I could've (should've) gone in the 3 months I was between jobs - I left my old job in June and only started my new job on the 1st September. I had already done two long haul trips this year (Panama + DubaI/Abu Dhabi) along with plenty of other short haul European trips so I wasn't that desperate to travel to Singapore as I've fulfilled that desire to travel. As for seeing my family, sigh - where do I begin? My father doesn't wanna talk to me, I am on a Skype call with my sister and he walks past the screen, stares at it for a moment, says a word or two then walks away. My mother participates in the call sometimes but only says really stupid things every time she opens her mouth. My sister can sometimes say really really dumb shit that winds me up as well.
So let me give you an example of what my sister does: if I presented to you this piece of information, "I want to visit the museum this weekend, but I found out that the museum is closed on Sunday." So the logical conclusion would be that I would visit the museum on Saturday, right? It's not rocket science. But my sister would say something like, "oh then you must visit the museum on Saturday as it will be a wasted trip there on a Sunday," as if a) I've not worked it out myself already and b) I needed her help to work that out. And I just look at her like, I know you're stupid and I'm the cleverest child in the family, but please don't assume that just because you struggled to work that out that I need your help to work out something like that. OK, I just used that example to demonstrate how the answer is so freaking obvious that anyone with half a brain cell can work out the right answer, yet she does this thing which is so irritating whereby she feels that she must give good advice even in cases like the museum that's closed on Sundays when the answer is so obvious and simple that I already know the right answer. So instead of trying to tell me that I must plan to visit the museum on Saturday, she could have asked me questions like, "so what do you intend to see at the museum? Have you been to this museum before? What is this museum famous for? How much is the admission ticket or is it free? Do you think it is a good use of the tax payers' money to subsidize museums? etc" She could have easily engaged me on the topic of the museum in an intelligent manner instead of assuming that I needed her help to work out that if there museum is closed on Sunday, then I must visit on Saturday. I don't know how to put this nicely, I think my sister is quite stupid and it takes a lot of effort to work that out; but then she is also subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect and she thinks that everyone else would also struggle to work that out. It is this type of micro aggression conflict situations that make even a simple conversation with her over a mundane topic challenging. Normally if I encounter someone that stupid, I'd be like, you're an idiot, I'm not wasting my time with you and I'll never talk to you again. But if it is a family member, what do you do?
DeleteThus it wasn't that I couldn't go to Singapore due to work or acting or anything like that, I just couldn't bring myself to face my family because I've had a tough time at work this year having to change jobs. I just felt mentally and emotionally exhausted, I couldn't muster the strength to face their stupidity 24/7 in Singapore. Even just talking to them for 45 minutes during the weekend on Skype is already very, very testing and exhausting. I'm sorry if this makes me sound like a complete bastard but I just didn't have the patience for them given what hard work they can be. I've not visited Singapore since 2018 and you know what, I don't miss my family at all. I'm quite happy to get on with my life and not make them a part of my life. Sorry if that sounds heartless and unkind.
Thanks for your honest sharing. A lot has been going on, and it's definitely challenging even for you to transit to a new working environment where the official language isnt your top three (or four). Most people won't even have the courage put themselves in that situation. You deserve a good break. Sometimes it's just about timing. I'm sure there will be an opportunity to visit your family next year if you wish.
ReplyDeleteActually i have no excuse, I spent a lot of the summer at home, just studying Spanish all day and night - I could have done that from Singapore. It's not as if I have that many chances to practice my Spanish in London anyway, I was just studying online and could've taken my laptop with me to Singapore. I'll think about next year after I get through Christmas and we'll see. I'm pretty busy all the way through till spring at least before I can think about a trip to Singapore.
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