Sunday, March 20, 2011

I AM A PALEONTOLOGIST -- THAT'S WHO I AM, THAT'S WHO I AM, THAT'S WHO I AM:  Not so amazing, Race.  I did not like that bunch, nor the impact of a Double U-Turn so late in a leg. I appreciated the complexity of that final task, mind you, but it didn't exactly feel like "this is something that locals do all the time."

Next week: another Luke meltdown. Oh, joy.

22 comments:

  1. Heather K10:40 PM

    I really needed Kent and Vyxin's penalty to be longer.  I don't think that I needed it to be like 4 hours or something, but I needed it to be at least an hour and probably closer to two.  It felt absurd that it was 30 minutes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm very annoyed with the Cowboys for telling Kent and Vyxin where that route marker was.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Meghan7:58 AM

    Heather K, I agree--30 minutes seemed like a slap on the wrists.  I realize that, in situations like that, the loss of time and having to scramble and all that is more of a penalty.  But this was 2 legs designed with a big enough bunch that everyone should have caught up.  The penalty needed to be bigger.

    So, so glad the redheads are gone.  Jaime has no ability to cope with stress.  She's just unpleasant.

    ReplyDelete
  4. We spent 8 days in Kunming last year, and this leg was ridiculous. There was so much more that they could have done. To be fair, the solar water heaters ARE on the top of every building in the city - we kept asking what they were - but they could have shown a couple of shots of the city to show how prevelant they are (and sort of explain the task better). But going all the way to Stone Forest just to assemble a puzzle? And a few blocks from the arch where they got the detour clue is the Bird and Flower Market...the perfect place for one of the usual find a clue inside a hard to navigate foreign market. It's stuffed with tiny stalls and very little (if any) English spoken - we had hoped to see them attempt something there.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Professor Jeff8:44 AM

    Not much to add re: the Goths' undeserved survival, but just had to jump in with a huge "like" for Adam's post title. We saw TMBG at the Festival of Science & Arts in London last summer, and they were brilliant, performing most of "Here Comes Science" and delighting kids and adults alike. Plus, these amazing things flew around Royal Festival Hall before, during, and after the show, adding to the geektasticity of the day.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The question becomes what is the "appropriate" penalty in this situation.  Normally, it's more or less "time saved as a result of the rule breaking."  Here, either no time was saved as a result of the rule breaking (teams got on an earlier flight by following the rule), or you read the rule as "must take the same flight the following day," in which case it's a 16ish hour penalty, which would have been auto-elimination, and they want to avoid for drama reasons.

    I also expect the "must take this flight" last week was less due to "limited availability" (as Kynt and Vyxsin demonstrated, there were alternative flights) than either to avoid Team 1 getting a massive lead by making the flight the previous night and getting at least some sort of bunch or due to production lead time--getting crews and challenges in place for the double leg.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Heather K9:52 AM

    I agree that the questions is what penalty is "appropriate" and i have no argument other than in my gut this penalty did not feel appropriate.  And maybe that is because they had a catch up bunch in between.   If there had been two trains to Kunming or the train had left close enough that it was reasonable that not everyone would make it onto the train, I might have felt the appropriateness.

    The bunching is really beginning to get to me this season (well of course except when it really helps out Zev and Justin).

    ReplyDelete
  8. Exactly. To me, betweent the penal activity and the extent of delay, they shouldn't have been allowed to re-bunch at all.  Better: force them to a delay at the other end of the train, to make them an obligatory double-U target?

    ReplyDelete
  9. J. Bowman10:16 AM

    I did want to point out the correct usage of the U-turn by every team that actually had a choice in how to use it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. As well as the correct use of the Express Pass, though I think truly optimal usage is "start the task, and use it once the last team arrives if you're not close to finishing."

    ReplyDelete
  11. Genevieve11:29 AM

    It looked like they did find a clue in the flower market, but they aired very little footage of it.  There certainly was a crowded market full of different kinds of flowers with a clue box in it, and Jaime and Cara were shown there.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Genevieve11:31 AM

    I definitely agree that that's the optimal usage of the Express Pass.  I think they used it because they wanted to be first, and I was kind of glad that the cowboys beat them there.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Loved the feature of the puzzle task in which asking the judge "Is it safe?" apparently equated to "Is it right?"  Or maybe that was just one team that timed their question just right. 

    I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly the Globetrotters got done with the doll placement task, seemed like that type of attention to detail had tripped them up before. 

    I agree with Heather K on the bunching issue this season, but maybe it's just more noticeable because there seems to be so much spread between teams this season. 

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hannah Lee12:30 PM

    They might have been trying to maximize the time they gained using it, to give them more of a head start in the next leg.  

    Otherwise, I think Adam's "optimal usage" is correct.   Especially since this season, any time advantaged gained by finishing first is inevitably going to get neutralized by some annoying bunch.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Adam C.12:54 PM

    And I'd just like to say (since all the K&V and J&C and Express Pass and U-Turn and leg construction stuff has already been said) that I absolutely loved the impromptu 3-on-3 game during that last bunch.  Hail, Trotters!

    ReplyDelete
  16. gretchen3:07 PM

    The Amazing Race doesn't always make me want to go to the places they visit, but I thought the last two episodes in Lijiang and Kunming were gorgeous.  I think Yunnan Province just got onto my list of places to visit before I die.

    ReplyDelete
  17. alex s.3:35 PM

    I wanted K&V's penalty to be longer because I want massive, unprecidented incompetence to have at least some effect on something called a "race".  Two full episodes and the whole thing seemed to come down to artificial gimmick at the end.  (I grant that the cheerleaders could have handled their u-turn better, and it didn't have to be the death notice that it was, but it still seemed like a pretty cheap way decide a leg.)

    I liked the pick-up game as well, but partially because the Globetrotters and the Cowboys are the only teams this season I have any interest in spending more time with.

    ReplyDelete
  18. The flower market that they went to is more of a wholesale place...the Bird and Flower Market is a different place - it's a public market with lots of tiny stalls stuffed into it. Really cool place to poke around - we bought unique pieces of jade there. Kunming is a really pretty town, and the area is beautiful. It's up in the mountains - I think they said it has the same elevation as Denver - so the air quality is significantly better than the other places we went to in China.

    ReplyDelete
  19. mhgatti10:35 AM

    The 'Trotters, both during the show and in online extras, kept trumpeting the fact that they survived - not just a U-turn - a DOUBLE U-turn. But if anything, having another team in the same situation as them made it easier to survive, correct?

    ReplyDelete
  20. Yes, except that they were the second team to be U-Turned.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Marsha1:02 PM

    Agree with everyone who wanted to see Kynt and Vyxsin gone for their massive incompetence, but what really irked me about the penalty is that they didn't have to serve it until the end of the leg. Knowing you have a penalty, and not telling anyone, is a really big advantage. More importantly, why didnt' they have to serve out the penalty right then and there? They should be put at an immediate disadvantage regarding the UTurn coming up. Sure, with the bunch it didn't matter, but they didn't know that (and it shouldn't have been that way anyway).

    Stupid leg.

    ReplyDelete