Tag Archives: Pit Stop

November 29, 2009 · 11:33 pm

The Amazing Race Season 15 – “Episode 11 (Czech Republic)”

“It Starts with an ‘F,” That’s All I’m Saying!”

November 29th, 2009

Do you know what word starts with F? Fail.

Before tonight’s episode of “The Amazing Race,” where a team had a Speed Bump that I thought would be erased by bunching within the first ten minutes, I expected to be writing thoughts on how annoying I found the manipulation of the race in terms of controlling competition.

However, through a strange and unthinkable series of circumstances, I am instead writing about how one of the racers was so convinced of this sort of producer intervention that they risked the entire race on being able to predict their next move.

They bet zig, the race zagged, and the final three was set in stone after only thirty five minutes of a frustrating, if fascinating, hour of television.

It’s an hour of television, though, that you won’t be able to find a review of here: I’m filling in for Dan Fienberg over at HitFix tonight, which means that my review can be found over at their fine establishment:

Recap: The Amazing Race — “It Starts with an ‘F,’ That’s All I’m Saying!” @ HitFix.com

The Amazing Race Season 15 – “Episode 10 (Czech Republic)”

“We’re Not Working with Anybody, Ever, Anymore!”

November 22nd, 2009

When we get this close to the end of The Amazing Race, the show’s interest in its characters begins to shift. At certain points, the show allows the racers to appear as comrades, laughing together and competing against the race itself more against each other. However, by the time you get to the final four teams, the show wants every chance to pit the teams against one another in a fight to get to the end, trying to breed the sort of competitive fire that you want to see at this stage in the game.

And while most of the google hits from last week’s post seemed to indicate that the biggest piece of news from the leg was crotch censorship, the real story was the way the producers turned Dan and Flight Time’s altercation into a sign that, from this point forward, things are personal. In reality, the clip was only really edited this way (Big Easy clarified, as they did at the start of this leg, that they had no personal vendetta), but what it does signal is that all bets are officially off.

And this week, as the teams head to the Czech Republic, we realize that this season these teams are perfectly built in order to enter into this competitive stage. There is no team in this race that is what one would call a “feel good” team, and the result is that we’re effectively watching to see how well these teams are able to embrace this competitive spirit. And while this might not fit into a narrative of personal achievement or self-realization, it does fit into what makes these final legs of the race suspenseful: all of these teams are both ultimately capable of being competitive (athletic and strong-minded), but they also tend to create an enormous amount of drama in the process.

As someone who likes this competitive side of the race, I’m pleased by this, but I can see how someone looking for more of a fan favourite finish to the race may be disappointed.

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Tagged as Brian and Ericka, CBS, Competition, Czech Republic, Detour, Don Giovanni, Entertainment, Episode 10, Episode 9, Flight Time and Big Easy, Globetrotters, Meghan and Cheyne, Non-Elimination, Opera, Phil Keoghan, Pit Stop, Prague, Reality TV, Roadblock, Sam and Dan, Stolen Taxi, Television, Tiny Mandolin, Train, TV, Vintage Praga

October 12, 2009 · 12:11 am

The Amazing Race Season 15 – “Cambodia”

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“Sean Penn, Cambodia, Here We Come!”

October 11th, 2009

The job of being an editor on The Amazing Race is really a tough one. In each episode, you need to turn the unsuspenseful into the suspenseful, and emphasize the zany in the mundane. Of course, it helps that often The Amazing Race is suspenseful, and that it is often extremely zany, and that the cast of characters involved can often enhance both of these elements. As such, it is likely every editor’s dream to receive a team like Zev and Justin, who deciding that Phnom Penh is actually Sean Penn, and who strike up a hilarious and fantastic relationship with their cab driver Thierry.

However, the editors also have to come to terms with how, precisely, they’re going to send someone home. Last week, Marcy and Ron got sent home after struggling with a Detour (they were just too slow, plain and simple), so Marcy got a lot of talking heads about her father’s time in Vietnam. The episode was a sendoff, albeit it a slight one, a last hurrah. In other instances, the editors love playing up irony or the impact of a single mistake, and sometimes they even play a game of Schadenfreude.

But as the teams race through Cambodia, the editors have the toughest job of all: turning triumph into adversity in a split second. It’s a chance of pace the episode handles with the grace of a newborn giraffe, heightening my sympathy for the difficulty of the editors’ job while also lowering my interest in this season, all in one fell swoop.

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Tagged as Cambodia, Detour, Editing, Elimination, Entertainment, Episode 3, Flight Time and Big Easy, Harlem Globetrotters, Lance and Keri, Leg, Passport, Phil Keoghan, Phnom Penh, Pit Stop, Roadblock, Sean Penn, Sean Penn Cambodia, Season 15, Television, Thierry, TV, Zev and Justin