Amazing Race Season 30

This starts tonight at 8/7c. I’m pretty excited. Last season really got me back into the show.

Holy crap, THIRTY SEASONS?!

They’ll hit 75 seasons later this year with all the country spinoffs.

Watched the first episode with the family, we all loved that ending.

I was really surprised at the team that got eliminated, since they had almost no screen time in this episode. That almost never happens. They’re getting tricky with their editing! :)

Also, I’m really glad that the penalty didn’t cost that other team elimination.

I had no idea. Thanks for the heads up

The team that was penalized was pissed. I thught Phil was gonna get slugged.

Yeah, I watched the show last night and I don’t really recall! It was the mini-models, wasn’t it? Weren’t they fighting it out with the Goat Yoga ladies?

Yep. They showed the Goat Yoga ladies and the NBA players so much, so I figured one of those teams would be out, but surprise, it was the mini-models, who didn’t get much air time during the episode.

I was convinced that the NBA players would be out on their penalty.

The Belgium tasks were very interesting, I thought. I was very jealous. I’d love to see how that old printing press worked, and how diamonds were appraised in more detail like the racers got to.

What did you guys think of the new addition to the race: The head-to-head?

Even though it changes the end of a leg in a pretty fundamental way, I kind of like it. I just wish they’d picked a more interesting head-to-head. Though I guess what they chose was good in that it didn’t necessarily just require you to be the most physically fit.

The head to head has been used in Amazing Race seasons for other countries like Amazing Race Canada. The placement in this leg wasn’t as impacting as others I’ve seen. When placed in the middle of the leg, it can eliminate a big lead built up by a team as the team waits for the next one to show up so they can go had to head.

I didn’t like the new head-to-head challenge. It was hard to tell in this instance what the time frames were between teams, but this has the very real chance to penalize a team because the team behind them is doing so poorly. Imagine a scenario where the other 9 teams were all fairly close when reaching the head-to-head, but that last team is 1, 2, 5 or even more hours behind (and we’ve seen Races in the past where this occurred). Now that #9 team has to wait and wait and wait, and then maybe lose the head to head, which eliminates them simply because the team behind was so bad.

Tony

I don’t like the head-to-head. It’s like someone decided to make TAR more like Survivor

I wasn’t a huge fan of the head-to- head either. I’d rather see teams get put up against a hard set time, and required to beat it or keep trying. Many road blocks in previous seasons are made easier and easier on each attempt, resulting in simply just seeing how fast someone can re-do the task until it get to the “ultra easy mode” I’d rather wish they didn’t make those THAT easy.

Well, the leg after the head-to-head was more traditional Amazing Race with taxi driver communications problems, missing the obvious, and forgetting the gnome requiring backtracking. Unfortunately. the preview shows that another head-to-head is scheduled.

I was so happy at that ending. And also surprised, since they have a 2 hour episode next week.

You’d think a non-elimination leg would be at the center of a two hour episode, not the one before that. I guess it’s likely that two teams are leaving next week.

I like the basketball players. It’s a shame they’re such awful racers.

Yeah, awful racers.

The two hour France episode was great though. I wish they’d have more challenges like that, where you’re expected to learn how to sail with no training. That’s pretty hardcore. It did seem like a huge former basketball player did have a pretty big disadvantage there though.

This season isn’t resonating with me very much. For unknown reasons, I’m not particularly interested in any of the teams. Plus the head-to-head challenges really blow. I understand they’re trying to mix it up, but that’s an idea that needs to be jettisoned at the first opportunity.

I watch the Amazing Race Canada, and the head-to-head battle (called a face-off because hockey) has been used in multiple seasons so this might stick around. In the Canadian edition, these head-to-head challenges were placed earlier in the leg and not used as the last challenge before the pit stop.

I dislike these head-to-head challenges because it negates a lot of the work that teams put into building a time advantage. We often see a couple of teams working hard because they know they are likely to be in last and second to last place. With the placement at the end of the leg, they can work as hard as they can on the penultimate challenge to save themselves only to find that the 30 minute lead they managed to get by hard work completely useless as they sit an wait for the last place team to arrive.

With a placement in the middle of a leg, a team that has opened up a big league gets screwed big time as the lead completely evaporates through no fault of their own. Thy get further screwed as the time they wait for the next team to arrive. That time advantage they built up through their efforts is transferred to the team that just beat them.

On a different note, it seems to me that more and more of the travel decisions are being taken out of the hands of the racers. The race structure is set up to put teams onto the same flight more often in recent seasons.