Amazing Race Season 30

That’s one area where I feel the show has definitely gotten better. I don’t miss the Airport drama at all. That was always my least favorite part of TAR every season early on. Now they hardly have any scenes inside airports, and I love that. Just put everyone on the same flight and forget the airport scenes, is what I’d been thinking even early on, and that seems to be exactly what they’ve done in these recent 3 seasons that I’ve seen now that I’ve come back to the show.

@Rock8man - I couldn’t disagree more. Airport luck (earlier flight gets delayed, etc.) was just a crucial to the race as taxi luck, and I don’t like that it has apparently been eliminated.

I don’t care if they eliminate airport luck or not, I just don’t want to watch it. The less time spent in airports the better.

Good episode this week. I liked them, but I was glad to see the Alpha male team leave the race. They almost caught up despite being U-turned, I think this type of team is so hard to beat at the end. Teams should try to eliminate them early like this if they can.

I love the slam against flat earthers this week. I wonder if any flat-earthers are upset about this episode?

Pretty sure they are just upset about everything.

I loved Well Strung, fun twist on the Alpha Male team.

I loved that episode so much. There was just so much to love.

First of all, when Evan (female member of Team Yale) & one of the twins came from behind and refused to help the other team, and she said in the little interview that helping someone has to be mutually beneficial, and there was no benefit to them, and you just have to be able to say no to people, and I have no problems saying no. Awesome! And then on the other side, Henry (from Team Yale) was being all badass with the winch and getting their trapped vehicle out. I fell in love with Team Yale at that point.

I’ve always loved Jen from Team Extreme, and I loved her even more in this leg because of her attitude and her inadvertently, instinctively helping people, and her awesome dancing.

And oh my god, that roadblock at the end was awesome. The song had such an infectious beat, and it was so fun to listen to. I was dancing along with them. When the twins had their first attempt, I was laughing so hard, I could feel my face get flush. That was one of the best tasks I’ve ever seen on the Amazing Race.

Next week: Another two hour episode? Are they trying to rush through this season? I don’t mind. I noticed during the episode that Survivor Ghost Island starts on Feb 28th. Maybe they’re trying to finish this season before then?

The other team got so immediately salty over that but if I’m on Evan’s team and I’ve just arrived at the challenge it seems completely reasonable to say “we want to give it a shot first and if we have issues we can collaborate.”

To me it felt like the editing played that conflict up a bit for dramatic purposes. Which I sort of understand but also hate.

I did like that song though.

It gave Evan a lot of personality for the first time, in my mind. Before that, I only really remembered them for that head-to-head where they almost lost, and the way they fought with each other. I love the way her and Henry fight.

“I feel like you’re not really listening to what I’m saying”
“I hear what you’re saying, but I feel like you’re being unfair”
etc.

Edit: Anyway, I’m a Team Yale fan all the way now. I hope they win the whole thing. On the other hand, if Jen and Kristi win it, I wouldn’t be upset either, since Jen is the best.

Last week’s episode was really great. I was so happy that Team Yale wasn’t eliminated, and that Jen was still in the race too. It was a shame to see the Lifeguard couple leave because of losing a passport though, it’s always sucky to see a team leave for those kinds of reasons.

And then this week, in Hong Kong, I was sad to see Team Indy leave, but again, I was happy Team Yale and Jen were both still in the race for the final leg in San Francisco.

I have to admit that I really liked that last leg. Having a really physically demanding roadblock, followed by one of the hardest last roadblocks in the race, I just like seeing that. I don’t like it when the last tasks are something teams just speed through, and the order of the race in the last leg never changes. There have been so many final episodes of TAR where the team that left the airport first seems to get ahead and stay ahead for the whole leg because the final tasks are so easy.

Anyway, I was pretty disappointed that neither of my favorites won the race, but it was still a great leg, and a great season.

EDIT: By the way, I love this super-fast way of getting through a season. Next week in the same time slot: Survivor: Ghost Island!

Disappointed with the team that won. I agree that the challenges were good.

We were disappointed with the team that won too. It was our least favorite of the three remaining teams. However, the marine was a badass on all of the tasks and got everything done. One of the things we didn’t like was that Jessica didn’t seem to do anything on any of the challenges, so it was at least fitting that she came through with the last challenge at the end. I give her credit for that, especially given who she was up against. And then it also seemed like the two of them were very supportive of one another and didn’t argue or attack one another when things got tough, which was also very impressive. I appreciated on the singing/dancing challenge, when he was super frustrated and didn’t want to rehearse anymore, she just looked at him and gave him a big, passionate kiss! I asked my wife why she doesn’t do that to me whenever I get frustrated and she reminded me that we’ve been together for 20 years and aren’t in the “honeymoon” phase of our relationship like they are! Can’t argue with that…

Rather dissappointed that there is such a huge gap between seasons these days. But I guess the ratings aren’t that great anymore and CBS is basically just using this to plug some holes for failed shows.

Suspected that season 31 might be the last and its been cancelled, however a bit of googling seems to reveal that season 32 is already in the can, so we have at least another 2 races to watch…

I stumbled across a much more stripped down “realistic” version of the show on BBC. Its called “Race across the world” and Episodes 1 & 2 are still available on iplayer, with another 4 episodes still to come.

Could you travel to Singapore for the price of an air ticket, without stepping on board an aeroplane?

Such is the premise of BBC Two’s new competition Race Across The World, which sees five couples attempt to make their way to Asia without flying, all while battling to complete the journey in the shortest time.

Sound easy? Try doing it without the help of the Internet. The contestants will be required to take things offline and give up their smartphones before embarking on the challenge.

The five couples will be tasked with travelling to Singapore on land and sea in the fastest time possible.

They’ll have to relinquish use of their smartphones and credit cards, and will be presented with £1,329 in cash, the price of an airfare to Singapore. If they use up their money, they’ll have to earn some more.

The exact path that they take will be down to the contestants and their ingenuity, but they will have to pass through a series of checkpoints, the first of which is Delphi in Greece.

Basically the show focuses a lot on all the nitty gritty that you don’t get to see on TAR. Such as budget discussions and wildly varying and branching routes…

Really hope it catches on and there’ll be further seasons in the future!

That sounds neat, yeah. I love the “no air travel” bit.

TAR always had the “no smart phones, no credit cards” but people got around it lately by asking people to use their smart phones and in some cases even promising to pay them later after the race.

I don’t really mind the borrowed smart phone use, as that crutch is soo ubiquitous these days its understandable for people to just resort to that.

What I found interesting in this version is the more grounded approach to where to spend the night and the pro & con discussions of various ideas. Also nice NOT to have incessant music that TAR plasters over everything.

Yeah, that’s something I also miss from the first season of TAR. The first season seems to so bare nowadays if you go back. There’s long stretches with no music in the early episodes. I thought it got better during the season due to good use of music, used in the right circumstances, but starting in Season 2 they overproduced the thing and made it into constant music all the time.

I’ve been really enjoying Season 31.

Episode 4 aired last night. I love the way they started last night in Vietnam. They teams get to their first task, slide down the hill towards a polar bear, and one of the contestants wipes out the polar bear. That was shown with minimal music and audio cues, and then the show transitioned right into the main theme for The Amazing Race as it showed the credits. Beautiful.

It’s really nostalgic seeing Colin & Christie from Season 5 again. That was my first season watching the show, so having them as villains was the highlight of the show that season. They’re now mellow people who are easy to root for. I hope they win this season.

I’m not reading your post because I’m 2 episodes behind.

I love Amazing Race but it’s sort of sad that the contestant pool has now devolved into featuring people from CBS shows. Maybe that was true before but it’s a lot more blatant now. Does this mean Amazing Race is on its last legs? I think so.

Yeah, I’m fully expecting this to be the last season if they don’t get stellar ratings this season. At least they’re airing right after Survivor this season, instead of being moved around the schedule like they normally are.

Colin & Christie are back? Wish I could see it. We don’t have access to US network television. I used to be able to stream the Race & Survivor for free, but now CBS makes you pay for All-Access to get anything at all.

Fuck you, CBS.

Stunt casting has been part of the Amazing Race for some time now (and on Survivor, don’t know about Big Brother as I don’t watch it). More telling is the way CBS has moved Amazing Race around and delayed seasons. The productions costs must be quite a bit given the need to film all over the world. Is the current ratings enough tot sustain it?

In any case, we do have season 31 - Battle of the CBS Reality TV stars. I’m rooting for Team Fun (Becky and Floyd). They just seem like a great fun team (and competent).