G.B.- I think you’re reading too deep into some of these tasks to consider them “luck-based.” It’s not luck whether or not a local helps you, it depends on how you approach them and how much charisma you have. Me personally, if I was a local who was asked for help, I’d 100% do it. As for the New York task, I’d say it wasn’t luck because one of the places mentioned in the song was Hawaii, and since Hawaiians have American passports, any American would count. It’s not producers’ fault only one team figured that out. Honestly the only “local assistance” task that I’d count as luck-based was in Russia when they had to find someone whose birthday was that day.
As for how it helps Regev & Helen...look, HaMerotz doing luck tasks before the pitstop is nothing new, and by my count there were only five this season (Hawaii, Colombia, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan 1, Thailand 2). Kyrgyzstan is debatable because it wasn’t just based on luck, but also how well one person could lead the other, as well as their knowledge of the country. HaMerotz 5 also had a lot of luck tasks before the pitstop (Italy 2, Namibia 2, Vietnam, Cambodia), and there were no celebrity teams on that season. It’s shady that Helen found the right panella on the first try, but I do want to point out that Regev said in a confessional that he was waiting for her to find the right umbrella because she always had the luck on those tasks...only for him to be the one who found it. Either way I’m fed up with them and how they won the Return Ticket with manipulative editing, and they might be worse winners than Jessica & Cody, should that dreaded possibility happen.