I wasnt sure where to stick this? found it while searching around for TAR 9 spoilers ~
The Amazing Race
From the Introduction
MOMENTS WE SEE AGAIN AND AGAIN
1) Bunching Points
First cited by the fan site Television Without Pity, these are the inevitable bottlenecks that slow racers down for hours at a time, and allow teams that have fallen hours and hours behind to catch up. Whenever a team with a four-hour advantage shows up at the airport at 3 AM, only to discover that the first flight out is at noon, they’re likely doomed to watch in dismay as every remaining team shows up in time to level the playing field in the morning. Other bunching points are bus stations, public buildings, and attractions only open during specified hours. Bunching points are either annoyances or godsends, depending on what teams you’re rooting for. Colin of Team Extreme still complains that his team would have arrived days ahead of everybody else, had the Bunching Points in Race Five not continually rescued the teams in the rear of the pack. He’s right about that. But it’s way preferable to a race where the ultimate winner is a foregone conclusion by Episode Two.
2) Hurry Up For Nothing
This the flip side of a Bunching Point: the frantic dash from place to place, involving reckless driving, exhausting chases through city streets, loud demands to pass that other car up ahead, and angry recriminations between teammates over a few wasted seconds, all of which eventually turn out to be entirely irrelevant as the destination turns out to be a place to…sit around and wait. This is most nastily amusing for viewers when we already know the outcome, and get to see the rear-echelon racers run themselves ragged for no good reason.
3) Locals laughing at the silly Americans
Let’s be clear about this. Americans may be great folks, from a country that has pioneered more fields of endeavor than we have the space to enumerate here, but the same qualities that have made us world leaders have also made us awfully full of ourselves, and awfully easy to laugh at when we’re made to do something beneath our dignity. So the crowds that form whenever Amazing Racers make fools of themselves in public are laughing not only at the silly people doing silly things, but also, specifically, at the representatives of a stuffed-shirt republic having some of the self-importance taken out of their tires. For many people around the world, there’s a deep satisfaction in watching these Americans act like clowns, especially when (with only two exceptions, so far), few of them have actually been clowns. This schadenfreude is even more delicious for folks toiling at their respective places of employment (I.E. brick and sausage factories, among other things), watching Americans attempt the same work and screw up royally.
4) The Really Bad Cab Driver
The Racer definition of a Really Bad Cab Driver is not necessarily the same as the real world’s. After all, real world passengers don’t get screwed out of a million dollars if their cabbie slows down at yellow lights. Racers have been known to scream at cab drivers for allowing other cabs to pass them, and for having insufficient command of English in countries where that is not an official language. But these are merely Frustrating Cab Drivers. Kris, of Race 6’s Team Smiley, who never lost her patience at any other moment, once told a dawdling cabbie that he really sucked. But that’s a merely Under-Par Cab Driver. A genuinely Really Bad Cab Driver is one who tells you he knows where he’s going, takes your money, and then drops you a zillion miles out of your way at a destination with no even coincidental resemblance to the one you asked for. Cabbies have driven Amazing Racers in the wrong direction, to the wrong airport, to restricted areas where they will be detained, and (in one memorable case) into the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. This can be more than fatal to the outcome of the contest. This can be downright dangerous.
5) Bad Vocabularies
Racers have shown some odd gaps in their vocabularies. Among the words, printed in clue envelopes, that have completely stymied one or more players (in extreme cases, all of them) include “skivvies,” “vertigo,” “stein,” “scarab,“ “gnome,” “silo,” “relic,“ and “hangar.”
6) Bad Geography
Racers have also shown some gaps in geographical knowledge. Brandon didn’t know anything about the Philippines except that it was “An Island.“ Jonathan Baker, (in an out-take) once forgot what country he was in and complimented a native greeter, in France, by telling him how much he liked Italy. (Blame him for this and you forget that an entire movie was once based on this kind of confusion: IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM.) Mom Weaver was unclear on whether Pennsylvania was a State, and identified Pontchartrain as one of the Great Lakes. Several teams from the first season appeared to have never heard of the Arch De Triomphe. It’s no great insult to these folks to say that nobody ever said participation in the Race required them to be rocket scientists. On the other hand, a few racers of exceptional erudition have often made the dumbest, most teeth-rattling mistakes, so it evens out.
7) Vomiting
Most in evidence during eating challenges, and never more harrowing than Race 6’s soup-eating challenge in Budapest. Alas, one couple the author tried to hook on the show only caught two episodes belonging to two separate races, happened to catch the two most serious vomiting incidents in the show‘s history, and now believes (despite many assurances to the contrary) that the show is only a panorama of piggy Americans hurling their cookies abroad. It really isn’t. We promise.
Phil, Pausing
Phil is a master of the dramatic pause, even if he sometimes goes overboard. Whenever a team arrives, sweaty and flushed, at the Pit Stop, he looks grim and says something like, “Blondie and Dagwood?” Pause, Pause, Pause. Continents rise from the sea. The White House welcomes several newly elected Presidents. Dinosaurs come back. “You’re the Last Team to Arrive.” Pause. Pause. Pause. We use another TV to watch the entirety of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. “The good news is that this is a non-elimination leg, and that you’re still in the race.” Teams have been known to mock Phil during his pauses, telling him to just spit it out already. It has been noted that if Phil raises his eyebrow before speaking, the team can probably count on racing another day.
9) Phil, letting the mask slip
Phil is supposed to be impartial, but his mask slips from time to time. He’s been known to break up at the antics of some teams and get teary-eyed when dismissing others. Once or twice, he’s even gone frosty with annoyance. He seemed to dread giving the bad news to the children involved in Race 8. These brief glimpses into the inner Phil are on the show’s enduring teases.
10) Phil, Pointing
Phil usually stands at the mat, projecting calm and gravitas, impassive as any judge as the teams rush toward him. Hotly-contested legs sometimes show him pointing, at some indeterminate horizon, presumably at his first sight of contestants coming into view. Only a churl would suggest that some of this pointing may be staged or, thanks to editing, not necessarily connected to the Racers we’re supposed to believe he’s pointing at.
11) Common-Sense Follies
Contestants asked to share their race strategy for the benefit of viewers at home often say things that belong in the “Duh” category, to wit, things like, “Our strategy this time out is to make sure we don’t get lost.” That’s good. “Our strategy is to perform the tasks as quickly as possible and get to the finish line as soon as we can.” That’s also good. “As long as there’s one other team behind us, we’re not last.” Gee, that’s also good. “We’re looking for a farm, so it’s probably in farm country.“ (Yes, somebody actually says that.) Brilliant. Make a drinking game out of taking a shot any time some team presents something mind-bogglingly obvious as if they just figured it out right now, and you’ll likely be three sheets to the wind by the end of a typical episode.
12) The Footrace
These are legs so close that the difference between elimination and staying in the game comes down to a sprint. In extreme cases, racers quick on their feet can catch up and overcome teams with a substantial advantage.
13) The Woeful Wrong Turn
We all know this one from our everyday lives: missing a critical exit, and driving on obliviously, sometimes for an hour or more, until the sheer unfamiliarity of your surroundings gradually forces you to the conclusion that you’ve made a serious mistake. The Virginia Girls experienced a particularly awful example of this in Race 7. After coming in first on the previous leg, they set off for the Andes, miss the turnoff quickly found by every team, and are next scene meandering along a beach, wondering when they’re going to spot the Andes. Missing one of the world’s great mountain ranges may strike you as a particularly embarrassing way to go down, but let’s be honest: you’ve been at least that lost at least once. You just didn’t have a million dollars riding on it, and millions of viewers screeching at you for being stupid.
14) Crowded Trains In India
Some Indian commuter trains are so crowded, requiring passengers to force themselves past dense walls of humanity just to enter and exit, that American contestants often find themselves pushed to the limits of their personal comfort zones. On the several races where this proved a factor, some racers had to fight off surges of claustrophobic panic. Several of the women complained of groping and other inappropriate contact. Some ladies who proved exceptionally strong in other circumstances felt genuinely menaced here In subjecting racers to this particular obstacle not just once, but several times, the show highlights the differing standards that separate the relatively coddled United States from the more teeming environments elsewhere. It’s a challenge less fun, but considerably more enlightening, than the Bungi-Jumps marking the race at its dizziest.
15) Worst to First
Any teams that begin a leg bringing up the rear are under extreme pressure to make up lost ground, lest they find themselves facing elimination. The Fast Forward Option, which was much more prominent in Races 1-4, provided many such teams a chance to change their luck, and claim whatever first-place prize Phil happens to be handing out today. Exceptional navigation skills, and luck with airline reservations, have accomplished much the same. A few teams so far behind that they seemed to be living on borrowed time, have been able to change their luck so completely that they ultimately went on to win the million dollars.
16) First to Worst
Teams that have been riding high go on to have a spectacularly bad day, miss every possible connection, blow the tasks royally, get lost, bicker, make mistakes, and find themselves eliminated at the end of the same day they began prematurely counting their winnings. Ah, fate.
17) We’re So Fat
Though the Race favors folks who don’t tire easily, players of less-than-ideal physical fitness have been known to make it into the Top Three. Sometimes, making good decisions is more critical than being able to run a quick mile. That said, older or fatter racers, of the sort who grow winded climbing steep hills, do note the contrast between themselves and the more athletic types around them. Sometimes they’re defiant, sometimes they’re despairing, sometimes they’re apologetic, and sometimes they’re downright amused. The Air Traffic Controllers and Race 8’s Wally Bransen are among the several who bring up the subject at least once an episode. But they’re not alone. There are also the folks who complain --
18) We’re So Stupid
Teams that get lost easily, or have trouble reading instructions, or who make dumbfounding errors in the heat of the moment, tend to realize it, and often point it out, with attitudes ranging from philosophical to furious. Sometimes they’re not as dumb as they think they are. As in real life, the most reliable way to measure degrees of dumbness is to note how rarely the truly, profoundly dumb think of themselves that way. (On THE AMAZING RACE, the dumbest people don’t bemoan their own inability to read street directions in foreign countries. They call the streets stupid instead.) For those who simply make a lot of mistakes, or are too intent on racing to stop and think, calling themselves stupid is just another mark of frustration. One can imagine them, later watching their real or imagined ineptitude from the safety of their couches at home, still shaking their heads and chanting, “Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.”
19) We’re the Best Team Ever
This may not be entirely fair to bring up, as all teams are encouraged to tell the cameras why they’re the team to beat, and few folks are going to enter this competition saying something like, “Our ultimate plan is to drag our droopy butts across a handful of episodes, whining all the way, before expiring in humiliation by Leg Three.” Everybody, even the long shots, says they’re going to win, even if it’s hard to come up with a good reason why they’d think so. But some teams actually take this rah-rah spirit past the realm of reasonable confidence into the realm of entitlement. They’ll talk about how they’re the only team that knows what it’s doing and how all the other teams suck. Few teams that behave in this manner are right. Some, like Team First Out, go down fast. Others, like the Guidos, stumble in some spectacular, jaw-dropping manner. Of all the teams that ever used “We’re the Best, and Everybody Else Sucks” rhetoric, Race 5’s Team Extreme and Race 7’s Team Truman Show came closest to factual accuracy. They were the Teams to Beat. And they both lost.
20) Where is Everybody?
Imagine you’re on a race around the world, that regularly takes you through airports and bus stations. Imagine that you’ve spent the whole day running your own course and have yet to encounter any of the other teams. This may mean you’re in the lead. It may also mean that you’re hours and hours behind, or on a one-way road to nowhere. Either way, isolation robs you of any meaningful reference point, and fosters an uncertainty that has led some racers to wildly incorrect assumptions about their own standing in the pack. Feelings of invincibility war, moment by moment, with feelings of imminent doom. It’s no wonder Racers express such relief upon spotting their competitors on the road: if they’re doing badly, then at least somebody else is in the same boat. This phenomenon is particularly irksome in cases where multiple teams find themselves sitting around at one bunching point or another, for what may be hours, while one much-feared team remains missing in action. Has that team taken the Fast Forward? Have they found a shortcut? Are they already chilling at this leg’s Pit Stop, sipping margaritas while they hatch their nefarious schemes? Or are they stuck in traveler hell, somewhere far behind elsewhere else, having misinterpreted their clue or missed the last train out? It’s no wonder that, when such folks show up, looking much worse for wear, even their bitterest rivals report a little surge of relief. It may mean the game’s still on, but at least…the game’s still on.
21) Racers Assuming That The Whole World Is Interested
The insular environment and obsessive competition of the Race leads many racers to a peculiar form of tunnel vision, manifested by the irrational belief that the ordinary citizens they encounter around the world are themselves deeply invested in the outcome of the contest. This can be a helpful assumption, in certain circumstances (as when Racers enlist the enthusiasm of native guides, or cab drivers), but enters the realm of self-delusion when otherwise sane racers do things like advise reservation agents in airports not to sell the same tickets to people standing directly behind them in line. This never works, as the clerks can only get in trouble by failing to do their jobs. Generally, using the Race to get service people to excel is a good thing; asking the same service people to break the rules or, in extreme cases, the law, is just plain silly.
22) Everything’s Hopeless, Before The Commercial
A team that suffers a setback in mid-leg will declare themselves doomed or lost or unable to continue, leading to a slow-motion close-up of a racer succumbing to temporary despair. This moment of pure tragedy is almost always followed, a few short annoying advertisements later, by the racers in question finding a way out of their predicament, and moving on, often to victory. This phenomenon occurs most frequently in airports, with racers trying to argue their way aboard overbooked flights. They are told that there are no tickets, look crestfallen and defeated, declare themselves screwed, and then, one dramatic sting and a commercial break later, find out that the ticket agent has managed to get them seats after all. Whew! Rescue from Certain Doom happens so often, in the course of the eight races aired so far, that it always comes as a little surprise when racers who declare themselves sunk actually do turn out to be sunk. Generally, a team sunk at the end of the first segment stands a good shot of staying alive, or even coming in first, at the episode’s end. And even teams that fall irretrievably far behind, have a chance of catching up to others at a Bunching Point.
23) Map Throwing
Driving on unfamiliar roads (or, in at least one case, navigating unfamiliar waterways), and taking heat for getting the team lost, the navigator gets so fed up with dealing with the driver’s attitude that s/he flings the map in a huff. This is not a particularly nice thing to do, but it’s the first refuge of the terminally frustrated, and it’s not limited to the most combative teams. Even some teams that got along most of the time (see The Bowling Moms), are guilty of this particular sin. It’s a good thing for them that gas stations don’t dispense copies mounted on concrete.
24) You Lost WHAT?
The best advice for any world traveler is to never leave any location, anywhere in the world, without first taking a moment to inventory your belongings. Haste now leads to heartbreak later, when you realize you’ve lost something vital. But Haste Now is of course the very point of The Amazing Race, and scarcely a race goes by without some team forgetting something of extreme importance. Racers have left behind their money, their maps, their clue envelopes, their passports, their luggage, their tickets, their paperwork, and (sometimes) their sense of reasonable perspective. They’ve also lost items the rules required them to bring. In the best case scenario, the items in question are dispensable, easy to replace, or just sources of contention (see: Hellboy’s sunglasses). In the worst, racers realize they’re missing something important many miles down the road, and have to turn around, hoping that the lost item is still wherever they’ve left it. It could be worse, though. If the current four-member teams of “Family Edition” prove popular enough to prompt experiments with races of six, eight, or ten-member teams, then the potentially abandoned items could, in theory, include entire family members. (“Where’s little Kevin? I haven’t seen him since Malaysia…”)
25) If You Only Heard
Producers encourage teams to talk about their “least favorite” competitors, a game that some players have resisted at the same time others participated with gusto. Sometimes, teams don’t need any special encouragement. And sometimes the feelings, whether better or worse, or not reciprocated. This leads to a favorite editing trick which contrasts Team A, on the road, talking about their vast affection for Team B, and how “nice” they are, with Team B, “simultaneously” trash-talking Team A with all the rhetorical skills at their disposal. The message, that the Race encourages back-stabbing behavior, is accurate enough, but not always as simultaneous as the editors like to pretend.
26) And Late Into The Night
This happens when the vagaries of luck or connection times separate teams by many, many hours. All the successful teams finish the leg in broad daylight, or even morning, and sad music starts to play as we fade to pitch darkness, when the last team arrives sweaty, exhausted, and aware that the jig is probably up. Usually the aftermath of disastrous navigation, it can be hard to take when it happens to a team you like, or a downright hoot when it happens to somebody you don’t.
27) Threats to Give Up
The Race is a labor-intensive, high-stress endeavor that proves too much for some players, who react to bad moments by, more or less, throwing up their arms and saying the hell with it, let’s go home. The decision rarely sticks, but there’s no doubting that the players mean what they’re saying at the time. Among the Racers who declare finito at least once, sometimes to fatal effect: Paul (Team Puss, Race 1); Nancy (Team Oh, Mom, Race 1); Wil (The Constant Snipers, Race 2), Flo (Team Albatross, Race 3); Marshall (The Pizza Brothers, Race 5 1); and Adam (Team Hellboy, Race 6).
28) Crowded and Confusing Marketplaces
Americans are used to spacious, brightly-lit indoor shopping malls, with name-brand stores and conveniently-placed maps equipped with arrows that remind the weary shoppers where they are. THE AMAZING RACE regularly sends its contestants into “Crowded and Confusing Marketplaces,” which Phil often describes as “mazes”, comprising hundreds of tiny, minimally-marked alcoves at either side of streets that seem barely wide enough to walk in single-file. Often, players will have to comb these narrow avenues for one specific merchant, selling one specific item; sometimes, they have to manage this trick without so much as a simple address. Players have encountered “Crowded and Confusing Marketplaces” on numerous continents, and have yet to run across a Food Court with an Orange Julius.
29) Our Big Buddy In The Sky
This one’s a little sensitive, so I’ll do my best to be politically correct here. There’s nothing wrong with praying for guidance, or strength, or patience, or understanding. There’s nothing wrong with being bolstered by your faith, especially in an endeavor as fraught with stress as THE AMAZING RACE. Far from it. That’s all admirable. But saying that God wants you on the race, or that He’s responsible for every stroke of luck you experience, is a little more questionable, and any comments to the effect that He supports your team over another are arrogant in the extreme. Whatever else you can say about the Supreme Being, it’s a bit much to believe He cares much about the results of reality television. Were he really pro-active about such things, then all the entrants who invoke Him during their AMERICAN IDOL auditions would be able to carry a note. They aren’t. So He’s not. Besides, if I really credited God for (picking one example at random) helping Brandon and Nicole in the mud pit, I would also have to credit Him for any bad luck that’s afflicted other teams. And I really find it hard to picture Him sitting up there in His Heaven, snickering for hours and hours while Lena and Kristy dealt with those hay bales. Because that, God, was just plain mean.
30) Racers Congratulating Themselves on Their Own Moral Superiority
As with the rest of us, in our own everyday lives, Racers are the stars of their own personal movies, seeing their own wants and needs and motivations and making their judgments of others based on what may be only fragmentary knowledge. Sometimes this leads to racers talking about the high moral principles they bring to the race while condemning the actions of other racers, often just as admirable, who have the temerity to play as if they want to win. Any careful observation of the Race reveals several serious disputes that start only because one team attributes open malice to the actions of another. Even in the pressure-cooker environment of the race, some of these fights could have been avoided if only an omniscient observer capable of seeing both sides (like a Producer) sat down both teams and caught them up on the he-said, she-said. (Not that the Producer would want to.) What we get instead is the frequent spectacle of teams presenting themselves as paragons of virtue surrounded by foul villainy, even in cases where the offense is merely playing the game to win.2
(Note: my hope, here, is bringing this list up to fifty by the time I hand in the book. The Luck-Based Challenge, which has been known to screw even the best teams, is discussed separately in its own chapter. But dang, is it infuriating when things don’t go sweetly.)
Notes:
1 I’m referring to the chocolate-eating task in South America, not his team’s later decision to concede defeat in Africa. Their decision to stop, based on Marshall’s knee injury and clear evidence that they had probably already lost, may have been controversial, and the only clear-cut surrender in Race history (there having been a couple of debatable ones), but you can’t call it a tantrum or a snit. They had good reason.
2 See, for instance, the sheer moral revulsion Colin and Christie and Brandon and Nicole shower on Chip and Kim, for the horrid crime of playing within the rules, in Race 5, Legs 11-12.
http://www.sff.net/people/adam-troy/Random/amazingrace_2.htm
