The Amazing Race > The Amazing Race Discussion

Why the Amazing Race has lost its magic

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Caelestor:
Well said mswood. I understand that TAR is clearly on a budget, and buying wrong plane tickets does waste quite a bit of time and money (a la Brad and Victoria from TAR 14)! And of course, the racers do damage their cars on occasion. (They need to penalize them, shame on the racers!  (:;) )

However, there are some obvious ways to save money:

Taxis from Narita to Tokyo? SERIOUSLY? (Another reason why the Japan leg was useless.) Taxis drain the most money on the show after plane tickets.
Removal of Fast Forwards completely (there needs to be at least 3 per race or none at all).
Replace the NEL penalty from Speedbump to mandatory U-turn. (Although speedbumps look pretty cheap, half of the time they're lame.). U-turns look cheap too since the tasks are already set up, and enough of them allows for strategic racing -> interesting TV.
Fewer detours (a bit drastic though, let's not go there)
Force teams to take public transport where it's possible (Europe, Japan, etc.). Navigation is paramount!
Make two legs in same country into one to lessen the cost of pit stops. (You could've easily done that with this season's Dubai legs!)

This brings me to another issue this season: bring back the 12-hour pitstops! In Vietnam, you left half the teams waiting at the airport for half a day. That hardly makes for great television. (And cut it out with the "will this team get on the flight" unless a team does epically screw up or the teams go on different flights; go back to TAR 14).

And from that, there is an evidence issue about the planning of the races. A spotting task a la New Zealand TAR 13 would have been great at Burj Dubai (and force Mika to confront her issue of heights :groan:). As Josh Wolk over at EW says, the Burj was too anticlimactic.

TAR should take a few pointers from HaMerotz LaMillion. (They don't need that many destinations/tasks, but at least the teams do something!)

Zack.:
The funny thing is they try to cut costs by going down to 11 legs and have two legs in one city, then they do this near the start of TAR 14:

1. Take a taxi ride to Zurich.
2. Fly from Zurich to Munich.
3. Drive (Mercedes'!) from Munich to Ruhpolding to Salzburg.
4. Drive from Schloss Helbrunn to the train station of Salzburg.
5. Travel by train from Salzburg to Munich.
6. Fly (Lufhansa!) from Munich to Bucharest.

in spite of the fact that they could've been given the cars at Stechelberg and easily driven from Switzerland to Germany to Austria (and then flown out of Salzburg) - Google Maps has the drive as 2 hours from Stechelberg to Zurich, 3:20 from Zurich to Munich, and 1:30 from Munich to Austria. They could've also given out the cars at Zurich's train station if they were concerned about driving in the dark, or had them continue traveling by train.

Neobie:
I notice a general trend towards laziness on the part of TPTB.

Which always start with a discussion of LAX. Nothing much more that hasn't already been said here.

But behind the scenes, we see Phil getting rest days between practically every leg (which leads to the non-12h Pit Stops) and racers being directed which city to fly through to get to their destination. Add that to the general inability to look for good, genuine tasks.

With the Japan, Dubai, Europe legs and the over-reliance on taxis, costs are apparently not of concern to TPTB as much as it is made to be. They're just lazy.

Just hire me, CBS.

puddin:

--- Quote from: Neobie on October 21, 2009, 08:46:10 AM ---

Just hire me, CBS.

--- End quote ---
I'll sign that resume for you Neobie :yes:

Moo:

--- Quote from: puddin on October 20, 2009, 04:35:19 PM ---One of the biggest letdowns to me were the tasks TAR14 Romania, fake gypsy village, drag the coffins and break the plaques filled with blood to find a clue
 . .Tammy and Victor looking for the detour for what seemed like 30 minutes screen time. The Roadblock/Gymnastics was cute though.


--- End quote ---

LOL, it turned out to be one of the best episodes though (followed by Leg 4)...  :lol: (Even though I love T/V so much <333)

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