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TAR: Where are we Going? Suggestions for the Future!

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gamerfan09:
First of all, thanks TARUSAFan for the essay, however I want to talk about some of your points for the sake of friendly discussion. :)


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM ---•   Twists

>      Season 26’s “Dating” themed season was atrocious on all levels. It is as bad as Season 24. None of the Blind-Dating teams even sparked a relationship. Also, there were too many double legs on the same country: Japan, Thailand, Namibia, Peru which some of the tasks were underwhelming. The only redeemable part was Hayley & Blair, a visit to Monaco and return visits to Peru and Namibia.
--- End quote ---

I really do not get TAR26's hate when TAR6 almost literally did the same thing by having its near entire end-game have nothing but dating couples. No way is it as awful as 24.


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM --->   Please announce each team placements when they arrive at the mat. We do not see these nowadays, even the reactions of the teams. Also, the pitstart where the team who won the last leg reads the clue for the next destination. We need to see that again Moreover, Phil narrates it now. We do not get to see teams interact and they capitalize on 2 teams just like Season 28’s Blair + Blodie = Blodie. Atrocious, they could have used that time to explore the city more + team interactions. Don’t give the viewers something forced.
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Agreed, but wouldn't you say that part of the awkwardness of the Pit Starts now also comes from Phil no longer narrating the intro? I did notice that TAR26 began the annoying trend of showing off a team interaction before the first clue is ripped open instead of Phil narrating the history of the city. The Amazing Race is a show about the WORLD. I legit do not understand why petty interactions have replaced narration about the Pit Start country. Smh.


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM --->  In visiting Asia, please visit other nations as well. We’ve been getting China, India, Indonesia, Japan… What about Israel, South Korea, The Philippines, Maldives, Cambodia? Stop visiting overused countries back to back or consecutively in Asia.
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I would argue that it's more or less the LEG DESIGN and the EPISODE that matters and not the overused countries in Asia. Look at the early seasons. Indian legs would always be fun, Indian legs would always bring out the best or worst in teams and would be season highlights (compare that to now where an Indian leg is Delivery vs. Delivery Detours and Balloon Roadblocks). I would say that the leg design and the episode matters the most rather than the location. I for one, would love a China visit in an area yet untouched. (Shenzhen on 28 was good!)


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM ---> Oceania, I am waiting for this one to pop up. Where's Australia, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Fiji and Vanuatu. I still cannot fathom, why this continent, Oceania is not visited considering it is one of the safest continents and there are loads to be done there.
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We had NZ and French Polynesia on 22 but yeah, we need another visit to these places. Can you believe it has been more than TEN SEASONS since Australia? Crazy.


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM ---> Central America / Caribbean, I still don't get why this has not been visited that much. Costa Rica, The Bahamas, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Panama. Hopefully, we will see Cuba soon.
--- End quote ---

Apparently it's American-Cuba ties that may prevent visits.


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM --->   Season 22, Season 23, Season 25 had a really great cast very diverse in my opinion. Season 27 also has a great cast but they did not develop them all properly. The only let down for Season 25’s cast for me was Keith & Whitney. Absolutely bland and boring. They both had their share in Survivor, so don’t steal another teams spot on the Amazing Race. Stop casting Big Brother, Survivor reality crossovers to join the Race. They have had their share of fame. They are obviously stealing a valuable spot to those who have applied.. Kudos for casting Bethany Hamilton in Season 25, a real inspiration for those with disabilities.
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I really don't see how these contestants have had their 'share of fame' but you call Bethany a standout and she has had a MOVIE based on her? I have no problem with crossovers, myself, but I find it weird that you call them to "stop casting these crossovers" when we have had only SIX (Alison/Donny, Rob/Amber, Ethan/Jenna, Keith/Whitney, Brendon/Rachel, Jordan/Jeff) out of 289 teams and two of them didn't even make it past two legs.


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM --->   For the premiere episode, it would be good if it was at least 2 hours or an hour and a half to give us the opportunity to at least get to know the teams more and make it not too rushed on the editing because you are fitting 11 teams in one episode and that is hard. Everyone must be memorable even for a 1st boot. It would also be good to have at least 2 Roadblocks and 2 Detours on the 1st leg.
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I agree that premieres need to be longer, but I would also say that it's all about a matter of leg design. Look at the TAR28 premiere. It had one very fun (but unbalanced) night Detour and a pretty difficult Roadblock. If the episode's first obnoxious ten minutes were cut out, it would easily be the best premiere since 17 AND it was only 45 minutes.

With that in mind, look at the TAR26 premiere. Despite it being 90 minutes long, it still sucked because there was only one task and it was stretched out to 90 minutes. Additionally, the TAR6 premiere is an early-age boring example as well. Forty minutes of driving to an HoO and then one Detour stretched out over 50 minutes (the TAR4 one is also just eh). I would say that the best example of a 90 minute premiere is TAR17. Despite it being 90 minutes with only ONE Roadblock, it was still good due to the cryptic clue, coracle task, ladder task, and iconic watermelon RB. Ultimately, I would argue that we don't necessarily need 2 RBs and DTs, more ARIs and a major task that's actually difficult would suffice.


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM --->   Have us fans get to help develop the Race for the benefit of the show as well
--- End quote ---

I want this but the closest we'll probably get is Design Challenge. We have had winners have tasks make it on the show, with the second Peru leg on TAR26 almost being EXACTLY like DC V runner-up RSF's leg! (Go to Chan Chan (the Detour location for one of the options) + her/his Detour was Surfing (the actual leg's RB) vs. Marinara (an ACTUAL Detour option for the leg!)  :hearts:


--- Quote from: TARUSAFan on June 05, 2016, 11:29:55 PM --->   Where exactly are the harder finales? we need this back Recent finales have been bland and boring.
--- End quote ---

I would argue that we have actually been having better finales though? The 25-27 finales are nowhere near as awful as the 18/19/20/22/23/24 finales and the 27 finale is actually pretty top-tier due to the memory task overload? The 26 finale was also crammed with tasks, something very unusual with modern-day finales.

If you read this all thank you and I agree with a lot of your points with some reservations :)

SamualDude:

--- Quote from: gamerfan09 on June 06, 2016, 01:51:02 AM ---I would argue that we have actually been having better finales though? The 25-27 finales are nowhere near as awful as the 18/19/20/21/23/24 finales and the 27 finale is actually pretty top-tier due to the memory task overload? The 26 finale was also crammed with tasks, something very unusual with modern-day finales.

--- End quote ---

I would agree completely! With the exception of the 21 finale, I think 22 would be best suited on your list instead!

gamerfan09:

--- Quote from: SamualDude on June 06, 2016, 02:06:51 AM ---
--- Quote from: gamerfan09 on June 06, 2016, 01:51:02 AM ---I would argue that we have actually been having better finales though? The 25-27 finales are nowhere near as awful as the 18/19/20/21/23/24 finales and the 27 finale is actually pretty top-tier due to the memory task overload? The 26 finale was also crammed with tasks, something very unusual with modern-day finales.

--- End quote ---

I would agree completely! With the exception of the 21 finale, I think 22 would be best suited on your list instead!

--- End quote ---

I typoed sorry :lol:

tarflyonthewall:
There's two issues with the finale: the formulaic leg design (arrive, first-come-first-served heights task, cryptic clue, task vaguely related to the local culture of whatever city you're in, memory task, finish line; occasionally the local culture task comes before the cryptic clue or there's a second one in place of the memory task, but that's about it) and the producers thinking that tasks that take the same amount of time for everybody regardless of skill level are exciting or likely to result in a close finish. That's not the case at all. The heights task that usually kicks off the leg often splits the teams beyond the point of catching up, and taxis getting lost do it the rest of the time. Other legs are less formulaic, but still have the same issue in terms of task design, to which I say: You don't actually need a footrace at the end of the episode to make an episode enjoyable or exciting. Look at TAR3: how many of those legs actually end with a tense finish? Portugal and Ho Chi Minh City do but they're both because of penalties, and Grindelwald does but it's a NEL that everyone knows is a NEL, and the final leg does but it's The Final Leg. Every other episode is edited as a blowout (even though Gina/Sylvia were only actually three minutes behind LOL), and the season is better for it. It lets you feel like every team's race has actually ended rather than randomly being cut off at some arbitrary point when they happened to find themselves in last place.

I also think the twists are actually detrimental to the show. Nobody's going to tune in because you're promising a Double Express Pass or a Save in the first episode, and the people who do tune in are going to be annoyed by the entire first episode being All About The Twist. And that's if you're lucky and we're getting one of those kinds of twists instead of a themed cast that results in everybody helping each other because of pre-season alliances (24, 28) or makes everyone in the cast blur together because they're all basically the same team (26, 28). The best twist in the show's history, and pretty much the only one that hasn't actively made the race worse, is changing up the leg structure by putting the Road Block before the Detour in some TAR4 episodes after the Detour had always been first throughout the first three seasons. It was simple, it was surprising, it worked well with the concept of the show, and you didn't even need to explain it beyond a random 'this doesn't normally happen' from the first team to arrive at Le Mans for that first Road Block. It's just a thing that happened that threw the teams off balance for a bit, but it didn't damage the show in any way.

I absolutely agree that the editing's been janky for a while, and it's only getting worse. Yes, it's a race, but the entire point of the show is that it's a marathon and not twelve sprints. Marathon runners slow down and get second winds all the time, and the show used to be the same. TAR1's second Thailand leg is an exercise in filler, and it's followed by the brilliant Beijing episode. The Chiang Mai NEL is followed by both the Hong Kong leg and then the incredible Sydney episode. TAR3's two worst episodes are unquestionably the Austria and Singapore episodes, and the episodes that follow them - Grindelwald and Ho Chi Minh City - are both strong, strong contenders for TAR's greatest episode ever. Venice follows the dull TAR4 premiere. Marseilles is followed by Amsterdam, and then by Mumbai. The forgettable Kota Kinabalu island filler leg is followed by Sepilok. St Petersburg gets the tone right but is otherwise kind of awful, and then we get the joys of Cairo. TAR5 later also gives us Dubai followed by I'M PACKIN' IT and Rotorua followed by MY OX IS BROKEN. And so on. I get that the show is beholden to the #12Legs21Days hashtag Phil keeps trying to make happen, but stop trying to make #12Legs21Days happen. It's not going to happen. Nobody cares if you take 21 or 22 or 23 or even 29 days to run the race - indeed, it would actually help if it was a bit longer and you used the extra time to wear the teams down even more. To put that timing into context, 21 days in, TAR1 isn't even in Thailand yet, and in TAR6 it's not even enough time for noted bottom-feeders Adam and Rebecca to actually fall into last place (they aren't ever Last For Real until the lighthouse in Sri Lanka, on Day 23).

I disagree, however, with the idea that Africa is cheap. It's actually prohibitively expensive in terms of filming permits and airfares, especially when you need connecting flights between African cities, and when you add safety issues and infrastructure, pretty much the only viable countries we haven't already seen since TAR17 are South Africa (how has it been twenty-two seasons since the last visit?) and Lesotho. Like I have no doubt that if Egypt and Tunisia was safe we'd have been back, and if Swaziland had a commercial airport we'd have been there too. But that's not the world we live in, sadly.

We definitely need a better variety of countries. It's great that the show has finally cut back on India (and crazy that the stereotype still persists given it's only turned up three times in the last fourteen seasons), but it's absurd that every season seems to visit Holland or one of the German-speaking countries when we've still only had a combined total of one leg in the entirety of the former Yugoslavia. Especially when those legs are invariably underwhelming - it's not a coincidence that the only two seasons since TAR13 to skip that part of the world, TAR17 and TAR25, are the only two that are widely considered modern classics. The best legs are the ones that feel fresh, and it's almost impossible to get that feeling when you're racing through Amsterdam or Bavaria or Bangkok for the fifth time. Ironically, the fact that so much of the TAR6 route hasn't been revisited (Iceland, Senegal, Hungary, and Ethiopia are all one-visit countries, and we've also never been back to either southern Norway or Corsica, with a long delay before Sri Lanka's only other visit) is the key reason it's aged so well when most of the other early seasons haven't. Meanwhile, every blatant attempt to recreate the magic of TAR1 comes off as phony AND ruins TAR1's legacy. I think we all agree that TAR is probably closer to finishing than it is to starting, but: stop looking back, and start looking forward.

gamerfan09:

--- Quote from: tarflyonthewall on June 06, 2016, 04:46:15 AM ---TAR3's two worst episodes are unquestionably the Austria and Singapore episodes, and the episodes that follow them - Grindelwald and Ho Chi Minh City - are both strong, strong contenders for TAR's greatest episode ever.

--- End quote ---

Those two would count as TAR3's 'weakest episodes' and yet they contain:

Austria:
-Flo sabotaging Andre & Damon
-Teri & Ian randomly leaping to first place on the way to Germany
-Flo melting down over staying in a cheaper hotel
-Flo bitching about being last only to then realize that they were FIRST after the Fast Forward
-Derek & Drew losing the clue, making Teri then find it and THEN abandoning Teri causing Teri to fly into a rage and THEN the former suffer a navigational breakdown
-Ken & Gerard's absolutely hilarious car breakdown and the resulting positivity and hilarity they have over the situation DESPITE BEING NEARLY IN LAST PLACE

Singapore:
-Flo sitting with Drew on the plane instead of Zach
-Flo bitching about the YMCA and then this resulting in Flo & Drew being closer in the hotel room
-Teri & Ian's PAPER UNDERWEAR
-That hilarious Teri & Ian moment immediately followed by them sniping at each other after seeing John Vito & Jill arrive at the Roadblock
-Zach finally getting tired of Flo's BS and consequently also bitching at her and getting LOUD
-The resulting event above causing them and Ken/Gerard's temporary alliance to falter over directions but both end up in a footrace for 2nd place

And I can go on and on. TAR3 <3333333333333333

It's probably the most perfect season of anything ever?

Other than that, great points tarflyonthewall! I also do notice that somehow the Race loves to go back to old locations (TAR27 and 28 are guilty of this) but they fail to make it anywhere as decent as the original (all the Switchbacks failing at recreating magic).

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