For my unsolicited thoughts on the first episode:
I have such mixed feelings about the leg, partially from an editing and presentation perspective, but mainly from a leg design perspective. There was such an unbelievable variance between the tasks, with some being unique, creative, and worthy of the awesome feeling of Niagara Falls, and others being complete jokes that could take place at a random carnival.
I'll start by prefacing that I enjoy TAR Canada, as an all-domestic route with an ever-diminishing roster of possible locations requires serious creativity in task design. And rather than limiting itself to a Roadblock-Detour-Pit Stop format, the showrunners challenge themselves to design legs with varying numbers of Active Route Info Tasks, multiple Roadblocks, no Roadblocks, etc. With that being said, I watch the show almost exclusively to see that creativity (and the adrenaline rush I get from watching TAR is secondary).
I saw that creativity- or at least location-worthiness- in a handful of the tasks last night, and all of them had one thing in common: they really utilized Niagara Falls as a location. While a rappelling Roadblock is nothing new, the task was elevated by the opening journey to get there- and the suspense between teams arriving on foot versus those by bus- and the sheer scope of the setting. Mist from massive waterfalls blanketed teams, and the impossible felt as if it were made possible. Similarly, the memorization of the color sequence was clearly easy for teams, but lighting up the Falls felt like such a behind-the-scenes, exclusive opportunity. It maximized the location. Finally, the Pit Stop location was incredible; I love that it took an elevator and underground run to get to an overlook, and the view of the Falls tied the leg together so well. The memory game component was also fun, and actually affected placements, even if it was the third memory challenge of the leg.
With all the good listed, it's time to get to the bad. I hated the Haunted House; it cheapened the leg and made it feel like a child's trip to an amusement park, not a challenging and epic race around the country. The leg didn't need any more tasks to round it out; teams simply could have grabbed a sequence of colors from any number of landmarks in Niagara Falls, like Skylon Tower.
Finally, I despised the Detour. The carnival games task was both designed and conveyed poorly. It was the furthest thing from unique, as it could have been done in literally any town with an arcade. Further, there were no parameters as to what games could be played and the audience had no idea what teams' options were, so even though teams playing the games clearly thought through what games they could complete the fasted or gain the most tickets from, it was lost on the viewer. Similarly, as much as the tourism memory Detour was yet another recitation task, the likes of which TAR Canada uses as staples, it immediately fell to the bottom of the barrel of these tasks. Typically, these tasks revolve around a cohesive tale, like a First Nations legend or a story from the Maritimes. Instead, we got what seemed like an assortment of bullet points about Niagara Falls, with little common thread between them. Not only is this indicative of poor planning, as the task can be scrapped from nothing, but it made it difficult to compare teams to each other. When a team was struggling on one passage, for example, we had no idea of their progress through the recitation the way one would for a story.
There are so many possible tasks relating to Niagara Falls it makes the Midway Detour look even more pathetic. Niagara Falls was referenced as a popular honeymoon location in the Detour itself, why not make that a task. If TARCan is so married to a recitation task, why not teams dress up and recite wedding vows? There are half a dozen chapels the show could choose from, and it's what the most creative iteration of the TAR franchise- HaMerotz LaMillion- would do. Second, the Niagara Falls Floral Showhouse is globally famous, located close to the other locations in the leg, and offers a chance for a unique task related to assembling a floral display. Call the Detour Wedding Vows and Floral Boughs. Hell, if production wants to save on costs, they could move Floral Boughs to the wedding chapel and instead reimagine it was assembling a bridal bouquet before having one team member toss it, over their shoulder, from a stage and have the other catch it. It takes such little imagination and knowledge of the area to come up with a better task than a Dave & Busters rip-off, and that's what makes me disappointed in production.
Overall, I enjoyed the leg, but I know TAR Canada can do better. I hope the rest of the season follows suit from the Roadblock and Pit Stop-tier of planning.
