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The Amazing Race International Versions => TAR Canada => Topic started by: colav10 on June 27, 2024, 11:14:28 PM

Title: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: colav10 on June 27, 2024, 11:14:28 PM

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Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Xoruz on June 28, 2024, 06:43:39 AM

Quote from: colav10 on June 27, 2024, 11:14:28 PM

Promo!

Rappelling at Journey Behind the Falls and a task at the Great Canadian Midway.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Xoruz on July 02, 2024, 08:01:17 PM

Let's do this. Time for a nostalgia trip.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Bookworm on July 02, 2024, 08:37:36 PM

So they downgraded The Assist. It went from someone teams could use strategically once per leg (and only once) to something that's randomly included in the clue at one task per leg. So, theoretically, the same team could get The Assist over and over again, and teams don't get the agency of deciding whether to use it or save it.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Xoruz on July 02, 2024, 09:31:01 PM

It's funny how they turned the Assist into Date Night.

Fun leg, but quite a bit of it felt fast to me. Part of that is due to Niagara being a huge tourist city, and many attractions are compacted into a small area. For the first leg, we got a lot of money talk with teams trying to save money and another team just losing theirs. We saw teams like Taylor & Katie repeated make one small and other people like Kevin Martin looking for any advantage where he can Boston Rob style.

Show content

It was just mistake after mistake for Eva & Trystenne with struggling at the Detour and then going to the Skylon Tower.

Side note, there was a small part of my brain that loved them reusing the music from season 1 to open the season.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: NumfarPTB on July 03, 2024, 04:52:54 AM

Quote from: Bookworm on July 02, 2024, 08:37:36 PM

So they downgraded The Assist. It went from someone teams could use strategically once per leg (and only once) to something that's randomly included in the clue at one task per leg. So, theoretically, the same team could get The Assist over and over again, and teams don't get the agency of deciding whether to use it or save it.

Very odd shift, seems more luck based.

It was a weird leg. The quiz at the pit stop was a very cool twist, it did shift a few placements around.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Joberio on July 03, 2024, 06:19:12 AM

Is no one doing live play-by-play recaps of the show anymore?

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: ZBC Company on July 03, 2024, 02:28:02 PM

This leg was fierce.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Bookworm on July 03, 2024, 08:29:35 PM

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.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Maanca on July 03, 2024, 09:54:22 PM

Clifton Hill is the heart of Niagara Falls' tourist traps. Went there a few times growing up and it seemed to get crazier each time.

To truly showcase the city, it's fitting they'd go there.

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: BourkieBoy on July 05, 2024, 08:45:06 PM

Finally managed to watch the episode  :funny: :lol:

Wow! This was my favorite TAR Canada episode in a long time! I personally think that the reason it is so great, is because the leg was done in the rain and the majority of it was done in dusk - I thought the scenery was beautiful! Nice little throwback to the very first season, with transporting the teams to the Starting Line via high-speed jet boat and of course, starting the Race in the very same location as the inaugural location.

Let's get into the tasks - what a way to start the race with that Roadblock rappelling down the Horseshoe Falls! I also liked the idea that you couldn't go too fast down the falls and miss the clue, otherwise, you'd have to go back up to the top and try again (and possibly falling to last due to there being limited spots). Then, straight onto the Detour at Clifton Hill - this place is now on my bucket list if I ever go to Canada! The amusement centre looked amazing! Game Time was definitely the easier choice (props to Kevin for playing the villain and hogging all of the balls on that pin machine - about time that we got another "villain" team  :lol:). Credit to the "tourists" standing outside the Niagara SkyWheel having to hearing all of the team's spiels in Show Time (I laughed so hard when Taylor & Katie kept saying fried omelets instead of cooked omelets  :lol:)

I did think that the haunted house task was easily the worst task of the leg (I actually laughed at the patheticness of the whole going through the house thing) and I found the memorizing of the colour combination task too easy (lighting up Niagara Falls with the colors however, was nothing short of incredible) and the surprise quiz question at the Pit Stop was a unique task. Not too sure about The Assist twist this season, I think I preferred how The Assist worked last season (with each team getting it and then choosing to use it on one task)

In regards to the teams, I think I like all of them so far! Micheal & Tyson losing all of their leg money at the Starting Line was hilarious, but there's definitely a few teams who aren't "Race fit" (I can't see Dorothy & Olus lasting for much longer, based on Dorothy's fitness performance on this leg)

Overall, this leg was incredible! I do think next week's leg definitely won't be as awesome, but we'll wait, watch & see! :)

Title: Re: TARCAN 10 Episode 1 "Back Where It All Started" July 2, 2024
Post by: Maanca on July 22, 2024, 06:16:31 PM

Julia is doing recap blogs

https://medium.com/@juliaviola/amazing-race-canada-s10-leg-1-recap-e32e324d1d3b