Comparing the previous episode from this one, the previous one was good, but this one was great!
There are so many things I wanna say, but I don't know if I still remember everything.
Justin & Diana vs Tanner & Josh: This rivalry is fun to watch as of now. It's interesting how Tanner & Josh is trying to get Kelsey & Joey to their side, even though the reporters seem neutral to either side. Maybe it's just the edit.
The W-turn next leg and the EP is making things more exciting for the next leg!
The only way Justin & Diana could avoid the W-turn is if they are 1st on the W-turn board. I wonder how this will turn out.
Tanner's hamstring problem reminded me of Dave's Achilles problem. It was on a footrace on the 2nd leg, and both their teams placed 2nd.
Coincidence, but this one is less severe than the one in TAR22. Also, Tanner & Josh winning footraces with such a problem shows how strong they really are, especially Tanner.
ChacAttack dropped from 3rd to 7th...
Now I see what I didn't see earlier. It was that bad after all. They lost their good lead, and that would've been frustrating if I were in their shoes. Also, funny coincidence how ChacAttack and the Cheerleaders left the whip in different ways.
It's like person X is about to go shopping without money and has to go back home and get it, and person B forgets to pay something he bought from a store. (I hope the metaphor is good.
)
Also, unlike last leg, the teams here are separated in groups. It reminded me of TAR16's Argentine leg, the 3rd leg too. There were 3 teams who are ahead of the others, and a 2nd set of teams trying to catch up with the 1st batch. Again, it is coincidental, but not completely.
The roadblock was a detail task. I like it because it shuffled some placements and it wasn't linear compared to last leg's.
The horse detour was okay, good enough; however, the 2 teams' mistakes on the whip made the other detour more interesting, and funny.
Also, I like how there are permanently limited slots in each detour side this leg. We've seen detours with the 1st come 1st serve policy, but any team can just wait all they want to get their chance to do the detour. Also, we've seen the random detour in Monaco last season, but my point is, the permanently limited slots detour this leg was unique, and I like that kind of twist because we get to see both sides of the detour by default. I don't remember seeing a twist like that back then, aside from fast forwards of course. There might be, but it doesn't happen very often.
Denise & JE got some attention from the roadblock, and from the somewhat exaggerated clip from last episode's preview.
Meanwhile, I think Jazmine & Danielle got the least screentime this episode, so I hope to see more of them next leg, even though I'm expecting the W-turn and the rivalry (and also the EP) to be the highlight next episode.
Ernest & Jin were really unlucky this leg.
There was no way they could catch up, and they didn't even see a team this leg.
3 teams made some mistakes, and it wasn't enough for them to catch up.
Jin finished the roadblock in 1 try, and he and Ernest never made the mistake of leaving the whip behind during the detour. (
to the other 2 teams with the whip, but
because this team still couldn't catch up) They did their best from how I saw it, and if they were at the front of the pack, I think they could even get 1st!
It is a 9th place curse because of those points I just mentioned, and it really makes me sad to see them go.
How I wish it was a NEL instead, including last leg. I really wanna see more of the teams who were eliminated early in the race, which is why I prefer earlier NEL's compared to later ones.
One last thing, a lot have been saying that the cheerleaders might be (or are) the new CaroJen. I disagree with this, and they are actually better than CaroJen. They do the physical tasks on their own, because they're athletes!
This makes me want to root for them too.
I think that's almost everything I wanna say. I might have forgotten something, but it might just be a small detail. Saying this much just means the episode was really exciting, and it was amazing!
This episode really delivered!