Just finished watching the last 2 episodes, in Morocco - it helps to watch them at 1.5 speed and just focus on speed reading the subtitles
These legs have been some of the most brutal I think I have ever seen in any race, with so many tiny clues, logic-based tasks, and luck-based tasks...I actually like all the teams this season, because I do not think that I could do half as well as any of them on these tasks.
Highlights of this leg:
- Sahar and Yiftach are basically a blur - they finished tasks so quickly that they have very little screen time.
- The double-battle looked like absolute hell, it was basically a test of upper body strength, and it was no surprise that anytime a man went up against a woman, he won, and that the FF teams were SOL. Mody and Mickey at least threw the task so that Amit and Rotem had a chance. I've always disliked the double-battles, because if it's a physical task rather than luck/logic/skill, teams that have to redo it are already tired, even though they've had the chance to test out the task and figure out how to do better. Maybe if every team threw the task and just agreed to let the previous team go (which has happened in previous seasons, and was basically how Amit/Rotem got through the task), they'd stop doing them.
- It was funny watching Inbar fall in love with one of the safety guys at the double-battle though. She looked almost ready to ditch her uncle and have him be her partner instead
- Guy fell backwards into a well at the laundry task, and he looked like he really got hurt, either by hitting his head or his back on the stones. He managed to persevere after some quick medical attention, but he was clearly struggling the rest of the leg. It was a slight consolation though that he looked like Papa Smurf for the rest of the leg, from spending so long in the blue water.
- Anne did not fall into the well, but since her water was green, she spent the last half of the leg looking like a bootleg Shrek.
- Udi is shocked to learn that Matan washes his mouth out with soap when he showers, and Matan is shocked that Udi (and the rest of the world) do not do that
- After the laundry task, Sapir is genuinely confused to learn that the smelly animal skins that they were cleaning are not that different from what her purses and pocketbooks are made from.
- Also, it's hysterical how bored Lior seems to be with the race, especially during confessionals when he's practically falling asleep.
- I love learning about the teams' lives outside the race, but please, editors, choose new information each time, because even though I adore Esti and Itzik, it was overkill to see them talk about missing their kids THREE DIFFERENT TIMES during the course of the leg.
- It's nice to see teams that run their own races and that most of the arguing happens between the teammates themselves rather than inter-team drama, which has made some of the more recent episodes/seasons of US TAR less fun to watch. They basically try to have fun and stay out of each other's way, and tend to congratulate other teams when they complete a task even when they get passed up by them. So, when Yarin and Miri got into a shouting match while they were doing the orange juice task, it was interesting because it was a departure from the norm, when all teams seem to get along the majority of the time.
- It was a heartbreaker to watch Racheli/Miri get eliminated, with less than ten minutes remaining on their yield (and their second yield, at that). They managed to pass Hasi/Yarin on the soap task, then again on the orange juice task, and then pass TWO teams at the cassette tape task (Hasi/Yarin and Guy/Idan), and got eliminated by something over which they had no control - it's part of the race, but still, had they not been yielded they would have finished in 9th rather than 11th, and one of reasons why I love TAR over other reality shows is that by and large, most eliminations are based on poor performance or navigation by the teams themselves, or by poor leg design (no equalizers, too many equalizers, several physical tasks in a row without a break) rather than merely getting yielded or u-turned out of the race.
- PSYCHED for the next few episodes in Senegal.
