On Sat, 17 Oct 2015 16:53:32 -0700, Loren Pechtel
Post by Loren PechtelWhile in Zambia monkeys make off with the passports of two teams,
including the one with the fast forward.
The teams are running around the jungle trying to recover their
passports, Phil can't Philiminate them as there are two teams out,
meanwhile the other teams run the next leg. They can't add extra pit
stop time because there wasn't a pit stop to add it to.
Or two teams get into a scuffle on a narrow section of the bridge
in front of the falls, which results in an unfortunate accident...
The first two or three episodes of TAR are often something of a
blur for me. The numbers result in the teams each getting little
screen time, and the early shows just seem like a jumble of people
frantically fumbling around to find their way in some foreign country.
But now, even with three teams eliminated, I'm still not getting the sense
of a distinct "personality" for any of the remaining teams. I can't tell
the cheerleaders from the track athletes, and there are three or four
couples who could be interchangeable in terms of standing out. There
is the team of cocky, young guys -- who are indistinguishable to me from
most of the other teams of cocky, young guys from past seasons.
(Oh, and apparently they misused their Express Pass, a gaffe that was
mentioned so many times by so many people, I'm surprised they didn't
have footage of one border guards -- or a monkey! -- shaking their head
and voicing dismay over the misstep.)
Is it just me, or is anybody else finding this season's teams to be largely
unremarkable?
I couldn't agree more with what you've said. Only two teams "stand out" to
me so far and that's because I can't stand one member on each of them.
That's Justin and James Earl's mom. The rest of the teams are a blur to me.
One of the problems with TAR, especially early in a season, is that there is
too repetition of seeing the same tasks done over and over by the different
teams. They devote so little time to the actual racers that it makes it very
hard to get to know them. This season is even worse because so many of the
teams seem the same as the others. It's not the number of racers that is the
problem either. Survivor often has 20 people and after a few episodes I have
a very good idea of who's who. That's probably because we see everyone at
the same time doing a challenge and roughly half of them at tribal council.
I'd like to see TAR move to just one task per episode so we can get to know
the racers better. They could make the tasks harder to make up for only
having one. They'd probably have to tweak some other things as well to make
this work. They need to do something though because if people don't connect
with the cast they won't watch.
--
Brian