Having the Fast Forward on every leg was great back when there was no bunching, because it was a long and involved race and the FF was the thing that should shake things up and save a team when they fell too far behind. But since it could only be used once it was a huge strategic decision to make.

Once they started the bunching the Fast Forward became pretty pointless, because you had used it to pull ahead to the front of the pack from the back, but then everyone is evened up again the next episode.

Having these sporadic Fast Forwards is even worse because knowing there are only two in the whole game it takes away the "you can only use it once" part of the strategy, meaning you might as well go for it the first chance you get. So it completely nullifies its purpose as a device to turn things around and save a team who has fallen really far behind in the pack.

At least this time the FF was a task that multiple teams could work on simultaneously. The past couple seasons, the FF task was first-come-first-serve so the first team to reach the FF task was guaranteed to get it.

The other thing that was lame about this episode was that it had a one-at-a-time roadblock. I hate those - no chance for passing - just wait your turn in line.

yeah the one at a time roadblocks are kind of the suck.

They need to make the fast forward tough to do also. Breaking plates is too easy.

the Kart race roadblock wasn't bad in the family edition. They need more things like that or having to bike 2 miles or something where you aren't smashing things.

Yeah, I agree. Just the analogy about being able to skip so many task should make it something doubly hard. Problem is everthing needs to be alot more harder for this show to stay interesting.

I agree. I actually prefer it when it really costs the team something...like when the black chick was last year had to shave her head.

I remember one episode from a past season where a boy & girl model team would have to shave their heads. The girl refused and they lost all that time going to the fast forward.

If they get to cut in line, make them pay for it! Lose hair, an eyeball, a limb...something.

One of the guys from Team Ace and Gary did cut his finger doing stupid elbow smashes against the rest of the plates. Would have been hilarious if they eliminated themselves by getting cut up.

There have been difficult FF in the past like when John Vito and Jill had to eat a lot of blocks of cheese, the shaving head ones, or team wheezer and geezer bringing the champagne across the ballroom of dancers but most FF was just do this ceramony or meet this person somewhere.
I think they had to cut down on the number of FF because of the costs of setting up a FF and then no one doing them.
I think they should have more FF but I rather they get rid of the yield rather than adding back the FFs.

Which is bogus - their budget should be bigger as their ad rate has undoubtedly risen since the first few seasons (with far higher ratings).

Along the same lines, there should be more Yields. When teams were frequently doing it to each other, the game was more interesting. Now that there are only two, there's not the same fear of reprisals.

actually both Ace/Gary and the hippies remind me of...

I do have to wonder why they seem to have completely dumbed down the challenges. They seem to be getting more and more touristy and less and less challenging. How long until we're more or less watching people go on a speeded up vacation?

whenever I see the hippies, the taller one (is it BJ or Tyler? damn i can never remember) reminds me of:

I'm partial to Wil & Tara's Scree Run in Amazing Race 2.

more seasons than not have not had the first non-elimination leg until they were down to 5 teams....at least that i am remembering.

I don't think they have ever had more than 2 or 3 yeilds in an entire race since they started having them. And they are not used very often anyway.

I wish they would get rid of the yield altogether, and go back to having FF on every leg. I think the show worked much better that way. Having only two FF takes all the strategy out of them, so they might as well not have them at all.

Absolutely. If they are going to have a Yield, then have a Yield in every leg. They can't use a budget excuse in that case. Also, they have never laid out the Yield rules clearly. Is there only one Yield available per leg? Any team should be able to Yield any other team (which includes a team being yielded, yielding another team behind them).

Oh and speaking of rules, what's with the arbitrary penalty minutes - like the 15 minutes in this one. There has never been any rhyme or reason to penalty minutes.

Chris

Finally arriving at the pit stop first, Fran is disappointed to discover that the prize is Phil's whopping Taco Bell gas.

I thought the penalty was based on how much time they would have gained by not following rules. Like that time they tok a cab instead of walking, they were penalized for the amount of time it took the other teams to walk.

I think they should be penalized time gained plus some set amount of time (:30 minutes, an hour, two hours - whatever). Make not following the directions a real penalty.

Wasn't it that way in early seasons?

I dobn't really know.

In Season 1 a team got a 24 hr penalty for skipping a detour (Emily & her mom). In a later season, Heather & I-forget-her-name got a two hour penalty for taking a cab when their instructions said "walk". The PTB never really tell us much about how penalties are figured out. To me, it looks as if they can change form season to season. 15 minutes just seemed kind of weak.