devilshalo

Again, the longer a judged roadblock continues, the more lenient the judges become.

Who u-turned Jeff and Jackie?

mwbmis

Yeah, that got old fast. And by fast I mean the first time they did it. I can't imagine how old it will get if it lasts all season.

Oh, and I think the nurse is adorable, but, then again, I'm not racing with her.

lwhy?

Jeff and Lyda u-turned Jeff and Jackie. They saw that one team was behind them, because there were two clues still in the clue box. So, they u-turned Jeff and Jackie since they hadn't seen them. If they had u-turned CJ and Lebya, they might still be in the game.

DJariya

I dig Jelani and Jenny. She's cute and they worked really well together.

Thought a Jeff and Jackie and Tyler and Laura were cool on initial impression.

That sucked that Mike and Rochelle did that to Jeff and Lyda. Shouldn't do that this early in the race.

I wonder how long Jeff and Lyda were stuck doing that dancing task. It looked pretty late when they were done and of course the editing was deceiving at how close they were to CJ and Lebya.

Shame about Hayley, she seems nice, but you can see Blair totally doesn't like her and he has to suffer with her for 10 more legs.

Jonathan Knight looks really old compared to his days on NKOTB. Hard to believe he was the gay Knight brother and not vice versa or so Jordan says.

MLBFan24

I felt sorry for team Tuskegee during the taxi cab incident. Predatory taxi driver scamming them.

Didn't realize all the dislike for Hayley...haha, that would be my type of girl

hdnmickey

That's my number one issue with the show. We were watching the "passing" clips and going that screw up was much worse than many of the others that caused others to fail! I really wish they would eliminate those kind of challenges. There are plenty of other things they can do, and have done in the past.

Also seemed really obvious which team was going to go first. Been that way for a few seasons now.

It will be interesting which of the blind date couples will get closer rather than start hating each other as the race goes on. Those pit stop nights are probably far more interesting then ever before.

Also have to wonder if the celebs will get noticed as the race goes on.

davidh777

Right, and they figured everyone who had already finished the dance was ahead of them. I don't recall if CJ and Lebya were the last to finish before them, but it's really a shot in the dark and their reasoning made as much sense as anything.

You mean the challenges that rely on an individual judge's perception of passing and failing? I agree there can be inconsistency, but you'd eliminate a lot of possible challenges if you just cut those out.

"So, you wanna....?"

lwhy?

Are the blind date couples sharing a hotel room too? If so, I hope Blair brought ear plugs...

gr8vette

Is it just me or does Tyler (I think it is Tyler) look like a close relation to Jeff (from Jeff and Jordan Big Brother team?)

devilshalo

I find that she's not very much into her partner, but they should make a decent team. That they took the time to re-read the clue on the way there was good, but I'd be surprised if they ended up with each other after the race.

davidh777

Probably just me, but Jenny looked like an Asian version of Cristin Milioti.

hdnmickey

Yes, those. There are plenty of options that don't involve judgement calls at that level. They have used plenty of them in seasons past.

But if they do keep going down that well, at least force the judges to stop the flip-flopping between pass and fail.

And while we're on the topic, toning down the "acting" by the locals involved with the challenges would be welcome as well. We were thinking to ourselves how lucky we were that most didn't do the sake challenge. The overacting by those stating if they players bottles were right or wrong was unwatchable.

Navinabob

I was really happy seeing World Order. Their videos on Youtube is one of the coolest things you'll ever see. That little dance bit was barely scratching the surface of their act.

hdnmickey

Same here.

Of course now we know their real talent is not reacting to American bad dancing.

LaxBandit

According to a TV Guide . com interview - http://www.tvguide.com/news/amazing-race-jeff-and-lyda/

It took them 3 hours and 42 minutes to complete the task (we did see a graphic of 3 hours and 23 minutes on the screen - that was after CJ and Lebya had finished.) It only took them 10 minutes to do the sake task.

According to Lyda they finished 30 minutes to 60 minutes behind CJ and Lebya so yeah the editing made things look alot closer than it was.

~~ PAL ~~

It's too bad they decided to "never give up" on a task that took them nearly 4 hours to complete. I was shocked nobody else elected to switch task either.

And no, for the Samurai Sake you cannot just keep going back until the 10th time when you get it right. On the first attempt, the team that got it wrong was given a brand new order of sake to pick out. So you cannot just keep going back and attempt process of elimination. However, all those sake are written in Kanji. If people had just thought of them as graphics and memorize 3 to 4 easier ones between the two of them, a team should have been about to knock it out in 15-20 minutes.

hdnmickey

This bugged me, but I think it's explained by people misunderstanding what would be required of them at the sake challenge. The u-turned couple basically confirmed this. They didn't go into details, but it's clear they thought all along that it too would have been very time consuming.

Frankly, the dance could have been very simple had they couples been good at it. There have been couples on past challenges that knocked out dance challenges with no trouble at all. Oddly enough there seems to a be lot of dance challenges in TAR.

chowderhead

I think you can look at the race in a couple of ways with the blind date couples.
1). Going into it looking for a potential partner to spend the rest of your life ... that means you are on a first date 24/7 until you are eliminated and everyone is on their best behavior. Meltdowns are probably less likely to happen.

2). Look at this race as an opportunity to win 500k which is a lot of money to most people and go into it motivated to do whatever it is to win. The lawyers both played to their strengths which was to break down the meaning of the clue as lawyers. i.e. defining vicinity.
These blind date singles both REALLY wanted to be on the race so it's not one person dragging another one to the finish line ... both people are motivated.

Of course there are shades in between those two extremes but I can see very easily one of the blind date couples winning.

hdnmickey

I think the key is the blind date folks all seem mentally sharp (even the high pitched blonde) and physically capable. Other than the Olympians, many of the existing couples seem to have the typical one member weakness. Especially the couple that barely survived. Wouldn't bet on them making it past the next leg.

davidh777

Right, if both members of the blind-date team are highly motivated to be there, that might put them a leg up on some of the other teams. Offhand, I seem to remember them being generally young besides, so that might also help. (I wonder what went into the selection process.) Throw in the fact that I tend to like the mixed-gender teams just as a yin-yang-balance thing, and most of the blind-date teams are mixed, I could see a lot of them being formidable.