TAR-Australia ep3
Jun. 5th, 2011 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccYes, I am procrastinating from this essay. On the other hand it's 10% done... so kind of nearly thereish. Sort of. Unless I decide to start rewriting from scratch, which is not impossible. *sigh*
Anyway. Episode 3. Channel 7 finally ran almost within the limits of my DVR setting, which was nice of them, so I managed to see the whole episode in one go for once. I wish they'd get over the whole "look what's coming up next!" and showing us footage of the episode they're about to screen though. Really, I'm going to watch the episode. Give us a quick recap of what happened last episode and then get on with it, dammit. The number of ads remains similar, although the advantage of DVRing is that you can of course fast forward. It did take me one ad break to remember that though.
Where were we? Oh yeah, Vietnam. Teams head off into the night, having had a 12 hour eat, sleep, mingle break. I'm willing to bet it was more like an "eat, interview, sleep" break, with most of the mingling being done at airports. Despite Mo and Mos being molested while waiting for a taxi by some local women who've apparently never seen man boobs before and thought they were hilarious, everyone makes it on to the same flight from Hue to Hong Kong. Even the models, who weren't sure whether Hong Kong was in Singapore or not.
In Hong Kong we hit the taxi dramas. Some teams (the models) are apparently surprised to discover that not all taxi drivers in Hong Kong speak English. I'm not entirely sure why this was surprising, what with Hong Kong being predominantly Cantonese speaking and all. Joey and Richard fail to communicate with their taxi driver at all and end up having to get him to take them back to the airport to find someone they could actually make understand them. I'm not sure that Joey's habit of speaking broken English in a funny accent was helpful in this situation. She'd probably have had better luck with pidgin English in a BBC accent to be honest. Or broken Cantonese. Or miming. Watching her trying to mime "Jumbo" - everyone was trying to get to the Jumbo floating restaurant by ferry from Aberdeen Marina Club - would have been hilarious. Damn, missed opportunity.
About this point I realised who Joey was reminding me of. It's Mirna. If she starts up with the "choo choo" while attempting to find a train station or miming swimming while looking for a ferry terminal it'll just confirm it.
Meanwhile the Farmers are busy being gobsmacked by really tall buildings. "I think we could even cope with Melbourne after this". Yeah, we've got much smaller buildings than Hong Kong.
Five teams (bikers, surfer dudes - whose godawful hair is getting worse, I swear, the models, the father/son combo and Mo and Mos) manage to find drivers they could communicate with and get to the ferry quickly. Dave sees Muscles and Bambi approaching and gets the ferry to leave before they can make it, causing Muscles to call Dave a "hillbilly". Which... fair call, actually. Certainly about as relevant as Dave calling Muscles "white trash".
At this point it's obviously late afternoon and starting to get dark.
Arriving at their destination restaurant teams find a pile of fortune cookies, of which one contains a strip allowing them to get their next clue. To find it they have to bite into, extract and read out all the other fortunes in the cookies until they get the right one. Fun! And also repetitive, as it turns out that there's not actually a lot of variation in fortune cookie fortunes.
Mo and Mos read out a cookie, in the statement that cracked both Dean and I up: "'A skinny man does not know how to do this', mate." Yeah thanks for the north/western suburbs accent there, mate.
Ferry two, with Muscles and Bambi and Alana and Mel takes off.
Remaining teams arrive at the dock, with Richard and Joey having finally made it after their taxi change. "Our taxi got us so lost, we had to get another one!" "Oh..." says one of the Big W ladies in what can really only be described as a polite not-caring tone. The third ferry takes off.
Teams open cookies. Joey is a bit over enthusiastic. ("You will be a winner!") With the Luck Of The Evil she promptly finds the clue and they're off to try and get the one and only fast forward.
I really, really wish they'd either go back to having at least four fast forwards on the leg - making it part of strategy rather than a lucky dip prize - or abandon it altogether to be honest. Anyway, they head off in a taxi to a local temple.
Everyone else grits their teeth and keeps going. I'm not entirely sure why everyone dislikes them so much, but it's really quite obvious that they're not popular. My guess is social skills, specifically a lack of, and Joey coming across as being really, really annoying in large doses.
Mo and Mos finish shortly after, and also go for the Fast Forward. It's a race!
The surfers finish 10-15 minutes later and go for the Detour. Again it's half a repeat from TAR-Asia, the choice being Lion Dance or Kung Fu Stance. They go for the Kung Fu, presumably not confident in their dancing skills.
Alana and Mel finish, and go to Dance. The Big W ladies finish, and pick Kung Fu, which surprised me. The bikers and models finish simultaneously and both pick Kung Fu.
Muscles and Bambi and the Farmers finish - the former pick dance, the latter Kung Fu.
Richard and Joey reach the fast forward. It's head shaving, the third time the race has done this as a fast forward. For some reason there's a board up with 10 numbers, so teams can go in order, which makes me wonder if this was originally going to be the roadblock or something. Otherwise it seems kind of odd to have that there, no one's going to hang around waiting for another team to finish the FF, let alone all ten of them.
Both of them are gung ho about the head shaving, even Joey. Who still feels the need to tell the monk shaving her head that she has hair extensions, or, in her parlance "I have Ext-ten-shun". Really not sure he had any idea what she was getting at with that, or why he should care. I mean, it's a razor. It's coming off whether it's fake or not.
She get shaved. Richard gets shaved. There is a lot of hyperactive shrieking. She describes herself as "brave". Oh whatever. Richard comments that they can throw out her hair-straightener, which she apparently brought on the race despite it weighing two kilos. FFS. They taxi to the pit stop (instantly recognisable again from TAR-Asia), come in team number one (more shrieking) and are out of the episode. Hurray! Grant also doesn't look happy to see them. It's social skills, I tell you.
Mo and Mos arrive at the fast forward, which has been taken. D'oh! Back to the detour. In an interview they crack Dean and I up again, by describing themselves as hitting "the summit of Mt Disappointment". The one near Kinglake? Really?
Teams are arriving at the Kung Fu detour. This turns out to be quite complicated, requiring teams to learn a sequence of around 30 moves in order to be able to progress to breaking 6 tiles with their fist. Kelly takes over for the bikers, training Dave in the moves using terms like "head, nuts, chest, guts.."
The Lion dance is equally as complicated, with as many moves and teams needing to (a) be able to jump on and off a small platform and (b) wear a Chinese lion costume, including the big head. The Big W ladies give up on Kung Fu and go to try the Lion dance. Mo and Mos choose the Lion Dance.
The surfers are the first to work out the Kung Fu moves. They break the boards and head off to the next task, which involves getting to the Venetian casino in Macau.
One of Mo and Mos meanwhile is having trouble keeping the lion legs of their costume up over their trousers. "Public streaking" giggles the other.
The farmers finish the Kung Fu moves, break the tile and head for the fast ferry to Macau. Muscles and Bambi finish the Lion Dance, and head for the ferry.
Mo and Mos - who are the most frustrated we've seen them so far - and the Big W ladies - giggling hysterically - continue failing at the Lion Dance, falling off the platform and generally being uncoordinated..
Alana and Mel finish the Lion Dance, the bikers finish the Kung Fu. Both head for the ferry. Dave describes Kelly having walked him through the Kung Fu as "I finally listened to my wife". I'm not sure he's that much different from Muscles to be honest. He's certainly irritating me more than Muscles is at this point.
The models finish the Kung Fu. Renae bruises her knuckles by forgetting to pull out before hitting the concrete below the tiles. I'm impressed by her toughness. Jeff and Luke finish. Everyone heads for the ferry.
Everyone except Mos and Mo and the Big W ladies end up on the 9.45pm ferry to Macau. Sucks to be the surfers.
The last two teams finish the Lion Dance. I'm thinking there might have been a mercy element in there.
More taxis, this time to the casino. More dramas, this time with teams having trouble finding one. All the teams finally get there, change into formal-wear and head for the casino floor for another luck-based challenge previously seen on TAR-Asia, this time playing Baccarat. 10 wins will get you 10 tiles spelling out "A Ma Village", the next destination. Oh and a clue, presumably with more information.
Mel and Alana prove that they're lucky, and head off without changing out of their formal dresses to A Ma Village. They're lucky the next task didn't involve running.
The Models are next luckiest, but opt to get changed before leaving. Then have a moment of crisis and doubt their taxi driver, getting him to return them to the casino where they can get another taxi... which takes them straight along the route the first guy was taking. Oops.
The surfers get lucky. At Baccarat I mean.
The trailing two teams arrive at the casino and change. One of the Big W ladies opts to keep wearing her non-strapless sports bra under her strapless formal gown. After watching one of the models hugging her chest the entire time she was wearing her gown (probably one reason why they opted to get changed back into their own clothes) I can understand why.
So now all but four teams are at the casino. One table has (in order) the bikers, Muscles and Bambi and the Farmers, all staring intently at the table. The other table has Mos and Mo, the Big W ladies and Jeff and Luke - and they all start promptly enjoying themselves, cracking up and laughing hysterically. Dave gives them a death glare from the non-fun table. I'd rather be on the fun one, myself.
"Technically we're not supposed to be gambling" says one of Mos and Mo, "I'm not the best sort of Muslim..."
The Farmers get the next clue and head off.
Mel and Alana arrive at A Ma Village, and discover it's a Roadblock. "Who can crack the Animal Code?" Alana has a panic attack and makes Mel do it. She's going to have to step up soon, Mel's now done all three roadblocks, the only team where this is the case.
The task is to complete the Chinese zodiac, which is made up of symbols for each year printed on Chinese lanterns, all hanging on a rack. You have to get the lanterns in order of the zodiac.
The clues shown are:
*1968 was the Year of the Monkey
*The Rabbit hops once to the left
*The Horse is two years after the Dragon
*1984 was the Year of the Rat
*Dog chases the Rooster just before it ends
*2008 was the start of the new zodiac
*In one way the rat couldn't be further from the Pig. In another it's right before it.
Other clues identified during the task were:
*The Sheep stays where it is.
*The Snake slithers to the left
Mel and one of the Surfers team up to complete the task. One of the Farmers takes it (I still can't work out who's who for either of those teams.)
The bikers finish up at the casino.
The Big W ladies finish up at the casino. Luck based task - random re-shuffling of the order.
Bambi and Muscles finish up, then Jeff and Luke and Mo and Mos. All three teams head off to get changed.
The models finally arrive at the roadblock after their taxi adventures. Sam takes it. The bikers arrive, Kelly takes it. It looks like these two teams are also planning on working together, and sure enough they have their heads together in the next shot.
Jeff and Luke arrives, Jeff takes it, then Muscles follows right behind. Jeff is a bit bemused by the number of teams now working together and asks whichever Farmer it is if that's allowed. They team up.
Jeff approaches the task the same way I would, which is to think of every single person whose Chinese zodiac sign and birth year I know. That would be 6 for me, 3 for him.
The Big W ladies arrive, having dropped a place, and Anne-Marie takes it. One of Mo and Mos takes it (yes, another male:male team I can't tell apart. Sheesh. Please don't have identical twins next season, I have enough trouble just with same-sex teams. The only reason I can now tell Sam and Renae apart is because Sam turned up in the Herald-Sun this week.)
OK, just stopping for a sec here - the Chinese zodiac isn't exactly common knowledge among non-Asian/non-Buddhist Australians. I mean, yeah, we know it exists, and we know there's 12 animals but as to the order? Not so much. I can't even tell you what Chinese year it is this year, thinking about it. (I'd even struggle with the order of the Western zodiac, and that's in every day's newspaper.) Even with 5 signs that I do know (in my case it goes Pig, Rat, blank, Tiger, blank, Dragon, blank, Horse, and I could probably work out Monkey eventually) there's still a hell of a lot of gaps. So I was curious as to how much you could get from the clues alone. The short answer is, from what we saw on the show? Not a lot. For starters two of the clues gave you year of the Rat, which admittedly is the start of the cycle - but unless that meant you could put the Rat at the start it isn't that helpful. You really needed to know at least one other year/sign to work it out. I'm assuming must have been other clues in there, otherwise it just wouldn't work with what was given, and it seems a bit harsh to need additional non-included information just to complete a task.
Edit: looked at it again this morning, and actually you can work out all but four animals with the clues given. The unknown combinations are #2 can be either Tiger or Ox, #3 can be Dragon, Tiger or Ox, 5 can be Horse, Tiger, Ox or Dragon and 7 can be Horse, Tiger or Ox. So it would help if you had a year to tie it to, but it's not essential - you could work it out by brute force if you had to, and the logical place to start would be with the Dragon/Horse clue. Then again, I'm mostly awake and working this out.
Alana and Surfer dude realise that that "the dog chases the rooster" means that the dog came after the rooster, not before. Like in a tequila chaser. Seriously, that's a whole degree of difficulty right there. They have the order correct and are teams 2 and 3.
Kelly thinks she has it - the bikers are team number 4. Not sure what's happened to the models. The farmers, right behind them, are team number 5.
Jeff and Luke are team number 6. The father, which ever one he is, gets seriously emotional while being interviewed, which makes me wonder just how late it now is as teams are finishing.
The models think they have it. They don't. They head back to try again. Muscles and Bambi, however, are right behind them and do have it. They're team number 7.
The models panic, and decide to use the Express Pass they won at the start of the race, rather than take the risk of the final two teams passing them. They are team number 8.
And that leaves my two favourite teams fighting it out. *sigh* This is never going to end well. Both are struggling, which is probably a combination of fatigue and quite possibly having no idea what their Chinese zodiac sign is. A shot of the dog and rooster in the wrong order indicates that Mo/s possibly hasn't drunk tequila chasers and hasn't thought of "chase" as being the other way around. In the same position I think I'd do exactly the same thing, and I have had tequila chasers. It's a badly worded clue.
Edit: OK, to be fair to the clue designers, if you know that the order of the zodiac is the end result of a race between the animals the clue makes perfect sense. If, like a large number of Australians and I'm guessing pretty much all of the racers, you don't know that though? You're likely to think of 'chase' as being left to right, rather than right to left. Mo/s should have had an advantage if they can read Arabic there, but then again fatigue kills brain cells. Or inactivates them at least.
Mo/s says to Tracey: "if we go tonight, we're going to miss you guys probably the most".
Aw.
Both teams consider quitting and taking the 4 hour penalty. That by itself is making me wonder what time we're up to now and how long these guys have been up.
Mo/s decides he can't think any more, and they take the penalty, sitting off to the side next to the mat. This gives the Big W ladies 4 hours to try and complete the puzzle.
The doors open and the Big W ladies walk through. Grant calls Mos and Mo to the mat. Suspense. Who out of my two favourite teams is eliminated.
The Big W ladies have also bailed on the task, meaning Mos and Mo are still in, and the Big W ladies are out. *sniff* Both teams hug.
In their final interview the Big W ladies admit that they've lost no weight during the three legs, but gained it instead. "It must be muscle." Heh.
Final analysis: I both liked and disliked parts of this episode. The detour was essentially the same thing on both sides, learning a routine either with or without additional tile smashing or Lion head. There were two luck based tasks - one I would have been fine with, but two seems a bit excessive. The roadblock I liked, although I would like more information as to what all the clues were. If the clues given were the only ones we were told about I don't think it was actually possible to complete the roadblock without additional information, which seems a bit harsh. And again, I really wish they'd either include more fast forwards, so that teams would have to make a choice as to whether to go for it or not, or drop it altogether. As it is this race's fast forward was essentially who got luckiest at the fortune cookies. Meh.
Next week: South Africa! Richard and Joey get bogged! Other teams laugh at them!
Anyway. Episode 3. Channel 7 finally ran almost within the limits of my DVR setting, which was nice of them, so I managed to see the whole episode in one go for once. I wish they'd get over the whole "look what's coming up next!" and showing us footage of the episode they're about to screen though. Really, I'm going to watch the episode. Give us a quick recap of what happened last episode and then get on with it, dammit. The number of ads remains similar, although the advantage of DVRing is that you can of course fast forward. It did take me one ad break to remember that though.
Where were we? Oh yeah, Vietnam. Teams head off into the night, having had a 12 hour eat, sleep, mingle break. I'm willing to bet it was more like an "eat, interview, sleep" break, with most of the mingling being done at airports. Despite Mo and Mos being molested while waiting for a taxi by some local women who've apparently never seen man boobs before and thought they were hilarious, everyone makes it on to the same flight from Hue to Hong Kong. Even the models, who weren't sure whether Hong Kong was in Singapore or not.
In Hong Kong we hit the taxi dramas. Some teams (the models) are apparently surprised to discover that not all taxi drivers in Hong Kong speak English. I'm not entirely sure why this was surprising, what with Hong Kong being predominantly Cantonese speaking and all. Joey and Richard fail to communicate with their taxi driver at all and end up having to get him to take them back to the airport to find someone they could actually make understand them. I'm not sure that Joey's habit of speaking broken English in a funny accent was helpful in this situation. She'd probably have had better luck with pidgin English in a BBC accent to be honest. Or broken Cantonese. Or miming. Watching her trying to mime "Jumbo" - everyone was trying to get to the Jumbo floating restaurant by ferry from Aberdeen Marina Club - would have been hilarious. Damn, missed opportunity.
About this point I realised who Joey was reminding me of. It's Mirna. If she starts up with the "choo choo" while attempting to find a train station or miming swimming while looking for a ferry terminal it'll just confirm it.
Meanwhile the Farmers are busy being gobsmacked by really tall buildings. "I think we could even cope with Melbourne after this". Yeah, we've got much smaller buildings than Hong Kong.
Five teams (bikers, surfer dudes - whose godawful hair is getting worse, I swear, the models, the father/son combo and Mo and Mos) manage to find drivers they could communicate with and get to the ferry quickly. Dave sees Muscles and Bambi approaching and gets the ferry to leave before they can make it, causing Muscles to call Dave a "hillbilly". Which... fair call, actually. Certainly about as relevant as Dave calling Muscles "white trash".
At this point it's obviously late afternoon and starting to get dark.
Arriving at their destination restaurant teams find a pile of fortune cookies, of which one contains a strip allowing them to get their next clue. To find it they have to bite into, extract and read out all the other fortunes in the cookies until they get the right one. Fun! And also repetitive, as it turns out that there's not actually a lot of variation in fortune cookie fortunes.
Mo and Mos read out a cookie, in the statement that cracked both Dean and I up: "'A skinny man does not know how to do this', mate." Yeah thanks for the north/western suburbs accent there, mate.
Ferry two, with Muscles and Bambi and Alana and Mel takes off.
Remaining teams arrive at the dock, with Richard and Joey having finally made it after their taxi change. "Our taxi got us so lost, we had to get another one!" "Oh..." says one of the Big W ladies in what can really only be described as a polite not-caring tone. The third ferry takes off.
Teams open cookies. Joey is a bit over enthusiastic. ("You will be a winner!") With the Luck Of The Evil she promptly finds the clue and they're off to try and get the one and only fast forward.
I really, really wish they'd either go back to having at least four fast forwards on the leg - making it part of strategy rather than a lucky dip prize - or abandon it altogether to be honest. Anyway, they head off in a taxi to a local temple.
Everyone else grits their teeth and keeps going. I'm not entirely sure why everyone dislikes them so much, but it's really quite obvious that they're not popular. My guess is social skills, specifically a lack of, and Joey coming across as being really, really annoying in large doses.
Mo and Mos finish shortly after, and also go for the Fast Forward. It's a race!
The surfers finish 10-15 minutes later and go for the Detour. Again it's half a repeat from TAR-Asia, the choice being Lion Dance or Kung Fu Stance. They go for the Kung Fu, presumably not confident in their dancing skills.
Alana and Mel finish, and go to Dance. The Big W ladies finish, and pick Kung Fu, which surprised me. The bikers and models finish simultaneously and both pick Kung Fu.
Muscles and Bambi and the Farmers finish - the former pick dance, the latter Kung Fu.
Richard and Joey reach the fast forward. It's head shaving, the third time the race has done this as a fast forward. For some reason there's a board up with 10 numbers, so teams can go in order, which makes me wonder if this was originally going to be the roadblock or something. Otherwise it seems kind of odd to have that there, no one's going to hang around waiting for another team to finish the FF, let alone all ten of them.
Both of them are gung ho about the head shaving, even Joey. Who still feels the need to tell the monk shaving her head that she has hair extensions, or, in her parlance "I have Ext-ten-shun". Really not sure he had any idea what she was getting at with that, or why he should care. I mean, it's a razor. It's coming off whether it's fake or not.
She get shaved. Richard gets shaved. There is a lot of hyperactive shrieking. She describes herself as "brave". Oh whatever. Richard comments that they can throw out her hair-straightener, which she apparently brought on the race despite it weighing two kilos. FFS. They taxi to the pit stop (instantly recognisable again from TAR-Asia), come in team number one (more shrieking) and are out of the episode. Hurray! Grant also doesn't look happy to see them. It's social skills, I tell you.
Mo and Mos arrive at the fast forward, which has been taken. D'oh! Back to the detour. In an interview they crack Dean and I up again, by describing themselves as hitting "the summit of Mt Disappointment". The one near Kinglake? Really?
Teams are arriving at the Kung Fu detour. This turns out to be quite complicated, requiring teams to learn a sequence of around 30 moves in order to be able to progress to breaking 6 tiles with their fist. Kelly takes over for the bikers, training Dave in the moves using terms like "head, nuts, chest, guts.."
The Lion dance is equally as complicated, with as many moves and teams needing to (a) be able to jump on and off a small platform and (b) wear a Chinese lion costume, including the big head. The Big W ladies give up on Kung Fu and go to try the Lion dance. Mo and Mos choose the Lion Dance.
The surfers are the first to work out the Kung Fu moves. They break the boards and head off to the next task, which involves getting to the Venetian casino in Macau.
One of Mo and Mos meanwhile is having trouble keeping the lion legs of their costume up over their trousers. "Public streaking" giggles the other.
The farmers finish the Kung Fu moves, break the tile and head for the fast ferry to Macau. Muscles and Bambi finish the Lion Dance, and head for the ferry.
Mo and Mos - who are the most frustrated we've seen them so far - and the Big W ladies - giggling hysterically - continue failing at the Lion Dance, falling off the platform and generally being uncoordinated..
Alana and Mel finish the Lion Dance, the bikers finish the Kung Fu. Both head for the ferry. Dave describes Kelly having walked him through the Kung Fu as "I finally listened to my wife". I'm not sure he's that much different from Muscles to be honest. He's certainly irritating me more than Muscles is at this point.
The models finish the Kung Fu. Renae bruises her knuckles by forgetting to pull out before hitting the concrete below the tiles. I'm impressed by her toughness. Jeff and Luke finish. Everyone heads for the ferry.
Everyone except Mos and Mo and the Big W ladies end up on the 9.45pm ferry to Macau. Sucks to be the surfers.
The last two teams finish the Lion Dance. I'm thinking there might have been a mercy element in there.
More taxis, this time to the casino. More dramas, this time with teams having trouble finding one. All the teams finally get there, change into formal-wear and head for the casino floor for another luck-based challenge previously seen on TAR-Asia, this time playing Baccarat. 10 wins will get you 10 tiles spelling out "A Ma Village", the next destination. Oh and a clue, presumably with more information.
Mel and Alana prove that they're lucky, and head off without changing out of their formal dresses to A Ma Village. They're lucky the next task didn't involve running.
The Models are next luckiest, but opt to get changed before leaving. Then have a moment of crisis and doubt their taxi driver, getting him to return them to the casino where they can get another taxi... which takes them straight along the route the first guy was taking. Oops.
The surfers get lucky. At Baccarat I mean.
The trailing two teams arrive at the casino and change. One of the Big W ladies opts to keep wearing her non-strapless sports bra under her strapless formal gown. After watching one of the models hugging her chest the entire time she was wearing her gown (probably one reason why they opted to get changed back into their own clothes) I can understand why.
So now all but four teams are at the casino. One table has (in order) the bikers, Muscles and Bambi and the Farmers, all staring intently at the table. The other table has Mos and Mo, the Big W ladies and Jeff and Luke - and they all start promptly enjoying themselves, cracking up and laughing hysterically. Dave gives them a death glare from the non-fun table. I'd rather be on the fun one, myself.
"Technically we're not supposed to be gambling" says one of Mos and Mo, "I'm not the best sort of Muslim..."
The Farmers get the next clue and head off.
Mel and Alana arrive at A Ma Village, and discover it's a Roadblock. "Who can crack the Animal Code?" Alana has a panic attack and makes Mel do it. She's going to have to step up soon, Mel's now done all three roadblocks, the only team where this is the case.
The task is to complete the Chinese zodiac, which is made up of symbols for each year printed on Chinese lanterns, all hanging on a rack. You have to get the lanterns in order of the zodiac.
The clues shown are:
*1968 was the Year of the Monkey
*The Rabbit hops once to the left
*The Horse is two years after the Dragon
*1984 was the Year of the Rat
*Dog chases the Rooster just before it ends
*2008 was the start of the new zodiac
*In one way the rat couldn't be further from the Pig. In another it's right before it.
Other clues identified during the task were:
*The Sheep stays where it is.
*The Snake slithers to the left
Mel and one of the Surfers team up to complete the task. One of the Farmers takes it (I still can't work out who's who for either of those teams.)
The bikers finish up at the casino.
The Big W ladies finish up at the casino. Luck based task - random re-shuffling of the order.
Bambi and Muscles finish up, then Jeff and Luke and Mo and Mos. All three teams head off to get changed.
The models finally arrive at the roadblock after their taxi adventures. Sam takes it. The bikers arrive, Kelly takes it. It looks like these two teams are also planning on working together, and sure enough they have their heads together in the next shot.
Jeff and Luke arrives, Jeff takes it, then Muscles follows right behind. Jeff is a bit bemused by the number of teams now working together and asks whichever Farmer it is if that's allowed. They team up.
Jeff approaches the task the same way I would, which is to think of every single person whose Chinese zodiac sign and birth year I know. That would be 6 for me, 3 for him.
The Big W ladies arrive, having dropped a place, and Anne-Marie takes it. One of Mo and Mos takes it (yes, another male:male team I can't tell apart. Sheesh. Please don't have identical twins next season, I have enough trouble just with same-sex teams. The only reason I can now tell Sam and Renae apart is because Sam turned up in the Herald-Sun this week.)
OK, just stopping for a sec here - the Chinese zodiac isn't exactly common knowledge among non-Asian/non-Buddhist Australians. I mean, yeah, we know it exists, and we know there's 12 animals but as to the order? Not so much. I can't even tell you what Chinese year it is this year, thinking about it. (I'd even struggle with the order of the Western zodiac, and that's in every day's newspaper.) Even with 5 signs that I do know (in my case it goes Pig, Rat, blank, Tiger, blank, Dragon, blank, Horse, and I could probably work out Monkey eventually) there's still a hell of a lot of gaps. So I was curious as to how much you could get from the clues alone. The short answer is, from what we saw on the show? Not a lot. For starters two of the clues gave you year of the Rat, which admittedly is the start of the cycle - but unless that meant you could put the Rat at the start it isn't that helpful. You really needed to know at least one other year/sign to work it out. I'm assuming must have been other clues in there, otherwise it just wouldn't work with what was given, and it seems a bit harsh to need additional non-included information just to complete a task.
Edit: looked at it again this morning, and actually you can work out all but four animals with the clues given. The unknown combinations are #2 can be either Tiger or Ox, #3 can be Dragon, Tiger or Ox, 5 can be Horse, Tiger, Ox or Dragon and 7 can be Horse, Tiger or Ox. So it would help if you had a year to tie it to, but it's not essential - you could work it out by brute force if you had to, and the logical place to start would be with the Dragon/Horse clue. Then again, I'm mostly awake and working this out.
Alana and Surfer dude realise that that "the dog chases the rooster" means that the dog came after the rooster, not before. Like in a tequila chaser. Seriously, that's a whole degree of difficulty right there. They have the order correct and are teams 2 and 3.
Kelly thinks she has it - the bikers are team number 4. Not sure what's happened to the models. The farmers, right behind them, are team number 5.
Jeff and Luke are team number 6. The father, which ever one he is, gets seriously emotional while being interviewed, which makes me wonder just how late it now is as teams are finishing.
The models think they have it. They don't. They head back to try again. Muscles and Bambi, however, are right behind them and do have it. They're team number 7.
The models panic, and decide to use the Express Pass they won at the start of the race, rather than take the risk of the final two teams passing them. They are team number 8.
And that leaves my two favourite teams fighting it out. *sigh* This is never going to end well. Both are struggling, which is probably a combination of fatigue and quite possibly having no idea what their Chinese zodiac sign is. A shot of the dog and rooster in the wrong order indicates that Mo/s possibly hasn't drunk tequila chasers and hasn't thought of "chase" as being the other way around. In the same position I think I'd do exactly the same thing, and I have had tequila chasers. It's a badly worded clue.
Edit: OK, to be fair to the clue designers, if you know that the order of the zodiac is the end result of a race between the animals the clue makes perfect sense. If, like a large number of Australians and I'm guessing pretty much all of the racers, you don't know that though? You're likely to think of 'chase' as being left to right, rather than right to left. Mo/s should have had an advantage if they can read Arabic there, but then again fatigue kills brain cells. Or inactivates them at least.
Mo/s says to Tracey: "if we go tonight, we're going to miss you guys probably the most".
Aw.
Both teams consider quitting and taking the 4 hour penalty. That by itself is making me wonder what time we're up to now and how long these guys have been up.
Mo/s decides he can't think any more, and they take the penalty, sitting off to the side next to the mat. This gives the Big W ladies 4 hours to try and complete the puzzle.
The doors open and the Big W ladies walk through. Grant calls Mos and Mo to the mat. Suspense. Who out of my two favourite teams is eliminated.
The Big W ladies have also bailed on the task, meaning Mos and Mo are still in, and the Big W ladies are out. *sniff* Both teams hug.
In their final interview the Big W ladies admit that they've lost no weight during the three legs, but gained it instead. "It must be muscle." Heh.
Final analysis: I both liked and disliked parts of this episode. The detour was essentially the same thing on both sides, learning a routine either with or without additional tile smashing or Lion head. There were two luck based tasks - one I would have been fine with, but two seems a bit excessive. The roadblock I liked, although I would like more information as to what all the clues were. If the clues given were the only ones we were told about I don't think it was actually possible to complete the roadblock without additional information, which seems a bit harsh. And again, I really wish they'd either include more fast forwards, so that teams would have to make a choice as to whether to go for it or not, or drop it altogether. As it is this race's fast forward was essentially who got luckiest at the fortune cookies. Meh.
Next week: South Africa! Richard and Joey get bogged! Other teams laugh at them!
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Date: 2011-06-06 09:30 am (UTC)I will miss the Big W ladies. I hope they had a good time, and I wish they'd gone further. :)
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Date: 2011-06-07 02:35 am (UTC)It was interesting seeing the start times last night - Mo and Mos and the Big W Ladies gave up around an hour after everyone else had finished. I think they were being realistic at that point, if they hadn't gotten it by then I doubt they were going to. I'm guessing it was the Dog/Rooster that ended up screwing them up.