hnpcc | Amazing Race Australia

At this point I think I'm better off doing a general overview of thoughts rather than a post per episode! Which is why I'm still doing one episode at a time, because I've just discovered I'm incapable. Hopefully I'll catch up to the current episode... by the end of next week, heh.

OK, Episode 4: The Most Hilarious Episode So Far. Recap available here. (Warning: recap has a lot of shipping going on!)

Highlights: the bunching at Johannesburg airport getting to Port Elizabeth. The random 300km drive to get a clue... and then drive back to just out of Port Elizabeth for the Detour. And then we got to the game park (aw, elephants! zebras! other African wildlife!), which was closed for the night. The drive was pretty much to force another bunch at the park, that was obvious, but naturally the Hyper Competitive Team of Joey and Richard made sure that they were first in line when the park opened. And then things got really funny. It is, as several teams pointed out, a bad thing to be the first in line when you're driving up to a mud hole that you have to cross. The advantage of being first in line of course is that you could get out, have a closer look at where you need to cross and actually work out what might be a feasible route. You'll still probably get bogged, granted, but at least you have a bit of a shot of making it across. All you have to do is ignore the other 7 vehicles honking behind you for a bit.

Or you could just go and drive straight in, without doing that. And get seriously, completely bogged. Which is what they did.

OK, that would have been funny enough. But then they decided to try and get themselves out (which was, to be fair, their only option).

OK, I haven't been bogged that often. Even I though might think twice about using locally available sticks to dig holes near the wheels, mostly on the grounds that I can't see how this is going to help with the vehicle being stuck. I mean the problem is you've got no traction, right? So the wheels are spinning? So digging holes next to the wheels is not actually going to help with this, what with there then being even less traction than previously.

And yet, that's what they started doing. Dean and I were in hysterics on the couch, to the point we had to rewind bits and watch again. When they picked up the brush both of us thought "oh yeah, they'll put it under the wheels and try and get some traction happening". And then they started digging.

Dean and I were still laughing, but nowhere near as much as most of the other teams were shown doing. OK, probably about as much as the other teams. It really was funny.

Meanwhile Chris - second in line - had decided to go around them and try a slightly different route through the mud, and also gotten himself bogged.

At this point we got a long shot of Richard and Joey - both of whom were looking extremely muddy thanks to the digging - and discovered that not only were they bogged but they'd managed to do it so the car was on an angle approaching 45 degrees. Seriously. Chris at least was bogged on mostly level mud. You know this is why scouting out the ground before driving over the edge of a small cliff into a mudhole might be a good idea. Even if the car's 4WD, it's still a good idea to know what you're driving it into. Or off, in this case.

And Dean and I had to rewind again because that cracked us up again.

More digging. Some pushing, but still no traction. I'm not sure that I wouldn't have tried pushing the car down further into the mud hole, mostly on the grounds that trying to push it back up the 45 degree angle cliff wasn't going to work, whereas getting it onto level ground might have helped.

One of the surfers moved the branches near the edge of the mud hole - and got bogged. He had the presence of mind to go into low gear, and got them out OK. Everyone not currently bogged followed them, making it one of the few times on any version of the race where being in the first three teams was a distinct disadvantage.

Chris managed to get the vehicle out... leaving Richard and Joey covered in mud and digging. Still. Digging. And I'm giggling again at it because it really was funny.

The Detour was original in both parts, which was a nice change - a choice between a Survivor-esque challenge throwing knobknerries to break pots hung about 25-30 metres away, or building a giraffe feeder. Dean would have picked the throwing, at least to start with, I would probably have gone along with it until we'd worked out whether it was likely we'd be able to do it. Not least because the giraffe feeders were quite tall, and I'm... not. As usual there was a crowd of (probably) paid locals laughing at the teams who chose throwing - I can't blame them, if they got teams on the US version to drop kick or handball or particularly bounce AFL footballs (or do something else innately Australian/Melburnian) I'd be one of the paid laughing locals too. Although given cultural mores I'd probably be trying to laugh a bit more discreetly than these locals were!

And then we had the first U-turn. I'm not much of a fan of the U-turns (or Yields), even when they do occasionally produce highly amusing results (Colin:Ox). I much prefer TAR:Original, where the fast forward was the only strategic card available. Still, it's there and as I said it does occasionally make for good TV.

The first team to get to the U-turn (the farmers) ignored it, probably wisely. It's early in the race, they're a strong team - why invite trouble when you might need to use it later on? The second team though... went straight for the jugular. Richard and Joey's jugular. And that was when I realised again just how much some of the other teams really didn't like Richard and Joey. I mean, there wasn't actually a good reason for the surfers to U-turn that particular team at that time. They'd finished the Detour, they were in second place, they're also a strong team, and - most importantly - Richard and Joey were still bogged. There were at least 6 teams behind them that they could have left the U-turn to - and at least three teams who probably would have turned the exact same team, leaving the surfers with the option of U-turning someone more threatening later on. But they really couldn't resist it, which was obvious from the giggles.

Meanwhile Richard and Joey had been pulled out of the mud by a support vehicle. Which was good, otherwise they'd have been stuck there all day. Which would also have been funny - I'd have liked to have seen Grant have to come out to eliminate them in the middle of nowhere.

I will give Richard and Joey their due. They arrived at the Detour in dead last place, built the giraffe feeder very rapidly despite (a) yelling at each other and (b) Richard managing to hammer his thumb at least twice, which meant that they left again before Mel and Alana and the Mo*s, both of whom were bleeding time building. (The Mo*s at least had the excuse of switching Detours, not sure what Mel and Alana were doing. Probably being short and having trouble hammering the top in, like I would.)

And then they got to the U-turn, and had to go back and break pots by throwing stuff at them. Schadenfreude is probably wrong, but was fun anyway.

The Roadblock, meanwhile, was a bungee jump into what looked disturbingly like an endless ravine. Me to Dean: you're doing it. Seriously, I'd have had trouble even getting across the bridge - which you could see through - to where the platform to throw yourself off was, let alone actually jumping. Ergh.

Another amusing "Motorway Patrol/Amazing Race" cross over moment when the farmers were pulled over for speeding. Unfortunately they weren't fined, or - as happened in one version of the Race - subject to an automatic loss of license. Now that was a funny episode, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer team.

Bungee jumping, bungee jumping - basically it's all fall and scream really.

Richard and Joey were now bogged down throwing sticks at pots, heh.

The final post-bungee task? Drive to this village, get a goat and deliver it to the local Sangoma. Yes, it's a working-with-animals task - they can't go horribly wrong!

The Sangoma was sitting on a mat in the middle of the village, surrounded by probably-unpaid-but-entertained-by-the-presence-of-a-film-crew locals. I'm just basing that on having grown up in small country towns - you wouldn't need to pay people to stand around, a film crew would be payment enough. Seriously. Most interesting thing to happen in the village since... quite possibly the goats escaped.

The early teams in general had no problems with the goats (and the luxury of time) and managed to drag (or in one case carry) them to the Sangoma. Who promptly smeared white stripes on their faces, heh. Hopefully that's to ward off bad luck?

Richard and Joey finally managed to unbog themselves by smashing their final pot.

Everything got tense when it was down to the final three teams. And then Richard and Joey came into their own. Knowing they were bone dead last, knowing they had a slow team (the Mo*s) in front of them, knowing they could definitely outrun at least that team they decided to... waste time by catching a second goat, having decided their first one wasn't good enough.

The second goat promptly repaid them by digging its heels in about halfway to the Sangoma and refusing to move. Despite being physically quite strong they didn't try carrying it, or anything other than attempting to drag it. I haven't laughed so much in ages.

The outcome was, finally, not in doubt. They were eliminated. For a team that I thought was going to be a major contender they turned out to be really quite bad at racing - the only time they didn't finish in the last three teams was when they lucked into the fast forward. They bled time at mental tasks like you wouldn't believe (I'm still disappointed they didn't do the zodiac task... because that would have been interesting to watch) although they were generally good at the brute strength physical ones. But what really did them in was apparently an inability to realise how much they were annoying everyone else.

Oh and an attempt to unbog a vehicle by digging under the wheels. *snerk*