The Amazing Race 33: Episode 4 Recap

0:00 Welcome back to the nullified take where we've got the tnt takes for you on the amazing race 33 and i'm joined here by a very well-known guest who those that have followed the nullify attack for a while here drew my normal co-host or one of my co-hosts for the challenge has kindly stepped in for michelle this week to be my co-host for the amazing race drew we've not spoken about the amazing race you and me at all up until this point so i'm very interested to hear what you're thinking of this season so far and especially coming into this season knowing that the first couple of legs were always going to be interesting because we knew that the show was suspended we knew people were going to come back how have you found the first couple of episodes coming into this season of the amazing race and have you always been a fan or is this something that you're sort of newly dipping your toes into so far so good with this race i mean we haven't had an amazing race in forever so i was ready and excited to have some form of the amazing race back on my tv i've been watching for forever like i've been sort of like a reality tv type of kid and cbs was like my first real experience into reality tv with big brother with the amazing race and then as i've grown up i've dipped

1:20 My toes into bravo which has tons of just terrible reality tv and then of course mtv with the challenge and everything so i'm watching everything and anything i even have like a too hot to handle video coming out soon because i just watch any and all reality tv even though i don't like it i don't like too hot to handle but i watch it so i'm excited to have somebody to talk about the amazing race with and yeah get your ideas and thoughts on this episode this week's episode coming back into it yeah the amazing race i've always seen it as one of the like big three you know back in the day like for me growing up in south africa the shows that always used to make it they were like the first one was survivor the second one was the amazing race and then big brother became pretty big and south africa had its own version of big brother as well which i believe is actually coming back after years and years of not forming in south africa which is exciting for people who are over there but those were always the big three for me the amazing race big brother and survivor all of them obviously being cbs shows as well but funny enough the amazing race has always felt a little bit like the stepchild when it comes to those three big shows because they haven't always received the same love i feel like from cbs i've seen a lot of people say that they don't really hype it up as much over there in the states they don't put a lot of advertisement

2:40 Up to say hey the amazing race is coming back like they would with survivor or big brother for instance one of the things that's been interesting to me drew is that when the season started it was up by 33 in viewers compared to last season and i had a quick look at the viewer ratings this season and it does look like it's hauling up it's 36 percent still above episode four or lake four from the previous season that showed so it's interesting because a lot of like die hard amazing race fans are 50 on it saying it's not one of the better seasons at this point as of yet but it does seem like there's a lot more eyeballs on it at this stage that's really interesting i think maybe it's the separation makes the heart grow fonder kind of thing like we haven't had an amazing race in so long so maybe more people are checking it out like more casuals that don't have a lot of tv viewing at least appointment viewing going over and over again so maybe that's it i also think that it has to do with some of the cast too i think they have like a youtuber they had a couple of youtube sensations as well as just some really fun teams so maybe the teams are different this season that's really making it a difference i know when i do youtube videos at least for some of the recaps for it

4:00 A lot of people are saying that this youtube family like they love them so i mean maybe that's driving up some of the viewership as well like i just think some of the teams this season are a lot better and i know they dip their toes in like the love island reality tv couple that is no longer on this on the race anymore because they're not together anymore so yeah it's interesting some of the cast members that they put on here and then to see half of the teams don't even come back as pretty and pretty crazy to me yeah it is a pretty insane twist just before we get into that kim and pen you mentioned them being you know youtubers i'm not sure what they follow account or their subscriber count is do they have like half a million a million subscribers because i guess when you look at a show like the amazing race that in general i think pull about four million viewers each episode if you've got like half a million or something subscribers and half of them show up it can actually make a massive change that could be the 30 that we're seeing an uptake maybe there was like a maybe there was like an overlay with between their viewership or but they have like a good couple of hundred thousands so when they do like talk about the amazing race because they do like some of their videos now whenever an episode comes out they do like a podcast of themselves just talking about what they were dealing with and that

5:21 Gets like a hundred thousand on its own so i don't know if their full viewership is watching but there's a good chunk of that maybe is overlaying with them yeah no i agree i think it's interesting and you know we've seen australian survivor go down the road of getting influences on the show people with high follow accounts on instagram and social media platforms we had a youtuber on last time as well and i think that it is a strategy to try and get the viewership and i know that the die hard fans the people that have been watching shows like this for a long time they don't like it when people get recruited for that reason they would prefer for them to have personality over everything else but i have to say you know love it all or hate it kim and pen they're very over the top characters but they do add something to the show because can you imagine if we had every single team out there have the exact same personality and bring no flavor to the show it would be hella boring to watch right yeah i think well i think also this year's cast is very competitive as well so mix that with their personalities i mean you got lulu and lala who are the radio hosts as well so i mean there's a lot of people that are within the biz as you would say and then they bring the personality

6:41 But they're also bringing the competition at least comparatively to the rest of the racers in this season i mean it's not like one well one team is always constantly up at the top leg after leg but you get a lot of these competitors that are actually doing well in the race that i think it's just very interesting how they chose the competition this season and how the competition is like doing separately but as a whole so i think i think overall i'm enjoying this season i'm wondering how it's going to be once they go to a different country though like what's going to happen the next time that we go the next episode where we get to see like them actually change locations and how that's going to go i mean we know that it's going to be different moving forward but that's where i'm going to be really critiquing the race as we're going on is what's going to happen when we move because i think switzerland was great but they're going to have to change locations and how is that going to change as we move forward and i want to touch into on that definitely i just want to welcome some of the live viewers here sam obviously always a great supporter of the channel welcome back sam sort of talking about the love island team and saying that they wanted the love island team to have their jess and cody magic very hard

8:01 To replicate jess and cody's still going strong i believe they've got two kids now which is great to see they've kind of fallen off a little bit from i think the public eye like she jess used to have a podcast that she's not doing at this stage as well i think they're just enjoying family life somewhere in texas if i'm correct but definitely i think cairo and ray would have been the hot mess team of the season clearly there was some miscommunication she was way more into him than he and to her you could clearly see that on the show and maybe she dodged the bullet not having to come back with ray for the remainder of this but i mean still we as the viewers probably are poorer for not seeing it but 19 months later is a long time so i'm not surprised to see that they didn't make it longer than that i also just want to welcome richard from south africa here in the also in the live stream welcome normally one of our listeners for survivor content also watching the amazing race obviously by the looks of it so like i said drew it is a big thing over in south africa the amazing race as well it was one of the first shows that i remember always making its way to south africa as i grew up touching based on the location which is kind of what you mentioned you know this first leg being in switzerland it's definitely a little bit more of a neutral leg like

9:21 You said it's it looked like it was a very safe country it's a western country so navigating and getting around should in theory be really easy there was still some teams this league that really struggled with it the team for me that clearly is not winning this thing and i will eat this hat if they do is gonna be arun and natalya because arun's navigation skills will horrible this league in a country that should be easy to navigate i don't know what's going on with them i had high hopes when they came back because i was like okay something's got to change maybe in 19 months they've worked out their like strategies on what they're going to do and we saw that happening this episode where they were like don't help the other team but that wasn't their problem was helping the other teams weren't the problem it was way they were communicating and their navigation and it's just different but i almost like don't know if it is the other detour that was messing them up like the punch it because the last two teams came from punch it but it was like both teams also got mixed up with the navigation so maybe where they were at and where the detour was at was really throwing them off but i mean we saw akbar and sherry really in the back of the pack and they

10:41 Made it somehow to finish this race at five like i don't know how that happens like they're finding that magic but something's going on where i don't know if it's the actual team's this race or this leg or if it is where it was the detour was at because both last place teams came from punch it but punches seemed to be easy but it would seem to be really hard if you if you got it i don't know what was going on yeah i mean we'll definitely get into the detail of it all and everything but arun was struggling even in the previous episode when they had to get into vehicles and they had to drive in scotland like he the main reason they lost that episode or got lost in that episode was because of the fact that he struggled to navigate and yeah he comes back after all and i think navigation is one of those things you either you've got a good sense of direction or you don't like one of my previous flatmates that i used to live with in christchurch a couple of years ago probably going back six or seven years now like we had a double story apartment and then whenever he was at the second floor of the apartment he would point in the opposite direction off the garage and think that the garage is underneath on that side and i'd be like you're one story up mate and you don't know where the garage is it's right underneath us so some people just do not have any sense of direction and i feel like arun might be one of those

12:01 People that you know even when he was on the mountain when he was doing the mountain section of it when he got the clue he didn't know where to go he's like oh i thought it was just gonna go down here i didn't know i had to go back up i'm like how do you get lost that's a linear challenge that you have to do but he still found a way to even get lost in that challenge i think he's i think he's a great guy i like the team i always like the father and daughter father and son those types teams and he's got such a great story as an immigrant i'm an immigrant in new zealand so there's a lot i can relate to when it comes to his story but i do fear for him in this game you know what now that you say that i think i would be terrible at navigation this whole time because i do well in places that i know but in the amazing race you would just be completely like far out like you don't know where anything is i mean my college i used to just like drive around and my mom would be like do you know where we're at and i'd just be like no i have no idea where we're at like but at night i would know everything because we used to go walking at night so i'd be like oh i know where this is at night but during the day i would just be like lost beyond all belief because i would be like i have no idea what's going on here but i don't know if that's just me or if that's just like but i yeah i'd be totally lost everybody you're a nocturnal creature you

13:21 Know you live at night that's how you find your way i'm a bit of a night person myself as well but you know looking at this leg here like we said switzerland pretty neutral pretty easy you know leg in this country to deal with i think that we as amazing race fans potentially and myself and riley touched on this last week we may miss out on seeing some of these more difficult countries to navigate and get around in this season because they also probably would be on the red list i would imagine for countries to travel to like most of africa which can be a mess for a lot of teams probably won't be done this season a lot of asian countries are not going to be on the list so you're not going to have that language barrier i don't know how safe south america would be to travel to but i do feel like we're going to see a european heavy leg here so we might see more of these european countries pop up as well one of the other things i wanted to say drew is that i really missed episode one when we started this thing off there was a completely different way that they started the season with the phones the smartphones full popping up on the smartphone them having to race from their house to the closest airport and then go over to london i missed as a die-hard old-school the amazing race fan the starting

14:42 Line and i was really happy to see that they brought the starting line back finally for the for the second version of the race that's gonna matter and we actually had a starting line here in switzerland but the teams that got first second third fourth all of that was thrown out of the window everybody started equally here in the restart of the race how did you feel about people coming back then being no advantage to teams that have placed higher in the previous section of the race do you think it was okay because of you know everything that went on it was pretty unprecedented 19 months of the break how did you feel about this because everybody pretty much had the same start here i almost feel like it's different for us as the audience because there was no difference right there we just went from episode three to episode four they just told us that there was a 19-month difference so to us it feels like oh there's two people coming back it feels weird that not all the people that were just on the previous episode was coming back so it might be a little bit difficult for like some of the audience members including like me at some points because i was just like it kind of sucks that it's like we went from nine to seven we actually went from nine to five back to seven but for the racers and everybody who's in production i think everybody's just

16:02 Like happy to be there because there was a 19-month delay i'm sure they were all thinking like well first of all they were dealing with the pandemic so there were there was a lot going on personally but also when thinking about the race it's kind of like are we ever going to get back to it like what is it going to look like when we get back to it so i'm sure they were just happy to be there together racing and getting to take part in a show that they love i don't think they cared that two people that previously were eliminated were back i just think that they were just like excited to be back racing so i think it took me a little bit of a time to be like okay let's get back to the race is it going to feel like the race but i think once we get into like the next episode and even after at the end of this episode i was like okay the race is back like this is definitely like we're back to full throttle here yeah and i don't want to touch too much on the teams that didn't make it back we kind of knew who those teams were going to be even in the previous episode so myself and riley did go into that a little bit but i didn't get an opportunity to talk to you about it is there anybody specifically that stood out for you that you thought man i wish i saw more of this team in the race and you were really gutted not to see them come back from those previous legs for me personally it was anthony and spencer who i thought could do extremely well like i feel like the

17:23 Quality of the races i mean when you and no bad shots at michael and mo who's become the francesco of you know the amazing race being first eliminated twice in a row here and we'll definitely get into them as well but when you replace michael and moe or anthony spencer with michael and moe the competitiveness of the race goes down considerably because anthony and spencer were very competitive through those first couple of legs in the race and from my understanding anthony received a job offer for a company that he's been trying to work for the last five years so he couldn't let that go and go back and do the rice sadly and spencer wanted to go back but obviously without anthony they probably didn't want to bring anybody else in to be his partner i was still i was really and i really like connie and sam's story as well adopting a kid and things like there's some great casting choices here but sadly you know we didn't see those guys come back were you gutted to not see some of these teams come back and how did you feel about the teams that they did replace them with i guess coming back into this and are you happy with how that sort of played out so i mean anthony and spencer were at the top of the pack i think they had like a little bit of a wave going on because of i think taxis

18:43 But competitive wise i think they were going to be a top team to beat but then again they were working very closely with rusty and or dusty and ryan who i think they were two working closely with each other they were too close with each other so i'm kind of glad that they were separated in a way i wish they would have been able to be separated in the in the race differently rather than just not being able to come back i do like connie and sam i think isaiah and taylor i would have liked to see them come back i know they had their difficulties outside of the show and that's why they couldn't come back ray and caro i think they were doing well for what they were able to do together but they were just clashing heads a lot so i don't think that they would have made it far regardless and it doesn't surprise me that they broke up because it just didn't seem like they were gonna work out i think that relationship was for a season and i think that season passed during covid and the pandemic and i also think that they were going through long distance and that was just not gonna work out so but yeah it kind of pains me to see like four teams like i thought there would be more teams able to come back from being in the race but i mean there was a lot going on in

20:03 Those 19 months so i mean i don't blame anybody for not coming back 100 and another thing that i really enjoyed this episode and i don't know how you felt about that was hearing from people what happened in that 19 months like you know lulu and lala coming back they lost their grandmother sadly who we saw in the opening episode always sad to hear these things i personally have lost family members in south africa due to covert as well so you know i get the seriousness the severeness of this thing probably more so than some but you know they came back with a different i guess focus this time around because they're now running for their grandmother they looked a lot more locked into me compared to the first couple of episodes where they were scatterbrained so that was good to see and then also hearing from the flight attendants about losing their jobs and i know a lot of people that worked in the air industry i mean shintel who's one of our co-hosts on the challenge insiders you know or not challenge insiders anymore but challenge coverage now here on the nullify take you know she's a flight attendant and she hasn't been working in that industry since all of this has gone down so people have been really affected by this and they're just happy to be out there to be able to race you know it seemed like there was no animosity about michael

21:23 And moe and arun and natalia coming back because like i don't know who it was who said that it might have been either one of the flight attendants who said you know because you guys came back we are able to finish this race which everybody wants to finish the race so no one helped that against them but it's it was i thought a good start to the show it's good to see where people are at you know mentally people seem to be more locked on the one thing that stood out for me though drew and i was fearful for the rest of the teams was when they took the bus to go to the mountain dusty said that they've been training at altitude and they've been doing all of these things because they know where their weaknesses were in the first three legs and they've worked on that and i was like well you got first and second most of that and you've found weaknesses man i'm fearful for the rest of the teams if they can improve on what they did before they came back yeah i mean hearing that they were able to be together during the break for a good portion and then train together i just think that they're a really strong team before everything that happened and then being able to actually be together work out together and kind of like work on their chemistry i think if some of the some of the teams weren't able to actually see each other during that time i mean i know some of them

22:43 Are actually like family members and live together but even some of the teams could possibly be split up i mean that's going to be a huge disadvantage if they were having to be apart from one another at certain points i mean like the singing cops aren't necessarily living together and i don't even know how much leeway time they got from phone call to actually being back on the amazing race i mean natalia and naroon are father-daughter but i don't know necessarily if they're seeing each other every day during that 19 months or even living together probably not because she just got married during the time that we saw our last time on the race and then back so hearing that and hearing them like work out hardcore i mean that's a huge advantage and i mean we see what happens this leg so i think they're gonna be a tough team to take down but we've seen legs of races just take one leg can just take a whole team out so i mean that's where you have to like be consistent there's one real big advantage to these teams this season there's no taxis in this rest of the season and we've seen superb teams in the past dominate on some seasons get the wrong taxi at the wrong leg and it's all over and i've always felt kind of cheated out of seeing

24:04 A great team progress and win that season due to the randomness of a taxi like no team in my opinion should ever be eliminated because of a taxi driver not being able to get a location or you know that type of thing should not happen i guess you could say yeah it comes down to you being able to call it and jump out of that taxi and try and flag a new taxi but in some countries taxis aren't easy to get a hold of you know if you're somewhere rural or you're in a country that the predominant language isn't english you know so at least we don't see that this season it's going to be a lot more in their control now that they're going to have to be driving the vehicles themselves a lot more i actually do like this addition to the show the fact that a lot more of the control of this race is in their own hands going back to the first real challenge here the roadblock that they have to do we see everybody going up this mountain they have to climb up the mountain go down it they get to this great viewpoint and i really sort of can relate to what pen said like when he went down there and he got the clone he said like this is a place that i would normally want to spend four or five or six minutes to just absorb it take it in because you could see i can't remember how many countries six different countries from the same

25:24 Viewing point and it looked absolutely breathtaking i was a bit underwhelmed personally with some of the earlier legs nothing to take away from london and scotland i've been in both of those countries there's more scenic things that you can actually go and see there i just didn't feel like it was visually as stimulating for me as a viewer those first couple of leagues and i was a little bit down on it compared to this leg like it was just breathtaking seeing this mountain that they had to go do this challenge on and obviously some people struggled a little bit more than others how would you have found this specific challenge if you had to go up there on this mountain do you have a fear of heights would it have been something that you would be able to you know take like a duck to water and easily just get into it or how would you have found this challenge and did you like seeing this big massive mountain that people had to navigate through so i'll answer the first question i have a i am definitely afraid of heights i don't like heights whatsoever if i went on this show i would have to have somebody a partner who knows like if there is going to be a roadblock or anything that has to do with heights they have to do it like i can't do it i know that they have to choose like before they can see it but if i'm all the way up there i'm thinking that there's going to be somebody jumping off of something or whatever like what we're gonna see in the next episode but i think i would be able to do this one because it is like navigating and

26:44 Hiking like across the side it's not like we're actually like scaling down a building or jumping off of it so that's where i would be able to like take a breath but i think that this one was better much better than the mail cart one like i didn't like that roadblock at all it was like 30 seconds and we're underground like i get it's cool it's a male thing it's been there for like 70 years but it's fine i don't need to look at mail i've worked in a mail room before i don't need to see any more mail i thought the views were breathtaking and i think that this one was deceptively difficult because when you're at home you're kind of like seeing like oh they're just going up and down a mountain but i mean that altitude is going to be killer so i mean when you're watching cherry like i think a lot of people would be getting hit with it harder than say everybody else that was just running back and forth and everything like sherry was having a difficult time i think she was getting hit both with the altitude and the heights but and mental like can you imagine you get up there you're not used to moving at that altitude you're short of breath you know you're like man am i gonna have a heart attack like you know you internalize all these things am i gonna fall down this mountain am i gonna slurp you like i mean i take my hat off to like i mean obviously you know myself

28:05 And riley and michelle kind of spoke to this in the first couple of episodes and she struggled even in the running portions and the cardiovascular side of things and we said hey you get 19 months you got to go work on that but how do you train for altitude how do you have that foresight that's what makes dusty and ryan scary to me because they actually trained at altitude like why like no normal person would go back and say oh i better go train at altitude as well you know so i agree with you she was she was terrified and you know hats off to akbar you could tell he was getting frustrated it's his personality he wants to go he wants to move she used to be a division one athlete he knows what she's capable of so there was a lot of frustration there for him but i think that he handled it as well as he could in that situation knowing that his wife went out there to do it because he potentially was too big apparently to go on the course but i'm sure he would have been okay like you know if he did it but they're gonna have to be good with their communication like you mentioned earlier like you need to know your partner's strengths and weaknesses like for instance if me and you were in a team heights i got you i don't have an issue with heights i'll do that stuff you know if it's algebra drew you're the man you do the algebra side of things i'll definitely do that yeah i thought akbar was better this leg than he was the first two legs or the first three legs but

29:25 He was getting a little chippy at the flag tossing thing there was there was some like that was the when the frustration was really coming out i think but he didn't like the one thing i will say he did get frustrated but he wasn't the one that said shut up or got to that level that was that was sheree they did that so but i mean listen they're a married couple they've been married for a long time they probably went away from this thinking oh man all of this is going to get aired on the show people are going to think like there's problems in our relationship but i think a lot of married couples this is just the way they communicate they've known each other for so long they're brutally honest and straight direct with people with each other like it's just their communication style but it was it was good to see like you said cherie struggling this much i thought looking at this in the episode these guys are out like there's just no way they missed the cable car going back down all of the other teams were on it and for them to be able to go back as far as they did from the back of the pack to win that i think had to do with a few different things that had to do with the fact that they chose the detour that seemed to at the end of the day be the easier one even though in hind like when we looked at it on tv we might have thought ah doing the physical thing especially if you're not well coordinated you're not good with choreography and all that kind of stuff the puncher one should be easier but clearly it wasn't it may have been the location

30:45 How far it was away from the town that they had to move afterwards but akbar and cheri had to do a lot of things right for the rest of the episode to be able to make up that time and not every single leg is going to be a leg that is going to involve heights so i do have a lot of faith that they can continue to build on this performance here because they got past the height section of it they moved on to the navigation part of it which it seems like that their navigational skills are really good they're getting to these points when they have to drive themselves without too much issues and when you can come back from behind like that this episode i think it does give you a lot of faith and gives you some momentum and belief in yourself that you can continue to carry this on throughout the rest of the race yeah they just gotta they just gotta push it and believe it themselves because i think that they've had too many close calls and that can also build up as well like they had there was a lot of similarities between last episode and this episode i feel and i just think that they really need to build momentum and believe it because i think lulu and lala had the same feeling because they were down in one leg and then they were able to come back in this one and get fourth place so i mean they're

32:06 Building momentum as well so there could be momentum but if they don't pick it up then they will start to fall back and there's only so many legs that you can get close calls with until it is your time and then you are the one being eliminated yeah wild for small will love the name big small fan myself as well it looks like cherie is doing another heights road block next episode they need to be smarter and what they do so that is scary to hear if she's gonna go and do another roadblock and the other thing as well is with these roadblocks you know i remember when the amazing race first started drew way back you could have one person do all of the road blocks and carry your team to the end but these days there is a rule in place where it has to be a lot more 50. you cannot have one person do all the roadblocks you've got to continue to split between the two of it as well also just before we move completely away from the mountain section just want to give credit to dusty who mentioned you know the legs on ryan saying that it looks like two bowling balls has calves and onion sacks and i don't remember dusty being this funny in the first couple of episodes i felt like they were a lot more serious in the first couple of episodes they're coming back and it seems like they're a lot more loosey-goosey just enjoying themselves being out there and they're giving us some great confession

33:26 Or he's giving us some great confessionals he was in the confessionals a lot more than ryan this episode as well he seems to be the one that's going to be driving the confessionals for that team yeah they're really funny before we move off of the mountain i want to just say that i was worried for penn's ankles if we're talking about men's i mean he men's features of legs i mean when he was running down there and i give it to him he was trying to get the lead or get caught up but man when he was going down there was some there were some steps that his ankle went completely to the opposite side i was like the it's we're 10 minutes in please don't just bust an ankle and have to be leaving like please just take your time we can get there well we've learned something about pen this episode when it's normal flat ground that's his enemy that's when he falls and stumbles running down a mountain on rocky road that's when he's in his element you know that's where he's like a gazelle on that rocks you know running down there but no i agree with you i mean obviously myself and drew we both watched the challenge and we're big fans of that like i got flashbacks of casey rolling her ankle on the challenge finale going down a rocky section of the mountain that was a lot less rocky than this like i mean this one looked way worse compared

34:46 To what penn had to do running down there and you know pen i mean pen and kim they do impress me like if we're talking about teams that are gonna be a challenge for ryan and dusty my winner pick at this stage and it has been since episode one has been kim and pen like i think they're gonna win this whole thing and the reason i think that they're gonna win this whole thing is they're getting a really big edit we saw phil in the first episode say hey you need to do it for the older teams who always have these young teams winning kind of thing they didn't need to put that in the edit i always read more into those kind of things than most fans and most people would probably think i'm crazy half of the time i'm completely wrong in any case so you know i don't know anything in regards to who's actually going to win but i do think that they're a pretty solid team and they have got a very wide skill set when it comes to what they do i mean throughout this whole race it was neck and neck between them and ryan and dusty even navigating to the toss it detour they pretty much got there at the same time they were doing the choreography at the same time and it's neck and neck with them at all times so i'm really impressed by what they're able to put out there as an older team i think that if they continue this run they could be one of the stronger all the teams that we've seen in the amazing race yeah and just the comparative between the other couple

36:06 Which is akbar and sherry i mean they just work really well together kim and pen do like they navigate they talk pretty calmly to each other no matter the circumstances and even when they we saw them getting frustrated in this episode they kissed each other and they were ready to go like they are so supportive and encouraged very encouraging to each other that i think that they will be a very strong team i almost think that the top three teams that finish this race is gonna be the top three because they've impressed me so much so far in the first four legs yeah definitely i mean raquel and kayla are coming back as well obviously they were pretty impressive this episode it was interesting to see the story line between lulu and lala raquel and kayla having a bit of an alliance here wanting an all-female team to win because there hasn't been an all-female team win the amazing race in quite a while so there's a little bit of girl power happening here ryan and dusty don't have their main alliance in anthony and spencer back so their shots fired their way when it comes down to someone having to do one of those challenges where you have to go back and do another one and you turn someone around a u-turn they might be targeted early here and they have been quite successful early in the show and that could also be

37:26 Another thing that could count in kim and pen's favor because i don't think kim and penn even though they're doing good is coming across as threatening as ryan and dusty who's just got this massive shiny target on them at this point oh yeah i can't wait for the first u-turn i think that's gonna be great it's gonna come down to who's in the lead at what point and that's where it's gonna be like who's gonna get the actual first u-turn because like you were saying dusty and ryan have such a huge target on them if they are even a second behind somebody they will get you turned and i would i they i would welcome it was it would be a good strategy if they somebody you turn them because then it really puts the pressure on them yeah it would be definitely be a winning strategy now going into the detail itself here you had two different options you had to punch it you see the cops you know they were the first to get out of the cable car the first to navigate their way into the town where they get the clue they get lost turn around go back all the way to meet up with arun and natalia and aruna natalia finally learned something and don't give them directions and help them here at this point with natalia being the one saying hey i lost us the game last time don't help them dad let's just keep moving they finally do get to punch it and they're in a still a pretty

38:47 Good position at this stage in the game but for some other reason when they're looking at how this belt needs to be put together with the story and the different emblems being knocked onto it they think that they need to move from the notches out to the buckle instead of the buckle to the notches it was crazy to me i mean it's one of those things that for us as viewers it seems obvious that it should be that you do it from the buckle inwards towards the notches but maybe it is a bit harder than what we give them credit for to me it seemed pretty obvious i don't know how it seemed to you like the way i would imagine like the outside of the belt is closer to where you know the actual buckle is and you move it in towards the notches that makes to me makes perfect sense in my mind but i don't know you know when you're out there you get limited instruction is it confusing do you get confused easily in this case can we give them some i guess leeway for messing this up or what was your thoughts on this because to me i just thought you guys are absolutely stuffing it up like you did last time i think it just comes down to overthinking and the pressurized situation that you're in because i'm gonna say that i always try to see it from both perspectives and to me if i'm in that situation 75 of the time i'm going to be going from buckle to the other

40:07 Way whereas i'm sitting there going like yeah maybe i could see them figuring it out like figuring out the other way but i would be asking like 50 to one questions on like where do we start how different does it have to be how far apart do they have to be and that kind of thing like if you're in a race and you have one simple task i mean i'm asking 50 000 questions because i don't want to take myself out of it from doing one terrible mistake which is what happens with the singing cops i mean i feel like it's kind of goes back to how they were eliminated the first time was it was just overthinking they over complicated it for themselves and they sunk themselves i mean if they were able to actually get this lined up i mean this would have been a much closer race to the end words but i don't think we would have it would have changed anything because both teams got super confused and super misdirected and were 6th and 7th at the end of this yeah it was one of the things that made it harder i think as well is that when they did the demonstration i kind of had a look at this michael and mo arrived there after aruna natalia right so arun natalie was the first one and the guy started putting the notches in when they got there the example of how it looked they were already i think halfway into putting in the different emblems as well so potentially they looked at that and

41:27 They weren't aware that the guy when they did this demonstration started from the buckle because you'd imagine if the guy showed them the full demonstration you'd be able to see that but i feel like they got there a little bit later and they didn't pick up on to that and then the other thing is obviously he had a different sequence that wasn't necessarily the sequence that they needed to put together so it's very hard to decode you know and sadly they get it wrong they see arun and italia get out of there they try and give these and they know that it's going to be rejected and they have to start from square one and i think that it took a lot of time to do that probably more so than what we actually appreciate as viewers ourselves and then after that they can only move away from there the flag one which seemed to be the faster one to do was quite an interesting one i think naturally wouldn't have wanted to gravitate towards doing choreography if i don't have to definitely a bit more of a freestyle person myself than doing choreography and dance or anything like that you know i just moved to the own beat of my drum but at the end of the day the team seemed to get through this pretty easily even someone like akbar who doesn't look like he was naturally the most flexible or the most rhythmic when he was out there he seemed to knock that one out of the park pretty quickly and i think it was just a matter of repetition i do want to point

42:47 Out that pen was the first one to sort of pick up on the fact probably should stand behind the person doing the demonstration and you know ryan and dusty they kind of just piggybacked on what they were doing the real funny part of this detour for me was ryan and dusty almost losing confidence because of how confident pin and kim is in their own ability to get through this thing and they almost changed detours which i think could have meant you know they probably i think if they change details i'll put it out there in the ether or the universe they probably would have been eliminated i feel like there's no way they could have gone out there done this and beaten the cops who were there already i just feel like again we don't know time stamps or anything like that but i just feel like that one was going to be a much harder one to do if they had to change direction and go in the opposite direction because most of the teams did end up being at the flag challenge at the same time it was only akbar and sheree that were the last one to go in and i think they only sort of crossed paths with the flight attendants as they left but it didn't seem like there was much in it if you hear what i'm saying so i feel like that would have been a brutal mistake and michelle who's one of the co-hosts or my main co-host will be back next week to do the amazing race coverage her number one golden rule is never change the detour yeah

44:07 I think they would have been at a severe disadvantage if they would have changed it but i think that with the cops making the severe mistake of having to restart after making one full belt that i think that would have still opened the doors for dusty and ryan to be able to make it in and maybe slip past even the natalia and arun so they could have easily gotten into the fifth spot or sixth spot even if they would have changed over because i just think that the cops really did themselves in having to redo the whole thing and it just seems like it the belt one was so time consuming i still can't believe it i guess because most of the teams did not do that detour and there wasn't much to it they didn't show a whole lot to it but it was so much more time consuming than learning this choreography and getting it done because like we were saying the last two teams came from the belt and then there was just i guess so many moving parts with the belt and having the clip off having to make sure line everything up make sure you got the story correct so i mean it just seemed like that one took forever so yeah definitely seemed like the more time consuming one of the two of the challenges that were out there and then the biggest challenge from there is again i guess navigating back to you know find full at the at the pit

45:27 Stop the pit stop being in a small little town or a little village in the center of the marketplace and we've got ryan and dusty getting there first no surprises kim and payne coming in second place no surprises there either raquel and kyla somewhere down the line made some time up and past lulu and lala they ended up i think outrunning them at the end they must have caught up when they were driving with lulu and being in fourth place i have been impressed by lulula that's i think their highest placement that they've had in the race up until this point i think they're the team if i have to look at all of the teams that came back that have come back the most locked on for me and focused compared to where they were previously i think that i can't remember which one of the twins just got out of a messy relationship maybe there was still a little bit of scattered brain around that and just not being focused her mind not being focused but i think that they both looked really solid throughout this episode we didn't get much confessionals from them sadly but that will probably come in future episodes akbar and sheree fifth place absolutely mind blown how they beat two teams there and it's both the teams that did the punch it with arun and natalya completely going in the opposite direction of where they need to drive before they are made

46:47 Aware that they need to turn around and go in the opposite direction to get to the town that they need to go to but they still get there before michael and mo michael and moe does seem to be great guys and i am sad to see them go twice this way but i think one thing that this does prove is that maybe the amazing race is not for them it is i mean i think it's a lot more difficult than what you appreciate is like we talked about earlier you either have the practical sense to do some of these challenges both of them were kind of artistic in a way they were shown up in both times doing these types of things but this is kind of what the amazing race is about and i'm sure there's going to be more of these similar detours coming up in the future and if they weren't eliminated this round they probably eventually would have been eliminated for the same reason in any case so i do feel for them leaving this way but in some ways also seeing the teams that were ahead of them even in the previous race it kind of basically just resets them back to where they were before the restart of the race in my mind yeah and i said in my review and recap i still can't believe that this was an elimination leg i mean they were gone for 19 months and then they were able to get everybody back together and start the race i just thought that this first one was gonna be like i don't know a trial or a pre sign yeah trial thing

48:07 Like okay well you guys been gone for so long this is the first we'll give you guys kind of like a practice go around like and then maybe give whoever came in last place like a punishment where they have to do like something else an extra task instead of being eliminated i just thought that there was no way that they were going to eliminate somebody after a year and a year and a half just being completely gone but yeah they kicked out the cops like i couldn't believe it like brittle i wonder i wonder if there was like if it was like the original five that were still in the race would they have been like maybe we should make this an elimination leg but i want to believe that this was always going to be an elimination leg which i can totally understand why they were they did it that way i just i set out in my brain going like there's no way they're going to eliminate somebody tonight like they took me by surprise with that ah 100 i was the same as you i thought no ways i mean they get all these guys come back immediately kick somebody out i also thought maybe if it was the original five they would have been like oh you know this feels a bit stink let's give them another shot we definitely are going to see non-elimination rounds i would assume moving forward without having lost so many teams i feel like a very minimum of two non-elimination legs are going to be ahead of us maybe the next one will be a non-elimination leg i'm not a big fan of non-eliminations i never have been even though my favorite

49:28 Team in the amazing race bj and tyler they won based on i believe twice coming last the non-eliminations and then ended up winning the hippies so they were one of the more lucky teams to do it i'm still not a fan of non-eliminations because to me it just kind of feels like the whole episode what did i watch you know type the thing but i know some people are happy with that you know it's just i always like the to be end result at the end of the episode but i would have understood if they decided this is a great opportunity not to immediately send the cops back home but i feel like even if they did the race the way the cops have been going like i just feel like the cops aruna natalia and i hope that rooney italia proves me wrong i feel like they just are hiding to nothing at this stage but like you said one bad mistake by a top team could change everything up yeah i agree with you with the non-elimination legs it's like when you have a cliffhanger on the challenge or something it's just like what did i watch why did i watch this like i'm just frustrated now that i gotta wait a week but i think for this season in particular i'm okay with it because i mean if they don't have any non-elimination legs this thing's gonna be over in like eight episodes at the most so i mean i think this is going to be at least 10 episodes of a season instead of the normal 12 and i do think that there's i'm gonna be welcoming the

50:48 Non-elimination legs because it gives us that much longer within the race and hopefully there will be a punishment because that was the thing with the first non-elimination leg was when lulu and lala came in last place i guess it was because it was a continuation but they still hit a pit stop but it was a continuation that they kept going with it heading into the next week that they weren't like having to face a disadvantage going further i hope that there will be disadvantages for non-elimination legs and whoever does come in last place because i think that's fair if there is not a non-elimination leg if you just tell people like oh nothing happens you can just go on to the next one there's nobody leaving it's kind of like what was the point like why did we do this yeah i just also want to add one of the things that i was really scared of coming back for this episode you know right at the premiere we see phil standing on the beach it's quite eerie there's no one around him as he welcomes everybody back to watch the amazing race after such a long layoff and i was really afraid that the show would feel solas in a way that there's no one around them they're not interacting with anyone like half of the fun for me when i watch the amazing race is seeing people interacting with people that they would have never had to interact with across the world and we saw that this episode like people were asking directions they were going into the

52:08 Bakery so it was a lot more normal than what i thought it would be like clearly there were certain things like the buses were for them alone there was no other people in the public transport that they had to go to the mountain the mountain probably there weren't as many people up on the mountain at the same time as them i'm sure they had a certain time booked out for the amazing race crew to go up there and shoot and be there on their own but outside of that i didn't get that feeling of it being soulless or empty and no one being around them not getting involved in the culture or the local traditions of the country that they're visiting and i for one am grateful that it didn't come across that way yeah same here i think that was my main feeling coming into this episode after being away from 19 months it's kind of like what is the race going to look like you kind of have a feeling like is it going to even feel like the amazing race are we just gonna stay in one country and then we're just gonna be going around to various locations which is fun in a sense but i mean you watch the amazing race for the different tasks the different teams interacting in a different culture or settings that they're not used to and traveling around and getting to see new locations so knowing that they're still going to travel they're just going to be traveling in a different way and still doing the task i think it's going to feel like the amazing race still luckily so it's not gonna feel like

53:28 It's completely like what are we even watching this doesn't even feel like the same show anymore so that's where i'm excited for it but again we're gonna have to see what's gonna happen when we do actually do a location change and how that's gonna actually feel yeah because i mean the other part to that is the challenges that they do the detours the rogue blocks like how big is it going to be are they going to stay true to what we've seen in the past or is it just going to become backyard games you know that's easy to do and manage and you don't have to interact with a lot of people so and you bring up a valid point because from country to country everybody is dealing with the pandemic in a different way so there will be different rules to abide by depending on the country that you're moving in switzerland may have been a lot more open and free to do certain things where the next country you go to it could completely flip things on its head but i'm hoping that we get to see more episodes like the one that we just witnessed also just quickly want to go back here before we start ending this podcast to a few comments loveable nikki welcome back to the live stream always great to have you here says that michael mo arun natalia had no reason to sharpen their weaknesses it makes sense to be that they were both the last two teams so i think what lovable nikki here means drew is that you know they potentially had very late notice or last minute notice of potentially

54:48 Coming back where these other teams probably for 19 months or 12 months even or however long they had knew for a very big portion of the down period that they were going to come back and race so they probably would have worked on a lot of things that they weren't great at but potentially for michael and moe and also for arun and natalya who both seemed to make the same mistakes that they made prior to coming back they didn't have that same opportunity yeah and i mean even if they didn't know a for sure time i mean they were one of the last nine teams heading into the pandemic era in the lockdown so i mean even if they didn't know for sure when they would be coming back they knew they would be back at least at some point so even if the amazing race said we'll keep you guys informed they were giving them like updates every couple of months or so often i mean they knew they were coming back so they could sit there work out do their things keep up with their chemistry whereas everybody else was just doing their thing doing their lives not even knowing that they there was a possibility of coming back maybe they did know maybe they were reached out at some point but you never know for sure like a hundred percent so i mean they're still doing their jobs they're still living their lives and having to do everything else while also maybe this being up in the air about coming back or not yeah now drew being

56:08 One of youtube's biggest specialists on the challenge obviously having a whole channel dedicated to challenge content we've got sam here asking you a very important question who from the challenge would make a good team on the amazing race and in sam's opinion bananas and wes should do the amazing race that's a good question i mean you would of course want like the bigger personalities on the show like you would want like a bananas devon and paulie maybe okay maybe not that far definitely devon i would think like you would you could also want couples on there as well if you want nani and casey to be on there as well but i think like bigger personalities would do much better on the show like kyle would be fun to have i mean to be running around doing i don't even care who kyle's partnered up with kyle would be fun to watch on the show just like trying to see him call weird stuff eric and ct and call together would be really funny oh that'd be crazy good like i would definitely be on that because you know you know like they've got this frenemy type of relationship they're friends but are they friends you know type of thing after this last season and i do think they are good friends but i think ct on the show like i mean can you imagine ct doing the child like the amazing race

57:28 Like i was looking at the amazing race this whole episode and i thought most of the challenges would just crush it in my opinion because they're so used to doing this physical stuff running up and down mountains and like the only thing that they might get caught on would be navigating for instance if they're not good at that stuff we don't really see them but then again they've got times where they've got to navigate with limited information out in the wild so who knows like i feel like most challengers would very easily transition over to the amazing race it's actually a shame when the cross seasons that they didn't have a challenge team back then as well they had the amazing race survivor and big brother team teams who remember a couple of seasons ago would have been cool to see that but i think the challenge may not have been part of the paramount plus thing back then or whatever endermal shine or whatever they call them they might not have been under the same umbrella when that happened yeah no i don't think so either but i mean this opens the door i mean this would be fun to see some of the challengers do this show because they always do like specific and niche like competitions that are physical or puzzle based and just seeing them have to like put together a whiskey barrel or do like a flag twirling checkpoint would be really fun to watch so i'm totally down i think definitely bring in like ct and kyle or anybody from

58:48 The challenge and i would love to watch them do it i mean we had one person from the amazing race natalie anderson the tech and ayanna oh my gosh please no but we had we had jen and also natalie anderson was also on the amazing race because she was on survivor and then they did the amazing race as well so i mean we had some amazing race people on the challenge so i mean let's bridge that gap and let's bring some challengers on yeah well for small ball here says ashley and amanda and then sam also says leroy and cam definitely a lot of great teams there that you could potentially bring on to the show that could potentially bring more views to the show that's why i'm personally a very big defender of getting people from these different shows to do the challenge people from the challenge to do some of these shows like you can tap into reality tv is reality tv at the at the end of the day and if you like one show kind of like you said in the beginning drew you'll probably end up watching a lot more you know than what you probably would have thought going into it like i mean i started on survivor then i branched out to amazing race big brother i became a challenge fan way later when some of the big brother players made the jump over to the challenge i was a product of that and then stayed there for the challenges i didn't leave when the big brother players left i guess there's still a few of them i didn't come there just for anybody listening to this due to josh or anybody

1:00:08 Like that i was i heard that and devon was going to be on the same season and i needed to see it because i remember how big the rivalry was between them and big brothers i was like i got to watch this and it just so happened to be that season was in cape town or close to cape town where i was born so it kind of all meshed together and then i stayed because i just loved the concept of the show and i think that it's a good idea that we continue to cross-pollinate and use some of these and special seasons to continue to build the fandom fall of these different franchises out there because at the end of the day i want the challenge to continue on i want survivor to continue on i want the challenge to continue on i want there to be successful seasons for all of these different shows so to me it makes sense to bring people over to create a bit of an extra hype for shows like this as well drew we spoke about quite a lot i know if you want to add anything to what i just said but is there anything else that we did not touch on for this specific episode anything that you wanted to bring up while we still got you here on the podcast i'm trying to think i think we nailed everything as we went through this was a pretty like standard leg of the race that we started at one spot and then they kind of moved as a group throughout this whole challenge because the way it happened is that they were pretty much in the big group throughout the whole thing i mean over half of the episode was

1:01:28 Them trekking through this trail and so when they were doing all the other stuff i mean they were all in one group so i don't think we missed anything if i remember correctly and i do agree with the cross-pollination because if you can get some bigger personalities from different tv shows it may get people interested to seeing oh that person was on the challenge or that person was on big brother now i want to go on to paramount plus and watch their season and get to know more about them kind of thing so i think that also helps in that realm as well but yeah i think i think we nailed it i think i mean not to tweet our own arms but i think we nailed it on the back here for everybody that is in the live at the moment that also watches the challenge we've got a very special episode between myself drew and chantal that will be going live in about an hour from now about 57 minutes from now to talk about all of the controversy that has come out after the finale in regards to what happened in the finale did the right team win was it fixed there's going to be a lot of debate myself drew and chantal have all watched all of the content that's come out and we thought hey let's get together it's going to be a little bit structured differently compared to probably what we normally would do recapping an episode but it's just going to be a

1:02:48 Free-fall talk about some of the information that's come out and the state of the challenge all stars at this stage and you know how much of this actually sort of does happen in the main show as well and we're going to have a bit of a discussion on that so look out for that about 57 or so minutes from now go grab a drink get something to eat you know depending on what the time is there i definitely will do the same on this side andrew i will catch you in about an hour's time and we'll be back to talk about all of the controversy i think it's going to be a heated one yeah it's going to be spicy we've got some we got a lot of information to go over and talk about and i can't wait to hear because we haven't talked at all off air i mean we just said like let's do this let's have a chat and we'd listen to everything and i haven't heard either you or chantelle's feelings about this and i cannot wait to hear what you guys have to say because i've made a video it's out there and like getting to have a couple of days after making that video now i can like i think i can like really have a big conversation with both of you and i cannot wait yeah and i'm hoping you know like we always do we all have our own takes on some of the things that's going on because that'll make it for a very interesting conversation we'll catch you guys in about an hour's time if you're going to be there for that as well and for those that have listened to the amazing race content here and that likes this please put a like on the video

1:04:09 Hit the subscribe button if you want to see more content the next show that we will add in the coming weeks to the nullify take will be australian survivor which i'm really excited about i might even have some previous australian survivors on as guests at time as well which i'm trying to work out and then also moving forward we will be doing survivor us when that comes out as well i did see somebody asking about big brother celebrity at this stage though sam i'm not that much looking into big brother it is a big commitment with the live feeds that you know if i didn't have a full-time job you know maybe i could commit to that but at this stage i'm not going to be doing anything on big brother maybe in the future i'll be watching it so be happy to chat with you if you want to join the discord put join the discord link on the channel and you can have chats with me about what you're thinking of big brother and you know we can have a bit of a back and forth i don't know if i'll be doing a recap on that one as of yet drew do you have any plans to do big brother content on your channel in the future i checked the rumored cast and i don't think i'm gonna be able to cover big brother celebrity or celebrity big brother this go around i do have some plans for a new project that i'll be doing that i'm hoping to launch in february as well as well as my other content that i'm doing on angel cake so i have a lot of plans going on

1:05:29 Very soon so i don't think i'm gonna be covering celebrity big brother yeah that's fair all right guys we'll catch you back in an hour's time talk to you soon thanks for watching bye