Amazing Race: All Stars

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Nephythys

I love Rob and Amber-I did not enjoy watching last night and will miss them. I think they went out with more grace than many other teams do-

I agree. They didn't complain, they didn't accuse anyone else of cheating or screwing them over. They knew they blew it and that was that. They may be cocky and a little arrogant, but as far as I'm concerned, they've earned it. They've shown time and time again that they know how to succeed at these games. They didn't fair so well this time, but, counting the 3 seasons of Survivor between the two of them and now 2 seasons of Amazing Race, they were competitive in 4 out of 5 of their opportunities. That's hard to argue with. Heck, you can't even really call this time around a poor showing seeing as they were in first for the first 3 legs.

For those that watch the show regularly, is there usually this much bitching about other people taking advantage of opportunities? I mean, these teams have all played before and they seem completely shocked that someone might, gasp, use information they overhear to their advantage. Or even, dear lord, lie to other teams to get ahead. Call me naive, but that's really starting to turn me off of the show more than anything.

[Matterhorn Fan]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

For those that watch the show regularly, is there usually this much bitching about other people taking advantage of opportunities? I mean, these teams have all played before and they seem completely shocked that someone might, gasp, use information they overhear to their advantage. Or even, dear lord, lie to other teams to get ahead. Call me naive, but that's really starting to turn me off of the show more than anything.

I wonder something similar...why don't more people play this way? Why doesn't one tribe loot their rival's camp when they're at tribal council? Why do AR teams cooporate? Why, when someone's having trouble with a quest, don't the people having trouble simply stand two inches behind someone else and do what they do?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Matterhorn Fan

I wonder something similar...why don't more people play this way? Why doesn't one tribe loot their rival's camp when they're at tribal council?

On Survivor I'd imagine that they have some rules in place against that. But who knows.
ETA: Oh yeah, and what MP said. There are far more direct consequences to pissing the other contestant's off in Survivor than in AR.

Why do AR teams cooporate?

There is occasionally a good reason. For example, it made sense for Rob and Amber to work with the beauty queens when they were both stuck on the sign post quest. They knew there were other teams behind them, so rather than worry about beating that one team, it made sense to strike a deal and say, "We'll help you guarantee you're at least ahead of the other teams."

Why, when someone's having trouble with a quest, don't the people having trouble simply stand two inches behind someone else and do what they do?

To some degree I see a kind of unspoken agreement of convenience. Basically, if all the teams were trying to peak at everyone else's work, that would just lead to all the teams doing a better job of hiding their work. So it would kind of be a self-defeating strategy, so the teams probably just naturally don't even bother (kinda like there's an unspoken thing in baseball that says that a batter won't turn around and look at a catcher's sign). But that shouldn't mean you get pissed when you get sloppy and someone does catch sight, or is within earshot, of one of your answers (again, like baseball, there's no such courtesy when a batter's on second base, it's up to the catcher to do a better job of disguising his signs in that situation).

[Jughead P. Jones]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

For those that watch the show regularly, is there usually this much bitching about other people taking advantage of opportunities? I mean, these teams have all played before and they seem completely shocked that someone might, gasp, use information they overhear to their advantage. Or even, dear lord, lie to other teams to get ahead. Call me naive, but that's really starting to turn me off of the show more than anything.

If you thought this season was bad, you really should have watched Season 8 (the family edition) with the holy-rollin' Weavers. At one point, one of the Weaver kids was upset and made the statement "Nobody likes us because we're Christians!"

I'm sure you can get the gist of what the rest of the season was like for them.

Usually, every season has one or two teams that whine and yammer about the advantages other teams seem to get. Unfortunately, many of the teams in the All-Star season were ones that did just that in their respective seasons.