tetoffens t1_iu1fhx1 wrote on October 27, 2022 at 8:59 PM

Did you start at the beginning or early seasons? It gets more complex as it goes on.

ananonislander OP t1_iu1l8ig wrote on October 27, 2022 at 9:38 PM

Jumped right into S32 of the American one. If 32 seasons in and this is as complex as it gets... yikes :)

tetoffens t1_iu1nlph wrote on October 27, 2022 at 9:55 PM

Season 32 was COVID. They had more limitations.

bfir3 t1_iu20ibk wrote on October 27, 2022 at 11:33 PM

You are thinking of Season 33, not Season 32. Season 32 finished filming in December 2018.

TARUSA has been like this for a while. They do have some cool and challenging tasks sometimes, but in general the episode formula is a lot more simple than TARCAN.

Typically TARUSA is just Pit Start -> Roadblock/Detour -> Roadblock/Detour -> Pit Stop with the occasional Route Info. Even when they do have a Route Info, it is more often than not simply a "go to this location to get your next clue".

Compare this to TARCAN where the episode formula usually includes several Route Info tasks. Sometimes Route Info tasks in TARCAN can take even longer and be more challenging than the RB/Detours.

Some legs in recent TARUSA seasons were completed by teams in around 2 hours. Old seasons of TARUSA had teams traveling a lot within any given leg, often requiring them to self-drive or take a long bus/train. Sadly, it's not the same anymore.

ananonislander OP t1_iu2ac1m wrote on October 28, 2022 at 12:49 AM

A comparison I'll make is TARCAN they need to learn / memorize / perform perfectly a complex series of dance moves or sing a song etc.

TARUS, they had to learn how to play a whopping 5 notes on Caribbean drum and they had a cheat sheet to read from furthermore.

Or roll an empty barrel to Carnival vs. spending 8 hours digging for 6 species of clams. Stuff like that.

That TARCAN G7 summit ... memorizing that speech in english, then french, then answering questions in 3 other languages. Yikes!

Good point about the travel bookings - seems to all be taken care of now (for both).

bfir3 t1_iu8wwkk wrote on October 29, 2022 at 1:58 PM

> That TARCAN G7 summit ... memorizing that speech in english, then french, then answering questions in 3 other languages. Yikes!

Yup, this would never happen in TARUSA. Even in the old seasons, there's no way.

In the latest season there was a Route Info that required teams to learn ASL to sign the alphabet. They were then given a name which they had to sign to their partner and their partner had to interpret it correctly. I doubt they'd have that in TARUSA as well.

ananonislander OP t1_iu9anqo wrote on October 29, 2022 at 3:42 PM

Agreed, that one was wild in terms of difficulty. That's what I'm saying...

By comparison, TARUS is like ... race to A and point to the purple duck then race to B, talk to a guy, race to C look at the clouds, race to D, finish.

bfir3 t1_iu9oiwf wrote on October 29, 2022 at 5:20 PM

Yeah most of the time that's the way it is. But they do some really cool stuff sometimes still. They go to a lot of cool places, and you do get to see some interesting things. This is true even in the covid season.

It's still worth watching I think. If Phil keeps making Amazing Race seasons, I'll keep watching.

ananonislander OP t1_iu29iy3 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 12:42 AM

Ah, fair comment. Edit, answered this before seeing bfir3's comment.