My Anime History

Recently I picked up a Crunchyroll account so I could watch Sword Art Online.  But even though it's only $7 a month, it felt wasteful to watch only the one show.  So I've actually been watching quite a bit of anime lately.  And since I've got the urge to write again, I figured I'd just go with it.

Anime's been a part of my life since childhood, but I didn't realize it until high school.  That's because all the early anime I watched were American re-dubs of Japanese shows.  Battle of the Planets was originally Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Starblazers came from Space Battleship Yamato, Voltron: Defender of the Universe was a merger of Beast King GoLion and Armoured Fleet Dirugger XV.  The king adaptation was also my favorite, Robotech.  That show took three completely unrelated series, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, and rewrote them into one ongoing story.  Innocent child that I was, it never occurred to me that those shows were any different than the other cartoons I was watching like GI Joe or Transformers.  

Robotech.  Nobody does giant robots like the Japanese.

I did notice some differences, though.  The anime based shows tended to have better animation, for one thing.  More, the stories were a lot more adult in that there was romance, war, and death on most of the anime shows that was noticeably absent from their American contemporaries.  Certainly no episode of Robotech ever ended with "And knowing is half the battle!"

When I got to high school, my buddy Steve introduced me to the Anime Club.  That was the first time I'd heard the term, but I got the point quickly enough.  Anime was Japanese cartoons, the word a shortening of "animation".  While springing from Disney roots in the 1930s and then steered down a different path from western animation in the '60s by Osamu Tezuka, anime had developed it's own style and sensibilities that felt really fresh to my teen aged eyes.

Astroboy, Tezuka's classic character.  Another Japanese robot, albeit not a giant one.

I spent a couple hours a week from then on in a classroom watching bootleg videos of various anime with my classmates.  To be honest, I don't remember much of the shows from that time, with one exception.  When I was a young freshman, someone mentioned The Dirty Pair which sounded pretty interesting to a young man with raging hormones.  When I inquired further I was peremptorily informed that "you're not ready for The Dirty Pair" which only made me want to watch the damn show even more.   Eventually someone brought a tape with it on and we watched the antics of a pair of scantily clad girls who were pretty terrible at their jobs.  It was a fun little show, but not exactly the revelation I'd been expecting from all the build up.

You're not...well, no, actually you probably are ready for The Dirty Pair.

The summer between my freshmen and sophomore years, I got into the bootlegging business myself.  I spent a month with my uncle in San Diego, and the video rental place near his house had a bunch of anime while he owned two VCRs.  I rented and copied hours of the stuff and returned to the Anime Club a minor hero for my efforts.  I also figured out that if you put your actual destination in the return address spot on an envelope with no stamp and drop it in a public mailbox, the Post Office will deliver it for free.  Video piracy and mail fraud all at the age of fourteen!  What can I say, it was that kind of summer.

I don't remember most of the shows I copied and the tapes themselves are long gone, but two did stick in my memory.  The first was Megazone 23, Part 2.  That was a cyberpunk style story reminiscent in many ways of the more famous Akira in that the hero is a motorcycle riding rebel in a tightly controlled technologically advanced society, though the stories go to vastly different places.  Megazone was notable because it was filmed in English with Japanese subtitles, which was a nice change of pace, as virtually all the Anime Club stuff was the other way around.  It also sticks in my mind because of the horrible, graphic violence.  It was one of, if not the, first times I can recall seeing people bloodily ripped apart on screen.  It made me queasy at the time, but not so queasy that it stopped me from sharing the video with my friends and younger brothers!

Don't be misled, even Megazone 23 Part 2 concludes in a giant robot fight.

The other show I recall was Gunbuster, which was a short six episode show about humanity in a war against giant bugs.  Naturally, this calls for the use of giant robots.  It also was the first time that I can recall seeing the Teenagers Save the World trope in anime, as the two main protagonists are both high school girls at the start of the show.  Gunbuster was also the first place I ran into the concept of time dilation from FTL travel, a concept that forms the core of the classic science fiction novel The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.  It was pretty deep stuff, even if Forever War handles it better.

Gunbuster.  A giant robot.  Look, it was the '80s...

Eventually, though, I went to college and that was it for me and anime for a long time.  Without the resources of the Anime Club, long before video could be transmitted over the internet or Cartoon Network debuted Adult Swim, there wasn't an easy way for me to watch the stuff.  I went into a Ranma 1/2 phase in the late '90s, but that was an expensive habit since I was buying the show four episodes at a time on videotape.  I can recall seeing some Sailor Moon on TV now and again, and one of my friends threw a party where we all watched Perfect Blue.  A buddy and I got our hands on and watched all of Noir.  I saw Neon Genesis Evangelion at some point and got annoyed at the ending.  But that was pretty much it for decades.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: "Congratulations!"  Me: "What the fuck?"

Then, in 2012, I stumbled upon Crunchyroll, a web service that brings translated anime to the States.  Since then, I've found anime in many other places, including Funimation, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime.  Still, Crunchyroll remains my primary anime source and most of what I've watched recently came from there.  It was on  Crunchyroll that I saw Another, a show I wrote a review about, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which I did not but probably should have.   

Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  Looks cute, doesn't it?  It's a trap!

So that brings us to today.  In the last year or so I've watched something like a dozen anime series, and it's time to talk about them.  Some of them have a lot in common with some of the others.  These tropes and how they're used will be a core element of my forthcoming reviews.  We've already touched on one of those, the aforementioned Teenagers Save the World.  There will be others, but don't expect this to be a TV Tropes deal.  Identifying the parts that go into a show is not the end of criticism.  It's the beginning.  How those parts are used is even more important than what those parts are.

With that in mind, we'll start next time with the show that got me onto my current anime fix, Sword Art Online.

Doctor Who Review: Episode 7.8 "The Rings of Akhaten"

Spoiler free to start, spoilers after the poster.

Throughout Season Seven, Doctor Who has been trying to be explicitly "cinematic."  You can see it in "A Town Called Mercy" where Doctor Who does a Western, or "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" where it's Who does Jurassic Park.

"The Rings of Akhaten" is Doctor Who does Indiana Jones.

No snickering, please.

As is pretty typical for the new series, whenever there's a new companion on the stage one almost always gets a companion-heavy episode either right out of the gate or as the second episode.  This time it's the second episode, as we start to get to know Clara as a character in of herself rather than just as the object of the Doctor's obsession.  How well does that work?  Not bad, even if the story itself is a little over the top for my tastes.  Details and spoilers after the poster.

Spoilers in Space!

Sing a Song of Spoilers!

Right, so we've got Clara now.  There's something funny going on here, because while Amy was an actual mother who we even got to see give birth, Amy never had a chance to be particularly maternal since her child was stolen within hours of her giving birth.  On the other hand, Clara, while not technically a mother in that she's never given birth to anyone, has had three out of her four stories so far emphasize how good she is taking care of kids.  In "The Snowmen" and "The Bells of St. John" she's a professional nanny, and here in "The Rings of Akhaten" she spends much of the episode as a surrogate mother for Merry.  

So we have a companion whose motherly aspects are being highlighted and then, all of a sudden, the Doctor explicitly mentions his granddaughter for the first time in decades?  I'm beginning to suspect at the Doctor may actually try to fulfill his vow (see below) in the 50th anniversary special.

Wouldn't that be something to see?  Personally, I can't think of a better way to commemorate 50 years than with a resolution to one of the longest running unresolved plotlines in the show's history.  It took them twenty years to give Sarah Jane Smith the resolution she deserved, while Susan's been waiting for nigh on half a century!

Going back to this week's episode, I enjoyed it.  There was some derring-do mixed in with Clara taking care of Merry, the bit with the door being particularly funny.  The visuals were glorious, especially of the various planetoids in the rings.  We got to know more about Clara, fulfilling the episode's brief, and got some alien world fun.  So why do I find myself somewhat lacking in enthusiasm for this episode?

Well for one thing, watching the show live on BBC America kind of sucks.  The commercials break the flow of the show, especially since I'm used to seeing commercial free versions on Netflix or on DVD.  I also can't get over the fear that scenes may be getting cut short or eliminated entirely on the BBCA version, since I've seen re-runs there that are definitely missing scenes I remember from DVD versions I own.

Beyond that, though, is the fact that I didn't buy the ending.  A leaf with the power of the infinite?  Even with the setup of "things we value become valuable" from the rent the skybike scene, I still wasn't getting it.  It felt hokey to me, too much like all those "the power of love conquers all" stories where you can literally turn love into a demon destroying energy beam or fire ball.  I'm just not buying it.

Nevertheless, the episode served its purpose and rolled the plot forward a bit.  It was fun, if not especially deep.  Good enough for now, but I'll want something with more meat on the bone before this season is through.

Game of Thrones Review: Episode 3.1 "Valar Dohaeris"

As usual, I'll be doing a very brief non-SPOILER review, then a full review after the poster.  You have been warned.


Game of Thrones is a pretty hard show to review on an episode by episode basis.  After all, excepting big event episodes like last years "Blackwater", Game of Thrones really doesn't have much in the way of distinct episodes.  I mean, yes, each one begins on some kind of stinger and ends on a big event or cliffhanger, but there's almost never a coherent plot that begins and ends in the same episode, "Blackwater" excepted.  No, most Game of Thrones episodes just pick up the ball and run it a few yards forward, then hand off to the next episode.  Which is fine, since they're telling one very long story of which this is only a tiny fraction.

It does make reviewing that fraction on its own a pain in the ass, though.


The short, non-spoiler version is that this episode is a pause for breath.  It's talky, with very little action.  It's giving you a chance to catch up with about two thirds of the cast as they each start something new.    There is, of course, no such thing as a disposable episode of Game of Thrones.  If you want to watch the show, you have to watch them all, and in order.  So a blind recommendation like this is pretty worthless.  Nevertheless, the episode is a necessary one even if not all that much happens in it.  Much of the rest of the season is being set up here and, presumably, the next episode as well.

Our House words?  "Here there be SPOILERS"

  

Come for the ale, stay for the SPOILERS.

As I discussed above, Game of Thrones doesn't really do the traditional TV structure.  Compare this show to, say, Babylon 5, which had a long story to tell, but did it over five seasons of regularly structured TV.  That is, each episode of Babylon 5 could be viewed on its own as a stand alone work.  Granted, you wouldn't get as much out of each episode if you didn't watch the others, but each epiosde still had a regular structure.  There was a main plot that began and was resolved over the course of that episode.  Often, as is common on shows with large casts, B5 would have a secondary plot as well where we saw what the characters not involved in the main plot were up to.  That plot would also be resolved by the end of the episode.  Most Babylon 5 episodes had a typical A-Plot/B-Plot structure, with the main plot being hinted at or advanced in some small way during one plot or the other.  The exceptions were what showrunner J. Michael Straczynski called "Wham" episodes, where he takes a crowbar and "whams" the plot onto a different course.  Those episodes were the ones that most fans really remember, and they are the ones that have the most in common with Game of Thrones, which does Wham episodes as well.  The death of Ned Stark and the Battle of Blackwater were both serious Wham episodes, after all.  But in contrast to the way Babylon 5 approached episodic content, Game of Thrones takes a different model.  

Game of Thrones uses soap opera structure.  

If you look at it, very rarely do you see a plot begin and end in the same episode.  Instead, we see plots start and stop throughout the series.  Sometimes they go a season, sometimes they go only a few episodes, sometimes they go on and on.  Each episode touches on a few of the various plots, moving each one forward.  Sometimes the plots run into one another and new plots form, while sometimes (especially with Daenerys off on another continent) they stay separate from everything else.  But still, the structure is there.  Game of Thrones is a soap opera with swords, bared breasts, and dragons.

That's not a bad thing, mind you, but it does mean that rather than a chronological look at events, it makes more sense to just track each plotline individually.  So let's do that.

Beyond the Wall there are two plotlines going on.  First, there's what's left of the Night's Watch on the run from ice zombies.  In the other, Jon Snow's making an ass of himself with the Wildings.  Of the former, there's not much to say, since it's only to establish that you can kill the zombies with a torch and that, contrary to the books where Sam gets his first hero moment, HBO's Sam failed to even get the ravens sent.  Which, honestly, makes more sense from a dramatic point of view, because it means that the Night's Watch are racing back to the Wall to try and warn the world rather than just hoofing it to save their own asses, as in the book.  Sucks to be Sam.

But not as much as it sucks to be Jon.  Because, as always, we get another "you know nothing, Jon Snow " moment.  Poor Jon can't help fucking it up, no matter how hard he tries.  They're going to have to work hard to elevate Jon to a hero position at this rate, because so far we've only seen him as a moody, petulant fuck-up.  Even the moments of coolness he should have had in the first couple of books were downplayed or rendered accidental, while the ways in which he sucks have been magnified.  Alas, poor Jon.

Of course at least he gets some reasonably significant screen time.  Robb only gets a few moments taking an abandoned Harrenhall, and Catelyn is shown but gets no lines.  And even that is more than Arya or Bran get, as they aren't even in this episode.  Neither is Jamie Lannister and his warrior maiden escort, for that matter. Indeed, pretty much the only other Stark besides Jon who gets any real screen time is Sansa in her golden cage at King's Landing.

Sansa, of course, has gone from pining for marriage to Joffrey and becoming Queen to pining for escape to anywhere. Being possessed of very poor decision making skills, she opts to put her trust in a man who was obsessed with her mother and betrayed her father, leading to his death.  I'm sure he's helping you out of altruism and things will go swimmingly for you, Sansa.

Meanwhile, as Sansa books a trip to Fantasy Island, Tyrion is getting the Cold Hard Reality Fish slapped into his face.  Fact of the matter is that Cersi still hates you but you no longer have the power and resources to fuck with her the way you did last season.  Oh, and your father hates you too and you're never getting your rightful inheritance.  You can almost hear the wheels turning in Tyrion's head calling for revenge, and Dinklage does an excellent job with his barely suppressed and totally righteous rage.  As much as I enjoyed Tyrion's rise last season, seeing how he handles is fall should be as good or better.

Someone who's on the rise is Margaery Tyrell.  Having replaced Sansa as Joffrey's Queen-to-Be, Margaery is making more of an effort to win the love of the people than Joffrey ever has.  Is it a ploy to gain power through the people?  Is it genuine concern for her subjects?  Both?  Hard to say how they're playing her in this version just yet, but I'm enjoying the way she's interacting with Joffrey and Cersi.

The poor Onion Knight, Ser Davos Seaworth, on the other hand, isn't enjoying life.  His ship and son were blown up, he's burned and missing fingers, and his boss has tossed him in the dungeon because the crazy fire priestess is ascendant.  This is actually a bit of an acceleration over events in the book, but not a bad one given the time constraints they're under.  I expect that this particular plotline probably won't change much from the published version.

Finally, we get to Daenerys.  In another acceleration, she's already made it to Astapor, the first of the three cities on Slave Bay.  Here, she's disgusted by the way slavery is practiced even as she contemplates buy hundreds or thousands of them to fight her war for her.  Compassion or pragmatism?  What will the Stormborn choose?  And will her new knight who appears at the end of the episode, Ser Barriston Selmy who took all of last season off to find her.  So now Dany has two advisers, one practical and ruthless, the other noble and virtuous.  Which impulse will she follow in Astapor?

So that's where we stand one episode into Season Three.  Presumably, we'll be catching up with the characters on the run (Arya, Bran, Jamie) and see what's going on in Winterfell now that Theon's boys decided to take a hike.

It should be fun.

Doctor Who Review: Episode 7.7 "The Bells of St. John"

As is customary for my reviews, there will be SPOILERS after the image.  My reviews will almost always appear after the show has been released to the general public, so I assume that you are, like myself, one of those fans who likes to read reviews only after seeing something for himself (or herself) to find out what everyone else thinks about it.  As a mere blogger and not an official member of the press, I have no early access to shows like Doctor Who, and couldn't do a day and date review even if I was so inclined.  

For the spoiler-free section, I'll summarize my feelings by saying that I liked but didn't love "The Bells of St. John."  It was a pleasant enough episode, and officially introduced the new companion to the show as well as what appears to be a recurring villain.  So it is, by pretty much any standard, an important episode.  And yet it didn't grab me the way the very best episodes of Who can.  I was never thrilled, amazed, terrified, or moved.  Instead, I would say I was curious, interested, and ultimately, amused.

Find out more after the poster in the SPOILER section.

Check your wifi for danger, there's SPOILERS here!

So, the second half of Season Seven is upon us.  Which is bullshit right there.  There's a new companion, a new opening credit sequence, and a new TARDIS interior.  Most of the old storylines have been closed off, and everything is shiny and new again.  Which means that this really should be Season Eight, right?  Nope, the BBC in their infinite wisdom have decided that rather than have Season Seven in 2012 and Season Eight in 2013, they were instead going to split Season Seven into the second half of 2012 and the first half of 2013.

"But wait," you might say, "isn't 2013 the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who?"  Why yes, yes it is.  And to celebrate half a century, we're going to get half a season, a fiftieth anniversary special, and a Christmas special in December.  I'd go into why, but John Seavy already did it better than I could over at his blog, Fraggmented.  Go check it out over there if you want the depressing breakdown.  

With that little bit of angry bile out of the way, I suppose it isn't kosher to penalize this episode for the folly of its institutional masters.  So how was "The Bells of St. John", anyway?  Well as indicated above, I liked this episode.  It was almost a regeneration episode without an actual regeneration, as the Doctor learns how to be the Doctor again.  Throw in a new companion with a mystery behind her, corporate evil British Style, and an old enemy who dates back to 1967 and isn't the Daleks or Cybermen, and you have the makings of a great episode.

But somehow "The Bells of St. John" never makes it to great.  Having given the episode some thought, I've come to the conclusion that for all the potentially great elements included in this episode, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.  The reason, alas, is pacing.  There's too much going on in this episode, and nothing has time to breathe.  The scenes with the Doctor meeting this era's Clara are fun, but there's not enough time for it to be really satisfying, because the main plot of the Evil Corporation intrudes almost immediately.  But the resolution to that plot line is rushed and anticlimactic because they've got to have the Doctor recruiting Clara scene at the very end.  And so on, and so forth.  "The Bells of St. John" could have been a masterful two parter.  Instead, its a rushed single episode.

Which brings us back to the BBC complaints I made above.  You see, Stephen Moffat only has eight episodes in this truncated mini-season to do what normally he'd have fourteen to work with in a rational universe.  No wonder the man says that (beware long term spoilers on the following link) "I'm nearer to the end than the beginning" of his time as showrunner for Doctor Who.  Who wouldn't be frustrated when your bosses don't appreciate the value of what you're bringing them?

Even with all that, there was a lot to like.  The Great Intelligence is a much better villain in the Internet Age than he ever was controlling Yeti robots in the 1930s.  Playing on the fears we have of a powerful technology like wifi that has gone from non-existent to ubiquitous in only a handful of years is a smart move.  I also doubt that this is the last we've seen of the GI this season.

The mystery of Clara deepens, as we see that modern Clara has inherited the governess role of her deceased predecessor from "The Snowmen" and acquires the computer skills that are the hallmark of her equally deceased future descendant from "The Asylum of the Daleks".  It's too early to make much in the way of useful speculation, but so far she seems to be some kind of Eternal Woman, reborn over and over again, but keeping the skills and personalities of her earlier incarnations.  Either that, or maybe she's a trap placed by the Silence to snare the Doctor.  After all, Clara got the number for the TARDIS from some woman she met in a cafe.  The obvious person for that to be is River Song, of course, but it could equally have been Madame Kovarion.  After all, since nothing in the composite timeline of "The Wedding of River Song" stuck, Madame Kovarion's death at the hands of Amy was written out as well.

Speaking of Clara, she's cute.  Spunky, even.  She stands up to the Doctor and refuses to be swept off her feet the way Amy was.  She doesn't hold him in awe, and seems more likely to be a real partner the way Romana used to be, rather than a helper or student the way most companions end up.  And hell, if she really is some kind of long form time traveler herself, she has a right to be the Doctor's equal.  This is a take on the Doctor-Companion relationship that hasn't been around in decades, and if that's where they're going with it, I'll be well pleased.

For all that it didn't resolve as well as I would have preferred, I still enjoyed aspects of the Evil Corporation plot.  The line about "Wait, he's going on holiday soon.  Kill him when he gets back.  No reason to be unreasonable about it." was pretty funny, and using computers to "hack" people and adjust their personalities was well handled.  

Overall, I end this review pretty much where I began it.  This was a good episode of Doctor Who.  I enjoyed it and it's well worth watching.  Indeed, as an introductory episode it's pretty much mandatory since it introduces both the Companion and the Big Bad for the season.  If you haven't seen it yet, get to it.  It'll be easy to find online if you're naughty, or on BBC America if you've got cable and can tolerate the commercials. 

I just wish they'd had the time to make "The Bells of St. John" as great as it deserved to be.

WEP '12, Day 76 - Amazing Race 20 Analysis, Ep. 5

You should know the drill by now.  Spoilers for episode 5 of season 20 of The Amazing Race.

There's something that occurs at the beginning of most episodes of The Amazing Race that can be a big clue as to what's going to happen in that leg of the race.  It's what veteran race watchers call the Loser Edit.  In a Loser Edit, the team that's going to be eliminated at the end of the episode is given some interview time at the beginning of it to explain a little more about who they are and why they're racing and so on.  Presumably every team gets interviewed like that all the time to provide Loser Edits for whichever team actually loses, but the one they show is a clue as to who's going out.  The reason they do it, especially for teams who haven't had a lot of screen time, is to try to make that team more sympathetic, so that you feel bad for them when they leave the show.

This week's episode had a Loser Edit for Kerri and Stacy.  Let's see how it turned out, shall we?

First off, we have some travel.  There's a huge eight hour gap between the Fast Forwarded Team Border Patrol and the saved by non-elimination Bopper & Mark, but almost all of it gets eaten up by various travel related delays as the teams take trains across Europe to Bavaria.  Most of the rest of it is lost by a good old fashioned Hours of Operation Bunching, so pretty much everyone is all caught up as they finally pick up clues and get rolling again.

That leads to the first decision point, a Detour.  What's faster, sculpting an old German's beard into something really complicated, or following a trail of gingerbread then using it to complete a gingerbread house?  It turns out that, like all the very best Detours, the answer is "it depends on who's doing it!"  And if they're representative of the breed, my respect for the Border Patrol is growing in leaps and bounds.  Who knew they were such good hair stylists?

Art & JJ prove to be good at beard sculpting, gnome curling, and perhaps most importantly, not getting lost, and manage to come in first.  Again.  That's three in a row for Team Border Patrol, and if that doesn't solidify them as the favorites to win it all, I don't know what does.

The rest of the leg plays out with relatively few surprises.  A few teams get decoyed by the wrong castle, there being two on either side of the highway they're all travelling along, but in the end it comes down to  race for last between Team DEA and Kerri & Stacy.  Kerry & Stacy manage to finish the task, sliding a gnome along ice into the middle of a circle, first.  Nery of the DEA girls has a horrible time of it, just being unable to get it right despite something like two hundred attempts, but to her credit, Jamie doesn't get down on her, and instead is encouraging as team after team races past them.  They finally pull it off by a millimeter and rush to try and catch up with Kerri and Stacy, which any veteran race watcher will tell you almost never works.

Except that this time it does.  Kerri & Stacy managed to get lost for the very last time, letting a relieved and nearly broken Team DEA hang on by their fingernails.

Loser Edit confirmed.

1st - JJ and Art (Border Patrol) 
2nd - Joey "Fitness" and Danny (Jersey Boys)  
3rd - Vanessa and Ralph 
4th - Blonde Rachel and Dave 
5th - Red Rachel and Brendon 
6th - Bopper and Mark

7th - Nary and Jamie (DEA)  

OUT - Kerri and Stacy (Cousins) 

OUT - Eliott and Andrew (Twins) 

OUT - Dave and Cherie (Clowns) 
OUT - Misa and Maiya

Dead Team Obituary: Kerri & Stacy

Kerri & Stacy had a pretty quiet race, all things considered.  There was a brief fear of heights thing when they got fooled by the first Roadblock about who had to jump out of the plane, but other than that, they were rarely interesting enough to earn much in the way of screen time.  What we did see of them was reasonably pleasant, certainly there was little of the overblown drama that infects the couples teams on this season.  But that doesn't mean that I'm really upset to see them go.  It's like that sometimes.  With twenty two people racing around, the edits favor the most dramatic people and situations.  Kerri & Stacy never had much drama.  That's good for them in a way, because the drama is almost always ugly on this show, but it costs them the chance to be seen very much.  C'est la vie.  

WEP '12, Day 74 - Amazing Race 20 Analysis, Ep. 4

With episode six on the air tomorrow, I really need to get my ass caught up on this one.  Same deal as always, read the recap at TWoP or view the episode itself at CBS.com.  Oh, and spoilers.

Episode four of season twenty involved three major race concepts, one of which we've discussed before, the Travel Fail.  That came up before when the second bus blew a window and re-shuffled the teams.  This time, though, the Travel Fail was self-inflicted, with Mark and Bopper failing to read the part of the clue that told them that they need to get their plane tickets to Italy at a travel agent instead of at the airport.  That costs them time.  So much so that they end up on a plane an hour and change behind every other team.  The big question to this leg of the race was whether or not they could manage to erase that deficit.

I'll save you the suspense, and anyway you should have already seen the episode or read the recap, right?  No, they can't.  To their credit they do manage to get within line of sight of one other team, but it's as that team is leaving the location of a challenge that the boys from Kentucky are just arriving at, and they never get even that close again.  So our beloved boys from Kentucky come in last.  I'll deal with the fallout of that at the end of the analysis.

The second concept we have to talk about is the Fast Forward.  The Fast Forward is a game mechanic that allows teams to try to complete a side challenge.  If they pull it off, they can skip all other tasks and head right to the Pit Stop.  The catch?  Only the first team to complete the challenge gets the benefit of the Fast Forward, and each team can only use a Fast Forward once per race.  In the first few races there was a Fast Forward available on every leg of the race except the last one.  When you used your Fast Forward was a big part of the strategy of racing.  For the most part, the Fast Forward was used defensively.  In other words, you saved it until you were in danger of getting eliminated.  Then you gambled that no one else had tried to use it ahead of you.  It was a moment of tense decision making for teams that added to the drama of the show.

Alas, that drama is dead now.  Why?  Because in the more recent races they've cut the number of Fast Forwards down to only a couple per race.  That means that whichever team is in first place when they get to a Fast Forward just grabs it and pads their lead.  Rather than an interesting strategic choice, the Fast Forward's been reduced to a reward that guarantees the team in first place will stay there.  That's what happens here, letting Team Border Patrol surge to a second first place finish in a row.

So we know who came in first and who came in last.  Was there anything else interesting going on?  Not really.  Both teams with Rachels in them had inter-personal breakdowns, showing once again why it's a bad idea to race with your spouse/dating partner.  Other than that?  No, not really.

At the end, then, Mark and Bopper came skidding into last place.  There they got a couple of surprises.  The first was Art & JJ, having heard that Bopper was racing for money for his sick daughter, deciding to split the cash they won for coming in first with the Kentucky boys.  Which was cool of them, I have to admit.

The second surprise was today's third and final concept, the Non-Elimination Leg.  You see, sprinkled tow or three times per race is a Non-Elimination Leg where coming in last doesn't kick you off the show.  The first such leg in Race 20 was this episode.  That means that Mark &  Bopper live to race on.  However, they will have to do an extra challenge on the next leg, called a Speed Bump, as their penalty for failure.  That's well worth it to have a shot at staying in the race, though.

I should also point out that for a veteran race-watcher it was obvious that this was Non-Elimination when Phil didn't eliminate them right off the bat.  The man's not an asshole.  If you're gone, he doesn't drag it out to make you suffer.  He gives it to you right to your face.  If he tells you you're last and doesn't immediately follow it with "I'm sorry to tell you but you've been eliminated from the race," then either some other team fucked up worse than you did or it's Non-Elimination, as it was here.

It does lead to an interesting scenario, though.  If Mark & Bopper manage to beat the odds and win the race and the million bucks, are they going to give Art & JJ their money back?  Hopefully, we'll get to find out.

Episode four standings:

1st - JJ and Art (Border Patrol) 
2nd - Blonde Rachel and Dave 

3rd - Joey "Fitness" and Danny (Jersey Boys)  

4th - Vanessa and Ralph 

5th - Nary and Jamie (DEA)  

6th - Red Rachel and Brendon 

7th - Kerri and Stacy (Cousins)  

8th - Bopper and Mark 

OUT - Eliott and Andrew (Twins) 

OUT - Dave and Cherie (Clowns) 
OUT - Misa and Maiya


With no team eliminated, we'll be skipping the Dead Team Obituary in favor of an updated look at the surviving teams.

Blonde Rachel and Dave

Alas, after a promising start, Blonde Rachel and Dave have degraded into bickering.  Mostly, at least as far as what we've been shown, this is Dave's fault.  The Army pilot keeps insisting that they need to "communicate" better, but what he seems to mean by that is "you do what I say."  That's perfectly acceptable in the Army, less so with your wife.  Likability: Medium.  (And dropping fast if they don't quit fighting.)

Despite a terrible third leg where they came in 6th, we can't ignore the back-to-back first place finishes, and even with the in-fighting, they still came in second on this leg.  Survivibility: High.

Bopper and Mark

They've done nothing to cancel their initial hero status, they don't fight among themselves, and they're friendly and interesting to watch.  Likability: High.

On the other hand, they've been 9th and last in two legs, while 3rd and 4th in the other two.  That's not a recipe for long-term success, but they're better off than some other teams.  Survivibilty: Medium.

Nary and Jamie (Team DEA)

I've gotta say, I've been expecting more from this team.  Certainly they've been pleasant enough for what little screen time they've gotten.  They've done or said nothing to change my initial appraisal of them as people.  Even the whole "going undercover as kindergarten teachers" bit is more cute than insulting.  Likibility: High.

However, they might as well be kindergarten teachers for all their performance to date has shown.  They've come in 4th, 6th, 5th, and 5th.  That's a pretty middle of the road showing, so that earns them Survivibilty: Medium.

Brendon and Red Rachel

With the last couple of legs, this team has proven to be increasingly fragile.  Unfortunately, that's manifested by Rachel whining and screaming at Brendon which in no way endears to me a team that I didn't much like in the first place.  Likability: Low.  (And if I had a more flexible system, I'd call it Non-Existent.)

That fragility has hurt them in the last leg in particular, with them threatening to quit.  Those kinds of teams almost never survive for long, as a desire to quit makes you less likely to give the kind of effor that's required to stay in the race.  Still, they do have a pretty impressive record with two 2nd place finishes to go along with a 4th and a 6th, so we can't count them out entirely, as much as I'd like to.  Survivibilty: Medium

Joey "Fitness" and Danny (Team Jersey Boys)

To my surprise, I haven't found the Jersey shtick as annoying as I thought I would.  Maybe they just look better in comparison to the Rachel teams, but they just aren't on the Hate 'Em List anymore.  That doens't mean that I want them to win, though.  Likability: Medium.

 After a rough start, 10th and 8th, the Jersey Boys have picked it up lately, coming in 3rd for the last couple of legs.  Split the difference.  Survivibility: Medium.

Kerri and Stacy

Still haven't seen much of this team.  Still seem nice, if uninspired.  Likability: Medium.

Can't say I'm impressed with their performance, though.  Coming in 7th, 5th, 7th, and 7th doesn't suggest you're long for the race.  Survivibilty: Low.

Vanessa and Ralph

This team presents a quandary for me.  On one hand, they seem to be petty people, fond of insulting other teams over things like dress sense and the way they wear their hair.  On the other hand, the team they lash out against most is Red Rachel and Brandon, a team I don't care for either.  Still, Ralph and Vanessa's behavior aggravates me.  Likability: Low.

If trends continue, I won't have to worry about it for much longer.  Coming in 5th, 7th, 8th, and 4th doesn't inspire much in the way of confidence.  Survivibility: Low.

Art and JJ

They've cut down on the boorishness, and the offer of cash to Bopper and Mark was pretty redemptive.  Not my favorite team, but they're rising in the standings.  Likibility: Medium.

As far as actual racing goes, they've been awesome.  Third, 2nd, 1st, 1st is a great record by anyone's standards.  Survivibilty: High.

WEP '12, Day 63 - Amazing Race 20 Analysis Ep. 3

As always, this analysis presumes you've either watched the episode or at least read a recap.  As such, there will be no attempt to avoid SPOILERS.

Though I've since learned that other people, who are wrong, disagree on this point, I think that the leg run by Dave and Blonde Rachel in this episode was one of the worst I've ever seen.  Granted, I need to qualify that statement as "one of the worst legs I've ever seen that did not result in elimination."  After all, Dave and Rachel are still in the race, which makes it a better leg than the Momily collapse in the first race, or Misa and Maiya's pitiful efforts in the first leg of this race.

What made it so bad?  Well, let's see how things went.  This leg of the race started off with Travel Bunching at the Buenos Aries airport.  However, a few teams, including Blonde Rachel and Dave, Bopper and Mark, Team Border Patrol, and Team DEA (alias "Kindergarten teachers") all managed to get onto a flight that gets them into the next destination, Asuncion, Paraguay, a couple of hours before the other teams.

They'll need it.  This leg includes a Detour that has two choices, as always.  The first is to create a pyramid of watermelons.  The second is to string a harp.  Every team from the first flight decides to do the melons.  It turns out to be a bad call, because even if you can accomplish the task, it still takes a lot of energy and time. For Dave and Blonde Rachel this is Bad Decision #1.  Granted, it's a forgivable mistake in that virtually every team on this leg will make the same call.

To their credit, Team Border Patrol plans carefully as they lay down their watermelons, making sure that they're all facing the same direction as they go to increase stability.  And it works for them, letting them cruise through the stacking in one try, and after going through the Roadblock without much problem, nets them a first place finish.  I might find them a little obnoxious, but you've got to give the Border Patrol guys credit, they've never finished worse than third place so far.  My original analysis of them as a strong team remains a pretty good call.

But this entry is about Blonde Rachel and Dave.  Their melon pyramid collapses, as does those of Bopper & Mark and Team DEA.  However, while both Bopper & Mark and Team DEA take the hint and immediately bail out to try the harps, Blonde Rachel and Dave decide to try to fix their pyramid, despite the probability that they'll pretty much have to take it apart and start over.  They consider using the Express Pass that they earned for winning the first leg of the race, and decide against it.  I'm going to call this Bad Decision #2.  Either use the Pass immediately so you get the maximum value out of it, or put it aside.  Furthermore, if you leave the same time that the other two teams do, you're still in the pack and not likely to fall very far behind.  Especially since the teams from the second flight are arriving just as Bopper & Mark and Team DEA are bailing out on the melons.  Since you know it takes ages to to the melon pyramid, it's the perfect time to bail out and see how the harp goes.

What's worse, though, is what happens next.  You see, Blonde Rachel and Dave futz around with their pyramid even longer, and when it collapses for real then decide to bail on it.  They rush over to the harp, glance at it, and then decide to use the Express Pass at that moment.  Without even trying to do the task.  That means that they've wasted a ton of time that they could have skipped if they'd done the Pass at the outset, but that they're alos using it while in around fourth place, meaning they're not in great danger of getting eliminated.  They've pretty much done the worst thing they possibly could with that Express Pass, making this Bad Decision #3.

But the hits keep coming!  Next they get to the Roadblock.  The clue is "who's ready to use their head?"  Odds are good that this isn't going to be a running or strength based task.  Probably it'll be a figuring something out task, or something goofy if the clue writes are being clever.  Your team consists of one strong and buff man and one not very much of either woman.  So, logically, you should send Blonde Rachel in for this task and save Dave for a task where carrying or running is important, right?  That is, however, not what they do.  They send Dave.  And, as it turns out, the writers were being clever.  The task is to balance bottles on your head.  And, unlike most tasks where you can keep trying until you succeed, there's a fail state: You only get 20 bottles.  If you break them all, you lose.

Dave breaks them all.

So with Bad Decision #4 in the rear view mirror, Blonde Rachel and Dave make their way to the Pit Stop.  Had they not wasted their Express Pass, they could have used it on the bottle task when it became clear that Dave was never going to succeed at it.  If they had, they'd  have come in second this leg.  Instead, they wait out a two hour penalty and end up in sixth place for the leg.  If everyone had been able to get on the first plane, that penalty would have ended the race for them.

Truly, it was a miserable performance, which even Dave agrees with in a post-leg interview.  "We did everything wrong."

True.  Luckily for you, there was that two hour gap.  And because of that, the twins managed to botch both the harp stringing and the bottles badly enough that even Ralph and Vanessa, who got the bit in their teeth and fought through to finish the melons despite multiple collapses, passed them for eighth place, ending the twins' run.

But I'll remember this leg for Blonde Rachel and Dave's mistakes.  I've rarely seen a team that was doing so well manage to do so poorly and still survive.  Let's see if Nietzsche was right about getting stronger.

Episode three standings:

1st - JJ and Art (Border Patrol) 
2nd - Red Rachel and Brendon 
3rd - Joey "Fitness" and Danny (Jersey Boys) 
4th - Bopper and Mark 
5th - Nary and Jamie (DEA)  
6th - Blonde Rachel and Dave 
7th - Kerri and Stacy (Cousins)  
8th - Vanessa and Ralph   
OUT - Eliott and Andrew (Twins) 
OUT - Dave and Cherie (Clowns) 
OUT - Misa and Maiya

There are some trends to note here.  First of all, the Border Patrol guys have, as mentioned, never finished worse than third.  Meanwhile, Vanessa & Ralph and Kerri & Stacy have never finished better than fifth.  keep an eye on that.  Also, I'd like to take a moment to compliment Red Rachel & Brendon and the Jersey Boys for coming in second and third, despite coming in two hours behind because of the airport situation.

Dead Team Obituary: Eliott and Andrew

Remember what I said last week about a team not getting much screen time early in the race meaning they'll be around for a while?  In particular, in reference to the Twins?  Yeah, that didn't work out.  Despite my expectations, the Twins went sixth, ninth, and last.  the only significant screen time they ever got was their final death spiral.  I guess they never did anything so interesting that the producers felt thy needed to be on screen.  There are teams that go that way, some races.  The first team ever eliminated from the race, Matt & Ana, went out like that.  I guess I was trusting the tropes more than I was the evidence of the twins' poor performance.  Good to know, I guess.

As for the twins themselves, we never really got to know them.  They didn't fight very much, they didn't interact with the other teams very much, at least as far as was ever shown, and they never did anything particularly cool or terrible except proving to be bad at harp stringing and balancing a bottle on your head.  I expected more of them, but that's the way it goes.  At least Andrew got to play some soccer with a Brazilian hero, so that's something right? 

WEP '12, Day 59 - Amazing Race 20 Analysis Ep. 2

As usual, this analysis assumes you've already watched the second episode of Amazing Race 20.  Those of you who haven't are encouraged to watch it at CBS.com.  SPOILERS follow.

Most every leg of the race starts with the teams leaving from a Pit Stop.  Usually it's after twelve hours of rest, though occasionally you see twenty four or even thirty six hour gaps.  What that means, though, is that if you arrived during the day, you'll be leaving at night, usually very late at night.  For instance, Blonde Rachel and Dave arrived at the end of last leg at 2:46 pm, and are thus leaving at 2:46 am, which is a pain in the ass vis a vis trying to get anything done.

That's by design, though.  You see, the primary mechanism that the Race uses to keep teams from getting huge leads and thereby killing all the drama in the Race is called "bunching."  That occurs when the lead teams run into something that forces them to sit around and wait, which allows the trailing teams to catch up.  There are two types of bunching.  One is Travel Bunching, where the teams have to fly somewhere but the next flight is hours away, so that while they're sitting around waiting to board, the trailers catch up and with everyone on the same plane, the race is reset to zero when they land.  That happens most often at airports, but it can work for any type of transportation, including boats and trains.

The second type of bunching is Hours of Operation Bunching.  That's where the location or activity that's next for the teams doesn't open for a few hours, so the leaders get to watch their lead vanish one team at a time.  That's what happens in this one, as everyone catches up before the local courier arrives at dawn to hand out the next clue.

It also renders moot the full list of departure times that I jotted down as they appeared on screen, but there was still some interesting data to mine there.  For instance the top three teams were separated by all of three minutes, and that the gap between the lead plane and the second plane seems to have been about two hours.  Also that the Twins either got lost or were really bad at making empanadas, because there where nearly an hour behind the next team, Ralph and Vanessa.  Guess there's some missing drama there.

Speaking of screen time, one way you can guess which teams are going to be in it for a while versus the ones that are going out soon is that the more screen time you get in the early episodes, the more likely you are to get flushed out early.  Meanwhile, if you get short shrift, it tends to suggest you'll be there near the end.  So, since they only got Misa and Maiya for one episode, the producers tended to show as much as them as they could.  Considering that the Twins seem to have lost a whole hour in there somewhere and no one felt it was worth it to show us how, I'm guessing that the Twins will be around into the later stages of the Race.

Anyway, the teams head out into a Detour, the choice between two tasks.  One of the ways I tend to keep myself involved in events is to try and guess which one is the better choice.  In this case the choice was between setting up a solar oven and boiling some water with it, and collecting wood and clay then hauling it a mile on donkey-back and then making a fire.  Normally you should try to avoid gathering tasks, since you never want to be at the mercy of random chance to find something the way Misa and Maiya were in the first episode.  However, in this case you weren't searching for a single hidden object, you were just gathering stuff off the ground, so I thought that the fire task was the better bet.

Oddly, only Team Border Patrol agreed with me.  Everyone else did the solar oven.  And it turned out that I was right, since the Border Patrol guys managed to get lost and lose 20 minutes and still ended up in second place!  the big sticking point was in how long it took for the pots to boil, with some teams standing around for as much as 45 minutes waiting for the sun to do its job.

The next step was to take a bus eighteen hours to Buenos Aries.  Blond Rachel and Dave, Red Rachel and Brandon, Team Border Patrol, and Bopper and Mark all make the first bus.  The second bus has the Clowns, the Jersey Shore Boys, the Twins, and Ralph and Vanessa.  Finally, Team DEA and Kerri and Stacy make it to the last bus.  These last two are fretting because it seems all but certain that one of them will be eliminated.  But then random fate takes a stab at the second bus by somehow breaking a window on that bus, putting all four teams there in a competition for the bottom.

Now I've said in the past that one of the things I enjoy about the Race is that you can't get voted off the island.  You win or lose based on when you arrive at the mat, no more and no less.  But that isn't entirely true.  After all, there is the once or twice per race U-Turn which you can use to screw another team.  But there is another social element to the Race as well...how willing other teams are to help you out or team up with you.  Team DEA has that clearly in mind.  They've gone undercover as kindergarten teachers, since they're afraid that revealing their DEA skills will make other teams more likely to U-Turn them or not help them out.

The social element comes to the forefront in  Buenos Aries.  The final task, a Roadblock which means only one teammate can participate, involves figuring out the average weight of a corral of cattle during a cattle auction.  So you have to count the number of cows, catch the total weight of the corral during the auctioneer's pitch, then successfully do the division all while various bidders yell out numbers.   It's not an easy task, especially for frazzled and sleep deprived racers, so many of the teams end up working together.  But who to work with?  Blonde Rachel and one of the Border Patrol guys end up working together, but purposely exclude Red Rachel because Brandon had purportedly ripped a out of Team Border Patrol's hands during the pile up with the courier.  Mark watches Red Rachel self-destruct during the task and shows mercy, basically handing her the answer to the problem.  That doesn't make Red feel any better, though, as she continues to implode on he cab ride over to the Pit Stop.  Clearly the pair from Big Brother are going to be a high drama team.  Here's hoping they implode right out of the Race.

The middle two teams, still believing that they're fighting for last place, didn't cooperate at all, which only makes sense.  That leads to Kerri and Stacy ending up team number five, and Team DEA getting the Phil Fake-out where he pretends they've been eliminated, then reveals that the other teams had bus problems and they're still alive.

That leaves us with the remaining four teams screwed by the bus problem.  By the way, how does a window of a bus suddenly shatter?  Did someone take a shot at the bus or something?  Anyway, there's a little more math teamwork that ends up leaving Dave of the Clowns in the dust, and he and Cherie are duly eliminated.  That at least frees me from having to distinguish between the two Daves on the show.  It was also nice to get some validation on another [b]Suvivibility: Low[/b] team going out early.  Now if we can just get Kerri and Stacy out next, I'll really look prophetic.

Episode two standings:

1st - Blonde Rachel and Dave
2nd - JJ and Art (Border Patrol)
3rd - Bopper and Mark
4th - Red Rachel and Brendon 
5th - Kerri and Stacy (Cousins) 
6th - Nary and Jamie (DEA) 
7th - Vanessa and Ralph
8th - Joey "Fitness" and Danny (Jersey Boys)
9th - Eliott and Andrew (Twins) 
OUT - Dave and Cherie (Clowns) 
OUT - Misa and Maiya

Dead Team Obituary: Dave and Cherie

As I said, I'd rated this team as a low survivability team, primarily because I figured that they'd fall too far behind in a grueling physical task.  As it turned out, it was bad luck with the bus and Dave's poor math skills that did them in.  Who knew?

Something that I've noticed is that the show tends to try and slip in something inspirational about a team right before they go out.  It's like they've got this story about a team that hasn't got a good context as far as the Race itself goes, but since this is the last time we'll see this team, they might as well throw it in.  That's how we learned that Dave had beaten cancer twice, which made me even more suspicious than usual about their chances when I heard Dave relate the tale early in the episode. 

Given that they managed to leave the show with clown walks and cartwheels, I have to admire Dave and Cherie for sticking to their roots.  Of course, if they'd been more interesting during the Race rather than as they left it, maybe I'd feel bad about their leaving.