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A Dying Clown wrote:

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I may quit watching but at least I have to say TAR6 is more watchable than TAR4 right now for me

Structurally, TAR6 is more appealing, even with the awful elimination order. Apart from the lame Corsica leg, you immediately get to Jonathan's satisfying elimination (which has some of the best African tasks ever), then some of the most interesting Asian legs ever (first time in Sri Lanka, first 'modern' Asia leg)

If you mean modern city then I'd say it was Hong Kong in TAR2. But it skillfully combined the new with the old and made the city seem interesting and human. But I never liked the first TAR6 China leg. It just felt very cold, distant and off putting to me. And the detour seemed kind of silly and boring carrying a lot of bricks around. It made me never ever want to visit Shanghai in a hundred million years. Just turned me completely off to the place for some reason. It, with the finale, would be the two legs I'd absolutely skip seeing. So the only TAR6 Asian legs I liked were Sri Lanka and the Mount Hua one. And Sri Lanka is really bittersweet when they are on the future "train of death" and in Gul.

I also didn't like TAR6 being in Europe for SEVEN legs all together. That is over half the whole race and when you add in the overlong premiere it is even more time. I think it was the most Euro oriented Race ever and only second to TAR Family Edition in a Race stuck on one continent forever despite using Senegal as a "divider" technique. I'd eliminate or merge the Norway and Sweden legs down to one leg and edit Iceland down to a 60 minute premiere, get rid of Corsica of course and combine the German and one of the Hungarian legs into one a la the Hong Kong/Sydney half-and-half leg in TAR2. Except for Gus and the beers, the German leg was useless. I mean soap box derby? Come on. So overall I thought TAR6's race course sucked.

Now TAR6's Euro legs did have one thing up on TAR4's. They filmed it in summer when Europe didn't look so depressing and cold and gray and drizzly and dismal week after week. And it is WEEK after WEEK the first broadcast through remember. TAR4's grim looking European legs matched it's grim mood and was just a total downer.

Which weirdly leads us back to TAR2. The Aussie poster here who once referred to TAR2 as "the sun dappled Season" put his finger on one of the reasons Season 2 is so popular. You really can't discount the psychological undercurrent that weather plays on your enjoyment of watching TAR. It's under the radar but it really effects the mood of the viewer whether they are overtly conscious of that effect or not I feel.

And yes we saw some rain in TAR2 but only really twice and then very briefly. And it was a plus for those episodes too. Once where we get the funny moment of Oswald & Danny dry in the hotel lobby while Blake and Gary are getting rained on. The other was when the weather gods (and editors) pulled a joke on Wil with the sunshine and Tara bit. But otherwise sun dappled it was.

I still love the NZ 1 episode with Nevis platform and the sheep RB (one of my fav RBs ever). But the second NZ episode was slow I agree and the Hawaii one. Those two I'd change but not ever NZ 1 which was a great leg in my opinion.

As far as English goes most European legs can count as English legs given how many English speakers there are around in Europe. In TAR6 all three Scandinavian countries and Germany had tons of English speakers making them like visiting England or something. In fact it is pretty hard to get away from an area in the world where English speakers aren't easily available in this era. That's why a country like Thailand adds so much to TAR when they get outside of the tourist areas of Bangkok.

^ Oh how quickly the giant office chair has been lost to history. Years from now some archaeologist will dig up it's remains and wonder at what race of giants once lived in that land of yore.

I liked less countries with more depth. We are getting cardboard surface images instead of countries a lot in recent seasons. And turning around hopping on a plane means no real interaction with the people. Kind of defeats having a race around the world at this point if we can't see it or it's people anymore.