While we are all talking about improvements for TAR3, I wanted to start a thread on the one everyone seems to hate the most- Bunching.

Let me first state that I know bunching will happen, It's not compelling TV if teams get out to leads of 1-2 days or more. It will also be very difficult to produce a 1 hour episode if teams are all in different countries at the same time.

That being said, in some of the later episode of TAR2 we saw them get bunched up 2 or 3 times in the same episode. Examples:

In Hong Kong- they all were at the Detour at 8am when it opened, and were all bunched up again going to the Airpot.

In New Zealand- they all were bunched at the ferry (minus Cha cha cha), and all got bunched up again just to see that stupid morning ritual at the natives camp.

I think there should be a few ways to bunch teams less, maybe every other episode, and add a little more strategy into the race.

1. Have more short distance Plane flights that have more travel options. (Paris- London, New York- Toronto, Seoul- Japan). Use the long distance flights as ways to re-bunch the teams every couple of episodes.

2. Pick Detours/Roadblocks that are open either 24/7 or with longer hours. I thought that Chex would picked the right detour cause it was open while the bridge was closed. Also in Brazil they went to a night club.. and in TAR1 the rat temple seemed open all night long. Adding a night element to some of the detours might add some skill to it also.

3. Have teams arrive at Airports during WORKING HOURS. If teams all get there at 2 am, they will all be on the same 8am flight. If they start to get there at say 6am, they will be on different flights, some direct, some connecting. The best airport scene in TAR2 was from Brazil to S. Africa, when all teams had to scramble onto different flights.

Other suggestions?

• RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,PagongRatEater, 03:35 PM, 05-28-02
• RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,Bebo, 03:52 PM, 05-28-02
  • RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,KMan, 05:10 PM, 05-28-02
    • RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,bacon, 10:56 PM, 05-28-02
  • RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,ELCinOhio, 03:34 PM, 05-29-02
• RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,Strider, 12:47 PM, 05-29-02
  • RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,magic_star, 04:11 PM, 05-29-02
    • RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,Strider, 10:46 AM, 05-30-02
      • RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,PagongRatEater, 12:04 PM, 05-30-02
  • RE: BUNCHING- ARGH!!!!!!,Kokoro, 05:39 PM, 05-29-02

I am totally with you - great points. The fact that all three final teams got on the same flight and had the race come down essentially to a foot-race was a joke. I think that you should be able to do SOME lead building. You want a few bunch up points through-out the race, so that you can have some grouping of the front-running groups and the second tier groups, but to have 1-3 groupings per episode is just RIDICULOUS! Essentially it punishes the teams that have raced well by putting them in the same situation as the teams that did not and makes elimination more an issue of luck than skill.

This was my big complaint last year too, but Jerry just didn't listen. To the contrary, I would say it seemed even worse in TAR2 than in the original/ I really hope that they change that, but I really doubt that they will....

Other suggestions?

More time between charters. There is minimal reward for the lead teams when they limit the number of reservations per charter, but they need to spaced farther apart for it to really matter. So what if there's only a 15 minute difference betweem the boats/planes/whatever?

Even ruder and snottier as the years go by. And let's add mean, horrible, witch while we're at it.

Card-carrying member of the PGSA

'Canes Rock! Beat Canada!

I could not agree more. The one aspect of the short-lived "Lost" that I enjoyed was that teams all took different routes to get to the same place. Let's see more flight options.

I agree to a certain extent. While the bunching in the final episode bordered on ridiculous, it still made for an extremely tense final. That said, and this is coming from a Blake and Paige fan, i thought the final episode bunching got out of hand the minute they had to stay the night in the igloo. I mean Blake and Paige were 10 minutes behind because of their goof on taking a later flight and it didn't matter one damn bit. Hell, they didn't even make em leave 10 minutes after the other two teams the next morning. They let em all leave at the same time. It all depends on what you want. Do you want a real competition that comes down to who does the best overall(which could be boring) or one in which tons of bunching occurs and leads to a nail-biter finale? I can understand both sides.

Why not have the charters leave as soon as they are full. In Australia, Chex had the fastforward, and Cha Cha Cha actually got on a plane before the other 3 teams. Their reward.....

15 Minutes over 2 teams, and 30 minutes over the last place team.

Great ideas.

1. Agreed. I think that airport management is the key. They should pick the airports so there are many options. Why is it that at every airport they all end up at the same ticket counter? Aren't they allowed to use any airline they wish?

2. Agreed. Also, having more choices at Detours where the choice isn't obvious. To steal a quote from Femme in a previous thread:

"Tread or Trek? In Tread, teams must drive a car 5 miles to the next task where they will hop on one leg for 1 minute. In Trek, the teams must walk 500 miles through the blazing Sahara Desert and once they reach their destination, they must build a single family dwelling out of sand."

Making the tasks non-linear would help here as well. Make them accomplish three things in a certain city, where they have to decide the smartest order to do them in.

3. Agreed. And this applies to the other tasks as well. I think the easiest solution here is to always make the first team start at 8:00 am (or whatever time the first task is open), instead of the "mandatory 12 hour rest period." Teams will still go out spaced as they came in, but there's no reason for it to be exactly 12 hours later.

Special mention for the igloo bunching. That was a blatantly obvious contrived purposeful bunching. There are plently of ways to keep the teams close together without equalizing them artificially just before the end.

>3. Agreed. And this applies to
>the other tasks as well.
>I think the easiest solution
>here is to always make
>the first team start at
>8:00 am (or whatever time
>the first task is open),
>instead of the "mandatory 12
>hour rest period." Teams will
>still go out spaced as
>they came in, but there's
>no reason for it to
>be exactly 12 hours later.

I don't think that is a good idea.If they got there around 5:00 a.m.,then they would only get a maximum of 3 hours of sleep but probably none since they have to arrange taxis and other things.The other choice would be to give them 27 hours of sleep and that is way too much.12 hours is a good amount of time to have.It wouldn't be fair to the teams leaving later either.They would miss all the good flights and have to get a flight that leaves a few hours later.I think bunching is a good idea.Sometimes the teams leave at night and get bunched at the airport,but it's part of the game.

You have a good point there with the 5 a.m. example. I agree with you on the sleep explanation. However, I don't think it is unfair for the teams that were behind the previous day to be disadvantaged the following day. There has to be some carry over advantage to doing well the previous day, but perhaps not that big of one.

I think we need to find some way to have a "quasi-bunch," where the teams are bunched, but the leading team still maintains a small advantage. This way, there is still a point to being in the lead, but the show is still exciting because no one will get too far ahead. Accomplishing that might be difficult, however. Any ideas?

I also have different opinions on bunching depending on when it occurs. If everyone were bunched just at the beginning of each leg it wouldn't bother me so much. The winners would be the team that consistently does well leg after leg, since there is no advantage to leading. But, bunching that occurs in the middle of a leg is pointless. What was the point of doing the earlier tasks well if you are essentially starting over? Even if one team is far ahead, the show could remain suspenseful through good editing.

Perhaps you make it so that there is a MINIMUM of 12 hours rest, but the lead team can leave the stop no earlier that 8AM or even 6AM. That way teams still get their rest but no one is leaving at 2:30 in the morning. Solves both problems!

I see the "compelling television" issue here that you don't want one team to be a day ahead of the others coming down the stretch. My take on quasi-bunching is that teams you can bunch in groups - this way you have can a leading the pack set of teams and the non-competive teams don't have a chance to luck-out and knock out one of the better teams. But for one bad leg in Thailand, Meach was a very strong team, but they did not benefit from it later in the race. If you don't reward teams for doing consistently well then all this show becomes is a bunch of mini-races on each leg instead of one contingous race.

<<Why is it that at every airport they all end up at the same ticket counter? Aren't they allowed to use any airline they wish?>>

Well yeah, however, you can't throw out the fact that a lot of the teams are followers - and it's not really a bad strategy - go where you see people, and you'll know you can't be too far behind.

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Now let us never speak of S3 again.