Slap "Do you know how to get to the Hours Of Operation sign?"

!Slap! "And the train station ticket counter?" Was there any real need to regroup the teams twice within the first segment? We didn't spend any real time at the first clue pickup site: if the camera wanted us to appreciate something, the lingering didn't happen. Make everyone use their Travel Modes Of Impending Death twice and deplete leg funds... at best, that was all it did. Beyond wasting episode time, which was done rather nicely. If you're into that sort of thing.

Slap I'd make it a capslock triple, but I can't know how long the Roadblock took to perform during any test runs. Maybe there was a chance some of the pilot efforts had it go over the time required for the next train to arrive -- and depart. Still, I have to believe the producers at least knew what the rail schedule looked like and realized there was a strong chance that when every team arrived together, they would leave the same way. The front half of this episode was the classic Whole Bunch Of Bunching. We haven't seen that in a while. It was a welcome absence. Take it away.

No Hand Movement Seriously: Read. The. @#$%ing. Clue.

Clap Okay, admit it: you put that entire paper Detour branch together in the hopes that Mallory would get to achieve the trifecta, right?

Clap Elephants! So many elephants! (Try not to think about why the water was brown.)

No Hand Movement I won't try to judge the Detour branches against each other because every team on the paper end made errors -- but when all the teams on one side leave before every last one on the other, it can feel like the imbalance came from more than racer actions.

No Hand Movement What was with the wise man intersect towards the end of the leg? Giving teams a moment for introspection seldom works. Creating a musical clue and setting up a task to come didn't happen. It just came across as a 'must fill leg with something' moment in a segment which already had those. So... what?

Slap "Sorry about equalizing you again and again and again. How about an NEL to render any racing you actually did even more pointless?"