Recap: The Amazing Race 30, Episode 6 – “Do I trust her? Hell no.”


Recap: The Amazing Race 30, Episode 6 – “All’s Fair in Love and War”

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Teams use the Travelocity app to book tickets on one of two flights to Prague, Czechia! On the first flight are Henry & Evan, Lucas & Brittany, Kristi & Jen and Eric & Daniel. On the second flight arriving one hour later are Alex & Conor, Cody & Jessica and Trevor & Chris.

Once in Prague, teams must make their way to Rudolfinum. Here, teams must first check in at the Double U-Turn. None of the first flight teams decide to use it. They open the next clue which reveals a Detour: This or That. There is no other information on the Detour other than the locations.

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In This, teams must head to Staropramen Brewery where they must re-stack a pallet of empty beer kegs. While doing so, they will come across a full keg from which they will pour a perfect mug. When approved, they will deliver the keg to a party boat. In That, teams will make their way to Charles University and sit in on a lecture debating Nicolaus Copernicus’ theory. One lecturer arguing that the Earth is round, the other that the Earth is flat. Teams must listen to all the facts before making their way over to pass an eight-question oral exam.

Kristi & Jen and Henry & Evan choose This while Lucas & Brittany choose That. Lucas & Brittany can’t get through the lecture and they decide to quickly switch just as Eric & Daniel arrive. The twins head over to the oral exam after the lecture and get the first question wrong. They decide they will go back and forth from lecture to exam as much as they need to in order to memorize the information.

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The second flight arrives and Alex & Conor get to the U-Turn first. They decide not to use it. Cody & Jessica are next and decide to U-Turn Trevor & Chris since they are the last two teams.

Kristi & Jen, Henry & Evan and Lucas & Brittany are having trouble finding the party boat. Henry & Evan are searching for more than 30 minutes, Lucas & Brittany for more than an hour. Eric & Daniel are on their 9th attempt at the exam and they finally pass.

Teams can now make their way to Andelska Lazen Beer Spa to receive their next clue from three patrons enjoying a beer bath.

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Meanwhile, Alex & Conor choose the beer Detour. Cody & Jessica choose the lecture, but enter the wrong lecture hall. They see Czech words on the projector and are scared off so they decide to switch. Trevor & Chris decide on doing the lecture Detour first.

Kristi & Jen are first to get to the beer spa and receive the clue pointing to the very familiar Stara Cistirna Odpadnich Vod.

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And here, it is a Switchback to the infamous Road Block from TAR15.
For this Road Block, teams must go through hundreds of ringing telephones for eight that have someone on the other line. Each will give them a word that together and unscrambled will form a famous Kafka quote: “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

Jen, Daniel and Evan start the Road Block.

Across town, Trevor & Chris manage to pass the oral exam on their 2nd attempt and hurry over to the other Detour.

At the Road Block, Jen has all the words and just now has to unscramble the quote. Daniel and Evan decide to work together.

Jen finishes first and she and Kristi head to the Pit Stop at Letenske Park. They officially check in as Team #1 and win a trip to Perth. Eric & Daniel finish 2nd and Henry & Evan are 3rd.

Brittany, Jessica and Alex get started with the Road Block. Brittany and Jessica compare the words they’ve gotten as Brittany remembers the Tangier incident. The three of them think they have all the words and try to figure out the correct quote.

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Jessica has something and doesn’t immediately tell them what she’s submitted. When she gets the stamp of approval and the next clue, that’s when she tells Brittany and Alex the correct answer. Brittany and Alex realize she was giving them the wrong words to allow her a cushion.

Trevor starts the Road Block. While Cody & Jessica have trouble finding a taxi, Alex & Conor and Lucas & Brittany are taken right to the Pit Stop. Cody & Jessica see them running around and laugh, thinking they are going the wrong way. But Alex & Conor and Lucas & Brittany finish as Teams #4 and 5, respectively.

We are led to believe it is a close Race between Cody & Jessica and Trevor & Chris. But it is Cody & Jessica who step on the Mat as Team #6. That means Trevor & Chris are last and eliminated.

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Episode Thoughts

So I thought this was the second best leg and episode of the season so far. The Tangier Leg is still the best. But I actually really enjoyed this episode more than the others.

The tasks were good, the competition was great and it felt like a very full leg even with again just the basic Detour and Road Block only. And that’s quite a feat considering there’s only seven teams left.

Nice to finally visit the Czech Republic after all this time. And of course visiting Prague after all this time, they had to do a Switchback to one of the most infamous TAR tasks of all time. I like the modification to the original task. Having to memorize words to put together and unscramble to form a memorable quote from Kafka is much more difficult and challenging than the original.

Actually this task seems very familiar:

Hehe. It seems like they recycled the TARPHDME12 version of the original task. I think the TARPHDME version was a little bit more fun and challenging if only because it had giant insects and prisoners and executioners also in the room to freak teams out even more. It made it even more of a Kafka environment. It wasn’t even dark in the room here.

Anyway, let’s rewind back to the beginning. It was a good Travelocity commercial. Not sure about having to force teams on those two flights though. Obviously they didn’t actually search for the flights themselves. It seems as if TAR really wanted teams on two flights. But it’s okay.

Now, TAR seems to want to put the U-Turn before the Detour from now on. And I’m not really sure how to feel about that. On one hand I really didn’t care either way since I guess I was used to seeing voting U-Turns and the like. But then TARA5 happened and Treasuri & Louisa were unfairly eliminated because of the pre-Detour U-Turn. Like I was actually really annoyed by that because they were a team that I actually liked and was rooting for. Isn’t that always the case? lol

But here I’m not sure. It’s very interesting because I’m not sure if there’s really a change in strategy whether or not the U-Turn is before or after the Detour. Because sometimes the order that teams arrive at the first Detour clue is not the same order that they will finish the Detour and thus arrive at the U-Turn board for. At the same time as long as there is another full task before the actual U-Turn board, then teams based on their own skills will get to that U-Turn board before others. I don’t know. I think maybe it’s okay to have them switch the placement of Detours from time to time just to keep teams on their toes. Also just like a Double Battle/Face-Off/Head-to-Head, I do think there still needs to be at least one or two more tasks after a U-turn to give teams a chance to catch up. And not have a U-Turn automatically be an eliminator.

Of course the Road Block should have been difficult enough to allow for teams to catch up. And actually the Detour seemed to be challenging enough to get teams to fall behind. Eric & Daniel seemed to find an excellent strategy to tackle the lecture side of the detour. And the beer side of the Detour was straightforward with it’s directions but still challenging as they had to look for the party boat and with some physical aspect as well.

Speaking of, another one of those mystery Detours here. And funny enough, TARPHDME also had one of those This or That Detours, though not in Prague, but on the second half of the Super Czechia Leg in Brno.lol

Back to the Road Block, if you follow TARPHDME or any of my recaps you know that I hate teams just giving each other answers. Especially when it’s taken to an extreme. So I wasn’t too happy to see teams sharing their answers at the Road Block. I think it kind of took away from the challenge and made it easier than it should have been

Still I thought this episode overall had some great competition, great tasks and we got to see a lot more from each of the teams. And I think that is because of the actual leg and much better editing this.

I was not a fan of them including Phil repeating to expect the unexpected at the Mat. They’re obviously trying to foreshadow the team swapping or whatever that will be next week. But it felt a little forced. And I think that has to do with editing.

My Subjective Team Rankings

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So we definitely got to see a lot more of each team this episode.

I definitely like that Kristi & Jen are doing very well on the Race but they do not feel like racebots. It’s always a danger for a team that does exceptionally well such as them finishing in the top three every Leg so far. But they’ve shown that they aren’t invincible and that things don’t come easy for them. They’ve definitely had to work for each of their top 3 finishes. And it wasn’t even because other teams messed up that bad. They were just able to get themselves into a position to allow them to finish very well every Leg.

Like Phil said, Eric & Daniel have been underdogs this race so far. But they did very well this episode. And they definitely impressed at the Detour with an excellent strategy. They’ve definitely been stepping up every week. And that’s always great to see a team improve as the Race goes on.

Henry and Evan were a little less interesting this leg. Even as Evan seem to be much more annoyed with Henry than she has been and the other previous Legs. As the other teams seemed to step into the forefront this episode, Henry & Evan kind of took a step back. But they still had a pretty good leg.

It’s also a shame to see Trevor & Chris emerge on the Leg that they are eliminated. Now that’s always the case that the Race only focuses on the team as they’re close to being eliminated. Still they were a solid team that never really asserted themselves as a front-runner. But whose personality kind of seemed muffled by the shows poor editing. They did a great job hustling through the Detour though.

Alex & Conor were also able to get a little bit more time this week. We see that they’re basically our bickering couple this season. Especially as the Lucas & Brittany have now relinquished that title and instead or the happily engaged couple.

As for Cody & Jessica, it’s actually a great thing that they haven’t been doing very well these last few legs as it makes them a little more human and not the racebots that they were hyped up as being by fans and the show before the Race. Showing that they are human keeps you from wanting to root against them. I also don’t think there’s anything nefarious about their U-Turn decision or Jessica’s decision not to immediately give the correct answers to the other two teams. I would have shot both of them up my list had Jessica just ignored them and not told them the answers at all. But I get why she did it. And that’s fine.

Overall I think I might be rooting for Kristi & Jen the most. But I don’t have any team that I particularly dislike. And that’s fine. As long as they are able to have great competition then that’s okay with me.

2 thoughts on “Recap: The Amazing Race 30, Episode 6 – “Do I trust her? Hell no.”

  1. So, I really enjoyed this episode. It had a lot of movement, and even though it was a shame that we saw the Violinists go out, it was a great episode. Having seen the next two episodes, looking back at this one, made me feel like it may end up being one of the small amounts of highlights in the season.

    The idea of a U-Turn, is to add pressure on you to finish your detour task quicker, and maybe make mistakes that way, so you can U-Turn another team, or not be U-Turned. Having the U-Turn choice before the tasks seems lazy, and punishes teams that are behind. They also have had a lot of U-Turns in the series. Far too many.

    I’d also say, that the tasks this season have been so simple, that a U-turn is only really effective, if the tasks are both long and hard. That really hasn’t been the case so far.

    1. This was definitely one of the best episodes of the season, despite the U-Turn stuff. The show wants drama to come out of the U-Turn, but they’re definitely not using it correctly to maximize drama and competition.

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