It’s all food for the first Detour of the Race.
In Soufflé, teams head to the Center for Culinary Arts Manila to what Derek only describes as a cooking challenge. Specifically, teams need to learn how to and then actually bake a soufflé.
In Serve, teams head to Little Tokyo where they must memorize the orders of eight guests, all in Japanese, and then correctly relay the orders to the head chef before serving the dishes to the guests.
All teams choose Serve. Vince decides to make a song out of the orders to help him remember his 4 orders, but when they go to the chef, he shakes his head that they are incorrect. They insist they are saying the orders correctly and are annoyed Chef is not giving them the thumbs up.
AJ & Jody also decide to memorize 4 dishes each. But AJ just laughs when he struggles. “This is a waste of time. *bleep* *bleep*”
Jet & Yna and Luz & Chen are right behind them.
Vince & Ed finally get their dishes correct and open the next clue telling them to perform a drag routine at Resorts World Manila.
Yna ends up reciting all the dishes herself with AJ & Jody finishing close behind. Luz & Chen finish just as Matt & Phoebe arrive.
After Matt & Phoebe leave, Roch & Eji manage to pass Kelvin & JP.
Daniel & Chalie take a while to *bleep* figure out the *bleep* Filipino-language Detour clue. That allows Tina & Avy to arrive at the restaurant before them.
RR & Jeck decide against doing the “shuffle” Detour. They arrive at the restaurant and as they get their bags, the trunk hits Jeck right on the face. She’s bleeding, but fine.
The *bleep* rain makes it hard for Daniel & Charlie to *bleep* understand the *bleep* orders. But they still *bleep* finish before Tina & Avy.
Zarah & Osang catch up to RR & Jeck at the restaurant.
Both finish and all teams are off to Resorts World Manila.
Episode Thoughts
It’s almost kind of fitting that the episode ended with a downpour and a flooded Manila.
What is happening?! You know, I absolutely hate saying anything bad about TARPh. I hesitate to criticize and be negative because I know the huge hurdles TARPh has had to jump over just to even make it on-air.
But these last three episodes have been rough. After such an amazing premiere, it’s like it’s gotten less and less amazing with each day.
And that really saddens me. I absolutely want The Amazing Race Philippines to have many, many more seasons in the future. I want to see them go out of the country. I want them to do Switchbacks to memorable tasks. I want to see a TARPh: All-Stars. It would make me so proud, as an Amazing Race fan of 14 years, to have the Philippine version run for just as long.
But it’s been rough. After the alliance debacle of the last two episodes and the horrible first Filipino version of TAR Israel’s Double Battles, this episode showed maybe the biggest problem with the “One Route Maker a Day” format. If a task or challenge underwhelms, then the entire episode is a bust. That’s a huge risk. And unfortunately, with the Detour choices this episode, it made for a very bland 30 minutes. If there are Linear Legs, then this was a Linear Task and episode. Teams walked in, then walked out. That’s it.
The 2nd biggest problem with the format is the sense of time in the Leg is completely lost. You know that first group of teams finished the Detour before half of the teams even left University of Makati stadium. And I wouldn’t be surprised if those leading teams finished the Resorts World task before Zarah & Osang left the restaurant. This format doesn’t work if we see teams doing tasks after dark in one episode, while other teams are doing the next task in the afternoon in the next episode.
I was really looking forward to this format too. But now I’m actually missing season 1’s random airing schedule with Legs starting and ending on different days. At least those episodes played out normally and we knew where teams stood in relation to each other.
The only consolation from this episode and the preview for the next episode, there’s no opportunity for teams to leech off each other and teams actually have to do stuff on their own. By themselves. Like one is supposed to do in a Race.
*sigh* I guess I’ll wrap up my regrettably ranting recap with this horrible oversight that absolutely should NOT even have made it into the episode:
My Subjective Team Rankings
No detailed team rankings today since the teams barely did anything of note. Not even the teams mispronouncing “soufflé.”
Except for Kelvin & JP who definitely need to clash more. We’ve never seen bickering male friends on the Race before. Their little taxi asaran reminded me of Dayal’s hilarious outbursts in season 1. It would be fun to see more from them.
Just like I’m looking forward to some fun father and son arguing from AJ & Jody tomorrow.
And Daniel can keep swearing up a storm, as long as he and Charlie keep the camera mugging to a bare minimum.
Episode Quotes
Chen: “Parang laging galit magsalita.”
JP: “Wag kang sigaw ng sigaw, para kang tanga.”