Teams must now hop onto one of two charter buses to Our Lady of Manaoag Shrine in Manaoag, Pangasinan. On the first bus leaving at 1am are Matt & Phoebe, Jet & Yna, Vince & Ed, Roch & Eji and AJ & Jody. On the second bus are Tina & Avy, Kelvin & JP, RR & Jeck and Daniel & Charlie.
On the bus, the second group decide to tsismis. Tina & Avy suggest they form an alliance to yield the rich kids Jet & Yna. Daniel & Charlie agree. Kelvin & JP say Yes, but don’t really offer any details so as not to put themselves in a risky position in the future.
The first bus stops for some breakfast at a Shell station and the teams have fun messing with each other, especially at the expense of Jet & Yna and their wealth. They all agree to work together since they are the first group.
The second bus also makes a pit stop and the group continues their alliance discussion. But RR expresses her hesitation in sabotaging another team which goes against her being a Christian. She admits being wrong about targeting Tina & Avy in the first Leg.
But RR says her heart is convicted and feels the Holy Spirit has let her know that it is wrong to Yield someone just because they are rich. She assures them this is not just her protecting her butt, but she and Jeck came on the Race to represent God.
The others try to convince RR that it’s nothing personal, it’s just a game. But RR decides to back her and Jeck out of the alliance.
The first bus arrives in Manaoag and teams must now search amongst the stalls next to the church for their next clue by asking “May clue ka ba para sa akin?” (“Do you have a clue for me?”). The correct vendor will hand them the clue and teams will have to take one of the keys from the same stall.
They will then head to the back of the church to find their Kia Sportage and learn a prayer that they must recite to a priest who will bless their car and hand them their next clue.
Jet & Yna and Matt & Phoebe find the clue first followed by Roch & Eji, AJ & Jody and Vince & Ed.
The 2nd bus arrives and the teams all find the clue and keys. Except for Daniel & Charlie who just follow everyone to the back of the church. But Tina tells them they need to get their car keys first. The crowd is very kilig when Team Juan D returns to grab their keys.
The teams start memorizing the deep Tagalog prayer. Roch & Eji are the first to give it a try and they receive the next clue, happy to continue improving their place in the Race. They open the next clue revealing the Road Block.
Matt & Phoebe are next followed by a very action filled Vince & Ed. Jet & Yna and AJ & Jody are next and all teams so far have memorized the prayer fine.
RR & Jeck give it a try, but they don’t really memorize it by the time they reach Father. They take peeks at their cheat sheet to recite the lines they’ve forgotten. The priest has no issue with that and he blesses them and the car and they are off.
Daniel & Charlie watched RR & Jeck and knowing there’s no way they can memorize an all-Tagalog prayer when they can barely read Tagalog, they do the same peek and recite method. The priest also blesses them and sees them off.
Kelvin & JP are happy to be getting a blessing after the last few days with no connection to family and friends. They feel like the blessing will help guide them today.
Tina & Avy are now in last because they focused too much on perfectly memorizing the prayer. They thought they’d at least be ahead of Team Juan D because of their poor Tagalog skills, but they are surprised to see all teams have passed them.
Episode Thoughts
First of all, thank you to whoever uploaded the episode today. I was worried it wouldn’t be uploaded since Saturday’s Pit Stop episode nor Sunday’s recap is nowhere to be found online. The TV5 livestream has always been pretty wonky for me these last two weeks. (It must not like me watching from the US =( ) But Monday’s episode was the absolutely worst!
^^^ I saw that little buffer wheel most of the episode until I gave up and went to watch the live world premiere of Ilustrado instead. At least it actually airs on GMA Pinoy TV and I don’t need to proxy my way to a livestream that doesn’t work.
Anyway…
Yay Our Lady of Manaoag! It’s great to have TAR (any TAR) Racing somewhere I’ve actually been to. Went to Manaoag for the first time last year. Beautiful place to visit.
And double yay for TARPh heading into Ilocano country. Woohoo. Hope they go even farther (further?) north.
The car blessing task was a good task to have at Our Lady of Manaoag. They seriously have like hourly or even every 30 minute car blessing sessions. So many people really have their cars blessed there.
The memorization part of the task was interesting. Was it not specifically stated in the clue? I’m surprised RR & Jeck and especially Daniel & Charlie were able to basically read from the paper while the other teams were so focused on memorizing it perfectly. Hmm…
But what an episode though. Perfect editing (and great that nagkataon) to start it off with RR’s big epiphany and then the Route Marker being Our Lady of Manaoag. Funny.
That whole discussion was pretty funny too. Not because RR (and Jeck I assume?) are very religious, but that it came out of nowhere. I’m not sure if RR was specifically referring to how she treated Tina & Avy in the first Leg when she said she regretted her mistake against “them.” But it’s funny how now she has a conscience now when she had no problem doing what she and Jeck did in the first Leg.
What made that whole conversation even funnier was Charlie’s absolutely indignant stare at RR. And then him saying, with his British accent, “Why?! Because of God?!” It was hilarious.
Targeting Jet & Yna because they are rich is an alright excuse, but it’s just that really, an excuse. Someone’s financial background outside of the Race has never been a major issue on any other TAR I’ve seen. I think the Filipino audience though has been groomed to always root for the poorest, saddest sob story. None of the teams here have a sob story, I don’t think. And that’s great. This is about a competition, a Race. Not who is the most kawawa which is what other reality show franchises that involve text voting might like to focus on.
Good episode overall. But I’m worried about this Leg’s Double Battle. It appears if there will be one, it may be one of the later tasks. Eeek!
My Subjective Team Rankings for the Episode
Daniel & Charlie were just hilariously great this episode. And it wasn’t because of camwhoring or anything like that. Again, Charlie’s staring at RR and then his “Because of God?!”[/British accent] was hilarious. And then them running around without a clue at Manaoag, but then actually beating the team that helped them? Insane! lol
No big fights from AJ & Jody this Leg, but I have them this high because of what Jody said about how it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor on the Race. That is true. It also doesn’t matter what age you are (something AJ should remember) or if you’re fat or fit. Unless the Race actually puts a forcibly unfair, skewed task on the course (Hello sprinting!), everyone’s on an equal playing field.
Definitely liked getting to see Roch & Eji move into first place. On the opposite side of AJ & Jody’s confessional, the Chefs mentioned that Jet & Yna are probably on the Race just for the experience. Which may be true, sure. But why I like the Chefs saying that is they are showing their competitive nature. We saw it on the first Leg when Zarah & Osang were eliminated too. I definitely want to see more of that from them.
Jet & Yna really are a different sibling team than we are used to on TAR. So being the rich siblings is a great, new and fresh dynamic. Other than the teams targeting them, not much else of them this episode. Tina & Avy were nice to help Daniel & Charlie by pointing them back to the car keys. It’s not the kind of help that is too much, even though they did end up in last after this Route Marker. But I was surprised to see them leading the charge against Jet & Yna. It’s not a bad strategy, but considering they were ganged up on in the first Leg…
Matt & Phoebe were alright, but quiet this episode. I am really excited about Kelvin & JP‘s meltdown on Tuesday’s episode and seeing them get emotional about the blessing was great. That will definitely contrast with what I expect we’ll see next from them. Hehe.
With RR & Jeck, I wish they did memorize the prayer instead of having to peek at their paper. But the biggest thing from them this episode was RR’s big epiphany. It was just so random it was funny, really. And Vince & Ed really need to get more feisty, otherwise they’re just going to be buried under the other interesting and more volatile teams.