The excellent TARflies Times has a nice interview with TAR co-creator Elise Doganier, and it looks like series DVDs are in the works. Yay!

Q: Is there any movement towards offering DVDs for the show?

A: There is. I’m hearing it’s going to happen. So keep your fingers crossed. I think it’s positive. It’s up to CBS. They’re very aware that people want it. It’s probably going to happen.

Q: Good, I know that’s going to make a lot of people happy.

A: I can’t wait for it. The fan base has grown so much, people haven’t seen season one or two. I know people would enjoy seeing those.

Oh, I would LOVE to see the first two seasons. And the episodes of Season 3 I missed, because that was the season of wacky Team Oh Brother and Team Asshat. I’d love to see them again. And of course it would be fun to see my beloved Klowns and ATC. I never did succeed in getting “gigged” by either Steve or Dave in their TWOP thread (if you managed to score against them in the good natured give-and-take banter after their elimination, one or the other one would “gig” you for it – Navy humor, I think).

I’d love to see ANY teams again from a former season, actually, even Team Who, after seeing just two episodes of the current season, because the horrifying spectacle that is Team Botox (that would be Jonathan and Victoria, nicknamed by Kendra in last night’s show) makes irritating or “blah” teams from seasons past seem like wonderful people.

Miss Alli ‘s first recap of the season (for the 2-hour premier) ran to 27 pages, and she’s already got the mini-recap up for the second episode. It’ll get blown away by the full entry later, so as I did before, I’ll save it here for posterity:

We move from Iceland to Norway this week and learn a new rule — teams have to split the Roadblocks essentially evenly between themselves this season, placing a premium on average ability rather than having the single biggest stud. It’s an excellent and welcome change, unlike most reality show “adjustments,” and you can see its effects immediately. Also immediately evident is the growing creepiness of Jonathan, who unsettles viewers everywhere by shoving Victoria and conking her on the head with the trunk of the SUV without apologizing. Weird. Adam and Rebecca have a pitiful little chat about the future of their relationship after it is imperiled by an argument over sunglasses. Meredith and Maria haven’t taught themselves how to drive stick, which is pretty much an unforgivable oversight. Hayden and Aaron hit a few rough spots. For the first time, teams partake in a group activity, which gives the other teams an opportunity to build the kind of dislike of Jonathan and Victoria that we at home have already developed. In the end, it continues to be a bad season for New Yorkers, as Meredith and Maria are just a little bit too slow at too many things to keep themselves in the race, and in spite of a penalty rightfully assessed against Freddy and Kendra for a very stupid rules violation, the girls go home. Oh, and Lori’s hug of Phil offers up the funniest Phil face ever.

Not only that, but Lori’s the first contestant that my beloved editors have chosen to subtitle, because she has an incredibly opaque regional accent. I’d say Florida panhandle, or very rural Alabama, since she sounds like one of my clients from Birmingalabamaham (shout out to my sister Timmy!).

I’ve fallen into the habit of keeping notes as I watch, so that I can keep track of the order teams arrive at and depart from objectives and tasks. I also like to keep track of everybody’s departure times, because you can often predict if they’ll have to bunch up at an airport, or have time to get there before the first flight out or not.

And thanks be to TiVo, the handy 6-second instant replay button gets a workout. You can make people fall on their asses or listen to them say incredibly stupid things over and over again.

As noted above, there were some interesting changes to rules. Also, we actually got a fair amount of dialogue from the rigger at the ski-jump zipline task (this season started about August 13th, so winter activities get adapted). He’s shown on camera a lot and says to Adam “You really don’t like the heights, do you?” No, Socrates, he does not, and he cries for his mama all the way down, the big hair-horn baby. Rebecca’s name was conspicuously absent from his panicked cries, as I hope she noticed. Cute Rigger Guy looks like he could be related to Carter Oosterhouse. Later on, Adam (aka “El Hornio” on TWOP) has a hissy and a fit and a meltdown all in one, and threatens to lay down on the train tracks and die. Over losing his sunglasses, and also because Rebecca starts to give him The Speech he already heard once before. Sheeesh. And if he doesn’t start wearing some socks, he’s going to have some horrible problems with blisters, not to mention no one will want to sit near him because he’ll have major foot skank. I picture him sucking his thumb in his sleep and fiddling with his hair horns, and Jesus I think I’ll move on now. Nothing more to see on El Hornio.

In another change, we see teams arrive at an overnight location that is not a Pit Stop – in previous seasons, the only time we see this is in the first episode, where there’s a camping place, or somewhere you have to find a place to sleep while you wait for an “hours of operation” in the morning, or you find or pull a timed shuttle ticket. A former racer somewhere has noted that each episode we see actually covers about 3 days, so they probably have never bothered to show the extra overnights on camera because they weren’t that “camera-ready.” They must have planned to show this one, though, because of the picturesque and interesting inter-team rowing competition the next morning. They all arrive at a rustic Viking camp, where they are met by people in costume cooking traditional foods. The next morning, they piled into two beautiful wooden Viking boats and rowed themselves across the fjord to an area where vehicles and a clue box with route info awaited them. It’s not clear whether the 5 teams in each boat chose themselves, or if they were simply assigned seats in order of arrival. I think it was the former, because Botox were the third team to arrive, and I think the first two teams were in the other boat.

Typically, Jonathan Botox screamed throughout the entire episode, either boasting his incredible racing prowess or berating his wife, Victoria Botox (I think her eyebrows are tatoos, BTW). Also typically, he managed to piss off his entire boat with his incessant shrieking and criticism, and made at least two female “crewmates” cry. I bet he’s the real reason they couldn’t seem to pull together on the oars – God, he must be a nightmare boss. Meredith, one of the Noo Yawk girls, sobbed inconsolably in the back seat afterward, while Maria struggled to get the car in car. Meredith was the one that supplied the title quote for the episode, too. Pity she had to have such a bummer of a day and then get eliminated, but she was really patient while Maria struggled, so I’d buy her a beer if I ever met her. Same for Maria – I drive stick, but when I was younger, I couldn’t drive my mom’s stick at all, so I could sympathise.

If I ever met Jonathan, I’d buy Victoria a beer. Then she could throw it in his face. That’d be good.

In another vehicle, they showed Kendra looking very upset over the same thing, while Freddy agreed with her statement that there was no “spirit” in their boat. Jeez, are all these people former cheerleaders too, in addition to being models, actors, or entrepreneurs? There was some amusing footage showing the second boat, oars akimbo and obviously in complete disarray, while the first boat had been shown cruising smoothly. Someone on TWOP noted that Hera was wearing a George Washington crew sweatshirt, so she must have been mightly irked at being in the crap boat too. In an exchange as the second boat arrived awkwardly at the dock, Jonathan can be heard screeching about handing his pack off to Freddy, who was already stepping onto the dock. “Get your own damn pack,” he snaps, and gets moving. I think they were genuinely disappointed that what should have been a cool experience had been ruined, and they were frustrated at not being able to compete well against the other boat.

Oh, Botox is SO going to get Yielded, if they still have that option this season. By every other team, in successive weeks.

Ironically, it was Freddy and Kendra who screwed up and didn’t find their original clue (the blue route information card was shown on-camera, in a puddle, where they dropped it between the cluebox and the car). Maybe they were both so upset and wanted to just get out of there and away from Jonathan? Anyway, it was interesting watching them take their penalty hit. The only other times we’ve seen a penalty assessed, they didn’t show the clock ticking down while the team stood off in a penalty area (or maybe they did when Chippendale/TAR4 drove instead of walking?). They weren’t eliminated, however, as Meredith and Maria had spent the entire hour bringing up the rear whenever they had to drive, owing to Maria’s inability to drive stick. Once she started to get the hang of it, they actually did better navigating to the train station and other waypoints than some other teams, but in the end they were trailing coming in to the Detour events, and did so badly on the “Accuracy” task playing the obligatory traditional local games that they were righteously knocked out of contention. However, they were supportive and kind to each other on the mat, and I give them full marks.

Rankings (Real and Deserved)

Current Leaderboard

1. I’m very happy for first-placers Kris and Jon – she is obviously a HUGE TAR fan, because she expresses utter joy at being there and actually pulling the clues. She and he partner race like it’s all a dream come true. They could do well if they don’t wallow too much in emotionalism when things inevitably go horribly wrong, but they seem to be pretty calm about minor setbacks thus far. Since each team member now has to do no more than 6 roadblocks, I’ll be keeping track of that now, too.

   Roadblock: Jon (there is usually no Roadblock in the premiere episode)

2. Jonathan and Victoria? They’re not so happy about second place, and neither am I. I look forward with relish and extra cheese for your impending implosion, Mr and Mrs Botox. As noted, next week it looks like in addition to screaming at your wife and bonking her on the head with the rear car door, you rear back (in a taxicab) as if to slap her silly, only catching yourself at the last moment. She flinches in the classic manner. Oh, my. I do admit that Mr Botox certainly brings the drama, with both hands and a helping of roast martyr. Mrs Botox may get the sympathy vote for having the most horrifying marital aid ever seen on TV, but she’s not above the screaming and berating and panicking either.

   Roadblock: Jonathan (shirtless, ugh)

3. Gus and Hera finished third? In spite of his habit of navigating by holding the map up in front of his face so that he can’t see out the windows? However, his ancient martial arts skills helped him and Hera complete the split Detour task quickly (another rules changeup), where other teams got totally boggled by the log/axe/arrow games.

   Roadblock: Hera (who appeared to love it)

4. Hayden and Aaron had a bad time doing the “Endurance” Detour, since neither was comfortable on roller-skis. I would totally loved that task, since my husband David and I cross-country ski, but I’m no good on downhills and can’t snowplow well. There were many pratfalls. Hayden tried unsuccessfully to work Aaron out of a really pissy mood by trying to get him to laugh at the wacky hijinks as they ensued, but didn’t succeed much. They don’t do so well when the chips are down. I hope he didn’t seriously hurt himself on the one fall, it looked like he knocked his elbow pretty good. I’d buy him a beer and show him how to fall down properly, which requires a base of 2 1/2 feet of snow. I’m very good at cross-country falling-down. There was a fair bit of sniping but they recovered in time.

   Roadblock: Um. I think Aaron did it.

5. Lori and Bolo somehow bitched their way into 5th place, in spite of continuing problems with navigating. Lori delivers the line “Accuracy means you have to be… accurate” when registering her disapproval of the Viking games, which was an online fan favorite for “Title Quotes that Could Have Been.” Thus we are treated to the sight of two musclebound juggernauts careening downhill on skinny wheeled skis. They do surprisingly well for Floridians, a state not known for winter sports, and seem to get the knack for remaining more or less upright by the end of the 2 mile course.

   Roadblock: Bolo, who totally winded himself climbing the stairs up the ramp

6. Adam and Rebecca‘s post-breakup ex-dating strategy seems to be paying off in spades. Rebecca wants to revisit it at the train station, and Adam offers to off himself on the (completely empty, no train in sight) tracks. Kudos to the editors to show that no Hornios were likely to harm themselves playing in train traffic.

   Roadblock: Heh. “Tell my mom I love her.” “AAAAUGGGH! Mom, I love you!”

7. Don and MJ snipe at each other, but cry and make up as they drive to the Pit Stop after completing the Detour Viking games. In an amusing twist, they’d driven off in Adam and Rebecca’s car, and the young, buff team panicked as they frantically checked the remaining silver stick-shifts. DMJ returned the car, thus avoiding a completely new “Grand Theft Auto” penalty. MJ apologized tearfully for yelling at Don when he wanted to turn around, and she wanted him to just keep driving the car to the mat. Good call on his part, that probably would have been a penalty as well. He’s such a sweetie, he got all choked up, too.

   Roadblock: Don (and was MJ ever pissed, since it was a non-strength
   one)

8. I bet Freddy and Kendra never lose anything again. That penalty almost cost them the whole shebang. Freddy doesn’t do the grace-under-pressure or frustration-in-adversity thing very well, either.

   Roadblock: Kendra? Yeah, I think so. Pretty happy about it, too.

9. Woops, that right turn out of the Detour almost cost Lena and Kristy the whole ball o’ wax. They had been doing so great, I think they got a little ahead of themselves. They’re pretty good at routefinding and spotting directional signs. Plus, how great that they found a friendly local (and very cute) Norwegian guy to guide them to the ski-jump and the Viking camp, arriving first at both locations. Also, one of them said “Tak (Thanks)” to someone when they got directions the next day, so they get extra points for cultural moxie. They were both pretty calm about the error, though obviously scared. They recovered nicely just in the nick of time to avoid elimination. And also, their fixed, friendly smiles were hilarious when the Botoxes arrived in full cry at the camp. Kristy just flat laughed out loud at Jonathan, and both of them smiled widely at Victoria while avoiding eye contact with her husband. I think that may be universal female to female body language for “I’m sorry your husband is such a scary jerk, are you okay?”

   Roadblock: Lena, the “active” one (her sister, Kristy, is “inactive” in the Charch)

10. And so we bid farewell to Meredith and Maria, whose male relatives will give them a ration of shit about their driving for the rest of their lives. I bet their cousin Vinnie feels really, really bad for not letting them borrow his stick Supra to practice on.

    Roadblock: Maria. Meredith

Edited for accuracy a couple of times…