Brian was the one who had trouble starting the Mercedes luxury car. I guess all the teams sat in the airport until midnight, then had an all-night flight to Holland. Can't have been much in the way of quality sleep for anyone.

As for the Poker girls, I wish we had seen them actually do the bell challange. That they were able to skip through that (thanks Sam/Dan) irked me.

Yes, that made no sense to me. I mean, if he'd whispered "Don't forget the secret room at the very top" or "Some of the bells are really small" that would have been a reasonably helpful hint. But just giving them the number? Dudes, QUIT IT. You're not pretending to flirt with them anymore, remember?

I was really surprised nobody tried to get an earlier flight out. I know there was only the one nonstop flight, but they had nearly twelve hours to find alternatives! Dubai is a major international port - surely they could have found a flight to somewhere else in Europe with a connection to Amsterdam, even if it meant taking two or three planes instead of one.

It's arguably a good strategy to offer help to people you know you can beat when the field narrows. Given how beat she was on the subsequent challenge, they'd have made an even more pitiful showing.

That was basically letting another team do all the work for you.

Um, no, it was doing all the work for another team. I'm not a huge fan of them but they didn't do anything at all to prompt that - it was entirely on Dan.

I did appreciate how non-bitchy with each other they were when the challenge(s) kept going so badly. Not a lot of teams would have gotten through that without more sniping at each other.

[Especially when one of them appears to be trying very hard and the useless keeps being exceptionally useless (except for all the times she suggested they switch challenges). But that's another issue.]

Dubai is a major international port - surely they could have found a flight to somewhere else in Europe with a connection to Amsterdam, even if it meant taking two or three planes instead of one.

Seriously! Grab a flight to Frankfort or another hub. I get the fear of connections but with that kind of timeframe they should have been at least looking for options.

Jessica, I've been told there are sometimes additional instructions in the flight plans, like "You can only take one airline" or "You can only take a direct flight" or whatever. And sometimes the producers just want to bunch up the teams.

Jessica, I've been told there are sometimes additional instructions in the flight plans, like "You can only take one airline" or "You can only take a direct flight" or whatever.

Well that's just stupid. It's a travel competition! They should be allowed to compete on travel, damnit.

We did hear at least one team ask specifically for a direct flight. But if it's in the rules, they should indicate that so we don't think they're all a bunch of dumbasses.

Yeah, the airport/flight scrambling and negotiations are some of my favorite parts of TAR.