[12x03] November 16th, 2008

[12x03] November 16th, 2008

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erolb said:
Not really the same. Whitely was the victim, Mark.W was the criminal. If someone stole your car then went on television a few years later and told an "anecdote" about it, would that be funny?
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Quite! Our Impreza got stolen a few years ago when someone broke into the house to steal the keys and then used it in an attempted armed robbery on a security van. Aside from the inconvenience it caused, particularly as they slashed the rear seatbelts to remove the child seats which they then threw away, Mrs Hersworksfinetoo could never look at the car the same way and I had to sell my beloved Scooby! And we were never told if the culprits were caught.

I hate the way some crimes are described as "victimless" if only property is involved. There is always a victim and while we aren't receiving therapy or medication as a result the sick feeling of being violated when something like that happens to you is not pleasant to say the least.

Shows how big a charisma bypass Wahlberg has had when they had to resort to that as a topic of conversation.
 
Im dead sick to be honest so im not going to write big reviews about the episode. (Like I ever did :p )
But I got to say something about car reviews. I know many of you say that now Top Gear is "entertainment" show. And I know you will say go watch Final Gear or something.
Now im not talking about down to earth car reviews but just the Top Gear testing cars in a hilarious way. I don't suppose that there is a lack of cars to review?
The old episodes they use to test normal average cars as well. For me now it just seems like they only do the Super fast cars or tuned 500's ;)

Top gear is suppose to be a "entertainment" show around cars. We havent seen many of those in a while now.
Not that im complaining that these V8 food blenders and ricing up a Avantime is bad but what I think is that they need to keep it 50/50. Some car reviews there some stupid challengers there and you got your self a typical Top Gear that everyone is missing these days.

So come on Top Gear whats wrong :(


PS - What I said at the top ^ dosent stop me from giving a 8 to this episode though :p
PSS - oh and Marky mark - Did he ever used the brakes until half the track? :p
 
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Sm?rg?sbord said:
This is why I don't read the blog comments. It seems to be second only to YouTube comments in terms of general stupidity.
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Nor do I normally - it only leapt out at me because of all the Caps and the !!!!!!!!!'s. You just know that if some of the people who post on there came here they'd have so many red blobs they'd look like they had the measles!
 
Mineworksfine said:
I hate the way some crimes are described as "victimless" if only property is involved...
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Eh? I hate the way crimes are described as "victimless" if only property is involved, too, as that's... not really what that means. Victimless crime means you get in trouble for doing something that doesn't involve anyone but yourself. You were clearly the victim in having your car stolen (my apologies, poor Scooby :(); the fact that they didn't find who did it just means that it's an unsolved crime, not a victimless one.

Archie411 said:
Top gear is suppose to be a "entertainment" show around cars...
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It almost feels like they're going back and forth this season between being an "entertainment show that just happens to have some cars in it", and a "car show that just happens to be really entertaining".
 
enjoyed the ep, I LOLed at the V8 blender :D. I liked the original ideas for different segments - toyota (yes it was in the last season's preview), finland, tuning the car.

Although I felt a bit puzzled with the Aventine tuning, it felt a bit weird really. Why not start with something obvious like weight saving first? Then the brakes were just ridiculous, there was no way they could fit it onto the original wheels. I guess I was expecting more in the power department, which would be more Top Gear.. It wasn't a bad segment, it just left me puzzled..

SIARPC, yay a Hollywood movie star that we all know. But man, was this guy cocky and arrogant.

Finland - James doing scandinavian flicks and powersliding!! YAY! And the driving schools were really interesting, seemed like quite a lot of fun!
 
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Eh??? No car review? An odd episode indeed. The financial crisis has hit TG as no car manufacturer is releasing new models and also not lending any cars to them. None the less, the episode was amusing to watch.

The Toyota wheel chair device is probably only going to be sold in Japan with its mad love of technology. It won't work nowhere else: In the US, the epic failure of Segway has killed the market for such devices and most of the people interested already use Golf Carts for such purpose; In Canada, all electric cars without proper road speeds are not allowed except in Quebec; In China & South Asia, people already use small motorbikes with 50 or 100cc engines so their is no need for such device; and finally in the UK where it rains all the time, a device with no hood may not work.

As TG has recently allowed plugging on the show (remember Hugh Grant plugging Music & Lyrics), I always cringe when the guests main purpose is just to do that. And why try to glamourise someone's criminal activities?

The best part was obviously the James in Finland bit. Seeing that racing is a normal household activity, I wanted to immediately move to Finland. But then it got me thinking, and Finnish members on this board like Posmo can probably verifgy, waiting 2-3 years to get a license must be a bummer and all the skidpad training & night driving training must be bloody expensive.
 
FROM A GERMANS POINT OF VIEW, i didnt like this one very much.
The main reason i watch and love top gear every week, download all the episodes as soon as they arrive is their brilliant way of reviewing cars.
They make nearly every car review really fun to watch, even if its only a Fiat 500 and thats what so many car shows on TV lack, especially here in germany they are just plain boring.

So in this EP i really missed a solid car review, i missed what topgear is about for me. Of course it was still great fun to watch but left me wanting for more in the end.

- That Toyota chair reminds of those things humas fly around in the movie wall-e ;) Anyone watched that ?
- the V8 blender was okay but wouldnt have missed it
- SIARPC was good, one of the few i watched at all, but that mainly because i dont know many of the UK blokes
- May in Finland was cool, i like finland and scandinavia as a whole :)
- that Avantime or what its called bit was ok too...but why didnt they just slap a big Turbo on the thing together with better suspension and semi-slick tires...that would have done it and the engine would only have to last for a couple of laps anyway ;)

In short: missed a decent car review => 6/10
 
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Rarely give out low marks for this show. but staring with the chair, it was short but in no way sweet my thoughts when it started where how many preciours minutes are going to be taken up with this. Finland was great, love the idea of every1 racing a old car on the same budget and being able to buy a compediters auto, am I the only one who thought the E36 looked well out of place. The blender although amusing and funny was out of place. I am no fan of SIRPC but I like to see a guest that is entertaining and passionate about the theme, Mark didn't fit any of the criteria for that so it felt even more empty than usual it has to be said though his lap was more exiting than the person doing it. Aventine well a cheaper starting point would have helped and something of a more convential car would have allowed bigger budget to spend on improving it would have made it much more interesting, although just changeing the breaks and the tyres made for a slowe lap I remember thinking "that can't be right can it?".

Bottom line going to give this a 6. Based purely on the Finland segment.
 
I give it an 8.
the toyota bit was "ok", not very exciting, but interesting,
the finland part was great, with hakkinen and james may racing
the star, well, I don't really like this part, and I think is the first "star" that I can recognize,
the V8 thing was funny,
the Evo challenge, hmm, was good, but, why not start servicing the engine and taking weight out first!? then maybe the suspension, tyres, brakes... and maybe more power to the engine!?
the news was ok.
 
I thought it was an alright episode.

The stupid toyota chair segment could've gone, and if they took out the blender thing, there would've been enough time for Hammond's Veritas RS review, which would've been more preferable.

Interview was boring this week. but the news was awesome.

The section with Mika was fantastic, very enjoyable to watch. The Avantime tuning bit was fun, but could be funnier I guess.
 
Been waiting ages to do this joke.

Shad Stang said:
Got a Star that an american knows.
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Oh, he's only popular outside the UK. That's why I've never heard of him. Bo-ring! 2/10.
 
Also, during the chair sequence I had the entirety of the spaceship bits of WALL-E in my head.
 
The chair thing fell flat, it could have been funnier and it could have been done like the Peel P50 and went to some really funny places. I was waiting for a Sir Stephen Hawking comment.
 
it was a good episode. and I have to agree that 3 years was actually exaggeration.. And I think that the track where they were with the C63 was Ahvenisto. Good driving from May as well, I have 2 cousins that do that sort of racing. the rest of the episode was pretty dull.
 
7 out of 10. it was a alright episode and enjoyable but lacking momentum that had been built up in the previous episodes. hats off to james for eating/drinking that meat and brick cocktail, surprised they were picking him up off the floor after trying that.
theres been worse episodes of Top Gear and this is nowhere near them but they do need to pick up the pace.
 
the episode was good, but there propably wouldn't really be that many tg fans out there if they couldn't do (much) better.

the wheelchair - nothing wrong with a review on that, but when lacking a real-car review i understand that it pisses of some people..

may in finnland - i really like james may, but i think he's best when complaining and mocking about stuff... well i guess it just wasn't cold enough when shooting in finnland.

marky mark - two things i like less than the siarpc-segment: mark. wahlberg.
really i think they should just drop this (segment) and start a lottery on finalgear.com for the new "reasonably priced (wo)man in a star car" where some lucky guy get to review some supercar and later get's his opinion's arse kicked by the boys.

tuning - loved that & proofed my point: making your car look like ali g's and sound like a 20 yrs old porsche with a cold is ridiculous and you deserve to be burned - with your car.
 
Second impressions:

The i-Drive would have been better if it were more like the Peel segment and not the Hy-Wire segment; more of a "hey look how we can cock about in this" instead of just an advertisement with a Top Gear presenter.

The Mark Wahlberg interview was "engaging", but it wasn't one of the most memorable interviews by any means. They really do need to stop letting presenters plug whatever they're doing, especially because Max Payne was awful. Also, he was apologetic to the guy whose car he said he stole all the time; it came off that they weren't talking so much about "so lets talk about Mark Wahlberg stealing cars", it was "lets talk about Mark Wahlberg's childhood", which just so happened to involve stealing cars.

The V8 blender segment wasn't really that funny... until James drank the milkbrick shake, and then I didn't stop laughing until after Jeremy went "Go! Go! Put it in your mouth! It's brick and beef, it's not gone well." in the interview. There's just something so silly about the three of them using an LS1 to make a milkbrick shake and then drinking it that you can't help but laugh at it.

I think they could have made the Avantime go around as fast as the Evo with as much money as they had (about US$14,000), but the segment would last about three minutes and just be a montage of them gutting the interior and fitting a bigass turbo kit and racing slicks on it. The rest of the time would be spent putting out the fires in the engine once it did it's lap. Also, they should know that big brake kit's aren't for stopping harder, they're for managing heat better... but I guess they figured a "brake installing" and "larger wheel installing" (which decreases acceleration) montage would be good for TV or something. It reminded me more of the Limo challenge than it does of, say, the Silverstone challenge.

EDIT: Oh yeah, did anyone else notice that the spoiler they put on the Avantime was the one from the 2006 Super Aguri F1 cars?
 
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also the V8 smoothie bit was a pretty good jibe at the actual V8 drink you can buy which is a kinda vegetablists softdrink. i think its blended fruits n veg into a can/bottle.
 
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