Uneven....thy name is
Top Gear.
The photography/editing and other production values completely blew away the content this time. Many,
many thanks to the folks who did the work on the R8/Vette segment. It was truly a visual treat, a work of art.
Regarding Clarkson's opinions on the R8 and the Vette...yes, they've been published before. However, I think the point of this test was to compare the
soul of these two vehicles. Clarkson proclaimed the R8, for all intents and purposed, soulless. Despite the Vette's attempt to kill him with a seat belt
, he seemed rather taken with its coarse quality.
Geoff...well, cute for a while, but frankly it ran too long. By the end of the first segment we all knew that an electric car made by the guys would be rubbish and the jokes were exhausted. Roll him down the cliff and bring back the cool wall for the time gained. If they were trying to poke fun at the state of the electric car today, they didn't quite make it. But big points for the Green Stig, though! Easily the funniest part of the segment, IMHO.
SIARPC: Where is it written that the star has to be a car person? I barely know what "Twilight"
is, but found this person rather engaging. And contrasting Clarkson with someone who really doesn't care about cars is really kind of entertaining.
And Jeremy, Richard, James....we know you're on after 9:00 and can say "penis" on the air. It was cute the first couple of times, then meh, now it's lost all its value. Good writers know when to be crude for effect. Your writing should be better than that.
Just for grins, after this episode I revisited a couple of the old segments, the original 100 Pound car challenge and Darts with Cars. The first I still found fascinating, the second still funny for the very audacity of the concept. I'm afraid that...and I know it's difficult...fresh new material is becoming thinner and thinner at Top Gear. Perhaps it's to be expected. Perhaps there needs to be one or more new writers. I don't know.
I think Clarkson may have hit upon the very spirit of Top Gear in the R8/Vette comparo. In the end, he chose the Vette because he had
fun in it. We choose Top Gear because we have fun watching it.
After the first few minutes, Geoff wasn't much fun. He was just incompetent and the guys were trying to make it look fun. Maybe the guys know each other too well now for there to be any real surprises and we're reduced to drawing pictures on the sides of each other's faces.
When you combine spontaneous humor with the soul of the automobile, you have a classic Top Gear episode. As you can tell, I didn't think 14X02 fell into that category. But I'm hopeful for a return.