[14x06] December 27th, 2009 [South America Special]

[14x06] December 27th, 2009 [South America Special]

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It is clear that the car was pushed down the hill.

Freezeframe the moment he gets out of the car. You can see fingers in the back tray of the vehicle. When it starts to roll. The hand disappears.

Sorry if I've spoilt it... but I just can't believe people think it wasn't set up.
 
stokesy1 said:
It is clear that the car was pushed down the hill.

Freezeframe the moment he gets out of the car. You can see fingers in the back tray of the vehicle. When it starts to roll. The hand disappears.

Sorry if I've spoilt it... but I just can't believe people think it wasn't set up.
Click to expand...

Sucks that you pointed that out, but I too see it now. Honestly, I don't think the Land Cruiser would've made it down the dune in one piece and on all 4 wheels, but I don't agree that pushing it down a dune knowing it would flip and end up broken was a proper way to end such an awesome vehicle's run on a properly good show.

:blink:
 
I'm sure it's very apparent, but we'd like to believe it wasn't. The magic of Top Gear. No need to scientifically disect the whole show. Just enjoy and love it.
Good TV needs to be fictionalized to a certain degree.
Even the News you watch on TV, is coated with some degree of bs.
 
It was an excellent episode and I really got into it, so it brought me back to the old feelings of Top Gear. Loved the camera work and the cocking about in the episode as well as the sheer challenges they had to overcome. In fact everything was pretty much perfect in terms of content. But I did find a few things a bit annoying which lead me to rate the episode a high 9 rather than a 10.

Firstly the scripting; overall the scripting was very good as it wasnt obvious and was justifiable for humour but the last act where they pushed Hammonds car down the hill really annoyed me. When Top Gear does challenges between presenters, the producers should never interfere with the results between them otherwise they will be voided. If I remember correctly Andy Wilman said that races were never staged or scripted and that each presenter genuinely wants to win. Why should this be any different for challenges? Hammonds Land Cruiser probably would of made it down the hill and the whole scene to initiate it was very obvious with the sudden jump out and Jeremys timed reaction.

The only other problem with the episode really was the pacing where they started off with lots of details in the beginning and by the end they had to cut things out and rush it. This episode really needed to be 15 mins longer in my opinion to flesh out the trip completely.

So overall an absolutely fantastic episode of Top Gear if only 2 small faults but that was sadly enough for me to rate it down from 10 to 9.
 
freakster_991 said:
I'm sure it's very apparent, but we'd like to believe it wasn't. The magic of Top Gear. No need to scientifically disect the whole show. Just enjoy and love it.
Good TV needs to be fictionalized to a certain degree.
Even the News you watch on TV, is coated with some degree of bs.
Click to expand...

totally agree with you. I'm all for them making it the best tele rather than reality.

I only decided to be an eagle-eyed viewer and point out the evidence of it being faked because I was the first to notice it.
 
stokesy1 said:
You can see fingers in the back tray of the vehicle. When it starts to roll. The hand disappears.
Click to expand...

You can also see a blueish hat/cap above Jeremy's headrest and tell that the Land Cruiser starts moving by going up in the back, like it would if people push up & forwards from the back. Gravity doesn't do that :lmao:



Staged or not, going down the hill in that ... thing ... was unacceptable, and chickening out without such an accident would probably get a lot of flak as well.
 
anyone thinking that it may have made it so they should have tried should book a flight and go try it for themselves. if they decided it was too risky then nobody has any right to criticise that.

sure you can argue they could have just left it behind and said it was too dangerous but i have no doubt they would have got just as much flak for that. really they were damned no matter what they did. so they decided to go with a bit of crash-bang instead, hardly a show killer IMO.
 
I really enjoyed it! It was fun to see Top Gear without cock ups every 5 seconds! Although a few escaped though but I loved it!
And the chemistry between the 3. It was absolutely bang on!
This episode is a proper episode for me in a long time.
The only bad part is that some scenes felt a bit dragged on and felt rushed though. Other than that...PERFECT! :D
 
Thank God in Heaven.

I can once again feel like a fan that is a fan not out of sheer loyalty. In other words I laughed again. Came home from a sad job, ripped off at the local gas station, CNN and FoxNews on a heck-bent mission to make everyone depressed and in the middle of holiday blahs ... and I laughed.

Thank you boys. Thank you.

KMTAL
 
Thank God in Heaven.

I can once again feel like a fan that is a fan not out of sheer loyalty. In other words I laughed again. Came home from a sad job, ripped off at the local gas station, CNN and FoxNews on a heck-bent mission to make everyone depressed and in the middle of holiday blahs ... and I laughed.

Thank you boys. Thank you.

KMTAL
 
Absolutely EPIC! I might go as far to say that was the best episode of Top Gear ever made. What a way to wrap up the decade.
 
I couldn't really ask for anything more.
 
I loved it. A few niggles: there was no development, it was all danger danger, freaking out then being worn out by a mountain and giving up. I liked Vietnam because clarkson starts off in agony, hating bikes and the whole experience, but he grows and changes his opinion by the end, capped off with a great ending location.

Hammond is still freaked by insects, May still is terrified by heights and after the land cruiser was executed, clarkson's 4x4 was a winner by default.

But yeah including that, I still loved it.
 
jedd_kenobi said:
...James with his vertigo.
Click to expand...

Slightly off-topic, but "vertigo" doesn't actually exclusively mean a fear of heights, even though it's often associated with it. ;)

JleeLink said:
The only other problem with the episode really was the pacing where they started off with lots of details in the beginning and by the end they had to cut things out and rush it. This episode really needed to be 15 mins longer in my opinion to flesh out the trip completely.
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I agree.

...

Regarding the episode, what can be said that hasn't already been said? All I can say is, that although I wasn't "blown away" by it (?), I did thoroughly enjoy myself. 75 minutes of pure enjoyment and entertainment. More than a few real hair raising, nail biting moments too - all the "dodgy" bridges, Clarkson's overtaking at the top of the road...

Also, I might be wrong, but I thought I clearly saw Hammond push his own car down before coming round to talk to Clarkson...but as someone pointed out above, you can actually see a member of the crew does it.
 
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Solid but unexceptional. Half of it was mediocre and the other half was a re-hash of other 'epic' TG episodes.

Just too few genuine laugh's...

Oh well.
 
The fear of heights is acrophobia. Vertigo is a physical condition that is often confused with it. I suffer (and I use the term advisedly) from acrophobia, and believe me, it's no fun at times. For example, I planned to share driving of a hire car in Crete, but once I saw the drops at the sides of the roads, I glued myself to the passenger seat and spent the whole time with my eyes shut.
 
I'm actually a bit scared to say this cause I think I will have the shit beaten out of me, but ...

... does anyone else feel like these challenges are slowly getting kind of repetitive? Not that I would have minded them undertaking this enormous task (after all I gave it a 10/10), but I think if they were to do the same thing at another place, it might get a specific sense of boredom to it. I mean it would still be epic: the scenery, the danger and everything. But I think that within this very epicness, it's more or less the same as before.
 
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Spectacular. Makes me want a Jeep or FJ.
 
I guess the fantastic poll rating of this episode is due to several pretty poor prior ones. People were starting to fear that TG slowly goes to history.
Fortunately, they still got something to show us, although frankly, it's very hard to show something completely different and fresh, especially after all those stunning series from the past.
Let's be honest, all TG specials were way better than the majority of standard episodes, and that's 'cause people want to escape their every day life and go for adventure, which all the specials were all about, more or less.
For me, North Pole Special still stays on the throne, not because it was better but mainly because it was the first proper TG adventure.
 
It started out pretty slow, but it definitely picked up at the end. I wish they showed more of the real problems with the cars though. And too bad Hammond just destroyed his Land Cruise at the end, it might have made it downhill.
 
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