[19x02] February 3rd, 2013

[19x02] February 3rd, 2013

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This episode was AWESOME! I actually live 2 hours from vegas so it was awesome seeing all the sights I know, and then to top it off. The S-10 that Jeremy races is the race truck owned by the Sheriffs Department here (Lincoln County Sheriffs Office)


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I gave it an 8 but thats probably because it was better than the shit show they aired last week.

It wasnt a terrible episode but it wasnt really worth watching on repeat either.
 
Enjoyed it much more than last week. More excellent cinematography - besides the cars and the scenery, some nice shots from the planes too. When SIARPCs are about to be introduced, I usually reach for the remote, but not this time. News was entertaining and longer than last week, with a lesson in physics from Clarkson tossed in. Liked the 'blink and you'll miss them' jokes scattered through the show - Noel Coward, the handy orthodontist, 'strip billiards' in Las Vegas and the amazing 'visible' B2 were a few.

It's always nice when Clarkson and May discover something they have in common and even better when they get an opportunity to run with it, and this time it was an amusing and fairly sustained attack on Hammond and his Viper.

Not sure why others reckon something is still missing from the show since, for me, it's way better than Ep.1 and arguably better or at least less predictable than some similar road trips (e.g. caravan and the home-made RV trip). In hindsight, I should have given last week 6 instead of 7, call it 6.5, and Ep.2 gets 8 for my vote, but call it 8.5 here.
 
One of the things I think was missing from this episode was the "story." The previous great road-trip episodes always told a story of the journey, showed their true passion for the cars and made you WANT to go do what they just did. While there were smatterings of this in tonights episode, it felt more like a bunch of fantastic footage strung together by cheap jokes and to fulfill a contract obligation... The care just didn't seem present - no emotion
 
Is anyone getting a little tired of USA road trips? They're up to four now right? FFS go somewhere you haven't been before!
 
This episode helps firm my growing opinion that Top Gear is rubbish.

Not that it was a particularly bad episode. I liked the way Hammond came out swinging with his "panel gap" and retro nonsense" comebacks at the start of the road trip. The rest of the trip was just eye candy (apart from the musical road ... how neat is that, that someone took the time to do it?). I also liked the guest. Someone who I know of and not some temporary Gen Y celeb from X Factor.

The show is now all style and no substance. Many of the positive comments hear are about the cinematography. Who cares? If I want nice pictures, I just need to look at my Windows desktop.

They really seem to have run out of ideas (good ideas). Another USA road trip in boring, esoteric cars. Why didn't they go to somewhere interesting and novel? No 7 star accommodation??

If they went back to being an informative car show they would have a whole world wide auto industry to provide a never ending stream of material. Instead they have gone the "creative" route and have now got terminal writer's block. Really, after 10 or 11 months off air, the best road trip idea they have is to go back to America ..... again?

I got bored at about 45 minutes and stopped watching. 4/10
 
I agree with the previous comments that the episode lacked that magic touch that would have propelled it to a 9 or 10, so I went with an 8.

The whole road trip seemed a bit too disjointed and it really felt lacking in purpose. I mean, what was the point of driving to LA in the first place? They went there, did some burn-outs, and then immediately retreated to Palm Springs. It seemed like a wasted opportunity, as if they were trying to do too much. They could have done it as a West Coast equivalent of the East Coast road trip they did, where May wound up on that local TV show. Perhaps having them meet up in Burbank and given a challenge to drive to LAX airport without using the freeways - the last person to get there gets a one-way ticket to Tijuana.
 
Eye-Q said:
The "we were going only 55" was a bit overstretched, too, but it had to be done to not have a boring "race" where the one who sets off first is the winner.
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I found the '55' pmh and the rev counter going crazy under it pretty funny.
I also think they had to do it to keep the show 'factual' and avoid being banned from the US again.

Decent episode = 8

Also, that Aston was great...
 
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We all know it is scripted and planned out well in advance. And yet it seems like every episode has to have some surprise to spark confusion amongst the three. Richard Hammond's poker face is now etched in my mind forever. I've seen it so many times.
 
7/10.. but only because I rated last week's show 7/10 and this one was a bit better.

Watched the entire thing now, and surprisingly, the opening is probably the best bit of the road-trip. At least they do talk a bit about the cars (although not nearly enough IMO).

It also highlighted one reason why this episode didn't work: JC and JM being totally satisfied with their cars, even complimenting each other's cars.. WTH? I know it's all scripted anyway, but May hating his CTS-V in the other roadtrip worked so much better.


And am I the only one who's getting fed up with Astons? I mean, TG keep harping on about how Porsche keep selling the "same car" for decades with the 911.. but Aston actually seem to have just one idea about car-styling. They all look exactly the same ever since the DB9 came out. Plus I'd go as far as saying that the Vanquish looks rather vulgar for an Aston; Exterior too "styled" and busy, cheap looking running lights, leather from a Victorian whorehouse and that awful blue color didn't help, either. Could look good on a Lancer EVO or even on a Lambo.. but on an Aston? In fact, to me, this one's a step backwards compared to its predecessor's styling (DBS).

And while JC's comments during the opening make his case for the LFA a bit stronger, it still doesn't ring true to me. Here's a man who loves big, brutish and often slightly silly cars (AMG-Mercs, the original Viper, Ford GT, Lambos), trying to tell us he fell in love with an overpriced PlayStation on wheels. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure the LFA is a brilliant car, but ?375,000 for that? If you want a nerdy, insanely fast Japanese car, why not buy the much more practical Nissan GT-R and save tons of ?s/$s?

S.
 
7/10

Not bad, but also not epic. Proof of that is that less than 12 hours after watching it, I forgot almost everything that was in this ep. (I can still remember every single line from both the Boneville and Isle of Man episodes, for example).

Jeremy's "This is the best car I've ever driven" made me cringe a little, even if he really meant it, it still felt like he was reading a paper glued to the camera


Oh, and I would like to leave a message to the idiot who thought it would be a good idea to take an LFA, a Viper and an Aston, take them to an awesome racing circuit, after showing us an incredible intro scene, and NOT race them against each other. Putting them against a pair of stupid airplanes instead:

Do that again, and I'll EAT your dog :mad:
 
Sascha77 said:
It also highlighted one reason why this episode didn't work: JC and JM being totally satisfied with their cars, even complimenting each other's cars.. WTH?
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Actually, that was something that totally made this episode work.

We've had the mandatory bickering for at least 17 seasons now, even when in reality the disagreement isn't there. Even in this episode, there was bickering about the Viper while, as you said youself, Jezza actually likes the Viper, regardless of model.

But the compliments were something new and a nice twist. And it makes the presenters more human and less like badly written comedy characters.

The bickering has been boring for 10 seasons now and not having to listen to it constantly made this road trip film infinitely better.
 
9/10 Better than last weeks. Didn't have anything daft or silly like the the P45 last week.

I for one was quite pleased that this time James and Jeremy didn't begin taking potshots at each others cars. That was quite nice I thought. That makes a change, although they did take the micky out of Richards choice.

I don't believe that having 4 US road trip episodes in SIX years is considered visiting America too much. Its a big country. Although having said that I want them to drive in a road-trip/cheap car challenge trip across Eurasia. Or even a two-parter, both an hour long, Moscow to Vladivostok, but I can dream.

I've had a bit of a nark on regarding sabotaging each others cars, and the Mexico joke which I cringed when I saw it being made in the India special, but this time around I didn't feel a shiver going down my spine at any point. I got bored though during the track segment. I think it was spoiled by the opening montage of the series, and I didn't even know it was recycled from TGUS. I probably would have watched it if it was being shown on BBC Three while BBC Two carried the UK version.

News was meh but I would still watch it, and because I didn't see this episode live last night as I completely forgot about it, I downloaded it on iPlayer and fast forward through the SIARPC interview until I got to the lap, and that in itself was better than last weeks. I wasn't entertained by last weeks at all. There was simply no effort to clean the track then.

So all in all, the SIARPC was OK, news was meh although I've come to exclude it from score consideration, perhaps the only thing about the road trip that bothered me was the drag racing, because they did that (albeit on an empty venue) in the last US road trip. I was probably close to rubbing my hands with glee before the dragstrip was brought up.
 
We've had the mandatory bickering for at least 17 seasons now, even when in reality the disagreement isn't there.
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I wasn't talking about bickering for bickering's sake (I hate that, too).

Let me put it this way: No matter what product you're dealing with, the most entertaining reviews are always the ones bashing a product or at least those of "non-perfect" products. Having written quite a few reviews myself professionally, I can also say that most journalist prefer writing those types of articles. It's so much more entertaining to listen to a smart, eloquent reviewer picking apart a "less-than-perfect" car than hearing him say how great or perfect a car is. It also gives a much nicer arc to an episode such as this. Gotta point out the muscle-car roadtrip again: May hating the Caddy made him "seeing the light" and bonding with the car by the end so much more entertaining and rewarding. In last night's show he started out by saying how great the Aston was and that attitude never changed over the entire show. Well, big surprise considering that he likes Astons. Why do we need 50 minutes of pointless driving around the US for that?

Or even a two-parter, both an hour long, Moscow to Vladivostok, but I can dream.
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I always thought they should re-create one of those old endurance races from the infancy of motoring. Like Peking to Paris. Granted: That one may be a bit too long for their timeslot .. ;)


S.
 
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Not as good as last week, a solid 8. Not enough dicking about! Mick Fleetwood was great! It was a 7 until then. It lacked intensity, as it as only half and epic race. It if was an entire program racing through the US with a little more dicking about it would have got closer to 10!
 
Like other people, I think there wasn't really anything wrong with the episode per se. But does anyone else get the feeling that the TG production team were burned quite badly by their first American road trip through the south and so, from now on, aren't dishing it out as much as they could? I get the sense that Americans, as a generalisation, don't like the piss being taken out of them quite so much as other Anglophone countries - in fact, some of them can get quite shitty about it some times.

Quite a few illogical things about the episode, though. The LFA isn't Jeremy's type of car - it's driven by computers, and from his past comments, such as when they compared the 959 with the F40, he's not too fond of cars that are overly technical. Likewise, the Aston Martin Vanquish isn't really James' type of car either. I don't know - maybe American roads are quite smooth, but he's been quite critical of Astons for their ride quality. And have Aston Martin fixed the gearbox in the Vanquish (which was its Achilles heel)?

Disappointing for the guest as well. You'd have thought Jeremy, with his interest in F1, would have mentioned The Chain at some point when discussing the Rumours album.
 
Ziggy Shadow-Dust said:
road-trip/cheap car challenge trip across Eurasia. Or even a two-parter, both an hour long, Moscow to Vladivostok, but I can dream.
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"In this episode, the boys answer a question no one was really asking: Can you buy an old car from the old USSR for less than 50p and travel from Moscow to Vladivostok?"

Boy I can almost already see the 3 battered old bags of bolts with dashboards written in russian, Clarkson shouting at some weird gearbox setup, Hammond falling in love with an old Lada, and James going mad at all the cold war relics and ghost towns. Let's not forget the Speed challenge! The guys must beat a time set by the Stig's russian cousin in a Morris Marina at the newly opened Moscow Raceway. :D


EDIT: Ok, maybe not Moscow to Vladivostok (10.000 miles) but... what about Moscow to Ob river (3.000 miles)?
 
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I really like this programme. It seems they've learnt (or copy) their US counterpart and have the episode wrapped around one single feature, which makes the show really tight and entertaining! Every bit of it is enjoyable and exciting and I love it
Complaints? Yes it's Jeremy...the LFA has been featured, and apart of its impracticality jokes all the stuff were recycled. And the whole show isn't as informative as it was like 07x03 feels like.
Gave it a 9 because I thoroughly enjoyed the show. And PLEASE don't repeat the 55mph joke, it's hilarious now, but it won't if you repeat it.
 
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