The Grand Tour - The BBC got bitchslapped. HARD.

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Watched the new episode, it was meh. Somehow it runs way too long but I barely remember anything in it. Only Hammond's car had any fun mishaps and the location and road were nothing interesting. It also had a pretty retarded point of "wind in desert being caused by global warming" rather than countries not doing maintenance to prevent spread of the desert.
Kerr Avon dijo:
Hammond has some new potentially faggy podcast deal going with his daughter

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I always considered Hammond to be the least manly of the trio. Clarkson is the fun chauvinist, and May is the autist who isn't ashamed of it. Hammond is more of a manbaby that larps Americans.
 
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wtfNeedSignUp dijo:
Watched the new episode, it was meh. Somehow it runs way too long but I barely remember anything in it. Only Hammond's car had any fun mishaps
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I know they're all scripted but this felt especially scripted, very little of the usual dicking around between the scripted set pieces. The only thing I remember that felt real was when Hammond's roll bar deployed.
 
They're too old and tired to get up to their usual shenanigans. How many specials are left on their current contract with Amazon? Because I don't see it getting renewed no matter how high viewership may be, I think these blokes are just done. They've all spent the COVID years figuring out what they're going to do after Grand Tour. For James it's his pub and gin, for Hammond it's DriveTribe and I guess roping his children into it, and for Clarkson it's that goddamn farm.
 
Absolutego dijo:
They're too old and tired to get up to their usual shenanigans. How many specials are left on their current contract with Amazon? Because I don't see it getting renewed no matter how high viewership may be, I think these blokes are just done.
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I don't think it's them being too old, I think they're playing it too safe with the set pieces. Their fear of the magic being gone, is killing the magic.
 
User names must be unique dijo:
I don't think it's them being too old, I think they're playing it too safe with the set pieces. Their fear of the magic being gone, is killing the magic.
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That or they’re afraid the set pieces will literally kill them (and thus the magic as well). I think all 3 of them are hyper-aware how many close calls they had over the decades and are afraid the luck might be running out.
 
Absolutego dijo:
They're too old and tired to get up to their usual shenanigans. How many specials are left on their current contract with Amazon? Because I don't see it getting renewed no matter how high viewership may be, I think these blokes are just done. They've all spent the COVID years figuring out what they're going to do after Grand Tour. For James it's his pub and gin, for Hammond it's DriveTribe and I guess roping his children into it, and for Clarkson it's that goddamn farm.
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There is just one more episode which is them in Zimbabwe. I understand it is the final episode of the grand tour.
 
naaaaiiiiillllll!!! dijo:
That or they’re afraid the set pieces will literally kill them (and thus the magic as well). I think all 3 of them are hyper-aware how many close calls they had over the decades and are afraid the luck might be running out.
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I think the funniest shit was always the banter, minor pranks and malfunctions, the reliance on set pieces is a way to mask their absence or plans incase they didn't get anything organic and spontaneous happening
 
User names must be unique dijo:
I don't think it's them being too old, I think they're playing it too safe with the set pieces. Their fear of the magic being gone, is killing the magic.
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I think they just picked a bad location and too good cars. They probably expected more traversal issues, but the route be done by literal tourists and has nothing interesting to see, due to being a desert.

I think peak GT was Mongolia, that had way better location, no roads and tons of banter.
 
wtfNeedSignUp dijo:
It also had a pretty retarded point of "wind in desert being caused by global warming" rather than countries not doing maintenance to prevent spread of the desert.
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Clarkson has been conned into believing that shite at some point in the last decade. It's probably his new squeeze, or maybe a contractual requirement from Amazon to stick to the consensus script. The "globam warling makes the desert eat towns" segment was particularly egregious though, because it had literally nothing to do with climate change.

khaine dijo:
There is just one more episode which is them in Zimbabwe. I understand it is the final episode of the grand tour.
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Yep. Clarkson announced a while back that the Africa episodes were going to be the last.
 
Absolutego dijo:
They're too old and tired to get up to their usual shenanigans. How many specials are left on their current contract with Amazon? Because I don't see it getting renewed no matter how high viewership may be, I think these blokes are just done. They've all spent the COVID years figuring out what they're going to do after Grand Tour. For James it's his pub and gin, for Hammond it's DriveTribe and I guess roping his children into it, and for Clarkson it's that goddamn farm.
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I just think they are trying too hard but also not sticking to the bit. I will say I think this episode was fine. They didn't have too much to work with but they ruined the joke with the fuel tanker by blowing it up. They should have kept trying to destroy it without actually destroying it and then just blow up something innocuous instead. The Eastern Euro episode is a good example of them again trying too hard, having James be in two shit cars and not together with the other 2 made that episode much worse than it had to be, it just reminded me of the old top gear eastern euro special where they didn't even do any shenanigans and the humor came from honest interactions.
 
This may be the most scripted Grand Tour episode we've seen yet, here's some obvious give-aways I will share and nitpick about below. Yes I accept puzzle pieces.

1. THEY WENT THE WRONG WAY AT THE START

The trio started at the town of Choum and went NORTH towards the disused Choum railway tunnel:
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2. THERE WAS POTENTIALLY NO MINEFIELD OR BORDER

There is an alleged minefield with signs and barricades at the other end of the railway tunnel, and also an alleged Western Sahara border checkpoint, however a December 2020 image of the tunnel's northern end reveals otherwise (for reference, The Sand Job was filmed 2-3 months after this image was taken, since it refers to the 2021 Senegalese riots):
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The Western Sahara border barricades, one of which Hammond crashed into, is also likely to be fake/just props, as this is still within Mauritania's borders. The disused railway track turns RIGHT and never goes into Western Sahara.
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We can also deduce that the fuel truck that goes straight through this alleged minefield is going to nowhere and is only for dramatic effect. Clarkson made the correct decision to turn back, since well, they will now go where they're supposed to go. There is no evidence as to whether the bats in the tunnel carry Ebola or not though.

3. THEY DIDN'T NEED TO GO TO DAKAR

In the special's ending section, Clarkson alludes that they cannot catch their flight home because there are riots in Dakar, and they cannot enter the city center. This is completely nullified by the fact that the airport in Dakar's city center has been shut down and replaced by a newer airport outside of the city since 2017. Them going on the beach Rally Dakar style is what you'd expect - milking the last out of this already boring trip.

4. MY THOUGHTS

There are many more dubious arbitary scenarios in the special, especially with the river crossing and how they could've just taken a direct route to St. Louis via bridge or crossed it via a ferry at Rosso. This entire special's route is also, as mentioned before, a known tourist route (Choum is famous for that kilometer-long train, the Richat Structure, entirety of Chinguetti, the random visit to the British embassy, Nouakchott's fishing culture) and is a blaring flare gun which signifies The Grand Tour's true final options for adventures, apart from the trio's obvious age and health issues.

The magic of Top Gear specials, and even some of the earlier Grand Tour specials, was that they didn't really go on routes that the average person would discover or already know about, or had especially frivolous scenarios/unscripted moments and good banter between the three. The polar special, the Bolivian special, the Middle East one, the Patagonia special, Burmese special, A Massive Hunt (Madagascar), and Survival of the Fattest (Mongolia) just to name a few.
Lochdown was filmed during TheVarus, so it's obvious that they could've gone nowhere else.
The shelved Russian special was for obvious reasons - war.
Scandi Flick was all over the place, the route was again uninteresting, but provided funny gags and James May's first Hammond-tier accident during filming (second if you count him falling over in Syria).
Eurocrash remedied the even less interesting route by giving us interesting cars and history/heritage of car culture behind the Iron Curtain, though the running gag being James constantly left behind in the old timey car felt really odd to me.
Sand Job didn't give us any of this - the cars were GTs modified in a similar way as in A Massive Hunt, the route is uninteresting and 99% just desert, there was little to no unscripted banter, and there was no car culture to speak of apart from the still-running jalopies in Nouakchott. The only thing that kept me interested throughout watching Sand Job was the DB9's electrical gremlins, however it did recycle the Eurocrash running gag of a presenter being left behind because they bought a crappy car.

We can only really wonder how The Grand Tour's return to Zimbabwe will be like, since it's understood that it will be the true&honest last TGT episode.

EDIT: I haven't even mentioned Carnage a Trois, it was that forgettable. However it serves well as filler content because I believe this was also filmed during peak pandemic times. There wasn't any road trip or anything, it was just pure mucking about in Frogistani cars.
 
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Lerias dijo:
Jeremy, James, and Richard set to be replaced. The Grand Tour is dead.
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The execs will find out real quick that the demand for even a good modern day car show is a lot lower than the demand for Hammond, James and May.
teriyakiburns dijo:
You never know, they might catch lightning in a bottle again.

If they get some of the crew from DriveTribe involved, it might not be so bad. Ex stig, annoying scottish bloke, and autistic sandwich girl. I could see it.
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It might be fun to watch for some people but I have a feeling that instead of building up their personalities by restarting the show as just a car show. They will try to force them into specials right of the bat and it will fall flat since you can't force a few decades of camaraderie in a 4 month shoot.
 
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