Top Grand Gear Tour TV Megathread: Because nobody wants to post a new one

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Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

webmeister posted:

Pretty sure he said Monaco.

The whole episode was pretty average in my opinion, though it picked up in the last 30-40 minutes where they actually did some driving. I think the biggest problem was simply that they didn't have a clear finishing point, it was just "let's drive north until we feel like stopping". Without a finish line there's no sense of urgency. And honestly, spending what felt like 15 minutes on the train was a really dumb idea.

They kept climbing and climbing into the mountains and I was thinking, "Okay, so what could their final destination be? Are they going to try to drive back down to the flatland now that their cars are destroyed? Or are they going to kick them off a cliff into Pakistani Kashmir and laugh?"

Neither, turns out. Though I don't know if any option ahead of them would have been particularly funny.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 23:08

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:11

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

quote:

"We were disappointed in the programme and have lodged a protest with the BBC," said an Indian diplomat working for the IHC who asked not to be named.

"We are not amused. There was a strong sense of disappointment, not just here in the UK but back in India and also among our non-Indian friends as well."

Wow, sounds like this thread wrote to the Beeb.

Also, I'm hoping they meant "We are not amused" to be read in a Queen voice.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2012 13:16

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Cakefool posted:

The only part that felt genuine was the Jaguar Cricket

I was wondering why nobody had mentioned that yet. Looked fun as hell, in the way that only something invented on the spur of the moment can be.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2012 23:39

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Hammond sure did seem to want everyone to know he'd been working out or something.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 01:40

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

What I want to know is, how does someone so incoherent get to be a captain of entrepreneurialism or whatever he is? He's like, "I'm driving along one day *mimes driving with hands on the wheel going up and down* and I go, shucks, I wonder how much it would cost to make a car? *keeps miming driving along, makes beep-beep-vroom noises*"

*Venture capitalists start hurling giant bricks of money*

# ¿ Jan 30, 2012 04:30

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Jut posted:

You know, I may be unpopular for saying this, but I would love to see more affordable stuff on the show. The �1000 shed challenges were great as they were something the average viewed could one day afford, and it's nice to see them gently caress around with fiat 500's and smaller sports cars such as the S2000 every now and again.

Would be better than SIARPC anyway

They could replace it with a segment where James and Hammond spend ten minutes talking about all the great deals you can get on new and used affordable cars by exploiting current incentives and � oh wait

# ¿ Feb 1, 2012 04:09

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

All I could think during the SIARPC was "Geez, that means this article exists".

Which is the world's least interesting thought for anyone more observant than me.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2012 01:50

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

All the Chinese cars with the ridiculously long name badges (i.e. ZK4-145CXFR 400FXB) looked like they were using the same font, namely the trunklid letters from VWs between like 1999 and 2006. Like they had an enormous container shipload of those letters and numbers and just passed them out to all the domestic carmakers to get rid of however they felt like.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2012 03:25

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

That 24-hour race one was one of the best ever. Mixed in with the scripted dorkiness was a huge amount of real live honest-to-god experience, stuff like Hammond hitting the Mosler and James accidentally parking in front of the other guys' bay. And at the end you could tell the emotional bond they'd forged with the car was real as hell.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2012 00:11

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

You know they're naturally funny enough together that the dialogue might as well be real, so that's good enough for me. They just script enough high points to make sure they don't forget any of the great stuff that comes up in rehearsal, I'd imagine.

I do love when they let candid little bits slip through, like Jeremy saying "Princess Diana had one" (of the mine-clearing machines), which made the cameraman loving lose his poo poo along with the rest of them.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2012 14:30

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

So um, did anyone look at Hammond's hair before he stepped out into the studio? :pwn:

# ¿ Feb 13, 2012 02:12

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Ak Gara posted:

What raised a red flag for me was the actor in the makeup chair telling someone who introduces themselves as a director to gently caress off.

Was that before or after considering what it was like to be sitting in that makeup chair with BBC cameras set up at three angles around you recording your reactions as the "director" walked in?

(I try to suspend my disbelief on things that try to pass themselves off as "candid", but sometimes...)

# ¿ Feb 14, 2012 14:13

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Camera crew taking to their heels under a hail of fireworks. That doesn't happen on TGUK.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2012 03:56

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Really all I want from TGUSA is for them to sound a little bit less like they're reading their banter off cue cards and putting up LAUGH signs for the audience.

The thing about TGUK is that even when their ribbing and taking-the-piss is staged and rehearsed, it sounds like it could be spontaneous, because they just know how to sell it. (Plus when they interact with the audience and they get to improvise, it's just as funny as anything they've got prepared.) The TGUS guys still make me feel like I'm watching goddamn Dave Coulier hosting America's Funniest People back in the late 80s.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2012 04:37

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

It wasn't much better when James and Hammond kept doggedly at it for another year or two.

Yes let's spend ten minutes reciting prices of five-year-old Volvos that have been advertised in local newspapers.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2012 06:00

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Perhaps because it's funnier hearing them come up with ways to say "this car is terrible" than ways to say "this car is awesome".

I swear if I hear the word "astonishing" come out of Jeremy's mouth six or seven hundred more times...

# ¿ Feb 28, 2012 03:54

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

mod sassinator posted:

I swear I saw some of the shots with the Brutus before, did Clarkson have it on one of his DVDs?

Yeah, "Powered Up".

# ¿ Mar 5, 2012 04:49

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

I loved it when they talked about "fjording" the lake.

Those guys have no idea what those words on the cue cards mean.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2012 13:44

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

I also loved how Tanner (?) strapped a bunch of NON-INFLATED tires to his car. For flotation.

"That's why they put them on boats right? :haw:

Data Graham fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Mar 8, 2012

# ¿ Mar 8, 2012 07:02

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Quaver posted:

... And another season ends. Boo. Does anyone else think that Kimi was perhaps the most boring guest they've ever had on? I was struggling to listen to him, he just gave off such a dull vibe!

I couldn't tell if that was the joke they were going for or what. "Hey, did you know you're the Stig's hero? He tries to be just like you!" What, you mean because he doesn't talk?

# ¿ Mar 12, 2012 02:22

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

BLOOD TYPE: RED

Best thing.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2012 12:25

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

I don't know if it's that it's short, it's just that the commentating manages to make it sound so boring. Like it's just some car driving around, and they're pointing out the highlights of the track like they do every week, never making mention of the driving style or whether it's funny or exciting or anything is riding on it.

At first I thought it might make a good shakeup to have them do the lap first and the interview second, but now I'm seeing that it's really essential to do it the TGUK way, because that way you've gotten to know the person (which is especially helpful if you've never heard of him before) and have some idea whether to expect him to be good or bad on the track or going for some particular goal or whatever. This way it's just "okay let's watch an indistinguishable lap being driven by someone we don't even know, all right now let's go inside and see who it is".

# ¿ Mar 16, 2012 12:51

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Yeah, let's see the guys get across the Darien Gap.

(Without it turning into a rehash of the Bolivia special.)

Totally love to see them do the Alaska Highway, though. Probably not the Dalton just because it ends very anticlimactically (oil rigs woo), plus we've all seen it on Ice Road Truckers. Dempster would be neat... but the Alcan itself probably has the best variety of terrain/scenery and opportunities for drama both along the way and at the end.

Data Graham fucked around with this message at 12:35 on May 9, 2012

# ¿ May 9, 2012 12:33

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

alex314 posted:

Interesting tidbit - it's almost 4000 miles in straight line between Moscow and Vladivostok, and you can travel it in mentioned above time.
To travel from Vladivostok to Pyongyang another 435 miles takes additional 2 days and 22 hours!

Largely because you have to spend like a day and a half at the border while they lift all the carriages off their trucks and transfer them to NK's proprietary gauge.

I'm on a phone, someone else post that photoblog of the guy who took the train from like Vienna to Pyongyang.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2012 17:25

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

You're not allowed to appreciate the awesomeness of the British Leyland challenge or the 24h BMW diesel race until you've sat through a year of Jason Dawe and Richard Hammond talking about used car prices.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2012 13:51

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

I just rewatched that one. The post-mortem where James falls asleep and the others laugh silently at him :3:

# ¿ Jul 17, 2012 12:02

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Preoptopus posted:

Not really. It's the south and they begged for it. Although I promise you the same thing would have happened in any small northern town in Wisconsin.

Only reason it didn't happen in Bolivia is because their car graffiti was in English.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2012 04:13

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Not to perpetuate this most tiresome of recurring arguments, but one of the things I love about the show is the moments that you know weren't staged. They remind you that even though an awful lot of their wacky hijinks are scripted to hell and back, sometimes painfully so, these guys nonetheless have a lot of genuine chemistry together and you can laugh a lot at any candid recording of them just shooting the poo poo.

The cameraman busting up in laughter at Clarkson's "Princess Di had one" (when he was showing off his mineclearing tractor) is one such moment. The backwoods mayor dancing in the tire shop in the latest US special is another.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2012 04:06

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Smoking the Porsche pipes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHr36rbWnKA

Best "scripted moment that got away from them" ever.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2012 04:06

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

They finally realized "Hey, we have Tanner Foust on this show, maybe we can I don't know USE him to distinguish ourselves with some actual high-speed driving segments".

Maybe that's part of why Tanner seemed like he's finally starting to enjoy himself on the show, too.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2012 05:20

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Or, lord help us, Adam Zastava.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2012 21:18

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

I grew up there. It was all I could do to keep from buying a plane ticket.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2012 17:34

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Crikey, it's the Albanian rozzers!

# ¿ Sep 11, 2012 02:30

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Fucknag posted:

The salesmen at my shop once tried to tell me that the Veyron uses the same Michelin Pilot Sports that we sell at the shop.

They are, actually. They're just PS2s, only in a custom size.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2012 15:24

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

The fact that it actually hit the bouncy castle was one of the real live laugh-till-you-honk, can't-believe-that-actually-happened moments that make Top Gear Top Gear.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2012 16:09

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

God, yeah. I want a freeze-frame of him standing there with his mouth gaping open. He looked like a drat cartoon character.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2012 21:00

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Tanner's "gosh" gets funnier and funnier the more bleeped-out swear words they put into the dialogue.

"Son of a BLEEP BLEEEP BLEEPing BLEEEP! There is no way you're getting that BLEEEPing thing up there, my gosh! BLEEEEEP"

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 04:52