Jet Lag Season 15 | Official trailer

I'm going to put this forward for one of the best episodes of Jet Lag yet.

It's a bit of a shame to see Sam and Toby's run end like this, it seemed like they had a pretty good shot at winning it outright. It's maybe a good thing from the production side of things that that didn't happen.

I love that Ben and Brian left Paris for Laon, only to watch a movie and (almost) immediately get on a train back to Paris. Not much action from the two of them in this episode, though I do like the move to try and fly from Paris to Zurich. Them taking the train south would have put them in the worst possible position if they made the catch and became the runners.

The plan to go to Prunay and then zoom on through while the seekers are frozen was a fantastic plan, that fell apart through really no fault of their own. Their connecting train left as soon as they arrived in Reims, and the bus accident left them stranded for 45 minutes. From the podcast, the accident was them getting a scrape from another bus that had also pulled over. It seemed to be company protocol to wait for a technician to come out, inspect it, and sign a couple of forms before they could get moving again.

I love the accidentally perfect framing of the shot where Sam and Toby do the throwing challenge, it was wide enough to catch Adam and Michelle sneaking up on them.

Adam and Michelle had an interesting starting position. Drawing the pinpointing challenge when they pretty much knew where both chasers were was incredible luck, and the fact that it allowed them to get moving immediately was also pretty cool.

Adam getting the coin flip challenge for a second time was incredible. Nearly 500 individual flips this time, which is just so many.

This season has been pretty interesting. It feels like strategies from the previous Tag seasons aren't working as well, so they're having to try different things. It's been a great refreshing of the format, which I appreciate.

...being 'Rathaus', while that's simply the translation of 'city hall'.

...that the train has picked up a tree branch on the tracks, an inspection has been performed, they've determined everything is fine, and the journey will continue now. Yet right after that announcement they keep up the suspenseful background music and manage to edit in a 2½ minute clip of the other team completing a puzzle, plus 30 seconds of them speculating wether an inspection needs to be performed. I guess it was a suspenseful scene for english-only people, but I was kinda sitting there thinking, 'okay guys, no need to keep up the suspenseful music, we already know the issue has been fixed and your train will start moving again in a few seconds'. :D

Looks like this will shape up to be a great season. I like the team vibes (Ben + Brian chilling with crepes while Adam + Michelle sweating bullets in the train station only to end up in the same place). Sam + Toby might be set up pretty well for victory now. I'm sure they'll get tagged in episode 2 but they'd still have over 2 days of game time to tag back in and will have ample coins to get deep into their own territory.

I expect the most interesting bits will be the competitions between the seeker teams.

Congrats Adam and Michelle! They had a pretty much straight shot for their run, so most of the excitement came from the chasers trying to catch up to them.

They do talk about this on the podcast, but this win wouldn't have happened if Adam and Michelle had won the coin flip as to who stayed on the train to Laon. If that coin flip had gone the other way, then Ben and Brian would have made the catch on Sam and Toby, leading to a very different game. Ben and Brian initially didn't agree to the coin flip (this was cut from the episode), but they agreed after it was pointed out that if both teams were to try catch them in Laon, Adam and Michelle would be able to run faster.

They also finally mention what movie Ben and Brian saw in Laon: it was Lilo and Stitch.

As an aside, Michelle is now the only undefeated Jet Lag champion.

My watching buddy and I predicted what would happen this episode before we started. I remembered their coin balance being low enough that a 1 hour train would have meant doing a challenge, which would have probably meant waiting for the next train, which then meant they'd be caught, which was my guess. But it turns out the train is only 33 minutes and they had time to make the connection, so the game was sealed. I'm glad they planned for this in production, more jet lag is always good.

While the train up to the observatory might've only cost 330 in-game coins, it ended up being quite expensive in real life. A return ticket is about 130 Francs, so multiply that by 6 and you're looking at nearly 800 Francs, or 1000 USD at current conversion rates.

There was some discussion on the podcast about the new setup with only two teams. The two other power ups were removed because they would have trivialised parts of the game, but the double stayed because it's fun. The more interesting thing to me was the reason why they made the original winner's region neutral rather than splitting the whole circle in half. If they had split it in half, then the line would have been right where they were standing, and whichever team was running would immediately go "rat mode". This way, the runners have a straightforward goal at the start, which is much more predictable for the chasers, and therefore better for the storytelling of the show.

I'm guessing there's probably at least a couple more episodes left in this season, which means there's a lot that can happen. I'm tentatively guessing that Sam, Toby, and Michelle are going to get the second place prize, but a lot can happen very quickly in Jet Lag.