watched the new The Grand Tour last night

In reply to JG Pasterjak:

Make it a caged rough NA. That way SM content would increase

A couple of random thoughts, as I watched it for the first time last night, through a tryptophan haze.

As an ugly American, seeing Brits make fun of ugly Americans never gets old. It was a little overhyped and overdone by about 20% in every facet of the production. Camerawork was beautiful. Clarkson needs to work on that gut.

Hopefully they'll turn the volume knob back from 11 to 8 on future episodes. Make fun of some crappy cars I might actually own someday, bring on some living celebrities, etc.

That second episode... yeah, well, I kept trying to come up with an analogy. The best I could come up with is that the episode was like visiting three of your delusional uncles in a retirement home and they all told some bizarre story about what they recall doing over in some Middle Eastern country. You're left thinking, yeah right.

Yeah, second episode was very meh. The Vulcan was cool, the in-"studio" stuff was fine, but the whole military training bit was pretty lame, despite the explosions.

Tom_Spangler wrote: Yeah, second episode was very meh. The Vulcan was cool, the in-"studio" stuff was fine, but the whole military training bit was pretty lame, despite the explosions.

Hey, at least we got to see Richard and James shoot each other...

I thoroughly enjoyed the military training. It was like a bad video game played over and over. I loved it.

Okay, the second episode wasn't quite as good as the first, but it still had me laughing out loud in a number of spots.

Do you think they'll ever really have a celebrity on the show, or is that just a running joke at Top Gear's expense?

The special forces bit was fun, if a little long. Maybe cut a few repeats, but otherwise it's the shtick I loved from TG. That and challenges with cheap Porsche's or caravans. People complaining about not enough car content, they'll still review plenty of uber$ cars we'll never see let alone own. The Vulcan was good, until the nobody-NASCAR guy drove it.

I thought the second episode was solid which the exception of Nascar pseudo stig and continued dead celebrity bit

I read a comment where someone pointed out how Mike Skinner is sort of the "anti-Stig": You know who he is, he's anything but silent and instead of supposedly being a "tamed F1 driver" (although it's never really stated where he came from), Skinner is from the NASCAR, which is nearly the polar opposite of F1.

I felt like their writers went to the SNL school of "let's milk this gag until every single viewer is sick of it" style. The pants falling down was stupid. The terrorists molesting Jezza was stupid. Everything about that bit was just stupid and they kept at it. My son walked out, and he's a 14 year old who loved old TG. When your brand of humor is too lowbrow for a 14 year old, change something!

In reply to KyAllroad:

I pretty much agree. That whole segment would have been better had it been edited down to about half the length.

It feels a little like watching a 70 year old Sylvester Stallone try to play Rambo. Or Progressive making one more berkeleying Flo commercial. It's tired and forced. It's over. It's time for them to do something new.

I enjoyed the second episode.

I just finished the second episode. I may or may not have been tweeting suggestions of calling FM to run some v8 miata instead of showing the same 30 seconds of footage constantly throughout.

The notStig cracked me up. Probably my favorite part. But I live in texas and what seemed like a caricature of a typical southern nascar lover seemed pretty spot on to me

Huckleberry wrote: It feels a little like watching a 70 year old Sylvester Stallone try to play Rambo. Or Progressive making one more berkeleying Flo commercial. It's tired and forced. It's over. It's time for them to do something new.

I haven't seen it, but the last season of Top Gear had this same flavor. It was over, they had played out all the tricks. Time to move on.

In episode 3 they're finally hitting their stride. Much better than the first couple episodes.

They seem to spend a lot of time with their middle finger extended in Top Gear's direction.

That was Excellent!!!! I think the producers at TG deviated to far in the physical misery of the hosts. It really was getting painful to watch. This really is a re-boot back to when they "anoy" each other and it is funny not painful to watch.

I watched it with my 11 year old and it was funny for both of us.

stuart in mn wrote: In episode 3 they're finally hitting their stride. Much better than the first couple episodes.

I hope so, episode 2 sucked pretty hard.

They still need to kill the dying celebrity bit though. Or just call the bit 2016 and move on.

The 2nd episode may not have been there best work but still way better than anything else I watched last week.

No NASCAR driver this week. Did not miss him.

Something else I noticed was the sound seemed much better this week. The volume of the hosts was louder and clearer than previous episodes.

captdownshift wrote: They still need to kill the dying celebrity bit though. Or just call the bit 2016 and move on.

I don't know it made me laugh.

Also watching it with my son made me realize that there was alot of things that made him laugh. Made me realize that they have made the show much broader in it's appeal age wise. Don't know if it is on purpose but they have.

Fueled by Caffeine wrote: I haven't seen it, but the last season of Top Gear had this same flavor. It was over, they had played out all the tricks. Time to move on.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who noticed the last few seasons of Top Gear starting feeling too forced. Basically like they were just milking past successes and coasting on their brand recognition, which meant within a few more seasons they'd probably be history (at least to me) anyways.

Then I saw the trailer for Grand Tour. I suddenly had high hopes, that freed from the constraints of the BBC they would be able to spread their wings a bit more and do something really enjoyable and entertaining. So far though, it's looking like the problem was that the BBC had started giving the 'super stars' too much creative license for their own good, and the extra freedom Amazon gave them just magnified the problem. So far it seems they took the formula for a show that was already in decline, only kept the lamest aspects of it, and then turned those up to 11 in episode 1...And then 12 in episode 2. If the next episode isn't a huge step in the right direction, I may not make it to episode 4.

Maybe they should have just made GT a series the travel specials and challenges that are what really brought TG more into the mainstream for even non-car-enthusiasts.