The newest episode of “The Grand Tour” arrived on schedule this week, entitled “Dumb Fight at the O.K. Coral” and it has the boys [Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May] traveling to a pair of places on each end of the spectrum – Nashville, Tennessee and Barbados.
The opening scene reveals the James has had a haircut and after Jeremy notes that Nashville’s nickname is Music City, USA, he makes subtle jab at the BBC by also noting that there is a song by the Allman Brothers called “Jennifer” that “you never hear anymore.” The song was the theme song of the former “Top Gear” when it was hosted by the trio.
A faux battle between Richard and James over which is better – a BMW or a Jaguar – results in their supposed road test being hijacked by Jeremy for his profile on the 503-horsepower Alfa Romeo Giulia Quattroporte [or as he calls it – the Quadriplegio]. This is followed by another regrettable appearance of test driver The American.
Conversation Street has two interesting main topics this week – the boys lamenting about the evolution of car design and how it has gone steadily downhill over the years – and James familiarly ranting about how he hates the Nurburgring and the recent fad of auto manufacturers using the track to tout the attributes of their new cars.
Interestingly, despite being based in Nashville/Music City, USA, the boys were unable to find an adequate celebrity to kill for this week’s episode and instead went for the UK-born third lead singer of AC DC, Brian Johnson, who they ran over with a football team [resulting in a faux football-soccer argument with the audience]
The main segment had the trio traveling down to Barbados where they were attempting to build an artificial coral reef by plunging the shells of five vehicles into the water. The first vehicle was prematurely sunk by Richard and the second vehicle as well as their decrepit boat were also sunk before the Barbados Port Authority told them “to go away”, forcing them to hire a private operation and go to another place on the island to do the job with their three remaining vehicles.
The sinking of two of the vehicles were then predictably botched in a variety of ways before the manager of the resort hotel’s beach also told them to go away. The final vehicle – a Land Rover Defender – was sunk with its tires on to create the reef after Jeremy was briefly distracted by a racing sailboat.
This week’s episode had an appearance by The American that resulted in an automatic 10-point deduction, joined by deductions for not killing an appropriate celebrity for the location used and the predictable banter of the main segment, ASN awards this episode with the score of 82 out of 100. Not bad, but could have been better.
