The third episode of “The Grand Tour” had some ground to make up for the lackluster second episode and it did just that.
The third episode was entitled “Opera, Arts and Donuts” which can be somewhat nit-picked as we were always under the impression that opera was part of the nebulous “arts” and we spell one of our favorite pastry confections “doughnuts”. But never mind all that, the episode was already a step above the previous stumbling episode by being based in the UK [“we’re coming home! – a triumphant Jeremy Clarkson declared as much to the BBC as to the audience]
The usual celebrity was killed – Simon Pegg – by simply falling off a bridge, which doesn’t seem like much of a fatal maneuver unless Pegg could not swim. But never mind that too, because there was a classic, straight-from-old-“Top Gear” road test pitting a Rolls Royce against an Aston Martin against a Dodge Hellcat. Naturally and predictably, American car-loving Richard Hammond was anointed with the Hellcat but we would have thought a better idea would have been to put James May in the Hellcat, Clarkson in the Rolls and Hammond in the Aston, rather than having them each in a car they already favor. So that minor road vegetable aside, the road test results were pretty much as one might expect them to go – each one loved their car and the only disputes were the color of the Aston Martin [brown or sunset orange], the loudness of the Hellcat and the fact that the Rolls is just a gussied-up BMW.
The main highlight of the episode was, of course, the destruction of Jeremy Clarkson’s real house in the English countryside. This was determined after Clarkson supposedly wagered that the McLaren P1 would defeat both the Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 in a hot lap in the first episode and if it didn’t, Hammond and May could destroy his house. In reality, Clarkson was already planning to destroy the house to build a new abode on his property – but this storyline fit in nicely with the episodes and gave the boys a chance to do something they like to do best – blow something up – especially if it was Clarkson’s house.
The episode was not as good as the first – we would have liked to have seen a change on the aforementioned road test and maybe some playful harassment of the locals as a side segment – but was a damn sight better than the second episode, so ASN awards an 88.