The American Returns For Latest Episode Of The Grand Tour Season 3
If you’ve seen the latest episode of The Grand Tour, you more than likely saw the American flag-clad racing suit that you may have recognised from the beginning of Amazon’s hit car show.
Throughout the episode, the faceless figure can be seen haunting Jeremy from afar, with Hammond and May not being able to see the person when Clarkson asks for some kind of confirmation to what he’s seeing. He appears at the end of the episode however, racing an RV in a destruction derby-esque race against the trio until Jeremy aims his RV just right and manages to roll the opposition’s vehicle. It bursts into flames, but the driver inside seems to disappear.
Those eagle-eyed viewers will have realised that this is indeed a nod to The American (Mike Skinner) from the first season of The Grand Tour, who was later replaced by Abbie Eaton. He was met with plenty of negative criticism, and after being dropped from the show, seemed to take it badly and took to Twitter.
At the end of the episode, a circle of fire erupts, surrounding the trio’s three RVs as they slept. It’s quite obvious that the team realised The American didn’t take his leaving too well, so decided to reflect his revenge in this episode.
Did you spot it? Let us know in the comments!
I have always found the road trip specials to be a bit hit & miss. RVing in the US is a lot different than caravaning in the UK and I’d hoped they wouldn’t just revert back into their “caravans are crap” attitude as soon as they could. What was I thinking?
Having said that, James’ rolling pub was absolutely brilliant. I’m sure there was serious discussion about whether or not Clarkson would be allowed to destroy it. Even the orangutan himself seemed to have reservations about damaging it. I want to travel in that RV.
I spotted that the character was supposed to be the American right off but I’d have preferred bringing Skinner back and giving everyone a proper payoff on the gag. I’m willing to bet a lot of viewers would have thought the whole thing was a lot funnier if they’d gotten some kind of punchline.
GRAND TOUR needs to either make the driver a larger part of the series or drop the idea of a series regular ‘character’ driver altogether. My suggestion: bring in known guest drivers every week to test the cars. I know that it drops a supposed control factor from the tests but most professional drivers are going to be pretty close in how they throw a road car around a track. If you want it to appear scientific, you could do one of two things:
1. Bring in two drivers – Not only would it add a bit of competition for bragging rights between the two drivers but you could then use an aggregate of the times as the official board time.
OR
2. Keep your ‘in house’ driver and have the weekly guest driver compete against her/him. Use the aggregate score as mentioned above for the official board time. This at least adds back a bit of the ‘regular driver’ control factor.
Bringing in pro drivers would be a treat for the fans and for the drivers themselves. It would also allow Grand Tour to bring in drivers who were previous Top Gear “Stigs” to throw a new car around for old time’s sake.
The segment could even be done in such a way that it wouldn’t have to take screen time away from something else. The driver in-tent interviews, if there’s one at all, could be short (although it would be nice to have Abby or a new regular driver on set as both drivers comment on the lap, car, etc.). Both runs would be displayed simultaneously using top/bottom splitscreen.
If Mr. Wildman would like any further production advice, he can feel free to contact me. LOL
I spotted it right away!
Realized who it was almost immediately. A bit of a chuckle in an otherwise average episode.