Did the Second season capture the magic of the Tour de France 2023?

    Collaboration between @thecyclingdane and @OwDoCycling

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    Thomas Pitcock please pop your delusional bubble this is not going to happen and you need to work for your leader unlike last year should we talk about Netflix well to FR Netflix and change whatever it’s called God you you’ve written an article about it so you know more than Patrick and me uh okay so uh I was lucky enough to watch to France Unchained season two a week early who wins you want say go uh but you can you can read my full review on psych. co.uk there I give the juicy details a lot of quotes a lot of quotes I I wrote like maybe 10 pages of notebook pages on um of quotes from the series there there are some zingers this is a much better series than the last I will give you that it GC it well tells this the story of the GC far better of course that’s because we have access to vano and Pacha which we didn’t really have in Season One V go was in season one but it was in this kind of awkward situation because he wasn’t meant to be one of the featured writers and he just kind of like jumped in halfway through um and everything was kind of recorded after the tour so it’s a bit sort of awkward because he knew what was happening but then this year it felt a lot more sort of organic and you had all the big different characters up there um Adam isn’t really touched on he has a bit of a sort of Spotlight in stage one when he wins that that stage but he isn’t really spoken about for the rest of the show which is a bit of a shame I feel like he was a bit untapped in terms of the narrative there but I’m alluding to inos grenades with with my previous Point inos grenades in an episode titled the Enemy Within uh have well it documents this big sort of battle between Tom pitock and Carlos Rodriguez pitock who’s to quote myself I say that pit Pitcock um doesn’t always come across as pleasant often his bluntness appears Brash abrasive and at some points braggadocious he is sort of you know there are some things he does at one point he’s he’s confronted by team staff because he’s not working for for Rodriguez and the GC plans aren’t working out once asked if he would work for Rodriguez he says I’m not sure can you turn the cameras off to which the scene ends um and then later on as well he completely ignores team orders on the grown columia and attacks Carlos Rodriguez um which meant that he shed brucial time at this point Rodriguez was not far off the podium and then the day after that he’s sort of saying oh well I’m going to attack on on a descent and try to go for the stage win and that stage was won by Rodriguez whilst Pitcock ended up losing a lot of time on that stage Ro thenorth described pitcock as having a ruthless winning streak there was also I mean interesting interesting episode episode six which is all about what it’s called dominance it’s all about do G time Tri performance in stage 16 and the Cod on stage 17 um it yeah it does replicate the tenseness before beforehand we didn’t know how it’s going to go people are saying opach is going to gain 30 seconds people saying V Go’s going to gain 30 seconds then we see the rides and afterwards there’s this quite bitter tone I think that that that the episode goes into where it sort of alludes to Scandal and doping and and controversy and a lot of the French writers have something to say about this Val mad of group FR de says there is no truth in cyclan and response to it he also pulls a face as well um before uh when when when he reacts to the news thato one by one and a half minutes simil Val simil Mar of grou FR as well um he said there are undoubtedly still some cheats in cycl that’s human nature and also tedo as well gave a pretty sort of cold response when asked about doping the episode ends with a new villain Richard pluger who enters the series Richard pluger who um who says quote there’s a lot of attention unus so he tries to divert the attention from it to distract a little bit from the riers to something else it’s a bit of a broken sort of quote but that’s how he said it in the show and what he is referring to is beer Gad this is documented well uh the final episode episode eight where you see the feud between Richard puger and Mark madio this is because Richard puger sort of created a media s like keep the day after you goes crazy time trial he was worried about all the allegations against yonas so he decided to hit at at M by saying that FR they show were drinking poison that referring to beer um on the rest days and Mark M does not take to this very well um not at all he was Mark M says that he did it well pug did it for the P to create a scandal uh within the sort of media circus of the ET France and Mar definitely takes this to heart um for the rest of the episode you can see him sort of jokingly drinking beer at the dinner table for the rest of the Turran stay cheers Richard plugger um and I mean the ybo staff don’t seem too happy about it either the ybo fans are booed as they go through virage Pino the special TI Pino Corner um which by the way you see on the show you see his brother with his family all on that corner that was quite a big bit of the episode that focuses on the teino corner but as the yumo call goes through people are throwing beer they’re booing they’re throwing stuff they’re spitting at the cart the UMO fans go thank you Richard so you could tell that everyone was a bit frustrated with with what Richard plugger said Mark maio even said that he took them for clowns also on the briefing before that 20th stage Mark madio sort of released his frustration saying when you leg to ache they’ll ache even more when you think about those and what he Richard pluger said about you which I mean was a pretty sort of damning quote for him to give however Mark Mio has the last has the last say in in the whole show spoiler alert episode 8 of of the series ends with the following quotes I want to show Reger pluger that real cycling is about men the effort the Goosebumps connecting with those around you yes he won Richard pluger and yonas but winning isn’t necessarily the most important part Pino without trying conveyed something else he ended with the Public’s love and I think that just encapsulates the drama the energy and sort of the of evil captured in tur of France and chain season two there we go debate why is there only eight episodes there eight episodes in the first one oh okay um they’re all about 45 minutes long the shortest one is 38 minutes long it’s actually I would say the most powerful one it’s called for Gino um it traces um matate Mid and p p b quest for a stage win for Gino and Gino as a theme and as a character does appear uh post humously as well I guess um the actual the whole series begins in the first episode with a very personal sort of uh sequence Ben okon is out in a training ride and uh he gets informed about the news that ginaa has died and okon and me were close they were former teammates as well back in NT and dim mention day today and um okona just it really hits him it felt almost too personal too invasive that we were seeing him find out about the loss of one of his friends and you kind of go around the palon later into that episode and you you hear what everyone’s thinking and there was this great quote as well from from moid at the end of the episode in honor of Gooma saying uh I hope he’s proud looking down from the sky that in response to P bow stage win and you could sort of say you can tell that the team wanted that they needed that it had not been an easy task for them to get into the Tour of France P BAU and Gina M rode very closely for a couple years beforehand as well they were good friends and po of says that he had that extra motivation and they could hear a scream back home in the in in the bass country when he crossed the line it just that was like great exaltation of Joy but also of grief I think the show really sort of handles this difficult topic of of grief within aelon very well how’s the uh the Jonas versus Po is not kind of shown as more of a a good R like the Rival the the grandios is it shown quite well yeah so I believe Steve Chanel who’s one of the Talking Heads describes it as a psychological battle in the show and you can see early in episodes one and two that psychological battle you get a little bit of a more behind the scen sort of um discussion about um when when w vard smashed his bot on the ground at the end of stage two and you can sort of see Adam Yates and pogacha joking about that you really get inside UAE and there’s a big contrast Andre halman who’s the sort of top dog at UAE for foot Pacha he’s very cam on the radio very sort of Co Cam and collected but then you see sort of ybo VMA Cutthroat shouting sort of more ruthless uh in in their communication style and team seems a lot more tense that might be the editing style it might just be the way that that they’ve been portrayed in the show but um UAE doeses seem a little bit more laidback uh as a whole and it is interesting to have the sort of the dichotomy between the two Retreat because in that first time we didn’t get into U at all so this one you do really get to see those two Riders and also as well on the flip side of it when V go eventually attacks and completely wipes out Pacha on the cord you get the insight into how pacha’s feeling and you can sort of see him sort of reliving that that grief but he’s kind of like well these things happen I’m Human After All I can’t I can’t be there every single day sometimes you have off days I think that was um that was quite s of human of him to do so yeah it’s the the age ried injury yeah so the first episode is sort of it sets the pathos for a lot of the Riders um it’s sort of um we have a sort of wasted 20 minutes of following Richard carass because we we have this whole bit where we go to and see training V just like yeah we’ve risked so much for for Richard he’s the most expensive signing we’ve ever had blah blah blah and then and then you see him grash in stage one then you go to hospital with him as well and find out that he’s broken whatever and your heart bleeds for carass but he’s not in he’s he’s not mentioned at all the rest of the season for VAs not for carass vas’s whole budget just went down the thing um and what what also is touch on is the investment s it as well like um R talks about investment side how he had to S convince people to pump the money into the team and how it’s hard to con convince them when you don’t have your leader at at the T Fran and as well into the a deser episodes because we follow Ben o Conor and fix KH a deser okono was really the the team leader going into that race gal was kind of an accident and okono was he he goes to this big ride of emotions throughout the series at the beginning he just seems a little bit he seems really frustrated he’s annoyed on stage five um that the team handed the victory to hinley because they work with hinley in the breakway to get Felix gal the stage win it didn’t happen in the end but they were quite close and gal jumped up the the GC in the process but you see like the team are unhappy with with okono and they’re like sponsors aren’t going to not the sponsors can’t justify paying this much for a guy who can deliver and you see that’s s of business side of of the racing more than you did inep in series one um but it’s it’s definitely a step up I think as a whole it’s it’s it’s very good and you don’t have to watch series one to watch series two I think they’re kind of separate entities as a whole

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