I enjoyed it, it was good fun and I had genuine laughs, but some of the staged parts were just over-the-top. I don't mind if they plan some of the silliness, but they just kill it when it gets too obvious. The parts when Clarkson and May were still sitting down in the midst of the remnants after the explosion, for example. It's comical, like a reinterpretation of some good old cartoon moments from "Looney Tunes", and I had a brief smile, but in the end, that's not even superficially related to motoring. Basically, it's not really what I want to see when I make the decision to watch an episode of the show.
I love Top Gear as it's like a display of automotive passion in the most childlike, basic, and purest form, without being overly technical. I don't necessarily wish Top Gear to be highly informative, all the time. I will watch other shows and read from various sources when I want to get detailed explanations of how this or that works. As a whole, I see the show as a celebration of the automotive world, underpinning the concept of fun in motoring, portraying some cars as characterful works of art, and things like that. And they've successfully conveyed that to the audience through many of their challenges, reviews, and features on classics. I don't agree with some of the things they said, but that's fine.
They can juxtapose comedy alongside the motoring, but it's hard to appreciate it in the same way when it's barely relevant to automotive anymore. In some of the newer episodes, it seems like some of the factors I mentioned are lost. They seem to be going downhill. These days, it feels like they're barely about cars, even though there are cars in the show.
Back to some feelings from the new episode...the parts when James May kept escaping reminded me of this video:
Chase begins at 0:18. No more escaping from 3:00 onwards.
