RECAP: The Amazing Race - "Cathy Drone?"

It's incredible how a show can go from stupendously boring to wildly entertaining in the space of one week, and The Amazing Race has managed to do exactly that. While this week's episode featured just as little actual travel as last week's, the difficulty of the challenges combined with mistaken directions and general team frustration to create a whole lot of drama and an overall fun-to-watch hour of television. After the jump, I've got the full recap.

Teams started by driving to Reims, France, and searching for a street musician playing a saw next to the only outdoor Joan of Arc statue. Team Detective found it pretty quickly, although a lot of other teams had trouble. Allie attributed their problems to a possible mispronunciation of Joan of Arc, "like maybe it's Arc de Joan. Like Arc de Triomphe is...Arc de...Triomphe." Sigh. She wasn't the only one suffering from a serious case of idiocy, however, as Team Bro asked a local woman where the statue was, and when she told them it was in front of the cathedral, they couldn't understand her, and thought she was saying "Cathy Drone." When they finally figured it out, one of them (I can't tell them apart) criticized her when they got back to the car, saying that no one in France spoke "good English." Yes, it's astonishing that someone wouldn't be perfectly fluent in a foreign language; how rude of everyone else in the world not to speak perfect English. It's pretty common to see blatant American ignorance on this show, but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow.

In other stupidity, both Jordan (the girl one) and Caite confused Joan of Arc with Noah, apparently, as Jordan thought that Joan of Arc was the guy who "carried all the animals" and Caite insisted that Joan of Arc was a man until Brent corrected her. At least Jeff is aware of how dumb he and Jordan are, as after her comment he laughed and said "I wonder why we're in last." His self-deprecating humour is great, but they really were far behind; they started something like two and a half hours later than everyone else, and they were never able to make up the time.

The Roadblock had teams rappelling 100 feet down into a cave underneath a winery and searching through what looked like thousands of champagne bottles for specially marked ones. They then had to climb back up 100 feet of stairs and uncork the bottle using a sabre, which looked pretty awesome. After this, they received a clue with the name of a nearby villa. It's interesting to see TAR actually using clues again, instead of just outright telling the teams where they need to go. It creates far more excitement, as teams often misinterpret the clues. In this case, the villa was associated with a brand of champagne called Tattinger, and was in a town called Pierry. However, the Tattinger store was in Reims, and most teams were told to go there when they asked locals for directions. Only a couple of teams were given correct directions, and consequently Michael and Louie arrived at the Detour well ahead of anyone else.

At the Detour, teams had to choose between Tower, in which they would build a 15-level pyramid of champagne glasses and then fill them using an ENORMOUS champagne bottle, and Terra, in which they had to search a square kilometre for a tiny cluster of grapes marked with an equally tiny Race flag, and then bring it to the harvest foreman. Louie and Michael chose Terra, and seemed to finish fairly quickly, claiming that "if I can find crack in someone's rear end, I can find grapes in a vineyard." Shudder. If the editing is to be believed, they finished the Detour before any other team even arrived, and they made it to the Pit Stop in 1st place again.

Steve and Allie got directions to the wrong Tattinger location, and Steve ended up smashing his car on a curb when they got there. Part of the bumper was scraping against the wheel, and Steve tried various solutions before finally channeling his inner Red Green and fixing it with duct tape.

Jet and Cord were hilarious as usual this leg, although they lost some ground by twice going to the wrong city, both when they were trying to find the Roadblock and again for the Detour. One of them (I can't tell them apart either) kept yipping every time he got excited about something, which was pretty amazing. Brent and Caite, on the other hand, were more annoying than they've ever been. I don't know if they've been bickering like this the entire time, or if it's just started on this leg of the Race, but it was like watching a couple of spoiled infants (and if the scenes from next week's episode are any indication, it's only going to get worse). Caite appeared to have given up entirely, and was whining about everything, while Brent seems like he's just sick of dealing with her. While everyone else asked directions from a business (or even a tourism office), they kept asking random people on the street, and no one they asked knew where their destination was. After finishing the Roadblock, they spotted Team Lesbian (who was on their way to the Pit Stop) and followed them. Embarrassment ensued, as Team Model ran to the mat just behind Team Lesbian before realizing that they hadn't done the Detour yet, and needed to turn back. When they got to the Detour, Brent (smartly) decided they should do the Terra search, but Caite bitched about it until he relented and they moved to the Tower option. This was another Detour where, while both options were difficult, it seems like the Tower choice was far more complicated, and the possibility for failure was demonstrated by both Teams Model and Big Brother, as they built their pyramids only to have them come crashing down. Team Bro was the only team to actually complete the Tower option; everyone else ended up switching (back, in Team Model's case) to the Terra search.

As funny as Jeff and Jordan were, it was kind of hard to watch them this leg, as they clearly knew they had lost. The entire episode, they didn't seem like they were in a hurry at all. Their fatal error (in my opinion) came when they arrived at the Detour and saw Brent and Caite out in the fields searching for grapes (this was after the Tower disaster). Jeff figured that they were still searching because it was an impossible task, and suggested that they would be able to do the Tower option faster. Unfortunately, their tower collapsed, and they ended up having to go and search for the grapes in the dark.

Brent and Caite checked in sixth, and when Phil held up six fingers, Caite declared "Five!" and Brent said "Caite, count the fingers." Jeff and Jordan arrived last again, and when Phil told them this, Jeff had another brilliant moment, putting a serious look on his face and saying "WHAT?!"

Overall, it was a pretty good episode. I'll miss the comic relief that Jeff and Jordan (mainly Jeff) provided. I would have much rather seen Team Model or Team Lesbian be eliminated, as their bickering grates on my nerves a lot of the time, and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. Having just finished watching Season 14 of TAR, it's difficult not to see how weak this season has been by comparison, but if tonight's episode was any indication, things may be turning around.