RECAP: The Amazing Race - "I Think We're Fighting the Germans, Right?"

This week offered us another fairly lame installment of The Amazing Race, although the producers tried hard to ensure that we wouldn't notice by creating a fairly impressive setting for the Detour/Speed Bump. The interesting thing about this leg is that teams didn't really do any significant travelling on their own. During the pit stop, all of the teams got on a bus and went to an "unknown destination," which they all immediately figured out was somewhere in France. I'm not sure why TAR chose to point out that the destination was unknown, as it had absolutely no effect on the game, but whatever, I'm not in charge of the show (if I was, you can bet the teams would be doing something more exciting than crawling across a field or painting the side of a house for their challenges).

On the bus, Joe iced his knee and mouthed off about how he wasn't scared about any of the other teams. Despite the fact that he was limping noticeably throughout the episode, he seemed to view his injury as more of an annoyance than any real hindrance to his game. The teams arrived in Les Monthairons, France, and drove to a bakery in a nearby village, where they had to buy a fresh baguette. I'm starting to think that this season of The Amazing Race is so Amazing because of how incredibly stupid some of these teams are, as Steve, Jet, and Cord didn't know what a baguette was (and the cowboys couldn't even pronounce the word properly). Team Bro was ecstatic about finally getting a car with an automatic transmission, and Caite was excited about getting to eat a baguette, planning to "eat the crap out of it," and "just shove it in [her] throat." Uhhh.

Once again, TAR gave the teams a detour that was so obviously skewed in terms of the difficulty level it was laughable. Teams had to choose between "In the Trenches" and "Under Fire." For "In the Trenches," teams had to decipher a message in Morse Code using a small field manual, and for "Under Fire," teams had to crawl 100 yards under (probably fake) barbed wire, get a message from a "soldier" in a machine gun nest, and crawl back. Every team chose "Under Fire," because unless you already knew Morse Code, why in God's name would you ever even attempt this one if you didn't have to? The challenges were set on a elaborately constructed battlefield, complete with planes dogfighting overhead (Brent was confused by the "flying things" in the sky, and viewers were confused about how he remembers to breathe), and the teams had to dress up as WWII soldiers for no discernible reason other than to make things more difficult, as their equipment was ill-fitting and kept falling off. TAR, if you're going to make the contestants dress up like idiots, at least give them costumes that fit.

Team Bro and Team Lesbian were back to their bickering ways, as Dan and Jordan fought about nothing for the entire episode, and Brandy acted like a brat at the Detour, bitching non-stop about how ridiculous it was that she had to crawl through the mud and insisting that "smart people do the Morse Code" challenge. Listen Princess, I would love to have seen you try that challenge. Maybe then a deserving team would have been eliminated.

Team Detective finished the Detour first, and arrived at their next Clue Box, which had a U-Turn option. For those who don't remember from seasons past, the U-Turn allows one team to screw over another team by forcing them to do both challenges in a detour. This wouldn't be that ridiculous, except for the fact that the Morse Code challenge was next to goddamn impossible. As retaliation for Joe's bus bragging, the detectives chose to assign the U-Turn to Joe and Heidi. As it was a Blind U-Turn, the team that used it was able to remain anonymous, but since there were only two teams ahead of them and Steve and Allie arrived at the U-Turn at the same time as Joe and Heidi, it was pretty obvious to everyone that the detectives were to blame. Joe and Heidi were forced to go back to the "In the Trenches" challenge, and they never recovered.

After the Detour, teams had to go south along a road to the U-Turn box, then find some old-fashioned bicycles, dress like idiots again, and bike 4 miles to the Pit Stop. Most teams had no problem with this except for Brent and Caite, who upon finishing the Detour, simply used Brent's compass to figure out which way was South, and headed in that direction.

Louie and Michael checked in first again, winning 55" HDTVs in the process. As stupid and pointless as the costumes are, watching Louie wear a fake moustache over his moustache was pretty funny. Jet and Cord commented that they like horses better than bikes, because "you don't have to pedal a horse."

This episode focussed heavily on Team Big Brother, primarily because they were so far behind. They started well behind everyone else, and had multiple problems throughout this leg of the race. First, Jordan couldn't figure out how streets work, so it took them a while to find the bakery. Once they found it, it took Jeff a few minutes to realize that their clue was inside the baguette. They got lost again, and when they finally found the Detour, Jordan had apparently decided that she didn't care about the Race anymore, because she dragged her feet and whined throughout the entire challenge. Her costume didn't fit, her helmet kept coming off, and she couldn't figure out how to crawl properly. At one point, she plopped down on the ground to fix her shoes, and Jeff put the barrel of his rifle in his mouth. They got to the Speed Bump, which was another asinine challenge that had them reinforcing a section of trench by weaving branches together (really, TAR? Is that the best you can come up with?). To be fair to Jordan, Jeff was definitely being a dick about it, but he definitely had a point when he mentioned that he had a 1 in 8 chance of winning a million dollars, and if he picked any random person off the street to be his teammate, they'd probably put more effort in than Jordan was. The best quote of the episode came when Jeff was waiting for Jordan to catch up to him in the crawling challenge, and yelled "Put your boobs on the ground, and drag 'em over here!" He followed that up by bringing the message ("The war is over") to the soldier at the end of the Detour and asking if the war was over "because of this message or because it took us so long to get here?"

Brent and Caite checked in 6th, but because they hadn't gone to the U-Turn box, they had to go back to the Detour site and find their missing clue. They still managed to check in 6th, however, because Jeff and Jordan were so far behind, and Joe and Heidi were stuck at the Detour. Unfortunately, Joe and Heidi were never able to decipher the Morse Code message, and Phil eventually showed up at the trenches and eliminated them.

Overall, the episode felt lazy. There was no real travel other than the bus ride during the Pit Stop, and the producers apparently decided that since they had spent so much energy creating the impressive battlefield, the entire episode should be staged there. The U-Turn twist was completely unfair, as it essentially allowed the Detectives to single-handedly eliminate Joe and Heidi. I wouldn't have minded if it had been a non-elimination leg, but it wasn't. Joe and Heidi seemed at the beginning that they would be a really annoying team, because they were very cocky in the first episode, but they ended up not being bad at all. I'm not saying that I liked them as a team, but they didn't do anything completely terrible, and it sucks to see a team get eliminated because of a stupid twist like this. Get with the program, Amazing Race.

Current Standings

1. Louie and Michael

2. Steve and Allie

3. Jet and Cord

4. Dan and Jordan

5. Carol and Brandy

6. Brent and Caite

7. Jeff and Jordan