Oh, Amazing Race. Every time I think you've learned your lesson, you go and piss me off yet again. Despite the fact that TAR is one of the best reality shows on television, it is not without its bad habits, and this week's episode was a prime example of that most hated of Amazing Race occurrences: bunching. Regardless of how far ahead or behind some teams might be, the producers decide WHO CARES?! It's not as though these people are RACING or anything! Let's have them arrive at a train station/airport/bus terminal, only to discover that they have to wait NINE HOURS for the next train/plane/bus; surely that won't piss ANYONE off!
And so it was that despite Kent and Vyxsin's best efforts at running the worst leg of TAR that anyone has ever seen, they were able to catch up with everyone else thanks to a ridiculously long wait at a train station. After arriving at the fake Pit Stop and being told by Phil they were still racing, all teams had to take a train back to Kunming. The Globetrotters, Cowboys, and Kisha/Jen whiled the afternoon away with a game of three-on-three at a nearby basketball court, which was pretty entertaining, especially once Flight Time and Big Easy started breaking out their Globetrotter tricks. Despite the Globetrotters being on opposing teams, Big Easy is like 10 feet tall, and it was "like playing basketball against a tree", according to the Cowboys.
When Kent and Vyxsin finally caught up to everyone at the train station, they continued lying about why they were so far behind, stating that their car had broken down and not telling anyone about the 30-minute penalty that Phil had said they'd be receiving before they could check in at the end of this leg. Kent claimed that everyone else was acting like "sharks swimming around", when in reality no one seemed to care that much, and it seemed like most people realized that the "Goths" were probably lying--there was just no way that the producers would have allowed them to fall something like 7 hours behind everyone else because a Race-provided car broke down; after all, we have seen cars be replaced before on the Race when they are irreparably disabled. On the train, Zev and Justin were up on the top bunk of some sort of triple-decker bunk bed, which seemed fine to them, as apparently there was "less chance for murder" on the top bunk.
Once in Kunming, teams were sent first to a flower market, and then to the Golden Horse and Jade Cock Memorial Arches. Amusingly, the Cowboys and a couple of other teams ended up at a McDonald's, with Cord commenting that the Golden Arches were probably not where they were supposed to be. At the Detour, teams chose between "Honor the Past", where they had to memorize the order of 15 dancers and arrange a series of dolls in that order, and "Embrace the Future", where they would have to lug several heavy boxes up to the roof of a building and assemble a solar water heating system. The teams were pretty evenly split between the tasks, and everyone had only one thing on their minds: the Double U-Turn that awaited after the Detour. Honor the Past ended up being a much faster task, and none of the teams seemed to take more than two tries to get the order correct. Embrace the Future, on the other hand, had Kent whining like a girl (which he is), and Jaime and Cara bitching (as usual). Margie was impressive as she hauled the boxes up without much help from Luke, and Flight Time and Big Easy seemed to have no trouble at all with the task (unsurprising as they're both professional athletes and are therefore in fairly good shape).
Margie/Luke and the Cowboys arrived at the Double U-Turn first, and both chose not to U-Turn anyone. The drama arose when Kent/Vyxsin and Jaime/Cara arrived at basically the same time, with the "Goths" getting there only seconds before the Cheerleaders. Kent, remembering the mistake they had made the first time they ran the Race (they apparently U-Turned a team that had already finished the Detour, thereby effectively wasting the U-Turn), realized that there was only one team that he absolutely knew was behind them: the Cheerleaders. And so, despite Vyxsin's desire to U-Turn the Globetrotters, Kent grabbed Jaime and Cara's picture and slapped it on the board, apologizing as he did so. Frustrated, Jaime and Cara U-Turned the Globetrotters before running back to do the second half of the Detour.
Both the Cheerleaders and the Globetrotters were extremely lucky that the Detour tasks were so easy; I kept remembering Joe and Heidi's elimination in Season 16 (the second half of the Detour in the leg they were eliminated on looked damn near impossible, requiring them to decipher a Morse Code message in the middle of a loud battlefield recreation).
After the Detour, teams had to go to the Stone Forest. Unfortunately, a number of teams (Zev/Justin, Gary/Mallory, and I think Kisha/Jen) decided to follow Ron and Christina, reasoning that since they spoke Chinese, they'd be able to get where they needed to go fairly easily. Ron and Christina's cabbie ended up taking them to the wrong location, and all of them fell behind. After finishing the Detour, in a moment eerily reminiscent of their downfall in the Season 14 Finale, Jaime and Cara's cab driver stopped for gas on the way to the Stone Forest (if you watched Season 14, you'll remember that Jaime and Cara ended up falling behind in the final leg when their cabbie insisted on stopping for gas). Everyone eventually arrived, however, and the hardest task of the Race (or so it seemed) lay before them.
For the Roadblock, one team member had to gather up dozens of wooden pieces and construct a life-size, 20-foot model of a Dilophosaurus. A nearby paleontologist could stop them at any point if he decided their model was unsafe (i.e. if the pieces weren't locked together properly). The problem was, once the pieces were locked in, if the person then realized that he/she had done something wrong, they were extremely difficult to get apart. Justin in particular had a really hard time taking his dinosaur apart when he realized he basically needed to start from scratch, Jaime kept falling off her stepladder, and I kept laughing loudly (I may have mentioned it before; I really hate the Cheerleaders). Only Jet seemed to have minimal trouble with the challenge (in a post-Race interview, it was revealed that some teams spent something like 4 hours assembling their models, while Jet apparently sped through the task).
Upon arriving at the Roadblock last, Gary and Mallory chose to use the Express Pass that I'd forgotten they had, allowing them to skip the Roadblock and head straight to the Pit Stop at Green Lake Park. Unfortunately for them (and awesome for me, because the Cowboys are my pick to win it all), Jet finished the Roadblock so fast that the Cowboys were actually able to overtake Gary and Mallory and check in first. Despite their 30-minute penalty, Kent and Vyxsin were able to check in fifth (ugh), and although the producers tried to work up some uncertainty about whether Justin or Jaime would finish first, in the end it was the Cheerleaders that were eliminated (huzzah!).
The leg was pretty entertaining, although like I said before, I hate equalizer legs; it completely nullifies any work that a team might have done to get to their current position in the Race, and it's not really fair. I understand that it's probably necessary in terms of keeping the production together and increasing the drama of the show, but it's annoying to see shitty teams like Kent and Vyxsin get rewarded for their ineptitude just because the producers want to keep everyone together. Sigh.
Current Rankings
- Jet and Cord
- Gary and Mallory
- Margie and Luke
- Kisha and Jen
- Kent and Vyxsin
- Flight Time and Big Easy
- Ron and Christina
- Zev and Justin
Stay tuned.
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