RECAP: The Amazing Race - "I Cannot Deal With Your Psycho Behavior (Austria)" and "We're Good American People (Switzerland)"

So! Thanks entirely to my laziness you, my loyal(?) reader(s?) are to be treated to ANOTHER two-episode recap of The Amazing Race! There is no particular reason for this, other than the fact that I felt like hell for Monday and Tuesday of last week, and by the time I felt better I figured I might as well wait for the next episode and just recap both at once. AND WHAT A RECAP IT WILL BE! I warn you in advance, this might contain A LOT of cursing, as I was GODDAMN FURIOUS with the outcome of the second episode. TO THE BULLET POINTS!!

• With six teams left, the Race led us from Varanasi to Vienna, Austria. I always enjoy the parts of the Race that take place in Europe for a number of reasons, mainly because the scenery is so incredible and there are fewer people (I don't even like to look at crowds), and the challenges always seem somehow more interesting than anywhere else.
• Jet and Cord screwed themselves AGAIN by booking a flight later than any other team; they opted for a flight leaving half an hour later that had only one connection, assuming that more connections increased their risk of delays. Unfortunately for them, the flight that the other 5 teams were on arrived without incident, and the Cowboys were immediately in last place.
• HOORAY! MORE PRODUCT PLACEMENT! Arriving in Vienna, the teams each got into a BRAND NEW FORD FOCUS and used the BRAND NEW FORD FOCUS rear-view camera to read a clue on the pavement behind them directing them to Schloss Schallaburg. Only Gary and Mallory had trouble with this, not realizing that they were supposed to look at the ground, and missing the clue entirely for a few minutes. Basically every team stopped and asked the same guy at a gas station for directions, and arrived at the castle without much trouble. At the castle they had to grab giant books indicating that they were to head to the National Library. Kent continued to prove that he's a fucking idiot by not realizing that a woman was a woman (to be honest, after looking at Kent for 5 seconds I'm not at all surprised by his mistake; HE looks like a woman, for God's sake).
• At the library (which was AWESOME and made me really want to live in Vienna), the teams were faced with a Detour: Long Hard Walk, in which they had to carry a couch across town, or Quick and Easy Meal, where they had to eat a giant plate of delicious-looking schnitzel in 12 minutes at the Wiener Riesenrad (a giant Ferris Wheel). The Detour actually enraged me, primarily because NONE of the three teams that tried the food challenge (Zev/Justin, Gary/Mallory, and Kisha/Jen) even came close to finishing it, and it was because they were doing it like GODDAMN MORONS. This isn't going to be my last rant about how stupid these teams are acting in this post, so strap yourselves in. This is a RACE. For a MILLION DOLLARS. And you're faced with an eating challenge. YOU DO NOT CUT UP YOUR FOOD AND EAT IT LIKE A FUCKING DAINTY PRINCESS. You pick up the food with your goddamn hands and shovel it into your mouth. Oh, you think you're going to puke? DO IT, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Jam your goddamn finger down your goddamn throat, puke that shit up, and then CONTINUE EATING. Whatever you do, DO NOT just lean back and moan about how full you are! It made absolutely no sense to me that NONE of these teams could do it. 12 minutes is PLENTY of time to eat that much food. Yes, your'e going to feel awful afterwards, and yes, you're probably going to throw up at some point, but in a race for a million dollars, isn't that something you're willing to do? Honestly.
• Kent continued to be the biggest bitch I've ever seen on the Race, constantly whining to Vyxsin about how heavy the couch was and dropping it multiple times. It's not just that he's acting like a 12-year-old girl on a regular basis, it's that he's doing it on NATIONAL TELEVISION, and his voice is so nasally and piercing that it makes me see red every time he speaks.
• Once the Detour was done, the rest of the episode was fairly straightforward. There was a boring Roadblock where one person had to dress up like a chimneysweep and sweep a chimney three times (the only entertaining part of this was when the woman giving instructions told Zev "Bigger, bigger!" and Zev came back with "That's what she said"). Zev and Justin came in first, and each won a BRAND NEW FORD FOCUS. The Globetrotters would have won, but made a wrong turn and came in second. Gary and Mallory were last, but were spared by an incredibly predictable non-elimination leg.
  
  
• The second episode led teams to the tiny country of Liechtenstein, and if you were offended by the cursing above, you should probably quit reading now, because I did nothing but yell at my TV for almost the entire hour.
• A Roadblock started the episode, with one team member having to ride a motorized bike equipped with an odometer the entire length of the country and then give the correct length (22km) to Olympic ski racer Marco Buchel. This would have been a good challenge and could have created a lot of drama if ALMOST EVERY TEAM HADN'T CHEATED. The racers were making mistakes left and right, from Jen losing her map to Flight Time taking a wrong turn, but none of it mattered to most of them. Jen showed up right behind Justin, and Justin decided it would be a great idea to yell his answer to Marco. Of course Jen overheard, saw it was correct, and gave the same answer. She then proceeded to give the answer to Flight Time, who then gave it to Gary (who had caught up after a pretty quick Speed Bump). Some of the other recaps I've read claim that Vyxsin got the right answer on her own, but I'm almost positive that she overheard it from someone else (she got completely lost on her way there; there's really just no way she figured it out on her own). The only team left out of the loop was the Cowboys, and this was infuriating (both because the Cowboys were my pick to win this season, and because YOU ARE IN A FUCKING RACE YOU GODDAMN IDIOTS! STOP SHARING YOUR FUCKING ANSWERS WITH EACH OTHER!). Jet had made a wrong turn and was unable to account for this when he calculated the distance, so he guessed 35km (which, to be fair, is a pretty embarrassing guess. It's so far off; the Cowboys just suck at directions). Once he gave the wrong answer, he had to ride all the way back to the start and try again, which may not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that it added an extra 44km to his trip, and the bikes didn't look like they went too fast, it probably put him at least half an hour behind everyone else.
• This is a ranting bullet, so if you don't like rants, skip it. Goddamn it, I'm really hating the camaraderie between teams this season. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with teams being friendly with one another; there's no reason why you would need to be mean to anyone in this Race. But everyone seems to be forgetting that it is a race. These other teams may be friends, but they're also competitors, and giving away answers is such a stupid fucking move that it's unreal to watch. I'm sure there's pressure, and it's uncomfortable to have someone ask you for an answer you don't want to give, but all you have to do is fucking say "No, we're in a Race. If I give you the answer, you'll probably catch up with me." The fact that you're ahead and that the other person is even having to ask for the answer means that YOU HAVE AN ADVANTAGE OVER THAT PERSON; GIVING THEM INFORMATION ELIMINATES THAT ADVANTAGE, YOU FUCKING CHILD. The Roadblock would have been infinitely more interesting if teams had not been allowed to share information; at least two of the other teams would have had to go back to the start like Jet did. I'd almost be inclined to say that the producers of the Race should outlaw sharing information like this, but I'm almost positive that would never happen.
• After the Roadblock, a bus/train trip took teams to Zernatt, Switzerland, where the Detour gave them the option of Wheeze (delivering 20 pieces of luggage to at least 5 different hotels) or Cheese (eating a pot of fondue cheese). Zev/Justin and Kisha/Jen chose Cheese, and I yelled at the TV some more when they took A GODDAMN HOUR to eat it (Zev and Justin did; Kisha and Jen quit after like 10 minutes and went to the other task). Again, this is a food challenge; I don't give a shit if you're throwing up all over the place, SHOVEL THAT GODDAMN CHEESE INTO YOUR MOUTH. Don't just dip your bread into it; fill your fucking glass with cheese and drink it!
• Despite some dramatic editing and a pretty serious error by the Globetrotters (they accidentally brought luggage for 6 different hotels, and then lost 2 of their luggage tickets somewhere along the way, thus causing them to have to re-deliver 2 pieces of luggage), it was fairly obvious that the Cowboys were not going to recover from the hole the Roadblock had put them into. There was a double U-Turn this leg, and although most teams opted not to use it (again, FUCKING STUPID. IT'S A GODDAMN RACE. FUCK THE OTHER TEAMS), the Globetrotters U-Turned the Cowboys, and that was all she wrote. Surprisingly (to me, because I'm a bad sport), the Cowboys went ahead and did the Cheese challenge anyway, even though they knew there was no way they weren't going to be eliminated. Again, because I'm a bad sport, I would have said "fuck it, just give me the 4-hour penalty; I'm not going to make myself feel like shit so I can be throwing up cheese while Phil eliminates me", but the Cowboys are much classier than I am. Perhaps if they had done the Cheese challenge instead, they might have been able to power through and finish more quickly, but alas, they did not. And so, my pick for the season (again) goes down in flames.
• Zev and Justin won yet another leg, and they are my new pick to win. It's surprising to me that despite the fact that they've won something like 4 legs this season, no one seems to be too worried about them. They are one of the most consistently strong teams left (the other being the Globetrotters, although it seems like Flight Time and Big Easy need help with quite a few of the puzzle tasks), and yet everyone is all buddy-buddy with them. It's annoying to watch, but I guess it's something that's kind of inherent in an all-star season; the teams already know each other and a lot of them are friends. I'd definitely like to see things get more cut-throat, but at this point I think Kisha and Jen are the only team that have that cut-throat nature left in them.
• Oh, I forgot. Goddamn Kent. That fucking whiny bitch complained his way through YET ANOTHER leg of the Race, and Vyxsin had to do 90% of the work for their team. The breaking point was after they'd finished the Wheeze challenge and were on their way back with the empty luggage cart; Kent whined that his legs hurt, so Vyxsin stopped the cart and KENT GOT IN AND LET HER PULL HIM BACK TO THE START OF THE CHALLENGE. For fuck's sakes man, you know that millions of people are seeing what a pussy you are on a weekly basis. Then again, the asshole clearly wears makeup, as well as a black-and-pink hoodie with cat ears. I'm sure he's not worried about people thinking he's a goddamn idiot.

And there you have it, readers. Another two in the bag. I kind of like this bullet-point format, so I may stick with that for a while (it's quicker to write, and I feel like very few of you actually care about The Amazing Race, so I may be wasting my time writing more in-depth recaps).

Stay tuned.