The Amazing Race 13, Episode 3
Did You Push My Sports Bra Off the Ledge?
By Reagen Sulewski
October 17, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Christy accuses Starr of pushing her sports bra off a ledge, for reasons undetermined. Mmm, tasty, tasty paranoia. Although Starr denies it (cause really, why admit it even if you had done something as insane and futile as this), Christy is not dissuaded and puts on her best "oh, it's already been broughten" face. I feel dumber for having typed all this.
Ken and Tina, Bride of Skeletor, head off first and journey to La Paz, Bolivia, which at 12,000 feet above sea level, laughs at Denver's puny altitude. Once they get there, they have to find the statue of Simon Bolivar and get that morning's newspaper to find their next clue.
Ken and Bill are second out of the gate, and emphasize their strength, that of being able to "step back and analyze the situation, instead of just rushing in." Remember this quote.
Terence and Sarah are third away, with Sarah just now grasping that this is in fact a competition and not a popularity contest. Hey, welcome to leg three! It's killing me that these motards are actually doing well.
Aja and Ty and Toni and Dallas are bo-ring and the pretty teams haven't done anything annoying yet. Let's move on.
Andrew and Dan puts on a brave face about being physically competitive, but let's face it – they're schlubs. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but they're also dumb. That's not a good combo for Team Flounder.
They're one up on Marisa and Brooke, who are too dumb to even know that being dumb would be a problem. Coming in second to last twice in a row is really not a good sign.
The flight to La Paz is wholly unremarkable and all the teams have to wait at the Bolivar statue overnight. We're treated to the sight of all the women grooming themselves the next morning, and Nick making a peace overture to Kelly and Christy, which roughly translates as "I know you're both crazy, but can we not directly fight each other?" Unfortunately for Nick, the divorcees vote to remain crazy.
There's a feeding frenzy when the newspapers arrive, as the teams scour the classified ads until they find one for a hat shop. Andrew and Dan find it first, but fail their entrance exam for spy school by yelling out the destination to their cab driver. The Ken and Tina/Nick and Starr alliance becomes rather formal as Ken pulls the other team along as soon as they find the clue. The other teams follow along shortly after (with Kelly and Christy reciting their clue in unison, apparently having learned their lesson), though Marissa and Brooke gesticulate wildly at the strange symbols on the paper, attempting to puzzle out their meaning.
After receiving their hat, the teams then receive the clue for the Detour, which has them choose between rounding up members of a band, and traveling across town on a bicycle that the Flintstones would reject as primitive. Notably, the teams are not allowed to take a taxi to their Detour location, something that Terence and Sarah and Mark and Bill (way to step back and reconsider!) do not heed. Team Co-Dependent notices this and turns around, but the Brainiacs travel on blissfully unaware.
The split seems to be about half and half for the choice of Detour, but with both Detours being relatively physical, teams are really feeling the altitude. The bikes handle worse than shopping carts and the streets are all cobbled, so honestly, as slow as the band members are walking, it might actually be the better choice.
At the end of this Detour is a U-Turn, which would send a team of their choice back to do the other Detour choice. It's early in the race, so in theory, enmity should be low between teams... but here we are. For some reason, this and the Yield consistently get treated as dirty play, as if following the rules of the game was wrong somehow. But teams never quite use it properly to deliver the knockout blow to another team trailing them, so that could be part of it. They can't get revenge on you if you're out of the race.
Having to interact with the bands causes some of our first incidents of the universal language of "Amazing Race-ese", i.e. Spanglicized English. At least they're in the right country.
The U-Turn proves exceedingly unpopular to use as expected, but one team comes close – Nick and Starr attempt to convince Aja and Ty to do their dirty work for them by sending Kelly and Christy back. Have some guts, man. Christy becomes her own team's delay, by crashing her bike into a building.
The teams have to head out to a small town outside of La Paz, where they'll have to participate in the Bolivian version of WWE Smackdown, fighting against women wrestlers, or Cholitas, for their Roadblock. Thrown into a ridiculous costume, they'll have to perform a six-item routine in the ring. Ken and Tina are there first, and Ken is thrown for a loop when he realizes he's fighting a girl. But hey, think about it this way – you're going to be wrestling a girl while wearing spandex and you won't have to pay for it!
Ken does pretty well, and his athletic training comes in handy. If Tina's face were still capable of expression, she'd be proud of him. They then are sent to the Pit Stop, a park overlooking most of the city.
Some teams' lack of physical fitness starts to bite them here, as Mark proves to be fairly uncoordinated in the ring and gets his fatass sent back to wrestling school. Marisa also bombs out on her first try, and Toni and Dallas breeze by these teams into second place. Mark fails for a second time, and it's looking pretty bad for them – they don't even know they've screwed up yet!
Meanwhile, Ken and Tina arrive at the Pit Stop and are greeted by a woman with a truly impressive hat. Children could take shade under it. They're first there, and are given a prize of a trip to Cabo San Lucas, which I hope can be taken separately. Although, credit where it's due, Tina was tolerable this week. Toni and Dallas come in for second, and have gone three weeks without doing anything notable, which may be a record.
With several other teams now well through the Roadblock, it's down to a race between Mark and Bill, Terence and Sarah and Kelly and Christy to not be eliminated. The taxi journey for them, as well as well as the middle of the pack teams, proves to be surprisingly impactful, with Terence and Sarah somehow going from eighth to third in the span of minutes. I think they used a portal gun.
Marisa and Brooke are fourth, with Aja and Ty, Nick and Starr and Andrew and Dan making it in for fifth through seventh. Mark and Bill arrive at the mat in second-to-last, but now must serve a 30 minute penalty for being idiots, something they've just now realized. Kelly and Christy aren't bad enough to screw up this opportunity, and sneak in for eighth place by those two sweetest words in the English language, "De" "Fault". I suppose it qualifies as irony that they survive because someone else read their clue wrong.
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