The Amazing Race Recap
She's a Little Scared of Stick, but I Think She'll Be OK!
By David Mumpower
March 16, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
From Russia with love, that's where we begin today's episode. Specifically, we start at the Theater of Musical Comedy, which is presumably not a celebration of the career of Weird Al Yankovic since the place was founded during World War II. The first team to depart this week is the flight attendant tandem, which blows me away every time I think about it. They exit at 12:34 PM, presumably from an alternate dimension where up is down, Bizarro Superman speaks nonsensically, and the Pussycat Dolls are talented singers who would never use their sexuality to garner attention.
The destination for the early part of this episode's challenge is the marvelously named Novosibirsk. Their transportation for this leg is the Transsiberian railroad, meaning the teams must be on the lookout for Ben Kingsley's bad acting. I've seen the movie. They should take that threat seriously. His fake Russian accent alone could make your ears bleed. Once they arrive in the city that has never been pronounced correctly by a foreigner, the contestants must seek out (and I quote) Punkt Tehnicheskogo Osmotra. Surprisingly, this is not a trendy Eastern European nightclub but instead some sort of small car graveyard. There are about 50 cars in the lot and all I can think is that at 6'4", I couldn't fit in any of them.
Kisha and Jen, the college athlete sisters, are the next team to depart at 12:36 PM. The fact that they were only a couple of minutes out of first place last week also surprises me, although I have felt all along that they were probably stronger competitors than they had shown at the start of the race. They seem smart and, more importantly, even tempered, which is important for success in this competition. Unfortunately, the two teams in the lead catch a bad break once they arrive at the train station. They are informed that the next train departure isn't for another ten hours, meaning that all leads will be negated. Of course, this is a bit of karma since similar circumstances in the past are the primary reason both teams are still in the competition. This makes discussions about departure times a bit irrelevant. In fact, the show cuts straight to 10:20 PM rather than show all of the fluff, a good decision they hadn't been making in seasons past.
The train's comfort level on a scale from Slumdog Millionaire's depressing parts to Bill Gates' nicest house falls in the range of elementary school bus. Everyone is miserable with my consolation particularly going out to Kisha and Jen. Their feet hang off their bedding area and their heads are less than a foot from the ceiling. They won't be eating a can of sardines any time soon due to the sympathy pains. The only noteworthy aspect of the train ride is that Mike, the bastard who made me suffer through Nacho Libre, takes a moment to celebrate Luke's mean streak during the prior leg. Upon realizing that the other team would never know who made them repeat a task, Luke chose to penalize Amanda and Kris. This heady strategic move was immediately decried as shady by both of them, but it proved effective and savvy when the strong players were eliminated from competition. Mike says that Luke is creating a new reality show archetype, "the sinister deaf kid". That's infinitely funnier than any joke in Nacho Libre.
The taxi cab ride to the location finds cheerleaders Cara and Jaime acting like the ugly Americans that they are. Their driver is smoking a cigarette since this is legal and culturally acceptable to do so where they are. Because they are bitchy people who want to inflict their beliefs on everyone, however, they immediately start bitching to the camera about it. Finishing the cliché, one of them (I really struggle to tell these two apart) blithely states that she will smile to the taxi driver, hiding what's on her mind behind her grin. At this point, the dude says "Thank you" in perfect English, indicating that he has understood every thoughtless word that came out of her mouth.
The detour this week presents a pair of fascinating options. Russian Bride requires a team to drive one of those clunker cars called a Lada to an apartment complex where they pick up a bride, chauffeur her to a particular church, watch the service, and take a wedding photo, at which point the groom will hand them their next clue. The two challenging aspects of this choice are that the cars are all four-speed transmissions in an age where few people can work a gear shift and the navigation of the unfamiliar area of Siberia. The latter could prove particularly challenging if the weather gets too snowy. Symmetrically, the other challenge involves using a snow plow to maneuver around an obstacle course, cleaning up snow all the way. This one seems like the much quicker choice on the surface, but it could prove quite challenging in execution. I'd be surprised if many teams picked the Russian brides, though.
There is a perception that Victor and Tammy are the Rob and Amber of this season. This is highlighted during a sequence wherein they drive away from the cluebox at the same time as Margie and Luke and Cara and Jaime. To Margie, this seems to mean that the three teams are working together at the moment, a piece of logic I simply do not understand. The mother/son tandem are clearly unified with the cheerleaders, and those two grow annoyed when something happens at a gas station. Cara and Jaime ask the attendant for directions to their next location. Margie shouts to the women that she will wait for them, presuming that Victor and Tammy will follow suit. Instead, they get instructions on how to proceed from a taxi driver who is also at the gas station. Seeing that Cara is still engaged in conversation, they decide to head toward the next clue rather than wait on the others. Margie sees this as unforgivable behavior that demonstrates that they are in this race for themselves and will use the kindness of fellow competitors against them. While I like Margie and Luke better, this is simply asking too much of Victor and Tammy. If you aren't working with them, why should you expect them to wait on you, Margie? It just doesn't make any sense.
Out of the first four teams (the three mentioned above plus this tandem), Mike and Mel are the only duo to choose the bride option. The last three teams at the moment are Kisha and Jen, who also want Russian brides (and who can blame them?), followed by the stunt-brothers and the flight attendants (normalcy has returned after last week). First versus last doesn't matter much since there isn't a lot of separation between the seven teams yet. Christie and Jodi become the third team to choose the Russian bride option while everyone else does their Mr. Plow impersonation. They immediately get in trouble when they pick the wrong group of people to ask for instructions. A bunch of men who "reek of vodka" gladly offer them directions that seem almost certain to lead them straight onto the set of Hostel 3. The ladies realize instantly that they are probably being pranked and one of them summarizes the entire conversation thusly: "That guy touched my butt and asked me my name." How this isn't the title of the episode, I have no idea.
The bad news for the flight attendants is that the snowplow challenge appears to be a breeze. Absolutely no one fails to complete the assignment and it appears to take just a few minutes to finish. The good news for the flight attendants is that Kisha and Jen are having a bad day. After having to drive in first gear the entire way to the apartment complex, they pick up their bride and head to the church. At this point, the editing crew starts giving them the playful music reserved for people who have become something of a laughing stock. Out of the teams that have gotten the wacky shenanigans ditty thus far, only the stuntmen have survived. Meanwhile, the flight attendants have gotten their act together a bit and also grabbed a bride, whom they inform, "We look so gross for a wedding. Sorry about our dress. If we really came to your wedding, we would look nicer." The people who decided to name this episode, "She's a Little Scared of Stick, but I Think She'll Be OK!" really blew it here. There were much better options on the table.
The first team to plow the virgin snow (Beavis and Butthead alert) are Tammy and Victor. Their next clue informs them they are headed to something that is absolutely impossible to pronounce that we're going to call Bibliotekah, the largest library in Siberia. I don't think the actual name of it can be pronounced using the English alphabet, but Victor sure tries, God love him. According to my TiVo, it legitimately takes him 13 seconds to spit out all the words. This is exactly why college Russian Literature classes are always empty.
The hits just keep on coming for Kisha and Jen. While trying to get their bride to the church on time, they forget to put their trust in God and man or something. They wind up flooding the engine of their car although I have to think that all of that first gear driving has probably led to some grinding of the gears as well. Amazingly, they're not having the worst luck out of the stragglers. The flight attendants have taken their bride to the wrong church, which cannot be a good sign of luck for her marriage. The groom is probably thrilled to hear that he may be getting out of this scot-free, though.
The final road block of this leg provides a couple of surprises. The first is that the cheerleaders have caught up with the brother/sister duo, which means the mother/son tandem is close behind as well. The second is that The Amazing Race wants its contestants to get nekkid this year. Ratings must be down or something. This event requires one of the two players to strip down to their underwear and run about a mile and a half, a "Russian marathon". If you go to the show's official web site today, you will see that the front page is comprised almost exclusive of shots of the women who chose to participate. This competition turned into soft core pornography so gradually I hardly noticed. Then again, curiously absent from these pictures is Phil himself, who does strip down to his basic Phil-ness to demonstrate the assigned task. (But don't fear - we've remedied that situation at the top of the page.)
This leg has been unusual in that there hasn't been a lot of opportunity for teams to catch up from significant disadvantages. Simply by choosing the brides option, teams have automatically placed themselves in jeopardy with little chance to catch up. A 1.4 mile run is the second half of the competition. The most a team could make up is a few minutes. Out of the frontrunners, Luke, Tammy and Cara do the jogging. Tammy passes Cara, who starts walking. The cheerleader is more concerned about how many hoots and hollers she gets (she actually says this), and is depressed right up until a man comes up and hits on her, at this point giving her impossibly low self-esteem a temporary boost. Of course, that's not even the weirdest concern out of the remaining contestants. Mark the stuntman is focused upon the length of his beard "I'm a Cossack now!" than he is on finishing the leg. This is not the most driven group of contestants the show has had.
Among the two bride drivers (from the Tiger Woods collection), Kisha and Jen sneak ahead of their competitors, who have gotten their own "God, they're hopeless" medley along the way. The top two teams from last week are back to reality this leg and it's readily apparent one of them is going to wind up losing. While they're struggling, the Margie and Luke win the leg, their second victory of the season thus far. Tammy and Victor finish second followed by the cheerleaders in third, Mel and Mike in fourth and the stuntmen in fifth. Reversing the first two teams, this is roughly the way I would rank them thus far in the competition. I'm actually quite disappointed in the stuntmen thus far. They don't seem to be playing to win, as it were. Meanwhile, I'm expecting the cheerleaders to turn heel on Margie and Luke in a few episodes leading up to a tag team main event bout against them at Wrestlemania 25.
Kisha and Jen arrive at the striptease first, which is horrible news for Christie and Jodi. There is no way either of these women is going to win a foot race against a college athlete. Both teams experience underwear issues, too. Jen has to borrow someone else's underwear since she doesn't wear any (how YOU doin'?) while Christie is thronged and strong and dying to get the friction on. Cara must have been driven crazy with jealousy while watching the episode because Jen and Jodi both got a LOT more car honks for their attire than the cheerleader had. She managed only one creepy only guy who was probably coming straight out of an adult bookstore when he started hitting on her. Meanwhile, Cara got her butt grabbed earlier in the leg and almost started several traffic accidents while she was out thong-jogging. I can't really blame the catcallers either. I have to say that I like Jodi better as a person now that I've seen her jogging in her underwear.
Unsurprisingly, Jen is the first one to the finish line, rocking a stranger's underwear in style. Hey, I've been there. But I digress. The point is that the sisters survive the leg by finishing in second to last place and probably by quite a bit. I get the feeling that the editing was misleading here. Jodi seemed to be running as if she knew there was no cause for haste. She even puts on some leggings to keep her feet warmer. Of course, none of this matters when Phil offers the swerve I was expecting the entire leg. Even though the flight attendants are finally the last team to arrive after being oh so close several times before, this is a non-elimination leg. They will have to perform an additional challenge during the next leg, but no one gets eliminated from the competition this week. But CBS does get panty-induced ratings. That's all that matters here.