The Amazing Race Recap
By David Mumpower
March 23, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
We start tonight in the largest city in Siberia, specifically the coliseum there that is the largest theater in Russia. The bad news at the start of the show is that contestants have thrown some clothes back on. We've gone from thongs to parkas, and I'm certain the show's ratings are taking the appropriate hit for it. Mother/son tandem Margie and Luke are the first to depart at 12:18 a.m., and they discover they are being sent to India for the next leg of the race. A few minutes later, Victor and Tammy head to the airport. Out of the seven remaining teams, these are clearly the best thus far. They have won a combined 60% of the legs thus far with father/son duo Mel and Mike and the flight attendants being the other winners. How this happened with Christie and Jodi is one of the season's great mysteries to date.
The order of departures this week is the cheerleaders at 12:30 a.m. followed by Mel and Mike at 1:01 a.m., the stuntmen right on their heels at 1:02 a.m., the college athletes at 1:28 a.m. and the flight attendants bringing up the rear at 3:09 a.m., almost three full hours behind the team in first. The good news for our last place contestants is that there will be bunching as no flight leaves until 7 a.m.. The bad news is that they will have to complete a Speed Bump. This is a challenge in India that none of the other teams will perform; the women are being punished for their performance on the last leg that should have rightfully eliminated them. It is quite difficult to imagine them surviving this week. Someone else is going to have to lose a passport or something for this to happen. I used to say stuff like that as a joke until it actually happened last season.
We skip the airport drama this week and find the participants heading straight to a tree named Peepli Ka Pedh. I can't say I had ever thought to name a tree before. Since I'm currently looking out a window at about 20 of them, I find myself realizing that if I ever tried, it would be like the Seven Dwarves. I'd run out of names almost immediately and be forced to call one of the oak trees Doc. I'm pretty sure that if I did this, a room with rubber walls would be in my near future. Resolved: giving trees names is unwise.
The airport exodus in India is the usual frenzied sprint to find a cab. Victor and Tammy get out of there first but most of the teams have little difficulty with their departure. The exception is the father/son team of Mel and Mike. The first cab they dive in has a driver who is unaware of any named tree in the area. They ask him to unlock the trunk of the cab in order for them to retrieve their luggage and find another cab. Rather than acknowledge this request, the man vanishes from sight, stating that he will find out the location. Mel earns my respect by stating to the camera that the race is not important enough to justify dehumanizing the driver by yelling at him, something he will regret all day. The Amazing Race should put that on t-shirts and make contestants wear them each leg.
Those of us who have watched the seasons where participants went to India know what is in store for the next segment. This is the Slumdog Millionaire portion of the show, and I'm talking about the first half with the kids, not the parts with Dev Patel. The contestants see the grim side of life in India and it reduces more than one of them to tears. We'll skip ahead to the next portion rather than mock people for having emotions and a lack of awareness of foreign cultures. Having a Jai Ho earworm should be more than enough punishment for them anyway.
The next challenge sees a great deal of bunching at the start. All of the teams but one wind up on the same one-lane dirt road ordered in a row. Surprisingly, the one team is not Mel and Mike but the flight attendants instead. Seriously, how screwed are they that they can't even bunch properly when the producers try to give them an even chance again? Once the competent racers exit their vehicles, the contestants sprint to the proper area, only to find a pair of "mystic men" sitting by a red phone. None of them thinks through the oddity of that. The editing is a bit confused here as it is unclear why Tammy and Victor are able to make a phone call without the others seeing them. No matter the reason, they complete the challenge and make their getaway long before anyone else is done. The rest of them (painfully) slowly deduce what is required and the entirety of the group heads to Amber Parking, where they presumably will not pass go and will not collect $200.
Victor and Tammy are the first to discover Amber Parking is a maharajah fort where they will be asked to load and carry some food and water to care for camels. Even by The Amazing Race standards, this feels like pointless busy work. Before they can finish, the other teams arrive and all of the contestants wind up agreeing with me on the point. This segment is mainly focused upon shameless shenanigans including a pratfall from Tammy, who isn't even competing, a random camel herder getting kicked to the ground by his steed, and - easily the lowest point - one of the stuntmen doing some Lawrence of Arabia noise in a painfully awkward moment. The good news for the flight attendants is that they arrive right as Victor and Tammy are making their first place exit. This means they aren't that far behind anyone else, and the team that is Mel and Mike are in trouble since the older Mel is struggling in doing the challenge. Maybe the women can overcome their opponents to get a small lead before they have to complete their solo task.
Ha! Of course they didn't do that. In fact, the whole thing is an editing swerve as Mel is the second person to complete this task followed by the cheerleaders, Margie (whose opponents call her the Bionic Woman, apparently) and Luke, Kisha and Jen and the stuntmen. The flight attendants are in last place again and I'm starting to believe it was their sense of direction that got Jack, Kate and Sawyer stuck on that island. You'd think that their years of experience with travel would have made them experts at finding the best flight, understanding how to pick out the most knowledgeable cab driver and so forth but it's just not the case here. Mel and Mike had their luggage kidnapped yet they still ran circles around these women.
Threatening to lap the pack this week, Tammy and Victor are the first to discover the Detour for this leg. The two options are Movers and Shakers. In Movers, the competitors are asked to pedal a transportation bicycle for 1.5 miles. The problem is the bicycle is being used as a rickshaw filled with extraordinarily heavy barrels. Once they arrive at the destination, they must search through all of their barrels in order to find a small miniature, the proverbial needle in their several haystacks. That sounds terrible, but I'm not sure the other option is any better. In Shakers, contestants must put on a ceremonial costume (think the donkey costume at Halloween but with Mardi Gras colors), walk out into the streets and shake their groove thangs until they are given 100 rupees. While that's right at two dollars in US currency, it's quite a bit of money to attain in such a short period of time. Both options suck on this Detour.
Victor and Tammy instantly prove me wrong by shredding on the Shakers task. Perhaps aided by Tammy's slutty makeup drawing attention, they easily bring in 100 rupees before anyone else even shows up. They have absolutely torched the competition on this leg. Shakers proves to be the only choice for challengers. Every one of the first five teams chooses to dance for money, which must make Diablo Cody proud and probably a little bit threatened. The only team to choose Movers is the stuntmen, a choice immediately followed by the announcement of Jodi and Christie's Speed Bump. This leads me to conclude that they're going to edit it like a photo finish between those two teams, but it's readily apparent the flight attendants are going home tonight, barring something unforeseen. The speed bump involves the process of painting an elephant. I hope they name him Stampy.
While the flight attendants are lollygagging through another challenge, Victor and Tammy accept their second win of the season. Surprisingly, they are only tied with Margie and Luke for most wins thus far, but the brother/sister tandem has finished in the top three in five out of six legs. Whenever they have been out of Transylvania, they've been dominant. Meanwhile, Margie and Luke have a weird streak going where they finish only first or fourth. This week is no exception as that's exactly what they do.
Mel and Mike and Kisha and Jen arrive at Casa de Phil ahead of them with the cheerleaders behind them, leading to exactly what I had expected: faux-drama with the stuntmen going up against the flight attendants. The producers of the show catch a break as the flight attendants arrive right as Kisha and Jen depart, meaning they aren't THAT far behind, but even a needle in a haystack wouldn't take as long as they need. They would have beaten the men if not for the Speed Bump, but as it is, the stuntmen finish a few moments ahead of them and survive for another leg. With the elimination of the flight attendants, however, they became the clear choice as the worst remaining team, though.