The Amazing Race 14, Episode 1 Part 2

Don't Let a Cheese Hit Me

By David Mumpower

February 17, 2009

These smart people went on Amazing Race to 'test their relationship'. Brilliant.

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Up in the front of the race, Mel and Mike interrupt Victor's strange attempt at spy games. Knowing when a train is leaving and where it is going, he inexplicably tells the other two teams who are with his sister and him that he doesn't know if they are in the right spot. Moments later on the train, Mel indicates he has a very good read on Victor by saying, "Watch those guys. We're watching you. It's not that we don't trust you. It's just that we don't trust you." Good call, dude.

The next segment is an exercise in Three Stooges physics. Interlaken, Switzerland is the home of gigantic blocks of stackable cheese. Apparently. These 50 pound mini-Velveeta factories are produced at the top of a hill then carried down a jagged slope by people using what I may only describe as inverse rickshaws. As Reagen Sulewski points out, the set-up begs the question of why they didn't just make the cheese at the bottom of the hill, but that's interjecting logic into a situation utterly lacking it otherwise. What the contestants need to make happen is this. They must carry four blocks of cheese down from the top of the hill to the bottom. Should their cheap wooden carriage devices break, they may not be replaced. If said cheese escapes, they must chase it as gravity carries it far, far away. Knowing nothing else about the challenge, you should instantly realize that all of the devices are going to break and the cheese is going to roll for a while. In fact, I find myself wondering what sort of damage a block of 50-pound cheese could do if it were traveling 15 miles per hour downhill and suddenly smacked someone in the side of the head. And I am clearly not the only one who had that thought cross their mind as poor Mel plaintively begs his son, "Don't let a cheese hit me," thereby giving the episode its name.




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Why is Mel so worried about unseen kamikaze cheese attacks? Like most contestants during this challenge, the older man experiences difficulty in standing while traversing the mountain side. In fact, he has to drop back on the seat of his pants and butt-crawl all the way down the hill. Any challenge that is crafted in such a way that this is understandable strategy is innately flawed yet here we are. It is the cruelest concept since last year's hurled-paint exercise that saw a contestant fall victim to rainbow bombardment from menacing strangers. Similarly, this challenge is carefully watched by cheering locals whose main pleasure comes from the breaking of the rickshaws, the tripping of the contestants and the chasing of the cheese. Admittedly, I got a pretty big kick out of the cheese-chasing as well, but the rest of it is bunk. This is an ill-defined competition that universally humiliates its participants.

Among the earlier challengers, Margie and Luke are the first duo to complete the challenge. Victor and Tammy and Mark and Michael almost simultaneously finish up behind them in a battle for second place with Mel and Mike currently in fourth. Everyone else is bunched on the course, fighting the wayward cheese.


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