Amazing Race Recap
Our Parents Will Cry Themselves to Death
By Kim Hollis and David Mumpower
April 19, 2009
Despite the renegade bird, Victor & Tammy finish ahead of Margie & Luke because the mother and son's boat driver just decides to sit in the middle of the lake for some reason. Once they finish, all four of the teams that matter are in their cabs, and Kisha & Jen are continuing to bitch about Luke & Margie and vice-versa. Seriously, if this is all you have that passes for drama, your television show is pathetic. We're sick to death of the whole thing and we're only a half hour into the show.
Back to the actual race, at the Ancient South Gate, the Detour gives teams the option between Choreography and Calligraphy. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. On the one hand, they must learn a dance, while the other task requires them to copy some intricate characters. In the case of Margie & Luke, choreography isn't even an option since they have to be able to hear the music in order to dance along with it. That seems a little unfair to us. We're sure Jen would just say that it's karma.
In fact, Jaime & Cara are the only ones to choose Choreography, and it does seem like they ought to have a natural advantage thanks to their experience as cheerleaders. In the description of the tasks, Phil tells us that Calligraphy could prove to be problematic since the characters are fairly complex and it might be easy to make a mistake. However, with Victor & Tammy leading the group of three in the calligraphy challenge, they all work together to blow through it. Jaime & Cara genuinely struggle with the dance challenge. They're clearly not doing something right, as they seem to be several beats off the other dances. Twice they are told that they are doing something incorrectly. Jaime immediately gets annoyed with the judges because "they don't speak English" and they decide to move over to the other challenge. Perhaps this would be a bad time to point out to Jaime that more than two times as many people speak Mandarin than speak English. Maybe we shouldn't bring that up.
Once teams have finished with the Detour, they must travel by foot to Banyan Lake and find the Sun and Moon Pagodas, which will lead them to their Pit Stop. It's going to be a three-way race between the teams that opted first for the Calligraphy challenge, and Jen & Kisha barely arrive in first. They don't care that they're getting a prize or anything, just that they beat Margie & Luke. It's going to be a hostile, hostile race between these two teams as we approach end game. Kisha & Jen do win a trip to Barbados, which obviously means that karma is on their side for some reason.
As all three teams stand on the mat together, Tammy & Victor try to be upbeat and positive. Phil notes that the competition seems to be getting more intense, and Victor says, "It's good, spirited, fun competition." Kisha & Jen reply, "No it's not." Margie signs to Luke not to say anything, but he is angry. Let's just say that the situation escalates significantly. All four are finding reasons to be mad at each other. Margie accuses both Jen and Kisha of laughing at Luke when he starts signing angrily. Phil says that he doesn't believe they meant it that way, and they probably didn't, but it's just a bad, awkward situation. We feel very badly for Victor & Tammy, who have both been making a concerted effort to be upbeat and positive and are stuck in the middle of the whole thing.
A little while later, Jaime & Cara finally finish the Choreography challenge, and they make their way to the Pit Stop. When Phil tells them that they are team number four, they ask if there were five teams in this leg. They were surprisingly upbeat either way, though.
Of course, this means that Team Bumble is finally eliminated from the race. We're not sure why the show had to waste our time keeping them on for another week. It effectively meant that we had two episodes where the final result was completely unimportant.
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