New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Amazing Race fans, watch for our quiz, How Well Do You Know: The Amazing Race 14, to be published the morning after the series finale!

---

Previously on The Amazing Race, we learned that deaf people don't like being called bitches. We learned women don't like being elbowed in the face. And we learned that four adults have all behaved like tempestuous three-year-olds when someone has the audacity to challenge them regarding their actions. The good news is that The Amazing Race is not the sort of show that constantly drudges up faux drama from previous episodes, so I sincerely doubt that the Luke/Margie feud with Kisha & Jen gets mentioned any further. I almost typed that without going into a giggle loop. Almost. The over/under on the number of times this gets mentioned during tonight's episode is half a dozen. I'll take the over.

Lost in the shuffle of last week's bitch-off was that three teams finished at almost the same moment. This means that only two minutes separates the first place team, Kisha & Jen, from the third place team, Margie & Luke, with Victor & Tammy in the middle of all the bitches. While it may not be a huge deal, devil cheerleader Jaime and angel cheerleader Cara are facing a 22-24 minute deficit against all other teams. Given that everyone is leaving between 1:48 and 2:12, there almost certainly will not be any bunching this leg...unless they fly somewhere.

Phil announces that teams will fly a thousand miles to Beijing, China, where they will receive a night time massage at an oriental massage parlor. This scenario is exactly what got Jerry Rice in trouble back in the day (google Jerry Rice massage parlor if you're curious). The catch here is that a bunch of sadists run this massage parlor and they want to punish the feet of some spoiled, lazy Americans. I'm not really a foot guy, so I struggle to envision how someone could administer a beating through that area of the body, but anything that makes Jaime suffer is aces by me.

53 seconds into the episode, it begins. Jen says, "I think there is no reason to harp on things that have happened in the past. The incident that happened with Margie & Luke was in the past." Kisha adds, "You know, we're going to move on. We're over it." The house won't be taking bets on whether this is true since it's such a transparent lie. This is one of those things that contestants say during downtime that they immediately forget had been discussed once they are back in the heat of battle. So, we're a minute and 15 seconds into the episode and we've already had one mention of the feud as well as one bald-faced lie. You really have to hand it to Alexander Pope. He pre-supposed the entirety of reality television when he wrote Rape of the Locke.





The team that was supposed to be the villains this season, Victory & Tammy, begins another joyous day in a country where they recently vacationed. As both of them display their dimples, the smiles show a pair of contestants who are serene about the competition and their performance to date. It's rare when a team genuinely enjoys the show the way they have, and it must be infuriating to the other players. This is the point in the show where they announce they were recently in Beijing for The Olympics, meaning that while it's a big city and they couldn't have possibly navigated more than a small portion of it, they still have a large competitive advantage over the others. Okay, even more so than normal.

Continued:       1       2       3       4