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

As the teams leave the pit stop and head on their two hour cab ride to Ho Chi Minh City, an emotional Marcy describes her father's experience of being shot down in Vietnam but persevering through it so he could be rescued. She is clearly moved to be here and she says that she wants to take it all in. Each season, I actually enjoy seeing these competitors slow down long enough to appreciate these places, because to paraphrase Marcy, you never know if you will be back here. I would hope that I'd do the same if I ever got to be on this show.

Only an hour and 15 minutes separate the first and last teams' pit stop departure times, so a major boneheaded move by anyone could doom them.

As the Amazing Race caravan of cabs arrives in Ho Chi Ming City, Flight and Easy are the first to get the clue from the dragon, followed quickly by Matt and Gary and then Zev and Justin. The unconventional clue (the producers love keeping these people on their toes) is a bullet that must be unscrewed to find a single stamp featuring the Ho Chi Minh City post office.

Matt and Gary reactively decide to run to the post office when a local tells them it is only a kilometer away. Whoops, that isn't right and sorry, my fellow Americans, you can't blame the metric system with this error rather the guy with no sense of distance. They head back to the cab to hopefully catch up with the others.

It's Detour time: Child's Play or Word Play. For Child's Play, the teams have to navigate a public park pulling a large concrete animal and collecting five balloons from around the park. For Word Play, they go to a hotel overlooking a traffic circle, have to find six Vietnamese characters on vehicles or drivers in traffic, then unscramble the letters for a common Vietnamese word and they can get a local to help. If it's me, I am going with Child's Play because it's clearly the more straightforward option. Word Play seems too convoluted even in this oversimplified explanation.

Flight and Easy are the first at the Detour, choose Child's Play and make steady progress. Fresh out of the "friend zone," newly dating couple Meghan and Cheyne retrieve the bullet clue from the dragon and head to the post office.

Congestion at the dragon clue is up next with brothers Sam and Dan, Lance and Keri, our elder statespeople Marcy and Ron, and poker girls Tiffany and Maria. One by one they get their bullet clue and are off to the post office...well, not everyone.

At this point, everyone leaves the dragon, figuring out that the stamp is in the bullet, except Lance and Keri. The Street Lawyer frantically and repetitively yells outside "Where's the clue? Where's the clue?" Keri isn't much assistance either as they berate one another about finding the clue. I defended Keri before but she has turned out to be as grating as he is abrasive. Thanks for the drama; we can take a commercial break now.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5