The Amazing Race Recap

By Daron Aldridge

March 5, 2012

They should star in an update of the update of Parent Trap.

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Let’s jump on it and see what the third leg of The Amazing Race has in store for us. In the immortal words of Nirvana, “Here we are now…Entertain us.”

First, the teams are staying in South America, so forgive me for assuming that South America’s love affair with Blonde Rachel & Dave will continue with another first place finish. Even though our Army of Two is aware that this puts a target on their back, they vow to continue racing just as competitively.

Their compatriots in the race are Border Patrol Art & JJ, who express an appreciation for how they are racing and the fact that both have jobs that "protect our country." It’s like a Jingoism Brotherhood in the eyes of our Border Patrol racers. From a race perspective, though, JJ is thrilled that their next destination is in Paraguay, another Spanish-speaking country.

Both arrive at the airport and spy an 8:40 a.m. flight to Asuncion, Paraguay, but standby list is the only option. Unfortunately, all the other teams arrive with enough time to do the same. The odds of all the teams getting on board are slim to none and the resolute ticket agents shoot down each sneaky team that tries to convince them to switch names around or overlook the other teams' priority listings.

Team Un-Fed’s encouragement to the other teams to put their names on the waiting list does not sit well with the Border Patrol. JJ understandably doesn’t want to carry the others to the end but in fairness, there wasn’t that high of a chance that the other teams weren’t going to notice the standby flight. And the last time I checked, no team can have ownership of a standby list so other teams can’t try it. It’s not as if JJ could lick the list like the last donut, just so someone else can't have it.

No sooner than Army of Two and Border Patrol finish celebrating getting their standby seats, then Team Un-Fed and Kentucky are also ticketed for the flight. They are elated, or as Un-Fed’s Jamie graphically says, “I think I just sh-- myself.” Not very appropriate language for a fake Kindergarten teacher, eh?




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With these four teams on a flight heading to Paraguay, the remaining five teams must settle for a flight that will arrive nearly two hours later. Each team is justifiably frustrated. Well, I assume they all are because we haven’t heard from or barely even seen cousins Kerri & Stacy.

Asuncion welcomes the first flight and its mad dash to the cab stand. The teams have to locate their clue at a storage yard for various items like slides, playground equipment and barbeque grills.

Art & JJ arrive at the site and find the clue first inside one of the grills. A Paraguay Detour is ahead and it involves either Stacked Up or Strung Out. Stacked Up requires the teams to drive to a fruit market and assemble a watermelon pyramid with a base that is 10-melons-by-10-melons wide. So the base alone on this crazy task is 100 watermelons and it goes up 10 melons high. Dang. I haven’t even heard what Strung Out is and I would have already prepaid my taxi driver to take me there over the melons.

So in reality, Strung Out is only slightly more appealing as the teams have to string a harp with 36 strings, so that it is ready for tuning. So, the tasks could be renamed: Impossible or Near-Impossible.

The insanity is somehow contagious because all four teams on the first flight independently choose Stacked Up. I swear I can see that two-hour head start on the other teams evaporate before my eyes, unless at least one of them wises up and switches tasks. For the first couple of layers of the pyramid, all the teams are upbeat, hustling and making progress. It must be hot out there, if you have pilot Dave complaining of the heat and he just completed a yearlong tour in Iraq.

Their hustle needs more bustle because, unbeknownst to them, the second flight has landed.

For the first time in the Race, we get a glimpse at the cracks in the Army of Two’s team dynamic. Because the married couple had been apart for so long, tension is coming to a head with this task as they start to snap as each other.


Continued:       1       2       3       4       5

     


 
 

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