The Amazing Race All-Stars Epsiode Five

By Stephanie DeGateo

March 26, 2007

This is a rat, not Mirna.

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Welcome to Episode 1 of the Post-RA era of The Amazing Race All Stars. The elimination of Rob and Amber has resulted in Charla and Mirna crowing and, I'm sure, the producers bumming. The remaining teams are at the "end of the world" which is the furthest point in Argentina before one reaches Antarctica. Oswald and Danny leave first at 12:02 a.m. and rip open the first clue. It sends the teams to the Marshall Glacier, where they will find an avalanche beacon. This beacon will direct the teams to...another beacon (this one buried in the snow).

Each of the teams follow Ozzy and Danny to the Glacier, with Charla and Mirna, who got to the pit stop just before Rob and Amber, leaving at 2:41 a.m. Any lead that the front teams had is wiped away when the chair lift that is to take the teams up to the Glazier area is closed until 8 a.m. Oswald and Danny and Eric and Danielle, the first teams to arrive, go off to a hotel. Bill and Joe stay at the lift, becoming the first team up the Glacier. As they wait for the lift to open, Team Guido and Teri and Ian have a VERY disturbing conversation about underwear. Joe states that he and Bill are wearing thongs, though they admit "they sometimes give you wedgies." Really, there are no teams on this race whose underwear choices I care to know about, but Joe and Bill are really high on my list of teams whose underwear choices I truly don't want to know about.

Bill and Joe's camping out pays off, as they are the first team to find the buried beacon and the accompanying clue. The teams are now directed to fly to Maputo, Mozambique. They must book a flight through a travel agent. The teams have been booked by the producers on a late flight out, but are able to find an earlier flight to the extent one is available. The beacon task is not difficult if (a) you actually take the homing beacon up the Glacier (which Dustin and Kandice fail to do or (b) you are not Oswald and Danny. For inexplicable reasons, Ozzy and Danny have extreme problems finding the clue, so much so that despite the fact that Dustin and Kandice have to go back down the Glacier to get the beacon, they finish the task before Oswald and Danny.

All these problems are for naught as all the teams manage to book themselves on the same, earlier flight to Mozambique. Team Guido takes time out in the airport to visit the Duty-Free shop to douse themselves with fragrances – though the quality is questionable, as Bill declares that some of the colognes smell like French whores. Thongs and eau de French whore...why can't these guys be straight, they are so yummy!

Once at the Maputo airport, the teams are directed to a car with a driver. They are to be driven to Apopo Training Field. The trip there results in one of the stupidest fights ever aired on television – Eric and Danielle attempt to get their driver to speed up and pass Bill and Joe. They don't actually pass, but it pisses Team Guido off and they confront Eric and Danielle with a warning to "watch your speed." Eric informs Bill and Joe that he was just playing with them...they weren't really going to pass. This leads Joe to warn Eric to "watch his jokes." Huh?




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At the Apopo Training Field the teams get their Roadblock clue. The chosen team member has to hold a leash which is on the neck of a giant rat. Yes...a RAT. It seems that these rats have been trained to sniff out landmines. In this task, the rats are to sniff out a deactivated landmine which contains the clue. While it is interesting that rats can be trained to sniff out mines; but the task itself didn't really require the team members to do anything other than call over a minefield worker who digs up the clue for them. Joe, who takes the clue for Team Guido, finishes first and gets the clue, which requires the teams to be driven 50 miles back to Maputo to find a building designed by Gustave Eiffel. Of course someone makes the obligatory "you dirty rat" comment (thanks Ian!) and each of the teams are off. Charla and Mirna leave last, but ultimately this doesn't affect them one bit.

There are two big separation points between the teams in this leg. First, there were two ways to Maputo according to a sign the teams encounter on their way from the rat task. They can either go straight or turn left. The teams who go straight get to the clue box much faster than the teams that turn left. The second and much more significant separation point was the choice of detours. The teams must choose between Pamper, where the teams must give manicures for meticals (the Mozambique currency) in a marketplace or Porter, where the teams must fill up ten 45 pound bags, tie them up and deliver one bag to an address in the city. The teams that choose the manicure task finish one, two, and three. And just to demonstrate that this task was the way to go, Teri and Ian, who got lost on the way to the clue box and then stumbled upon the marketplace while looking for the coal task, came in third. They were definitely behind Bill and Joe and Danny and Oswald, who go directly to the coal task first, yet manage to check in before both teams.

Charla and Mirna, however, finish the manicure task first and checked in at Fortaleza, a fort in the city, for their first number one finish ever. Dustin and Kandice check in as Team #2, while Teri and Ian are Team #3. The coal teams then start checking in. Danny and Oswald, sweaty and covered in coal, approach the mat and proceed to chase Phil around the mat in an attempt to hug him. The sound editors really needed to pull out the Benny Hill music for that little scene. When Phil finally checks them in, he expresses his surprise that Danny and Ozzy didn't choose the manicure task. Danny retorts that they "came to win...we didn't come to sissify." Awesome! I need to find a way to work sissify into my vocabulary.

Bill and Joe (who at one point was sporting what looked like a Hitler moustache given the way the coal covered his face) check in as Team #5. Eric and Danielle get some help from kids in finding the address to deliver their coal come in right behind Team Guido. In an unfortunate interview, Eric complains that they were beat by "old women passed their prime – we got beat by a bunch of queens." Count me in on Team Queens, as I have no patience for Team Asshole. Uchenna and Joyce, unfortunately, have difficulty finding the address to deliver their coal, leading to them come in last. Phil informs them that this is the first non-elimination leg, leaving them in the Race, but they are marked for elimination. Therefore, they must come in first or incur a 30 minute waiting period before they can check in. Given the way these legs have been designed, Uchenna and Joyce had better come in first, as there have been very few tasks that have allowed teams to separate themselves from the pack.


     


 
 

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