Color me underwhelmed, All-Stars edition. Aside from some early airport maneuvers from Charla and Mirna — for the last time, being on a reality TV show is not a matter of life and death, so enough with the breathless ticket-counter melodramatics — and a particularly cruel Newlywed Game-style Roadblock, this final leg of the race just wasn't that amazing. Maybe I'm just bitter because Eric and Danielle won, which is frustrating after enduring an entire season of their less-than-appealing… well, let's just call it "teamwork." And I have to say, after finally getting a chance to see Dustin and Kandice squabble with each other, I have even more respect for both their competitive spirit and their relationship. Much like Danny and Oswald, they dealt with each other as human beings — nerves may get frazzled in moments of extreme stress, and heaven knows I'd be ready to kill anybody after weeks upon weeks of 24/7 togetherness, but even at the height of their argument I h...
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Did I just watch an hour-long infomercial for the United States Armed Forces? Because I'm having the strangest compulsion to head down to my local recruitment office and enlist. And while I'm glad to see our military resources are being put to good use in Guam (zero-gravity maneuvers for impatient Armenian-Americans? Check. Plane-washing lessons for the posh? Check. GPS devices that for the love of all that is holy, you should not touch? Double check.), I just couldn't get all rah-rah when the writing was so clearly on the wall: Danny and Oswald were going home. I'm not sure when I stopped clinging to the hope that the boys would be able to beat the half-hour time penalty — or finish somewhere before last place, for that matter. I'm guessing it was somewhere between the third and seventh time Oswald walked right past the camouflaged pilot he was trying to locate. (Although I must confess, I began to sense the end was near after he started talking about the minutes and seconds o...
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"It was bad karma versus no money." I'm guessing that's a lesson you have to learn the hard way, huh? Danny and Oswald's wheeling and dealing made for an especially nail-biting leg; "selling" their yield to the beauty queens for cold hard cash seemed like a fairly ingenious move at the time, but as Cha Cha said, it was a move that came back to bite them… hard. From that point on, it just seemed like everything they touched fell apart. I even thought they had the right idea at the detour — who knew carrying a dragon head through the streets of Macau would be harder than making noodles with a bamboo teeter-totter? — but ultimately they just couldn't seem to escape the Curse of the Inept Taxi Driver. Meanwhile, Eric and Danielle survived not only their second yield, but their marked-for-elimination time penalty by the skin of their teeth. Now, usually I'd be upset that so much delicious, clock-watching drama was more or less moot thanks to a second consecutive non-Philim...
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It finally happened, folks: I have officially reached my breaking point with Charla and Mirna. Actually, that's not even fair; I've got no beef with Charla. (Heh.) But Mirna is working my last ever-loving nerve. It's one thing to torture us with her sanctimonious version of right versus wrong, but I just can't take the double standard any more. She says she wants to play the game with integrity, and then turns around and ask her new friend Desmond to kick ticketed passengers off a flight. She coins the phrase "yield karma" and then conspires with the other teams to get rid of the beauty queens at any cost. And she complains about how she's doing all the heavy lifting on her team, but every time I look up, Charla's performing another ridiculous roadblock while she stands on the sidelines complaining that Charla's not doing it quickly enough. Last week she was being dragged around by a horse while sporting a full coat of armor, and this week she was kicking down doors and searching ev...
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Is there anything worse than finally arriving at the first clue box of the leg and being told to go directly to the pit stop? You had to know things were looking bad for Uchenna and Joyce when we didn't see them for a good 45 minutes. At one point I found myself getting nervous for Oswald and Danny before I remembered we were still missing an entire team. Of course, it's like Phil said on the mat: They have already won this Race — so as big a bummer as it is to see them go home over a missed connection, it's tough to feel too sorry for them. Go home and work on spending that first mil, you crazy kids.I've been high on the Cha Cha train since Season 2, and I always thought it was because they're funny, they have such a great attitude and most importantly, they keep their bickering to a minimum. But this week, too much quality time together finally caught up with my favorite boys, resulting in a one-way ticket to Testy-town. And you know what? I adore them even more. It takes a v...
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First of all, did anyone else experience TiVo weirdness with this two-hour extravaganza? Mine treated it like two separate episodes with the exact same title — not really a problem since the cutoff happened during an uneventful cab ride with Joe and Bill, but still odd. I found this to be a real "status quo" week, where the teams I love were even more lovable (yay for the joint first place between Cha Cha/Uchenna and Joyce!) and the teams that irk me were every bit as irksome as usual (Danielle and Eric arguing over coffee stands out as particularly gross). The beauty queens were a pleasantly surprising exception, though — it was refreshing to watch Dustin get so excited about meeting fake Chopin and learning how to tune a piano, and I was also impressed by the way they set aside their disdain for Charla and Mirna during the intersection. I realize they were only doing the latter out of necessity, but it served as a reminder of what fierce competitors these girls can be....
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All right, kiddies, what have we learned today? You stop off for fresh fruit and it just may cost you a catamaran… which is even more upsetting if you actually know what a catamaran is. As much as I adore Danny and Oswald — from helping Charla cope with seasickness to imitating Santino (imitating Tim Gunn) from Project Runway — this week's leg served as a vivid reminder that slow and steady might make you likable, but it doesn't always win the Race. Hopefully a big fat mouthful of Charla and Mirna's dust will help Cha Cha keep that in mind.I don't know about you guys, but simply watching all those teams deal with one standby flight after another gave me a raging case of vicarious jet lag. I wouldn't go so far as to call it high drama, but at least the whole "not so fast, Eric and Danielle" fiasco added a bit of life to the tried-and-true airport bottleneck. And frankly, I was relieved to know early on that Uchenna and Joyce had a comfortable lead — and if being m...
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Last week we saw the Philimination of Rob and Amber, and this week Charla and Mirna skyrocketed from worst to first. It's official — we're watching The Amazing Race: Bizarro Edition. That being said, I'm always game for an episode that includes rodents of (almost) unusual size, blitzkrieg manicure missions and a stay of execution for Uchenna and Joyce. That last one's salt in the wound for the Romber faithful, but a relief to those of us who still believe there's time for Uchenna and Joyce to turn it up a notch. Chop chop, you two!I'm personally still pulling for Cha Cha Cha, even with that quick visit to Crankytown — do you think it was the frostbite or their inability to operate the avalanche beacon? Not only did they bounce back from those frayed nerves in record time, they also delighted us with perhaps my new favorite pit-stop moment of all time: Danny and Oswald chasing Phil with the threat of a sweaty, sooty hug. Just plain adorable. Meanwhile, the big Guido-versus-...
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Big thanks to Angel for holding down the fort while I was gone — and wouldn't you know it? I skip town and that's when Charla comes face-to-face with another little person at the pit stop. What next? You'll tell me I missed Team Guido arguing about whether or not Rob is Jesus? (Damn.)As for this week, no use beating around the bush: Call it karma, call it hubris, call it bad luck or call it just plain terrible spelling — no matter which way you shake it, Rob and Amber are toast. And truthfully, whether you love them or hate them, you have to admit that the Race is about to get a lot less interesting. (If we ever needed stone-cold proof that the non-Philimination legs aren't rigged, this is it; you just know every last exec at CBS is showing up to work Monday morning sporting a black armband and Visine eyes.) As a fan of the way these two changed the face of the game back in Season 7, I'm disappointed to see them go out at the hands of a needle-in-a-haystack roadblock —...
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Say what you will about Charla and Mirna, they certainly have a flair for melodrama. Between accusing the beauty queens of nip/tucking their way to success and begging that bewildered cab driver to please take their last dime, I'm not sure if I want to strangle them or thank them for making such absurdly entertaining TV. Honestly, did you ever think you'd hear the phrase "I don't have time for step stool" delivered with such desperation (or at all, for that matter)? But my favorite part was Teri continually referring to them as "Mirna and Schmirna" — I'm pretty sure she's not doing it maliciously à la Marshall and Lance from Season 5, which makes it that much more enjoyable.Meanwhile, who didn't see Kevin and Drew's philimination on the horizon? I was ready to nominate Kevin for sainthood after putting up with Drew's constant bellyaching — my shoulder hurts! I have altitude sickness! I need you to tow me out of a mud pit while I prepare to drag you alongside this SUV ...
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