On The Air

A race through sunny South America finds many anti-bunching points, the signpost that no one can solve, and bitterness carried over from seasons past. And all of those things add up to a Rob and Amber elimination. Read it all.

Episode links:
Miss Alli’s recaplet
TV Guide review
TV Squad review
Download the episode with BitTorrent

Previously on The Amazing Race: Fish! Rafting! Missed clues! David and Mary going home! And Rob and Amber came in first for a third time in a row. I bet that streak’s never going to get broken, right?

Currently on The Amazing Race Around South America: Teams leave the Pit Stop on a chilly, fogged-up-window kind of morning to find out they’re heading to another part of Chile, Punta Arenas in the south. Is this the most legs the race has ever spent inside one single country? Besides the Family Edition? Rob is cocky and overconfident, of course, and Uchenna interviews that he is more than happy to beat him a second time. Danny and Oswald interview that none of the other teams see them as serious competitors. And I can’t understand why, the way they have those flowers tucked behind their ears.

Then we get an interview with Mirna, by herself, that almost seems like it was filmed before the Race began. And she’s going on and on about how hard she works, mentally and physically, and the unspoken subtext is that Charla does nothing but slow her down. It’s great to see the veil of “Oh, Charla can do anything” fall down here, and we find out how nasty Mirna can be even to her own family. Then we hear her talking about how she “compensate[s] for shortcomings” as we see footage of Charla waddling down the hill, fifty feet behind everybody else. Oh no she didn’t use the word short! I can imagine there were more than a few hushed whispers at the Charla and Mirna viewing party that night. It’s awesome.

At the airport, most of the teams make it onto the early flight into Punta Arenas, but the Guidos just barely miss it. So they beg and beg to be let on. Silly them. Don’t they know that planes only come back to the gate for Uchenna and Joyce? They need to pay attention more. The begging goes on all together too long, though, to the point where it’s just embarrassing for them. The guy you’re talking to isn’t the one that can help you out, you know? And you’re about ten seconds away from pissing him off and making sure you miss the next flight too. So the Guidos are stuck in the rear with Charla and Mirna, someplace nobody ever wants to be.

On the other end of the airline flight, teams are scurrying to grab taxis and make their way to Lord Lonsdale’s Shipwreck, this big boat that’s just decaying on the beach. Here in America, that kind of thing would be a hazard and hauled away so nobody would get hurt and sue. But in Chile it’s a landmark that everyone knows. Even the stewardess on the plane knows where it is, and she writes out a set of directions for Uchenna so he can find it easily. But it turns out that Rob swooped in and grabbed the directions away from her. To hear Rob tell it, she just handed him the piece of paper as he stepped out of the bathroom. Which, I’m so sure she forgot all about the big black guy she had talked to just moments before. I’d love to see footage of that little exchange.

Rob and Amber do get to the shipwreck first, possibly because of the note, but possibly because they spent hours looking it up on Google at the airport. As they’re reading the clue, we see Oswald and Danny right behind them grabbing theirs, showing that those two guys would constantly be in first place if it weren’t for Rob and Amber. The Detour this week is Navigate It or Sign It, both loosely tied to Ferdinand Magellan. Navigate It involves using a city map to find first the town plaza, then a salvage business. It is obviously the better choice, because Sign It involves carrying building supplies up a set of stairs, then painting and building a signpost from a list of cities on a map. You have to spell everything right and get it all in the right order. This seems so much harder, so it’s kind of shocking when Rob and Amber choose to Sign It. Shall we call this Mistake #1? Let’s.

Danny and Oswald head off to Naviagate, along with Eric and Danielle and Teri and Ian. The other teams stay behind to paint the sign. Now, you’ve got to look at the map and figure out which town comes first, and even Rob can figure out that Magellan, a Spaniard, started from Spain. Amber gets it wrong, thinking he started at the edge of the map, in Guam(?!), and surprisingly Uchenna makes the same mistake. They think this because, why? I can’t figure it out. So Rob gets one point for being right. Pay attention, because it will be his last. In fact, he starts in immediately with spelling the Philippines as “Phillipeans”. You know, if the clue says spelling is important, maybe you should compare your signs to the map, just to make sure? Mistake #2.

The navigating teams have little trouble finding the salvage operation to get their next clue. Reading it is a different story, though, as we’re treated to another segment of “Danielle Is Dumb”, and we see her saying that the clue says to take a charter plane to Australia. It’s actually Argentina they’re going to, but she gets points I guess for picking the right vowel. Why is she on this show again? They’re in first place heading to the airport, though, so I guess she’s not holding them back too much.

Meanwhile, Rob is finding out that something on his sign is wrong. “No,” says the hippie judge. “Are you sure?” asks Rob. And so begins the downward slide of his cockiness tripping him up. Are you sure? This guy spent a day being briefed on the rules, I’m sure; I don’t think he’s going to screw it up. The Amazing Editors get amazingly unsubtle here, though, showing us Rob’s mistake about twenty time. WE GET IT. Stop.

The hippie judge also gets to tell Uchenna and Joyce that they’re wrong, and he gets points for not laughing out loud that they’ve put Guam first.

So those two teams, along with Dustin and Kandice, are still working on the signs when Danny and Oswald get to the airport. Ha ha ha. Which choice was faster? And the flight out of the airport is an arranged charter flight, so the producers are trying to make sure that all the teams don’t get bunched up on one big flight like they did a couple of legs ago. Nice move, there. You should actually be penalized for sucking, not have it erased with a bunching point. Danny and Oswald do a happy dance in the terminal. They are so my favorite team right now.

Amber is trying to convince Rob to switch Detours while they still have time. He’s not having any of it. Mistake #3. Oh, and he’s also changed the spelling on his sign to “Phillipenes”. He obviously realized it was spelled wrong, so instead of looking at the map, he spelled it wrong a second way! Mistake #4. The hippie judge lets him know.

Back at the airport, Teri and Ian are showing up to sign up for the charter flight. And they’re at the desk, when all of a sudden a hat comes flying from out of nowhere and hits him on the head. He’s looking all around everywhere to see where it came from, and we find out Danny and Oswald are standing up on the balcony above chucking shit down at him. Everyone has a good laugh, and funky music starts playing, so you know all these teams like each other. It’s so great to see people actually having fun on the race. Part of it is that now they know Rob and Amber are in fourth place, at least, so they’re celebrating a little bit. But also it’s because every room is a party when Danny and Oswald are involved, and their plane doesn’t leave until 8:00 the next morning, so they know they’ve got some time to kill. Live it up!

Oh, and the Guidos are just now showing up, along with Charla and Mirna, and everyone is running into each other at the same airport. One set going, one set coming. That can’t be a good feeling, to know you’re so far behind that the other teams are getting a flight out of town already, you know? The two of them hop into taxis and race into town, with Bill sticking his tongue out as Mirna’s cab passes them.

Meanwhile, Uchenna and Joyce are actually finishing the signpost correctly, and getting the clue to head back to the airport. Hippie Judge gets to say yes for once! For the only time this episode! Which pisses Rob off to no end, I’m sure, and only serves to accelerate the breakdown that’s about to come. Uchenna finds out that not only did the Navigate Detour go a lot faster, but by screwing around with the signpost he ended up on the second charter flight. I think half the skill of the Race is being able to pick the right Detours.

And the other half is knowing when to switch Detours, which is what Rob finally does. He tries the signpost one last time, but Hippie Judge is unrelenting, so Rob just lets the sign fall, scattering nails and splintered pieces of wood everywhere. Then he’s so desperate that he actually teams up with the Beauty Queens to get the Navigating done. Oh dear. Can’t say I would ever be that desperate.

Charla and Mirna and the Guidos, for all their tongue-sticking-out, arrive at the Detour at exactly the same time. Joe and Bill go for Navigating (because they’re not dumb), while Charla and Mirna look at the broken pile of dreams that is Rob’s signpost, and decide that this is the job for them. And then things start getting wickedly awesome. Because Charla and Mirna, as a basic part of their character, thrive on conflict. And usually they have other teams around that they can get indignant about, or cabbies that they can yell at, or poor unsuspecting locals that they abduct into their scary, scary world. But this time there’s nobody but the two of them, so it’s time for them to turn on each other. It all starts with the first part of the signpost clue, which says you have to haul all the materials up the stairs. For other teams, this was simple. For Charla and Mirna, it’s a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

First Charla tries carrying all the little wooden signs just loose in her arms. She’s got abut twenty of the things, and she’s giving them a great big bear hug, and that’s going about as well as you can imagine. Mirna sees a box nearby, so she starts screaming at Charla to put the wood in the box and carry it that way. At the same time she’s trying to grab one of the big logs for the signpost out of this bin, and it’s not going well. Charla’s confused about the very concept of the box, and why she needs it to carry anything. “Why the hell do we need this box?” She even starts to take it up the stairs, empty. But eventually Mirna fills her in on the preschool concept of using one big container to carry many other smaller items, so Charla fills the box up to the top with wooden arrows. Like, up to the top, and even more, until it’s overflowing and practically taller than she is. Then Mirna’s got the log in one hand, and the paint in another hand, and she’s swiveling back and forth, and I swear to god that I expected this to turn into a Three Stooges skit, where Mirna would twirl that log around and catch Charla right in the chin. Crack! Right on the noggin. But instead they scurry up the stairs, Charla hefting this big huge box of arrows and taking it One. Step. At. A. Time. Mirna’s not to happy about this. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with you, Charla. You’re wasting a lot of time.”

Then she starts talking at Charla like she’s a three-year-old, like the way she talks to cab drivers. “Leave half of it. Just run. I will get the rest for you.” Over-enunciating every word, in that annoying way she has, only it’s not some stranger she’s talking to, it’s her own family. So frustrated she is that she drops the big log she’s carrying, and in a panicked voice starts yelling that they have to go quickly. So she picks up the box, and Charla hilariously says, “Put it on my shoulders!” I remember this from before, Charla and her supposed shoulder strength. I love how the answer to everything in Charla’s world, whether it’s a side of beef, a box of arrows, or her own cousin (when they were tightening the lug nuts) is to put it on her shoulders. It’s like she’s a superhero with extraordinary shoulder strength.

Mirna just ignores her and carries the box up the stairs, so Charla turns around and picks up the log. The log that’s fifteen feet long, she picks up and carries where? On her shoulders, of course. This is the kind of comedy you can’t write. This is the kind that just happens naturally when two batshit crazy people get together. Although I’m still not convinced that Charla and Mirna aren’t just two gifted improv actors that are punking an entire nation, because sometimes this stuff is just too surreal. “Charla, you’re wasting a lot of time,” Mirna repeats, completely exasperated. “I can’t go any faster,” Charla screams back hoarsely. “Charla, please. Put that down. It’s not making sense, honey.” So very little of what they do makes sense, why would she expect it to start now? And I love how in interviews, Mirna is the first one to say how capable Charla is and how she can do anything a regular person can. But now she’s telling her how she can’t do it, and she’s slowing her down, and how it’s wasting their time. Now we know what Mirna really thinks of her cousin.

Surprisingly, though, these two are not the only team that’s imploding under its own weight. The Rob/Amber/Dustin/Kandice brain trust has managed to find its way to the town plaza, and they get their compass that will lead them to the next clue. So they sit down on the grass to look at the map and figure out where they’re going next. Mistake #5. And while they’re sitting there, Joe and Bill come barreling up, like a gay little tornado, and just grab the compass and leave without even slowing down. They’re there, and then they’re gone, with a glee little “Yippee!” Meanwhile Rob is left behind, fuming even harder in his own juices. This is now two teams he’s physically seen pass him up with his own eyes, and he doesn’t even know about the other three that have been at the airport for the last hour. So the whole group of them set off, under Rob’s direction, heading towards some naval museum that he has the address for. They get there, and of course it’s the wrong place. Ooops! Mistake #6!

And the Guidos are at the right place, getting the clue, and heading to the airport. They check in as team #5, completely smoking two teams that were on an earlier flight. Does this speak to the awesomeness of the Guidos, or the suckiness of Rob in this episode?

And after all the ten tons of crap Charla and Mirna had to go through to get their supplies up the stairs, they can’t even put the sign together right. Hippie Judge is very disapproving, because he has seen team after team come through here and get this stuff wrong, and it’s been a very long day for him. The two of them switch to Navigating.

Miraculously, Rob finally finds his clue and heads to the airport. He’s frustrated that he isn’t at the head of the pack, and it’s obviously affecting him because he’s made several very simple mistakes up to this point. Even Dustin and Kandice think it was a bad move to pair up with him.

Charla and Mirna find the clue with a minimum of fuss, and then Mirna just caps off the whole episode so far with four simple words: “Get the whistle out.” Yes, she has a whistle, and she’s standing on the street corner blowing it to hail a taxi. Everything she does is so bizarre! I don’t think I’d pick her up if I was a cab driver.

Day turns to night, night turns to day, and then we see the three lead teams getting on their charter flight. When they land they head off to Playa Larga to find their clue, and although Teri and Ian get there first, they miss the flag and head off in the wrong direction. There’s a tiny little flag tacked onto a fencepost, and they miss it. So that gives Danny and Oswald the opportunity to swoop in and get back in first place, which they do. While Teri and Ian are combing the endless beach, Oswald is reading the clue telling them to go to the Post Office at the End of the World, a journey that involves taking a tiny little speedboat that only seats two teams. So, again, here’s some forced anti-bunching that ensures the teams will be spread out. Awesome. Race planners, I take back all the nasty stuff I said about you. Just keep it up.

At the Post Office, the teams run into the Roadblock, and Oswald is so adorable as he opens the clue. “Come here, Darling,” he says to Danny. “let’s read together the Roadblock.” I love these two, and I love how they’re always in first or second place. Who ever thought an alpha male team could be so flamboyant, you know? The Roadblock is to sort through 1,600 pieces of mail (!) looking for one that’s addressed to their team, so it’s another needle-in-a-haystack task. And it’s a Roadblock, so there’s no getting out of it.

After they find their envelope, they have to open it and find out that there’s a letter inside from another team from their own season, and read it out loud. Danny and Oswald get a note from Blake and Paige, and even in the black-and-white flashback we see their teeth are still blinding me. They read the note, and head off to the Pit Stop. They’re in first place! Yay! You see, all they needed was to get out of Rob and Amber’s shadow, and now they’re right up there in the front. I tell you, this is the team to watch. Do something for me: Go to the official Leaderboard, which shows you which team finished in which place for each leg. Now add up the place everyone finished in, like you’re scoring a golf game. Who has the lowest number? That’s right, Danny and Oswald, with a 10. Which makes them the best team on the race, purely from a numbers point of view. Eric and Danielle, the second place team, have 13, while the only winners in the race, Uchenna and Joyce, are dragging behind with a whopping 21. So never, ever, count Danny and Oswald out of this thing. They ask Phil if he’ll come on their prize vacation with them. “That’s a whole other reality show,” Phil says. One that I would watch religiously.

Eric and Danielle’s note is from Dani and Jeremy, “the teammates you left behind.” Snore. And Teri and Ian, who finally found the cluebox on the beach, get a letter from Flo and Zach. One can hope that Flo took some medication and has had a few years to chill out. Zach, of course, should have been on All-Stars because he is The Best Racer of All Time. Just think about it: he didn’t just win, he won single-handedly while dragging the dead weight of Flo behind him all the way. He’s the only Racer that also had to be a full-time therapist, and he still won. If that’s not All-Star material, what is?

The second charter plane lands, and everyone scrambles for a taxi. Somehow, it’s Rob and Amber and Charla and Mirna who end up getting screwed, as the other teams end up taking all the taxis and leaving them in the dust. I don’t know how Rob ended up behind here, but let’s just call that Mistake #7. So Rob and Amber start walking into town, while Charla and Mirna call a taxi. But of course, when their taxi drives up, Rob and Amber are already way the hell down the road, so they flag it and get in. Which gets Charla and Mirna all up in a pissy fit. Mirna’s got her whistle out, is how bad it is, and they’re running down the road just as fast as they can. But it’s too late when they get there, and Rob and Amber have already gotten in and locked the doors. So all they can do is knock on the window and yell at the cab driver. He’s not kicking anyone out, though, so he drives away leaving Charla and Mirna in the dust. “You’re crazy,” Rob says, and for once I have to completely agree with him. Especially because, as much as the editing tries to hide it, there are little clues sprinkled around that make it sound like Rob also called a taxi, so this very well could be his. Which means Charla and Mirna are trying to steal his taxi, which puts a much different spin on the whole thing. Eh, whatever. I’m just happy to see these two teams in last place.

The three middle-of-the-pack teams get to the cluebox with no fuss, but Rob and Amber miss the flags the same way Teri and Ian did. Mistake #8. And Charla and Mirna just follow Rob, because, why not? But Amber senses that they’re going in the wrong direction, so the two of them turn around and pass Charla and Mirna going the other way. And then something awesome happens, from Amber of all people. As they’re running past she yells out “Got it,” making Charla and Mirna think they actually found a clue down there. It’s a good thing to do, when you’re in last place and up against a team you don’t like, to slow them down as much as possible. And the fact that it’s happening to Charla and Mirna just makes it more hilarious.

Now, if you don’t think Charla and Mirna are going to get all huffy and indignant and up on a moral soapbox when they discover the ruse, then you haven’t been watching Charla and Mirna. They spend every hour of their waking lives, and every ounce of energy they have, looking for things to get righteously indignant over. It’s what feeds them. Some people live on Cheetos and Mountain Dew, Mirna lives on a constant diet of moral superiority. It’s what keeps her so thin. So when Charla and Mirna finally catch up to Rob and Amber, at the boat dock, there is hell to pay. But, again, it’s Amber who’s the awesome one, making me see why her and Rob are such a perfect fit. Mirna and Charla both come up to Rob and Amber, full of indignant fire and scaring all the assembled locals and tourists that are on the boat dock, not to mention the other teams. They get up in Amber’s face, all “Why did you lie?” And Amber snaps back that she was just talking to Rob: “I got it, the clue’s over there!” That’s a wickedly cool save on her part, and you know I’ll never get mad at anyone for lying to Charla and Mirna. Never.

In an interview they’re bitching about being lied to. Charla’s wearing a shirt that says, “I Miss You” with a picture of…Zach Braff? I’m confused.

So Rob and Amber take off in their boat, leaving Charla and Mirna behind on the dock. And meanwhile, other teams are finishing the Roadblock and reading their letters. The Guidos get a letter from Loud and Pushy Frank from the first season which says, and I quote, “Jiggaty, Fliggaty, Wiggaty, Wooo / Boop Bop Bam / Flim Flom, Flam / Alakazam!” Ha ha, that’s awesome. You can tell that some people wrote letters that would be easy to read in order to help teams out, and others wrote really difficult letters designed to slow you down. We’ll see that later. And the Beauty Queens get a letter from Lyn and Karlyn, except only Lyn signed her name. Wow, the giant pulsing ball of hatred that is Karlyn’s soul is still going strong even today, I see.

Uchenna and Joyce and Rob and Amber are still sorting through their letters when Charla and Mirna get off the boat and Mirna starts through the mail. So we’ve got a three-way race for last place, and Uchenna and Joyce are the first to score with a letter. It’s from Susan and Patrick, one of the more forgettable teams on what was generally a good race. The letter tells them to win another million dollars, and also that they should never be afraid to steal a cab or bribe a bus driver. Also, not to trust You-Know-Who. I don’t think they’re talking about Voldemort.

So now the final race is between Rob and Mirna, and the music gets really tense before we find out that Mirna has found her letter. Putting Rob in last place. Now it’s hard to say you could have done a needle-in-a-haystack task “better”, but let’s call this Mistake #9. I’m sure he’s panicking more than a little bit over the fact that he’s at the bottom of the pack, and that’s got to be throwing him off his game. Charla and Mirna’s letter is from Lance and Marshall, the “pizza brothers” who thought they were funny but actually were just kind of vile, and who also quit the Race. The letter is full of bile and hatred for Mirna and Charla, which I guess is one thing I can be on their side about. They finish the letter and take off for the Pit Stop.

Rob finally gets his letter (and to hear him tell it, he didn’t even get the letter until after Charla and Mirna had checked in), and it’s also from Susan and Patrick. But instead of the love that poured out of the letter to Uchenna and Joyce, this one is filled with sarcasm and bitterness. And also some reeeally big words that they know Rob is going to have to read out loud, like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and antidisestablishmentarianism. Now, all the hatred that was directed towards Rob and Amber that season, from Patrick and Lynn and Alex, just made me so tired because they wasted so much energy on it, and it was oh so pointless. And to see that it’s still in place, all these years later, make me wonder what Patrick’s inner world is like. But, at the same time, I can forgive him because that’s a really damn funny thing to do to Rob, make him say antidisestablishmentarianism out loud.

So the editors try to make it seem like a close race to the finish, but like I said, the cat’s out of the bag on that one. Mirna is still yelling and yelling and yelling at Charla for not being able to go fast enough, yelling nonsense things like “Level 5! On the treadmill!” Sometimes I wonder if it specifically says in the rules that you can’t pick up and carry your teammate. Not that Mirna would ever be able to lift Charla even one inch, but I’ve wondered it before with some of these teams where you’ve got a buff guy and a scrawny girl. Are you allowed to do that?

What Mirna is allowed to do, apparently, is grab Charla by the wrist and drag her. And so she does, like a sack of potatoes. They make it to the mat first, and Uchenna and Joyce are still there waiting for them. Uchenna is so happy, it’s hilarious. He even takes over Charla-dragging duties for the last ten feet. I suppose there is precisely one situation in all the world and all the universe where you’d be happy to see Charla and Mirna, and this is it exactly. Enjoy the attention, girls.

So Rob and Amber are eliminated, and Rob is pissed but hiding it well. Oh well. The two of them were definitely All-Stars, whether you liked them or not, they were definitely one of the best, most competitive teams from the last ten seasons. Three first-place finishes in a row should convince you of that, if nothing else will. But now they’re gone, I’m happy to see them go, they’re off our TV for a couple of weeks until they get another show, and, most importantly, they’ve left the door wide open for Oswald and Danny to win it all.

I’m also glad to see the Race pick up after a few slumping weeks. There was just something about the editing, the excitement, the energy and the humor of this episode that was a return to form, in many ways. I just hope they can keep it up the rest of the season. God, I hope so.

Next week? Giant rats!!!