On The Air

The teams finally leave South America and head to Africa, where they have to deal with giant rats and bags of coal. Charla and Mirna end up in first place, signaling the end of civilization, and Uchenna and Joyce come in last but are non-eliminated.

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: Rob and Amber go bye-bye.

Currently on The Amazing Race: Teams are finally getting out of South America and across the pond to Africa. But first they have to go hunting for beacons on a nearby glacier, and find an Hours of Operation bunching at the ski lift. Oh well, get those out of the way early in the leg. And the next morning we’re treated to a conversation between Ian and the Guidos about the virtue of paper underwear vs monogrammed thongs. Neither of which I want to ever think about again.

The Beauty Queens manage to run right by their beacon, so they head all the way up the glacier only to have to head back down again and get it. So there’s some lost time. But Oswald and Danny cannot figure out how to work the beacon at all, and end up getting pretty bitchy at each other before finally being the last team off the mountain. Other teams are already at the travel agency getting airline tickets while the two of them are still searching. So let’s add avalanche beacons and fish hauling to the short list of things that Oswald and Danny do not do well.

All the teams get on the same flight across the ocean, and The Amazing Map shows us that they have to change planes like six times during the trip. Doesn’t sound fun, but luckily for us it happens in about three seconds. If only transatlantic travel was that fast!

Once in Africa they find the Roadblock, where one team member has to send a trained rat out into a minefield to find a clue. These rats are huge, like the size of my cat. Or Guido the dog. Plus they have little collars and names like Nelson and Tupac, and the idea is to pull them back and forth on a leash until they start digging, and that’s where the clue is. Bill and Joe are the first ones done, but Charla and her comically oversized bomb vest are left in last place

From here there are two crucial decisions that affect how well you do in the leg. The first one is which road you take to get back into the town of Maputo. Apparently there’s the long way and the short way, and the long way seems to be really long, since all the teams that take it end up in last place. Then comes the Detour, and while it’s hard to tell from just the clue, the choices turn out to be grossly lopsided. One task is to paint fingernails for a few minutes to earn money, and the other is to shovel coal for what seems like hours and then haul the bag to hell and back searching for the right house to deliver it to. I don’t know if they expected the two tasks to have such a disparity, but the fingernail task turns out to be ridiculously easier than the coal.

And surprisingly, all the gay guys decide to shovel the coal. Maybe they want to look butch? The Guidos call painting fingernails “weird”. Come on, guys, you’re not fooling anyone. We just saw you spritzing yourself with perfume at the airport.

Charla and Mirna hit the double-whammy of good luck, both taking the short road into town and painting the nails. So the combination of those two things lands them at the Pit Stop in first place. Did you hear that? Charla and Mirna are in first place! Will be never be rid of them? They fall down on the ground celebrating. Gah. Just stay there.

Teri and Ian are the last team to get to the Roadblock clue. They choose coal, but they accidentally end up at the fingerpainting market, so they decide to just do it since they’re already there. Which is almost always the right choice. And here it turns out to be doubly right, because of how simple the painting is. In fact, they earn all of their money from just two girls, so they’re done in like three minutes. And they end up in third place, beating out every single team that did the coal. That’s some poor Race planning.

The second funniest thing about the coal is that everyone, at one point or another, ends up with a Hitler mustache.

But the funniest thing about the coal, and quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in eleven seasons of The Amazing Race, is when Danny and Oswald get to the Pit Stop, covered from head to foot in coal dust. Phil is immaculately clean and pressed, as usual, so Oswald sees this and immediately runs straight at him, all “I’m hugging you!”. Phil shrieks, “No way,” and he takes off running through the trees, Oswald and Danny both giving him a merry little chase. Let’s just consider this the pilot of that reality show we were promised last week, shall we? Finally the boys settle down and check in fourth. Should have done the fingernails, I guess.

The Guidos are next, barely beating out Eric and Danielle for fifth. Like, beating them in a footrace, an actual footrace, which is so rare on this show. Eric’s pissed, because girls can’t run. Especially dumb girls like his girlfriend. “She got beat by a bunch of queens,” he says, and she’s apparently inured to his bullshit because she just rolls her eyes instead of kicking him in the nuts.

So it’s Uchenna and Joyce coming in last place. But Phil says, “I’m…”, and then pauses for like twenty minutes, so we know it’s a non-elimination. Seriously. There was time to get up and go to the bathroom during that pause. So it’s the first non-elimination of the season, and I’m thrilled to say that the mugging is still gone and the much-better thirty-minute penalty is still in place, because seriously? The mugging was the stupidest idea the Race producers ever had. Worse than the Family Edition. Good riddance to both.

Next week? Booted from the plane!