The Amazing Race has started again, back with its 12th season. I probably won’t be doing any recaps this year, unless I decide to pick it up midseason, but you’ll be able to download the episodes, as usual, on my Amazing Race BitTorrent page.

The Amazing Race is of course the news I’m looking at here. The All-Stars season didn’t completely kill the show, but it didn’t do it any favors either. The Amazing Race has been renewed, so it will be coming back for a 12th season, but for the first time in years it’s not on the fall schedule. Instead it’s being held back for the dreaded “midseason”, which could mean that CBS is losing faith in our little Race. Or it could mean that they’re just holding it back until the inevitable happens and one of the new fall shows gets cancelled, then they’re be able to drop TAR right into the waiting slot. Whatever. At least it’s coming back, but not in September.

How I Met Your Mother is back. It was kind of a close call, since that was a bubble show right until the last minute. It’s the best laugh-track sitcom out there, though, so it’s good to see they’re keeping it around.

Jericho and The Class are cancelled. We stopped watching Jericho long ago, but my wife will be sad to hear about The Class.

And of course Survivor is back, this time at a lake in China.

Out of the new shows, only Moonlight stands out. A vampire private investigator? Hmmm, that sounds familiar for some reason. It might be worth a look. But Jimmy Smits as a sugar cane patriarch? Kids forming a new society in a New Mexico ghost town? The swinging 70s? I’m thinking I’ll take a pass.

I’m also thinking The Amazing Race will be back sooner than we think.

So why have I stopped writing my Amazing Race recaps? Well, a lot of reasons, but the big one is the show just stopped being fun. Read on.

Okay, I know I’ve been slacking off on recapping The Amazing Race. There are 150 different excuses, from the two-week vacation that I took, to being disheartened over seeing so many of my favorite teams eliminated, to the fatigue that comes from having to fight the urge to fly over to California and kick Eric in the nuts. But the finale is coming up in two days so maybe I should write something? About all the crazy shit that’s been going on lately?

I think the thing that’s really soured this show in the last couple of weeks is the all the constant moralizing about using the Yield. I mean, the Yield is a part of the game. It’s in the rules. It’s not nasty, dirty, or underhanded, anymore than voting someone out on Survivor is. I don’t see anyone abstaining from the vote on Big Brother because “that’s not the way I choose to play the game”. So when that little fucker Eric starts whining about how evil everybody is for using the Yield on him, I just want to club him with something heavy and dump him in a ditch. God, what an ass. Having him on the show is making watching The Amazing Race a lot less fun for me, and is killing any desire I have to rewatch the show so I can write about it. And yes, Charla and Mirna have been complicit in moralizing about the Yield, and inventing this bullshit thing called “Yield Karma”, but they’re not nearly as objectionable as Eric is. Maybe because they don’t go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about it like he does. It’s really pissing me off, and the fact that Eric and Danielle are in the final three, when I look at the trail of actual genuinely nice people that have been left behind, it turns my stomach. The thought of them actually winning this Race fills me with nausea, and if it happens it might actually be a shark-jumping moment.

Okay, so I don’t mean that. But this show, and this season in particular, has been on a slow slide towards the inky depths. And in part it’s because of the usual fatigue that comes at the end of a season, that feeling of slogging your way through quicksand, trying desperately to get to the finale. Survivor has it, Big Brother has it. The Amazing Race at its best doesn’t have it, because the excitement seems to build as the year goes on. But this isn’t The Amazing Race at its best. I hesitate to say it’s at its worst now, because I remember Season Six, and I remember the Family Edition, so I’ve seen the bottom of the barrel and I recognize that we’re not there. But I keep waiting for the show to get better, like in a big massive way, to bring back the excitement of the first two seasons, and it’s not happening. This show is coasting. It’s repetitive. I mean, you expect Big Brother to be repetitive, because they’re always in the same damn house. And you expect Survivor to be repetitive, because they’re slowly using up the world’s supply of tropical beaches. But The Amazing Race? Which literally has the entire globe as its filming location? Which has thousands of cultures and languages to pull from? To be this repetitive season after damn season? This is the last show I’d expect to have fallen into a rut, and yet it did just that.

Maybe the malaise just comes from the casting. There used to be real characters on the race, crazy people like Frank and Wil. People you really wanted to root for, like Ken and Gerard. Even Charla and Mirna, who even haters have to admit are blisteringly entertaining week after week. But then they started casting assholes, like Eric and Jonathan Baker. Or empty-headed models. Or famewhores who just wanted to be on TV. And the show really started to tank, but the casting didn’t get any better. It got worse. And then came All-Stars, and they only got it about half right. Kevin and Drew were one of the big “star” teams from the first few seasons, so it was right to bring them back. Although with Drew’s health problems maybe they should have bowed out. Rob and Amber definitely belonged here, and so did Charla and Mirna. I understand they tried to get Colin and Christie, which was the right move, but they had to bow out because Christie got pregnant. So they made a lot of right choices. But John Vito and Jill? Dustin and Kandice? Eric and Danielle? In what universe are these people All-Stars? David and Mary? Christ. So this season was only half good to begin with, and then I had to sit back and watch teams that I liked, teams that were actually nice people, get eliminated in favor of people who shouldn’t even have been on the show. Which is the nature of the competition, yes, and which underscores the fact that anyone can have a bad leg, even the best racers out there. Which is fine. But which leaves us with Eric in the final three, and pisses me off to no end.

So am I excited going into the finale? Eh. There’s always an excitement about the final episode. There’s always the possibility of a real race to the finish line, of another ending like Season 2 had. But when you’re not excited about the teams, when the only choice you’re given is to root for Charla and Mirna or the Beauty Queens, that is a lackluster finish from any angle. And you can always hope that something will happen, that you’ll be proven wrong, that there’s some kind of pleasant surprise waiting ahead, but the track record just isn’t that good.

I love The Amazing Race, but I’m getting tired of watching it.

See you on Sunday.

On Survivor first it was a very good week, with Lisi getting booted, but then it was a bad week with Michelle going next. I’m sending all my thought waves for Earl and Yau Man to be in the final two, but it’s getting harder to see it happen.

On The Apprentice I got to witness the impossible, Frank making the final four! Over Heidi! You know, Frank is my Sanjaya. Everything about him is repugnant, and he’s a five-year old trapped in an old guy body, but I so desperately want him to win and I don’t even know why. And to watch Arrow triumph over Kinetic? It’s so wrong but it feels so right. These are not the people I should be rooting for, but I find myself doing it week after week. I’m pulling for my boy Frank to win it all.

But on The Amazing Race, quite the opposite has been happening. The two shows while I was away saw the elimination of both the Guidos and Uchenna and Joyce, leaving us with a very grim final four indeed. Danny and Oswald are the only shining lights left, and I’ve wanted them to win from the beginning, so I’m still rooting for them to pull through. But I was hoping that as we got near the end there would be two or three other teams that I could also root for, kind of as a fallback in case the unthinkable happens. But right now I just want all six of the other contestants to be eaten by sharks. Seriously. They cast some dud teams for this All-Stars, and somehow most of them are still around at the end.

Oh, and there’s so much more on my TiVo that’s still crying out to be watched. House. Scrubs. How I Met Your Mother. Ugly Betty. There are only so many hours in the day, people.

Airlines and ferry boats conspire to split the Race up into three mini-races of two teams each, each about six hours apart, with Eric and Danielle stuffed in the middle all by themselves. Very early on it’s obvious that it will be a race between Teri and Ian and the Guidos for 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: Rats and fingernails. Non-elimination.

Currently on The Amazing Race: Teams get the heads up that they need to fly up the coast of Africa, to Tanzania, then catch one of three ferries to the island of Zanzibar. Sounds simple? Yeah, check back in thirty minutes once everyone’s arrived. The biggest problem that people run into is that every single flight out of town, like every one, is full, so all seven teams need to fly standby. As you can imagine, this doesn’t do so well for getting everyone bunched together. In fact, the teams get spread out over four flights and twenty-four hours. I think it’s safe to say the first team checks in at the Pit Stop before the last teams have even landed. Usually the Race planners try to make sure this doesn’t happen, and there are enough flights for everyone so the teams aren’t this spread out. What happened? Did everyone in Africa decide to get on a plane that day?

Charla and Mirna are first at the airport, and they descend on some poor woman in an office in the middle of the night and try to use her phone to call the airline. There are the usual Charla and Mirna levels of chaos going on in this scene, so I don’t really know who they’re trying to call, or why the woman thinks it’s not a good idea to call, but it ends up with Charla giving the lady lessons on how to dial a phone. “You just dial. Hit. Hit. Hit,” she says as she punches her little fingers onto the desk. Why is it that every time they’re on screen I have to watch the thing four or five times just to figure out what they’re talking about?

Other teams get to the airport and end up talking to the same lady, so I guess she really is the go-to gal in the middle of the night. Nobody else tries to teach her how to perform rudimentary tasks, though.

When the airline counter opens the next morning, everyone finds out that the flight is already full so they all get on standby. There is another way to get there, but the connecting flight is also full and they’d have to get on standby at the other airport. Charla and Mirna go for it, figuring they’re just as bad off waiting on standby there as they are here, so why not? Everyone else watches them run off to catch their flight, then we see them making friends with “Cristo” the airline employee and forming a small prayer circle to try to get a standby seat. Somehow, it works. Cristo is even nice enough to get down on one knee to talk to Charla, just like you’re supposed to do with children.

So Charla and Mirna make their flight, and they end up actually in first place, before anyone else has a chance to even leave the first airport.

Back in Maputo, everyone’s finding out there are no standby seats open, so they have to run to a different counter to get on a different flight. But the counter isn’t open yet, so they’re all waiting around until an office door upstairs opens up. Everyone runs up there except for Teri and Ian and the Guidos, who stay behind waiting at the counter. The teams that run upstairs get tickets. Oh, but wait. Those four teams are only going to Johannesburg (the same place Charla and Mirna went to in the first place), and from there they’re on standby again. Is it really this hard to fly around Africa? Jeez. Teri and Ian and the Guidos get on the same flight, but they’re at the end of the standby list, because they waited until the counter opened. So they’re kind of screwed here.

They get to the connecting flight, and guess what? The four teams that went upstairs get standby seats, and the other two get nothing. I guess going upstairs has its advantages, you think? But then the guy at the counter looks at his computers and realizes that Eric and Danielle aren’t supposed to be on the plane. Like there were only enough standby tickets for three teams, not four. So the guy actually goes all the way to the plane, grabs Eric and Danielle, and tosses them off. Oops! They’re pissed, of course, and even more so when they find out the next flight isn’t until tomorrow. Ouch. And it’s standby only. Double-ouch.

Oh look Charla and Mirna. Are they still on this show? I forgot about them. They get to the ferry terminal, on a bright sunny day with few clouds in the sky, and are told that because of “the weather” their boat has been delayed until the next morning. Ha Ha! I smell producer interference, which is never kosher. I know they don’t like teams to get too far ahead or too far behind, because it screws with their schedules and Pit Stops and makes Phil have to scurry around like a madman, but to actually delay a team overnight like this, just because they have such a big lead? Not cool. The fact that it’s happening to these two makes up for the sour taste a little, but not much.

The other teams finally show up in Tanzania after dark. So this is like 24 hours since they’ve left the Pit Stop, most of that time spent waiting in airports. Not fun. And they get to the ferry dock only to find out…they’ve got to wait longer. Danny and Oswald get the first tag, which puts them on the 5:30 boat with Charla and Mirna, and Uchenna and Joyce and the Beauty Queens get on the second boat, leaving at 8:30. The other three teams? Yeah, they’re still at the other airport waiting for a flight. On standby. They’re so bored they’re dicking around with the ropes that make up the lines. And we have to watch it. That’s how little footage you get out of waiting in an airport for two days.

The counter finally opens, and Eric and Danielle finally get on a plane and jet off to Tanzania, leaving the other teams behind. So, more waiting!

Out on the open seas, majestic music brings us to the sailboat cutting through the open waters of the Indian Ocean, and Danny and Oswald sleeping peacefully on the deck. Then a record scratch and funky music as we pan over to Charla, retching over the side of the boat. Oswald becomes the hero by putting a cold cloth on her neck, and gets called a “doctor” for it, and is thanked for his “beauty tips”. And, it’s just a cold towel; I don’t think either one of those apply. But it’s good to hear Charla say the word doctor without adding an “o” at the end.

The last two teams are finally getting the hell on a plane to Tanzania. At the same time the lead teams are setting foot on Zanzibar. And, what’s this? A clue! A clue! The first clue of the game, and we’re at nineteen minutes and fifty-one seconds. You know, I get that airport hijinx are sometimes the hardest part of this game, and missing a flight or getting on standby first can put you in first or last place in a moment. But do we really need to see twenty minutes of it? Half the show before they get to their first clue? Not always.

Meanwhile Uchenna and the Beauty Queens are on the boat making slave jokes. Hilarious!

So the clue is a Detour, to either haul big logs on a cart or put a puzzle together. I would have said the logs would be faster, because you never know how tricky these puzzles are. And this one looks extra tricky. Mirna sees it and says “Are you kidding me?” But the funniest thing is that she’s saying it to nobody in particular, like to herself or to the camera, and she’s still using a Russian accent. But most all the teams take the puzzle and seem to get it done fast. So I’m glad I’m not having to pick between these Detours. Oswald and Danny finish first, and are directed to another cluebox. But they decide that, on the way, this is a perfect time to stop by a local market and get some fruit. Because, why not? You’ve been sitting around for three days, doing nothing, and you’re finally just now starting to get back into the Race, so why not dawdle? It’s not like a first place finish is on the line. Stupidly puzzling move. These guys do know how to slow down and smell the roses like pros, but they normally also know when it’s time to hustle.

So their little side trip gives Charla and Mirna enough time to get to the Roadblock (throwing sticks at a target) first. Mirna’s well into it before the guys arrive, and she does get done before them. They’re on their way to the Pit Stop, and check in with Phil in first place again. Did you ever think you’d see Charla and Mirna in first place two times in a row? Me neither. They each win a catamaran, and Phil should have brought a picture or something, because they have no idea what a catamaran is. They’re like, Yay?

Danny and Oswald are second. The moral? Know when to stop for fruit.

The next boat is landing, and Uchenna and Joyce do the puzzle while Dustin and Kandice haul the logs. Uchenna and Joyce are done first, by a long shot, it seems, so maybe the puzzle was faster.

Eric and Danielle get to the ferry boat, and even though there were only supposed to be three boats available, everyone knows it will be hours before the other teams show up. So they’re allowed to cast off. And indeed, we see the other teams still on an airplane, then landing and getting to the boats, but Eric and Danielle are long gone, and the next boat isn’t until 8:00 at night. Looks like we’ve got our bottom two picked out already.

Uchenna is throwing sticks, and it’s starting to get dark. Time is going by so quickly this episode. He hits the target, and they run to the Pit Stop. But they have a 30-minute penalty, remember? So they stand aside and wait. And wait. And wait. And finally their time is up, so Phil tells them they can check in. Wow. Those logs must have taken a loooong time.

The Beauty Queens are just now throwing sticks, which we see about two seconds of. I bet it took longer than that. And Eric and Danielle are getting off the boat, well after dark, and doing the puzzle. At the same time, Teri and Ian and the Guidos are getting on their boat. Everything in the last half of this episode is so rushed. I wonder why? Couldn’t have anything to do with the 20 minutes of airport footage.

The Beauty Queens check in, and Eric and Danielle check in some unspecified number of hours later. Between the planes and the boats, all these teams have to be separated by like six or seven hours. Charla and Mirna are probably leaving the Pit Stop right about now, unless they extended it to 36 hours because the other teams weren’t even on the island yet.

Speaking of the other teams, it’s time for their games to begin. They both do the puzzles, and it’s neck and neck, with the tense music and everything. The Guidos come out ahead in the end, and they take off, leaving Teri and Ian behind.

Now the sun is coming up. We’re at 18 hours after Charla and Mirna checked in.

The Guidos hit the Roadblock and start throwing sticks. Teri and Ian are in a taxi. You know the editors were wishing that both teams could have been at the Roadblock at the same time so there would be some tense footage to splice together, but Bill hits the target before the other taxi even gets there. So instead the editors have a little fun by showing his final throw in slow motion, his stick hurtling end over end towards the target. They grab their clue and it’s all over for Teri and Ian.

It’s not too bad. Teri and Ian were certainly more likable this season than they were in Season 3, when they were almost the villains because of their grumpiness and their yelling. This time around they seemed kinder and gentler, and like they were having more fun. But they were a disposable team, it’s it’s no big deal to see them go. Now there are only two more disposable teams left, Eric and Danielle and the Beauty Queens. If we can see them go, one after another, we’ll end up with a pretty awesome final four. Can’t wait!

But of course the Guidos are approximately 20 hours behind Charla and Mirna, and at least 8 hours behind Eric and Danielle. Shades of the first season, where the Guidos got so far behind that there was no way for them to catch up. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of producer-created bunching come into play this time, though.

Next two weeks? I’m out of town on vacation. I’ll be watching, but I won’t be writing. You’re on your own. It looks hilarious, though. Charla’s a knight in shining armor, and her horse knocks her flat on her face. Pause, rewind, play. Pause, rewind, play. Pause, rewind, slow forward.

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!

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!!!

But that’s not even all, That’s only the A Plot in this weird, wacky, wild, wonderful episode. We also get a B Plot where Charla and Mirna run out of locals and other racers to yell at, so they turn on each other. And it is magnificent, people. Viciously beautiful. We’ve also got flying hats, stolen cabs, plenty of ups and downs for everyone, the first of many wins for Danny and Oswald, and the disembodied spirit of Flo, shrieking at us from beyond the grave. In all, this is one of the best episodes I can remember seeing in a long time.

And Rob and Amber lost a footrace. To Charla!!!

Check back at On The Air later in the week for a full recap.

David and Mary are scared of fish and scared of river rafting, but they face both those fears. They’re still horrible at navigating, though, so they get 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: The deserts of Chile threatened to chew up most of the teams, but it was Drew and his fifteen hundred medical maladies that came in last and were eliminated.

Currently on The Amazing Race: Teams leave the Valley of the Dead in the middle of the night. The hills all around the Pit Stop are lit up gorgeously with spotlights, giving a ghostly effect to the whole scene. It’s the little details like this that set this show apart, you know? So the first order of business is to drive to a nearby town and find a clue in front of a church, and the clue tells them to head back to the airport. But they’re not leaving the country yet, it’s just a short hop across to a different part of Chile.

On the way to the church, the Guidos stop to get directions, and Eric rolls up nearby and eavesdrops on the conversation. He then uses the directions to get to the church first. Kind of an underhanded move, but there’s nothing wrong with it, really. It’s the same situation as Kevin “eavesdropping” on Mary at the Roadblock last week. If you don’t want people to hear you, just talk quieter. The Guidos get a little pissy about this, though, even pulling the grade-school move of standing in front of Eric’s truck so he can’t drive away. Really? Don’t be children, Guidos. Just don’t. They pulled crap like this in their season too, trying to block other teams in the airport so they’d miss their flight. I love these guys, but they’ve got to cut out the petty little games.

David and Mary get choked up in an interview about how hard it is to run the race without the Cho Brothers. Really? I would have thought the opposite would be true. Being in that alliance last year looked pretty rough. We even get a black-and-white flashback shot of the Chos, just like we had last year. You know, they aren’t actually dead.

Most teams head right to the airport to book tickets, but Rob and Amber go to a travel agency first. And this travel agency is located in a mud hut. Like, literally. They’re got computers and they’ve got internet, but aside from that it looks like a Flintstones house. It seems to work out for them, getting them a flight that lands an hour earlier. And Uchenna and Joyce get on the same flight by ditching the airport and heading to a hotel to shop online. They even take everyone else’s credit cards to buy them tickets, which seems like a stretch of the rules to say the very least. They’re allowed to do it, though, although the Guidos were the only ones that gave them enough credit card info to complete the sale, so the other teams are stuck trying to buy tickets on the faster flight at the airport. Some make it, some don’t, and there’s a showdown between Mirna and Teri and Ian that shows us the old folks are not to be taken lightly. They don’t buckle under Mirna’s ten tons of bullshit like other people do, and she seems a little taken aback, like “Why aren’t they intimidated by me?” Of course it’s just one more imagined slight that she’ll use to feed her persecution complex. What’s that saying about mud wrestling with a pig? Eventually you realize the pig is enjoying it?

So all the teams fly from Chile to Chile, and have to make their way to some fish hatchery with seven words in its name. The name is so long, they don’t even show it on the screen, just the much-shorter name of the town, Metri. And the teams have to get in a car and drive themselves. I’m so glad to see the return of having to navigate yourselves around. I was really getting tired of everybody taking taxis everywhere like they have for the last six seasons, it seems like. Even if “drive yourself” now means “hire a taxi to lead you”.

The Roadblock at the fish hatchery involves grabbing fish out of one tank, putting them in a crate, and running them down the hill to another tank nearby. But this is a huge tank (1,800 gallons, Phil says) so you actually have to put on hip waders and hop in to get the fish. And the fish are huge too, like 15 inches in diameter. And they’re flatfish, so they’re all lying on top of each other, and one of the first challenges seems to be to get in the tank without stepping on them. Eric and Danielle are in first place (where are Rob and Amber?), so Danielle takes the Roadblock without realizing that you actually have to grab the fish. Which is something she cannot do. Eric’s idea of being supportive is to scream at her and threaten her. Doesn’t sound very productive. Then he keeps screaming at her, “Use your boobs! Use your boobs!” Eventually Rob shows up, and even he is telling Eric to chill out. When Rob is tell you you’re being too abrasive? Time to step back and take a long look at your life.

Danielle isn’t the only one having a hard time with the fish, though. David gets in the tank, but as Mary says, “he don’t never touch fish. He’s afraid of fish.” And indeed, we see him very gingerly trying to pluck at the fish, almost like he just wishes he can rub them the right way and they’ll leap into the crate by themselves. David is Not A Water Person, I think is what we’re supposed to take away from his story. Remember last year and “Water over your head, if you fell, you’re dead”? Eventually he gets serious and starts flinging fish. You can tell he’s serious because he’s taken off his hat. And elsewhere, Mirna is having a full-on panic attack. She gets one fish in the crate, then recoils from it and it almost reduced to a sobbing mess. It’s kind of funny to see her in distress, you know? There are some people you just don’t feel sorry for.

Uchenna is the first one done with the fish, and he finds out that the clue is written on the bottom of the tank, in several parts. The clue leads them to the river near the town of Petrohue. So you have to write the clue down yourself, and hope that you don’t miss any pieces. You’d think this would be easy. But we see the Guidos, the second team to finish, write down the clue, and Joe misses the part about Petrohue. Doesn’t even see it. So basically all they know is that they have to go to “the river”. Which is so incredibly vague, you’d think they would realize something’s missing, right? They don’t, and they set off running.

Danny has a hard time with the fish, rather uncharacteristically because everything they do usually seems so effortless for them. When they leave only Charla and Mirna are still working on the fish. Everyone else is getting directions to Petrohue, but Mirna is still crying and freaking out, probably for a long time. But finally even she gets done and gets the clue. Then, while they’re driving around looking for directions, they run into the Guidos, who are doing the same. Except they’re not having any luck at all since they don’t have the whole clue. So the four of them accost a local on the street to ask directions, and eventually end up just grabbing the guy and stuffing him into Charla and Mirna’s car. The guy weakly tries to protest (“I have work!”), but they offer to pay him $50 US, so I guess that’s a pay raise for him. The whole thing has a “kidnapping the locals” vibe to it. They just yank him off the street, leaving his wife and young child behind. I think I saw this in a documentary once. It involved salt mines.

“Welcome to Charla and Mirna’s world,” they tell him. “It’s a scary one.” No kidding.

Charla and Mirna’s world descends on a police station or something, still with the Guidos in tow, and they’re asking for directions there. The Guidos are like, “what is this Petrohue of which you speak?” Mirna’s kind of dumbfounded, like “You didn’t write down the whole clue?” But then because her desire to be seen as a hero overrides her desire to knock out the competition, she gives the Guidos the missing piece of the clue. Even she can’t believe she did that. “You’re lucky you found us,” she says. And really, they are. If they though being stranded in Alaska was bad, they almost never got out of Chile there. That’s a pretty colossal mistake the Guidos just made, and they’re damn lucky they got out of it.

While this is going on, nearly every other team is arriving at Petrohue and the cluebox along the river. The Detour this week is a choice between climbing a rock wall, which is literally right there at the box, or going white water rafting, which is at some undetermined point elsewhere on the river. The rock wall is only 40 feet high, so it seems like this task could be done very quickly. Like the rafting shouldn’t even be an option, because first you have to find the place, then you have to change into the rafting gear, then you actually have to raft two miles down the river, then get out of the boat and get into a van that will take you all the way back to your car. That could take forever, you know? Forever. Compared to hopping up a really short rock wall. Astoundingly, no one takes the rock climbing, and they all go for the rafting. Is there something here I’m missing? Was there additional information on the clue that scared everyone off the climbing? I’m so confused.

So I said everyone chose the rafting, but that’s not really true because the Beauty Queens, Dustin and Kandice, somehow find the rafts before they get the Detour clue. I can see how they get screwed up, because there are yellow and red arrows letting people know where to park for the rafting, and there are obviously camera crews and everything set up there, so they know that what they’re looking at is part of the Race. But there’s no clue box, so they’re a little confused. So their reasoning is that they need to get in the boat first, and look for the clue box along the way. And, that’s not how it works. There have been tasks like that, to be sure. But there’s always been an intermediate clue that tells you to get in the boat. So they hop in and do the rafting, doing the right thing but for the wrong reason.

The rafting does look fun, I’ll give them that. It’s probably more enjoyable than the rock climbing, it just takes a lot longer to do. And only one person falls in, Teri. She fell off of the jet ski in her season, too, if you’ll remember, so I’m guessing watersports aren’t her thing. There is much tense music and they cut to a commercial, trying to make you think she drowned. But of course she didn’t, and they get her back in the boat in about five seconds.

Oh, by the way, Rob and Amber? First at the Pit Stop. Of freaking course. The funniest thing about the Pit Stop, though, is that the greeter is a little person, and I bet you a million and half dollars that they wouldn’t have hired him if Charla wasn’t on the Race.

Dustin and Kandice finish the rafting, and they find a clue. Just like they thought they would! And it’s the clue to go to the Pit Stop! Gosh, seem like anything’s missing there, girls? They’re in second place as they get back to their car, but then the car decides to play a joke on them and it won’t start. So while they’re sitting there trying to get the engine running, Uchenna and Joyce and Eric and Danielle peel out of there, making it to the Pit Stop in second and third place. Finally the car starts, like it’s just as anxious as us to see what happens when they check in with Phil, and when they get there Phil just gives them this look, like “are you kidding me?” Then he tells them, in one of the vaguest statements ever, “you did not pick up all your clues,” and sends them away. They wander off the mat with absolutely no idea what they did wrong, and as much as I’d like to tell you that they drive around and around and never find the missing clue, that’s not what happens. In fact, they not only figure it out, they figure it out so fast that they’re able to get back to the Pit Stop, with the missing clue, and check in before any other teams have a chance to catch up. Man, it’s so frustrating when people you don’t like do well.

But speaking of people I do like, Oswald and Danny check in fifth. It’s a bit of a slip from second place, but remember that they were second-to-last out of the fish Roadblock. So they made up a significant amount of ground over some other teams. What’s that you said? Two of the teams they beat were ones that got lost? La, la, I can’t hear you. They do remark on the greeter, though, saying the same thing the rest of us were thinking: “Charla’s gonna be in love.”

One of those teams that got lost was David and Mary, who end up taking what looks to be a series of very wrong turns, some of them made even when there are signs clearly telling them where to go. They meet up with some family that tells them Petrohue is a long ways away, back the way they just came.

Teri and Ian check in, while Charla and Mirna and the Guidos are just starting the rafting. Both of them have every reason to believe they’re in last place right now, so they’re hustling to get this done.

David and Mary finally get the Detour clue. Mary asks if the rafting is okay, and David tells her it doesn’t matter what he thinks, since she’s the one calling the shots anyway. What he actually says is, “It’s up to you.” So she immediately jumps all over him for this, shrieking about how she can’t do the rock climb, and he’s like, “okay.” She’s so exasperated with him. How dare he let her make a decision without interfering? What’s wrong with him?

Charla and Mirna are the first ones done with the rafting, and they race to get back to their car. And when they get back, who is still waiting for them? The local they kidnapped earlier. He’s just standing by the car like an obedient little puppy. I personally would have run when I had the chance, but I guess Stockholm syndrome is setting in early. Mirna actually apologizes to him for wearing a bathing suit, in that broken Russian accent of hers that she uses to talk to foreigners. Hey, she told him that Charla and Mirna’s world was a scary one. No use apologizing now. Plus, Charla’s the one that should be apologizing for her bathing suit, especially with that frilly little tutu ruffle on it.

Charla and Mirna have lost their keys, though, so that gives the Guidos the chance to get out of the parking lot ahead of them. Of course they back into a pole on the way, shredding the hell out of their rear taillight. You know, the car rental insurance rates for The Amazing Race have got to be sky-high by now. It must be getting harder and harder to find a rental agency that hasn’t heard of the many, many cars that have been destroyed by this show. They make it to the Pit Stop, but not before Joe has an emotional breakdown over how stressful the day has been. Hey, at least you weren’t eating cow’s lips.

It’s a race to the finish for Charla and Mirna and David and Mary, and for the first time this season I don’t really care who goes home. There is much tense music, but of course it’s Charla and Mirna who get there first. Did you really think David and Mary would ever win a race anywhere? Charla finally gets to make her love connection, and she’s so happy not to be eliminated that she gives the greeter a big hug. Aw. Somebody’s getting lucky tonight!

So that leaves David and Mary with the sad music and the tearful reminisces of how much the race meant to them. You know, they shouldn’t have even been here in the first place. There are about fifteen teams, at least, that deserved All-Stars more than David and Mary. Their whole hook was that they never left the couch, and they had never seen gay people or Asians before, and they were afraid of water, and they were country folk with a heart of gold, and seriously all of those bases were covered during Season 10. There was nothing more to be rehashed here, no reason for them to be brought back, and they sucked just as much at racing the second time around. This is one piece of casting that should have never been, and at least now it’s been erased. Good riddance. Go home.

Next week? Charla and Mirna are causing even more crap, this time with Rob and Amber. Do they never stop?