Monday, October 02, 2006

The Amazing Race: Enjoy the journey, but remember to read your clue

We continue our tour of communist and communist-adjacent countries with a trip to Vietnam. I have to say, I'm loving the intinerary this year. There have now been two countries in a row that the race has never been to (Update 10/2 p.m.: Um, apparently the race has been to Vietnam before. Whoopsie!) and that you rarely see on TV. This is the best part of The Amazing Race: being introduced to the culture of countries you might never see otherwise. Happily, we have teams like Mary and David and Erwin and Godwin who like this part of the race, too.

Anyway, teams are sent to Hanoi to visit the Hanoi Hilton. And while this seems like a bit of a downer, it's not the first time the show has visited a memorial. It's nice of them to recognize these places where terrible things happened, but the only two teams who really take a moment and appreciate what happened at the prison are Tom and Terry and Erwin and Godwin. Yes, Erwin and Godwin again. Those Cho brothers are really growing on me. They got off to an inauspicious start with the water pistols at the airport (stupid), but they have a great attitude and they work hard. And as their reward, they come in first for this leg. See? You should always take a moment to appreciate where you are.

Not having such a good leg are Duke and Lauren. Their local guide screws them over by taking their cab to her brother's place before they go to the prison, leaving them without enough money to pay their cab, and they get completely lost on the way to the Detour and end up at the complete opposite Detour from the one they wanted. They are, unfortunately, eliminated, but they still love each other. So good for them.

Tom and Terry, meanwhile, have severe reading-the-clue problems. They get in trouble for taking a motorbike during the leg, which they're not allowed to do for safety reasons. So they have to take a 30-minute penalty at the mat and think about what they did. You guys know Phil is only grounding you because he loves you and he wants you to be safe, right?

We've also got two teams with severe leg problems. Mary's ankle is still bad, and Sarah's knee just gets worse, to the point where she's actually crawling across the rice paddy to the pit stop. How much further can these teams go? CBS has already lost the Indian-American and the Muslim teams, and they're really not going to want to lose the woman with the prosthetic leg. They might have to send their interns in to top up her hydraulic fluid while she sleeps. If she doesn't know about it, it's not a rules violation!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My favorite part of this season is Mary getting to know (and like) people who she would never meet in her Kentucky coal-mining town. I particularly enjoy when she tells us "I even like the... [whisper] gay guys". You can tell that she knows it is a little bit insulting or not PC to talk about being surprised that she likes a gay couple but she is also just so pleasantly surprised by it that she feels compelled to share. I find her adorable and I hope that her bad ankle doesn't mean she will be eliminated soon!

Lori said...

I know, I really like Mary. It was so sweet when she told Tom and Terry that they had to walk her back from the pit stop. She seems like she's making friends with everyone, which is kind of refreshing.