The Amazing Race: The King is Dead

I don't understand how Charla and Mirna have stayed in the race. Everything they do is drama, they whine and complain all the time, they go out of their way to score any advantage they can over the other teams, but are mortally offended when Amber tricks them, and somehow, they're still around, like cockroaches. At very least, I would have thought that one of the locals they spend all their time patronizing and speaking broken English to would smack them or leave them in the middle of a barren desert. It must be Mirna's pact with Satan that has taken them this far, because it sure isn't their skills. Through a combination of dumb luck, a needle-in-a-haystack Roadblock, Rob's inability to spell, and, yes, Rob's hubris, the cousins manage to slide in ahead of Rob and Amber, who are eliminated. Which I still can't believe. And I really, really hope the cousins don't start taking credit for that, although I know they will. They had nothing to do with it. It was all the Philippines' fault.

Okay, let me explain. The teams head to Punta Arenas, where they participate in a Magellan-themed Detour. Rob and Amber choose the option of putting together a signpost with the names of all Magellan's points of call, in the correct order, and spelled correctly. Rob and Amber have everything correct except for the spelling of the Philippines (we know, because the editors helpfully threw in fifteen shots of the incorrect spelling, and just barely refrained from throwing a captioned [sic] after it). So they bleed a lot of time here, and they bleed more time by not only switching to the other Detour, but going in the absolute wrong direction from where they had to go. They were following Rob's hubris instead of the compass, you see. Thanks to this Detour, Rob and Amber wind up in the bottom of the pack.

And then, the Roadblock, which is like a big shout-out to longtime race fans. The racers have to search through a sack of mail for a letter from some of their former racemates. And you know, it's very sweet and all for the racers to get letters from their old friends on the race, but bring on the hate mail! It's a lot more fun. Just look at the one sent to the Guidos, a crazy scat-filled letter from Frank that is his attempt to annoy them from afar. Nice job, Frank! The two teams in last place, awesomely, also get demotivational letters – the cousins from Lance and Marshall, who correctly point out Mirna's inability to speak English, let alone any other language, with proficiency, and Rob and Amber from professional Rob-and-Amber-haters Susan and Patrick. Their letter was not particularly clever; I'd suggest that they take lessons from Frank. But as the cousins pick up their hate mail first, and they don't kill themselves or go insane (but not for lack of trying) wandering around in the wilderness at the end of the world, they grab the last spot. They're going to be around forever, aren't they? Like Dick Clark or ER. They just may win this whole thing through sheer Clouseauian luck. That's a scary thought.