The Amazing Race: Much Ado About Yielding

After a few episodes with supremely unexciting endings, in which the last team was either too far behind to make any difference or spared by a non-elimination leg, it feels good to finally have a nail-biting finish. I would have liked it more if it had been Charla and Mirna racing for the bottom spot, instead of Oswald and Danny, but then I wouldn't have cared as much, I guess. The cousins' butts are saved, despite Mirna's best efforts to get herself run over by a bus, by Eric and Danielle's elimination penalty and Danny and Oswald's very bad day. They get lost in the middle of Macau both by themselves and with their taxi driver, who so upsets them that Oswald threatens to kill him. (Oh, yes he does, and he wants God to help him hide the body.) It comes down to Eric and Danielle, waiting out their penalty, and the Chas, running to the pit stop, and the Chas are too late. And what do we get for this suspenseful finish? Another non-elimination leg. Yes, again. But I'm not really upset, because it means that Danny and Oswald are still in it. Besides, Phil promised that this was the last non-elimination leg, so from this point forward, everyone gets dumped like the dead weight they are. Or like the body of Oswald's taxi driver, in the South China Sea.

So, you remember how there was that one episode where someone got yielded? And then there was that episode where everyone kept talking about how someone got yielded? Yeah, someone gets yielded again. Actually, the same someone. By, more or less, the same someone again. Except, this time, the beauty queens actually hire the cash-strapped Danny and Oswald to do it for them, after the Chas pitch the deal. But… why don't Dustin and Kandice do it themselves? They'd get to keep the money, and it's not like Eric and Danielle aren't going to find out that they paid for the Yield anyway. In fact, Dustin and Kandice tell them so. It's not going to save their reputations in front of the other teams to pin the blame on someone else. Besides, do they really care what Mirna thinks of them? The beauty queens do claim that it was also a bribe to keep Danny and Oswald from yielding them, which may well be true, but it still strikes me as getting threatened by a puppy. Needless to say, Mirna saddles up her high horse to pass judgment on the Chas, and Eric is just plain furious with them. Phil actually laughs as he's telling the Chas how angry Eric is about the whole thing, which either means that he thinks Eric needs to get over it or he's really into schadenfreude. Clearly, Phil's not impressed by Eric's Yield Rage, which only makes sense, because he knows Colin. Remember when Colin got yielded and he tried to make Chip's head explode with his mind? Man, why isn't Colin on this race?

Meanwhile, an extremely cool Roadblock: skyjump off the Macau Tower. I mean, it's cool for other people to do. Not me. They would have to shove me off the platform, and even then I'd be hurling curses at my partner the entire way down. But the people who did it seemed to like it!