The Amazing Race, Episode 10-1

Shows

The Amazing Race returns, and I’m back to talk about it. Reunited, and it feels so good. This season, twelve teams took off from Seattle, Washington and headed to Beijing, China. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Line of the show: “The Motherland! Except we’re not Chinese.” – The Cho Brothers

Why is this the line of the night? Because it takes me back to the comedy of Russell Peters, who talked about being Indian and thus his “motherland” was… England.

Anyways, one episode down, and even though I’m not doing live recaps anymore, I’m bringing back my no-frills Leaderboard for ya.

Flights – For the last few races the initial flight has not been crucial to whether you get eliminated or not on the first leg. Rather, it has served as a “warm-up” to gain early departure times for the second half of the leg. And as we’ve seen before, being on that early flight doesn’t mean that you’ll get the earliest departure times. Dustin and Kandice got lost trying to find the Roadblock, but recovered enough to grab the last 7:15am departure time.

Roadblock – These Eyes
A mind over matter task that rewarded those who could eat quickly.

Detour – Labor or Leisure
I didn’t like the layout of the Labor task, since teams could look at each other’s squares to see what was wrong with theirs. Leisure actually seemed like the easier task – Tom and Terry breezed through it, and the two teams were actually goofing off during the practice session. However Labour didn’t seem to trick anybody, so it was a wash.

Great Wall Climb
This was the one task that helped change the order of finish for the leg. Lyn and Karlyn had a good lead on some other teams, but they had trouble scaling the wall and ended up in ninth. Meanwhile, Rob and Kimberly and Erwin and Godwin started the day in the trailing group, but used their superior conditioning to scale the wall and move into the middle of the pack. And Peter and Sarah arrived first, but Peter’s need to rush led them to the wrong part of the wall, which helped contribute to their third place finish.

Miscellaneous
– It’s pretty funny that half of the visible minority teams were gone after the first leg. Erwin and Godwin were also on shaky ground, but seem to have recovered thanks to the physical final task.
– I’m on the fence about Sarah right now. On one hand, we’ve been through the whole “woe is me/I don’t need your pity” thing with Charla, so I’m not inclined to feel sorry for her if she really is playing that card with the other teams. On the other hand, I do feel that Lyn and Karlyn are somewhat quick to judge and aren’t quick to pity anyone, so I think their dislike of the triathletes is somewhat misguided. But I’ll give this another week. She really needs to stop whining though – it’s something that has nothing to do with her disability and more in common with Flo, actually.
– We got exactly one shot of Bilal and Sa’eed praying before they were Philiminated. It sucks that they’re gone, because I was really looking forward to seeing how they’d balance the dictates of their religion with the sometimes hectic pace of the game.
– Speaking of Philimination, I think this is the first time since the first season where we see all the other teams around when someone gets sent “home”.
– Finally, I think this is the first season where teams are heading around the world in a westerly direction. Someone needs to check me on that one.

That’s it for now.

Sir Linksalot: The Amazing Race

Kevin has been an Insider since 2003, writing on a variety of topics ranging from The Amazing Race to Mixed Martial Arts. His current hobbies include Fantasy Football, Sporcle, travelling, making liberal use of his DVR and wondering what the heck he's gonna do when his two daughters are old enough to date. You can follow Kevin on Twitter (@starvenger).