Flights
The top two teams from Season 7, Uchenna/Joyce and Rob/Amber went different routes to acquire early tickets. Rob and Amber decided to find an internet café/travel agency before going to the airport, while Uchenna and Joyce secured a spot in line at ticketing before heading out to a hotel business centre. Note that they had no problem helping the other three teams at the airport, since they knew that other teams were trailing. Like Rob and Amber, they’ve learned the value of a temporary alliance.
What surprised me was that no teams actually asked if the second flight was the earliest arriving one, until Eric realized that Uchenna was on an earlier flight. Eric did good work in getting the last available seats for the early flight, which propelled his team up one spot in the standings.
Hey, they’re in first again
Well, full credit to Boston Rob when he said that he’d trade all his prizes in to be first on the 13th leg. He and Amber have been doing a stellar job so far. They’ve gotten help when they needed it, they’ve formed temporary alliances as dictated by the situation, and they’re the first team to finish first on the first three legs of the Race. Of course, should they finish last on a leg, it will be all for naught, but that’s the way it goes on this show. Still, anyone who said that they didn’t deserve to be on this “All Star” edition are probably pissed off right about now.
Roadblock
It would seem that there wasn’t anything difficult about the Roadblock, except that for some reason, people that were afraid of fish (Danielle, David, Mirna) decided to go with it. Still, there was a technique to catching the fish, and once a Racer figured it out, it was easy going from here (unless you ask Oswald). The big question for me was whether one of the teams would forget to write down the clue, which could be a huge blow to their chances.
Mirna, again
Yeah, she wasn’t the only one whining about the fish, but everyone else sucked it up and stopped complaining after a while. Mirna was a steady stream of whine. Then there was the whole kerfuffle with Teri and Ian. Mirna of course saw no problem with trying to cut in and get her standby tickets processed. And let’s not forget that she didn’t hesitate to lord her “superiority” over the Guidos in writing down the whole clue.
I should note that in this leg, we saw Dustin and Kandice giving Charla props. Contrast this to last episode where Mirna and Charla were pissing on the blondes basically for being pretty.
But in the interest of being fair, I won’t chide her for dragging Charla back to the change tents to recover their car keys. The rules are such that teammates have to be within a certain distance of one another, Roadblocks excepted.
Detour – Vertical Limit or River Wild
When Dustin and Kandice went right to River Wild without picking up a Detour clue, my wife asked what would happen. I told her that it would either be a time penalty or they’d be asked to go back and get all their clues. I’m still not sure how these things are decided, but I suppose that with the Detour in close proximity, the powers that be chose the latter. Not that it mattered, as Dustin and Kandice ended up not losing a spot.
We’re of course left to wonder if the rock climb would’ve been any faster. It was probably a coin toss between the two if you were athletic. I’m sure John Vito and Jill would’ve gone for it.
I wonder if Ashley Judd was rooting for them?
And thus ends the second journey of David and Mary. As I’ve said before, against this cast of Racers, they just aren’t in the same league. They had a level of comfort in the previous season, knowing that their friends would be there to keep them around as long as possible, but as Mary noted, there were no Chos this time around to help them. I’m impressed that they got to race three legs, and despite all my misgivings about them on the All-Star season, they’ll be missed.
