| Pos |   | Name | RB | Name | RB | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beauty Queens | Dustin | 4 | Kandice | 5 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 2 | Mirna/Schmirna | Charla | 5 | Mirna | 4 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| 3 |   | Eric | 6 | Danielle | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| 4 | Cha Cha Cha | Danny | 3 | Oswald | 3 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| 5 |   | Uchenna | 3 | Joyce | 2 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 5 | ||
| 6 | Team Guido | Joe | 2 | Bill | 4 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | |||
| 7 |   | Teri | 2 | Ian | 3 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 7 | |||||
| 8 | Romber | Rob | 1 | Amber | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | |||||||
| 9 | Kentucky | David | 1 | Mary | 1 | 9 | 9 | 9 | ||||||||
| 10 |   | Kevin | 1 | Drew | 0 | 10 | 10 | |||||||||
| 11 |   | John Vito | 0 | Jill | 0 | 11 |
NOTES:
| L5 | Non-Elimination Leg, Uchenna and Joyce came in last and were Marked for Elimination |
| L7 | Non-Elimination Leg, Joe and Bill came in last and were Marked for Elimination |
| L8 | Danny, Oswald, Uchenna and Joyce used the Fast Forward |
| L9 | Dustin and Kandice Yielded Eric and Danielle |
| L10 | Danny and Oswald used the Fast Forward |
| Non-Elimination Leg, Eric and Danielle came in last and were Marked for Elimination | |
| L11 | Danny and Oswald Yielded Eric and Danielle |
| Non-Elimination Leg, Danny and Oswald came in last and were Marked for Elimination |
Money
After giving away all of their money in Malaysia, Danny and Oswald had to play pretty conservative with their funds. $73 does not go far in Hong Kong and Macau, especially if you’re relying on taxis and ferries for transport. And since the producers kept coming back to the Cha Chas commenting on it, you had to figure that this might come into play later.
Travel
Teams traveled via turbojet ferry from Hong Kong to Macau, which like Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China. And also similar to Hong Kong, it is part mainland, part islands. Charla and Mirna felt the need for barf bags, but let me tell you, once that Jet gets out of the harbour and speeds across the river delta, you wouldn’t even know you’re on a boat.
Once in Macau teams rushed to find Macau Tower, but found a bottleneck in a 10am “opening time”.
Yield
The Beauty Queens were naturally afraid that they’d get Yielded again, but took Oswald and Danny on their “bribe” offer and “bought” the Cha Cha’s Yield, to use on… Eric and Danielle. Danielle is now the career leader in getting Yielded. Mirna questioned the use of the Yield, but strategically speaking, Yielding the trailing Danielle and Eric made sense. How? Well, let’s see:
- You want to eliminate a strong team, and despite all indications to the contrary, Eric and Danielle will always APPEAR stronger than Charla and Mirna.
- There’s only room for three of the four teams in the sprint to the Finish Line. Trying to “take out” the trailing team is meant to virtually guarantee your spot there.
- Danielle’s already “on tilt” as it is from the last Yield. Yielding her again could effectively take her mentally out of the competition.
- It’s the last Yield of the competition. It doesn’t make sense NOT to use it.
Of course, all this is based on the presumption that it was an elimination leg. Which it wasn’t, but even so, not using the Yield is throwing away an advantage you have on another team.
Roadblock – Sky Jump
Kandice, Danny, Charla and Eric took the Roadblock, which was another “jump from a tower” task. Nothing to it, unless you crap your pants on the way down. Charla was right though – that first step has to be scary.
Also of note – if I’ve been tallying the Roadblocks right, Eric has taken six Roadblocks, and if the Roadblock rule is in effect, then Eric has either reached the maximum or can do only one more, which means we’re likely to get more of Danielle freaking out on some crazy task.
Detour – Noodle or Dragon
The Dragon Boat returns, but this time teams were asked to carry some boat items as opposed to rowing the boat. The Cha Chas took this challenge, while the girls and Eric decided to make noodles, which to me seemed like a faster task – I’ve seen people make noodles from scratch, and it’s pretty quick. That bamboo pole flattening though – not at all suggestive of anything, no sir. Meanwhile, the Cha Chas ended up going to the wrong end of the Detour and lost valuable time, but then got lost going to the Dragon Boat. Eric and Danielle managed to move up to second on this task, and can I just say that Charla’s nice, but there’s no way I’d eat her noodles after seeing her stand in her shoes on the table, you know?
Driving
Eric noted that the inverted stick shift (since the steering column was on the right) might be difficult for some teams. And it proved true as Dustin took some time to get used to the stick, and Mirna had all sorts of problems initially.
So Why Do You Use It As An Advantage?
So finally Mirna says what we already knew – Charla wants to be treated as a normal person, and she treats her as a normal person – unless they can use Charla’s height to their advantage, or Mirna needs to complain about something. Now see, this is why I favour teams like Romber and the Beauty Queens – they do what needs to be done in order to win, but they also don’t try to act as if they’re the only team with “integrity” in the competition. In Rob’s case, I’m not sure integrity ever played a factor – unless you’re talking about Rob staying true to his overall strategy.
Non-Elimination
So here’s my question – had Eric and Danielle come in last again, how would the penalty time have worked? In all previous cases, teams who were marked but were officially the last team to arrive were eliminated before the penalty time had elapsed, so would Eric and Danielle have had the remaining penalty time tacked onto their departure time, their new penalty time, or something else? Obviously, it’s a moot point this season, but I’d be curious to see if it would come into play on a future season.
