In Hindsight: The Amazing Race Episode 12-1

After a short delay thanks to Super Bowl “XLI½”, the five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time, five-time Emmy Award winning reality competition The Amazing Race is back! I hope that it was worth the wait. Let’s break things down a bit, shall we?

Disclaimer: Since I live in Canada, I can’t get any bonus video that CBS may provide. Also, my daughter seemingly needs to be changed every hour, so chances are I missed some details changing nappies.

The Start
I am shocked, SHOCKED that the Girls Next Door didn’t make an appearance here. It’s not as if they don’t have a connection to the show – at least one of them is good friends with Playmate and former TAR competitor Victoria Fuller (they even threw a baby shower for her), plus Kendra (that’s the bratty one) would probably love to get as much mainstream exposure as possible, so why not? Aside from the fact that it strays from tradition, that is.

Anyways, after that traditional start, we see that the Racers may not be the best of the best here. If you see all the cars lined up single file, shouldn’t you, I don’t know, grab the one in the front?

As always, the Race starts with a mad dash to the airport, and teams that get there first get the early British Airways flight. Hey, never a bad thing, but for the great equalizer – London Heathrow Airport. Complications at the airport allowed the Aer Lingus flight to get to Shamrock first, and thus we now talk about

Shamrock, Ireland
The teams all got bottlenecked at the ferry, and raced to get times on the three charters to the Roadblock. It’s worth pointing out here that Ari and Staella stole Ronald and Christina’s taxi, thus testing the limits of “Race Karma” early. Once the ferrys got to their destination, Jason made the mistake of not listening to his partner the navigator. This is just me, but I think that unless your name is Zach and your partner is a whiny ex-girlfriend, you shouldn’t try to do it all yourself. Jason and Lorena went from front of the pack to middle of the pack, but it ended up not hurting them too much.

Roadblock
This one was mind over matter, but what a mind trip it was. A high-wire bike? Crazy. The only real position change was Nathan and Jennifer pulling ahead of the Goths, but that was short lived as the Roadblock gave way to a more difficult task…

DONKEY!
With the confusion about how much peat to transport, it would almost seem like the competitors didn’t know the amount to bring. Otherwise, it’d make perfect sense for the teams to count your lumps as you tossed it in the baskets. Minor issue though. Handling your donkey was key to completing this task, and Nathan and Jennifer simply couldn’t get theirs to move. Team after team passed them, but they finally got theirs going in time to avoid being the first elimination.

Other teams (Azaria and Hendekea come to mind) blew through this task, and even managed to get their donkeys running. Once done, they got to head to the Pit Stop, where the siblings finished first, and the Best Friends were eliminated.

Teams I Like
Azaria and Hendekea – Really likeable, and the team I hope will win, but I fear that at some point, this tandem will “pull a Cho” and get eliminated.

Teams I Don’t Like
Nathan and Jennifer – I just don’t see much chemistry between the two, and they’re not working very well together.
Ari and Staella – Guess I don’t have to worry much about hating them anymore

Teams I’m Leaning Towards Disliking
Kynt and Vyxsin – I’ve got nothing against Goths. Just those that try to make puns involving the word Goth constantly.
Jason and Lorena – OK, it’s just Jason.

Teams I Have No Opinion On
Everyone else. Although I gotta think that Grandpa is not going to last much longer in this Race.

That’s it for this week

Sir Linksalot: The Amazing Race