I like the phrase, too. I was just giving you a light-hearted hard time.
Point taken about Claire and Brook.
You know I somewhat agree here, but I’ve done things where you’re on the go for 2-3+ days of straight running around. It gets to be hard after a few days and I know I’ve said “fuck it I quit” even though I don’t really mean it.
I do like her though, she may not be the brightest bulb, but she’s got the drive.
My daughter lives in Hong Kong and the humidity and heat are unbelievable according to her, and she lived in Fla for 20 years. So I’m thinking the out of breath, can’t breathe had a lot to do with the temp/humidity factors.
Did anyone notice Vicki mentioning Nick’s temper at the pit stop? I wonder how often she keeps her mouth shut just to avoid his “temper”. He would be the type to blame her and her actions as an excuse for his losing his temper. I can’t believe it took me this long to realize what a jerk he is.
I don’t want to malign someone I don’t really know, but Nick really puts me in mind of someone who has really never learned to control his emotions or impulses, even to a somewhat minimal level. He seems to operate on a very immature foundation…usually by your mid-twenties you stop referring to things you volunteered to do as “stupid”. All along, I’ve thought he either had an exaggerated sense of his own abilities or a blustery bluff obsession about them. Overall, he really does come across as a man-child, and not so much a pitiful, harmless, whiny man-child like Hellboy was, but a man-child that you kind of expect to be in the paper at some point after being arrested for domestic violence.
I can. Nick really wasn’t an asshole until this episode. Every other episode has painted him as a slightly clueless but mostly together guy. The Amazing Editors could probably have made the glee club guys look like assholes if they wanted to.
He’s had other asshole moments. This was the worst, but it’s an escalation of previous behavior - it didn’t come out of the blue.
Yeah, Nick’s been going back and forth for me all season long. The only reason I hadn’t permanently bumped him into the “General Ass” category before was that he kept having moments of apparent revelation where he “realized” that he was wrong to snap at Vicki like he did. First, in Ghana, during the hoop-rolling, then again in (I think) Norway. Last night just capped it for me…it was the longest and the most severe incident yet.
I agree. He was being a jerk for sure in the boat, but I think a lot of what we heard was carefully edited during the food challenge. I’ve started paying attention to whether we can see the racers’ faces while they saying jerky things and more often than not, I think, you can’t. That means it could be edited and out of context. I was hoping they would change things up and make it and elimiation leg, but I didn’t really think they would.
Ah, okay. (Always wondered about the plane ticket thing.)
It’s just that I’ve heard differently from the show’s producers, how the cameras have to catch the action on the first take, and if they miss a shot there’s no going back (“I’m sorry, the camera jammed while you were throwing up in the bathroom…could you please puke again?”) But I suppose both can be true, especially if retakes are reserved for situations where time isn’t a factor.
He has come right out and said as much a couple of different times on the Race; He stated that the Amazing Race is supposed to be fun, and now that he is not enjoying himself, naturally the thing to do is whine like a three-year old and quit, without any thought to how his partner might feel about it.
The first time he was verbally abusive to Vicki, he tearfully apologized to her at the Pit Stop, and I actually thought he was sincere. After pulling the same act a couple of different times since, I now just think he is a good actor when he wants to be.
He really is a POS, but it looks to me that he has Vicki wrapped around his little finger…
Like the cameraman in this episode getting the door slammed in his face trying to follow Claire to the toilet itself. But they made up for it with the puking sounds 
And a cameraman (presumably).
And a sound guy–2 racers + 1 cameraman +1 sound guy.
There was a great BBC series called Around the World in Eighty Days in which Michael Palin tried to recreate the journey of Phileas Fogg. They normally had a crew of four, although Palin was the only one seen. For the trip across the Pacific Ocean, they found a freighter that only had two berths available, so only the cameraman came along. There were shots of Palin with the tape recorder hanging from his shoulder, adjusting his own sound levels.
He sets off alarms in my head for “abusive” all over the place. And she seems to be classically responding to him as well. She knows he has a ‘temper’ and she is always trying to diffuse it, and talk him down. He always blames her when things go wrong. He is allowed to change his mind/give up, she is expected to take it. She apologizes to him when she hasn’t done anything wrong. He seriously seems like more than just a jerk to me, the way they interact shows classic signs of an abusive relationship.
Abusers are often sincere when they apologize. They usually do really feel sorry for what they have done, but they don’t change their behavior and the cycle starts again. I just hope when she watches this all happening on tv she can see it for herself (any maybe her friends/family will see it as well.)
About the buffet challenge…I didn’t understand why some of them were eating so much? Couldn’t you tell if it was fake by poking it and comparing texture to other pieces around it? I can understand having to bite into a few things, but some of them seriously seemed to be testing out mainly by eating. You were allowed to poke/prod/move the item around, right? Just not pick it up?
I thought of that, but I suspect that the rules were more thorough than the description that Phil gave. Probably anything you touched with the chopsticks you had to eat. Otherwise you could just tap everything; I suspect the artificial food would sound different.
I was thinking of picking up the plates and shaking them a little bit, see if one piece jiggles any differently than the rest.
deleted.
Yeah, they specifically said “you touch it, you eat it,” so poking was out.
I could have sworn that the task description said that the food could be poked with the chopsticks, but anything touched with fingers had to be eaten… My daughter watched with me, and confirms my spotty memory, but I haven’t rewatched.
That’s what I remember as well. You touch, you eat. You poke, your stomach lives to fight another day.