Maybe it’s just my dirty mind, but I thought Otto was trying to call to mind the obvious rhyme to “Chuck It.” Then again, you’d need sort of a different type of hot giant chick (or dude) for that one.
I’d still love to see the teams battle it out on that one though.
I hate the eating challenges. I think they’re stupid. They require neither talent nor strength nor wit and I do NOT enjoy watching people vomit. I think they bring the whole show down and I wish they’d be eliminated from all future races. Surely there are a couple thousand better ideas for challenges than that.
Actually this season’s challenges have rarely been exciting or interesting. I think the mattresses might have been the best in that regard. Are the writers getting bored with the whole concept?
I actually appreciated the fact that this eating challenge wasn’t particularly disgusting. Camel meat may be a bit exotic, sure, but like the one guy said, it was basically just like a funny-tasting burger. I would have tried it voluntarily if I’d been there.
We could use more of the “look at the great stuff the natives eat” challenges, as opposed to the “look what kind of freaky-ass weird shit the natives eat” challenges.
IMHO.
I think it should have been a roadblock, with the non-participating team members being the ones throwing the tomatoes. 
Oh, I wasn’t really going for the obvious rhyme because it would never make TV. Although as I’m typing this, “Puppet or Chuck It” is sounding good.
Are you kidding? Obstacle courses with quicksand-like mud! Desert islands with tiger traps! Freakin’ tanks! Robot camel jockeys! Previously the Best. Detour. Ever! until they trumped it by pelting racers in the head with tomatoes!
No kidding, Otto.
The tanks and robot camel jockeys were great. Then came the tomato-pelting!
The best part was when they ran in toward the big pile of tomotoes, seemingly alone, and then all those people appeared out of nowhere and started throwing tomotoes at them.
Granted I’ve missed a couple of episodes, but I don’t think the Bamas have cheated, have they? Hate them all you want, but they deserve to be in the final 3 just as much as the other teams do.
They were found SO easily, in fact, that I think there must have been many, many more than four clues (one for each team) hidden in that pile. Like, dozens more.
I’ve never seen a team dispense with a needle-in-a-haystack challenge as quickly as Rob&Kim and the *Lyns did last night.
Tomato-Throwing Strangers would be a good name for a rock band. Either that, or Robot Jockeys.
I heard the Tomato-Throwing Strangers were opening for the Robot Camel Jockeys. Should be a good show. Phil plays bass for the RCJs. Maybe he’ll dance again.
Tomato Throwing Robot Jockeys! Driving tanks! And bashing bottles over each others’ heads while an oompah band plays in the background!
Simply put, the 'Bamas are lousy racers. They never would have made it halfway, if it weren’t for the Six-Pack Alliance. Heck, the Cho Brothers essentially sacrificed themselves (whether it was their intention or not) so 'Bama could reach the top four.
I’ll admit that 'Bama ran a solid race last week, aided by the bad luck of R&K’s flat tire and the BQ’s driving mistake…but last night’s leg was poorly planned, and virtually guaranteed that BQ would be eliminated, unless they managed to take first. I don’t think they have any chance of winning next week, but if they do, it will be the biggest upset since Flo & Zach’s whiny win.
I was thinking that same thing.
Hey! You’re still here! I thought you went away!
Well, let’s be scientific about this. Using Wikipedia as a source, I listed all the Roadblocks, Fast Forwards, and all Detour options. Then I graded them on a completely objective five-point scale: Painfully Stupid, Lame, Non-memorable, Interesting, Pretty Damn Cool, and Incredibly Awesome. OK, that’s six points, but I’m on a roll, so I can’t be bothered with minor stuff.
Episode 1
Roadblock: Eat fish eyes. Painfully Stupid
Detour 1: Labor: put bricks in a pattern Interesting (mostly because some of the teams screwed it up)
Detour 2: Leisure: perform a relaxation exercise called Taiji Bai Long Lame
Episode 2
Roadblock: Shoot flaming arrows Pretty Damn Cool
Detour 1: Take It Down: take down and roll up the cover of a yurt Interesting (because of the bickering)
Detour 2: Fill It Up: fill a barrel up with water carried by cart Interesting (because…yaks!)
Episode 3
Roadblock: Sell flowers on Vietnamese bicycles Interesting
Detour 1: Fuel: form wet coal into round bricks Pretty Damn Cool (because it’s coal!)
Detour 2: Fowl: construct an intricate traditional Vietnamese birdcage Non-memorable
Episode 4
Roadblock: Use an ascender to climb a large rock face, and then rappel down Non-memorable (because they always do this. This and bungee-jumping)
Detour 1: Over: load provisions, then row to a floating village to make two deliveries Non-memorable
Detour 2: Under: row to an oyster farm and grab 30 baskets from the water Interesting (because of the relative trouble some teams had)
Episode 5
Roadblock: Indian driver’s liscense test Pretty Damn Cool
Detour 1: Wild Things: wrangle a marsh crocodile to move it to a new pit Pretty Damn Cool
Detour 2: Wild Rice: use colored powder gnto color an intricate floral design Non-memorable
Episode 6
Roadblock: Climb a ladder to the top of one of the Kuwait Towers, then solve a puzzle Interesting (because of the puzzle twist)
Detour 1: Manual: fill ten bags of camel feed and stack them up Non-memorable
Detour 2: Automatic: use a walkie-talkie to make a voice activated robotic jockey whip a camel Incredibly Awesome
Fast Forward: Fight a simulated oil fire Pretty Damn Cool
Episode 7
Roadblock: (not shown in episode)
Detour 1: Salt: search through three giant piles of salt for a salt shaker containing clue Interesting (because so many dummies actually tried this)
Detour 2: Sea: travel by motorboat to an island two and a half miles away and search the island using a map to find the boat’s sail Pretty Damn Cool (mostly because of the random tiger trap)
Episode 8
Roadblock: Find four rubber stamps from stamp vendors Non-memorable
Detour 1: Long Sleep: deliver 8 covered mattresses to a certain address Incredibly Awesome
Detour 2: Short Letter: make 28 pieces of paper Non-memorable (because no one did it)
Fast Forward: Eat cow lips Painfully Stupid
Episode 9
Roadblock: Search the mine for a piece of limestone and crack it open Interesting
Detour 1: Swamp This: cross country skiing through bog Pretty Damn Cool
Detour 2: Swamp That: an obstacle course through bog Incredibly Awesome
Episode 10
Roadblock: Take a Russian T-64 Tank through a training course Incredibly Awesome PLUS PLUS!!
Detour 1: Make the Music: perform a rap incorporating the names of all of the nations visited so far on the Race Painfully Stupid
Detour 2: Find the Music: find a copy of the sheet music Non-memorable
Episode 11
Roadblock: Race horse chariots Incredibly Awesome
Detour 1: Throw It: use a pottery wheel to make two pots Non-memorable (because no one did it)
Detour 2: Grind It: use a large crushing wheel to grind olives, then pack them into bags Interesting (in part because of the only-three-stations twist)
Episode 12
Roadblock: Eat camel meat Lame
Detour 1: Lug It: get into giant costumes and walk in them to find a female giant Pretty Damn Cool
Detour 2: Lob It: search a giant pile of tomatoes and find one with a clue inside Incredibly Awesome
So, let’s see, that’s:
Painfully Stupid: 3 (two eating tasks and a rap)
Lame: 2
Non-memorable: 9 (two of which no one did)
Interesting: 9
Pretty Damn Cool: 8
Incredibly Awesome: 6 (camels! bogs! matresses! chariots! tomatoes! TANKS!)
So. Objectively, a pretty good set of tasks.
I noticed that too. There must’ve been needles in 25% of the haystack.
I think this was the first food challenge where anybody said that it was yummy (except Kimberly, of course, who just gags on general principles).
I’m fine with the BQs losing. This leg was theirs to lose. They started out using their looks to gain an advantage, and boy did they. They tried sabotaging everyone else’s taxis, they shanghaied a local, and they made up huge amounts of time.
But somehow when it came down to their using their brains and racing talent towards the end there, they managed to lose quite on their own.
It’s not like they came in mere nanoseconds behind the models. They came in last and the 30 minute penalty didn’t matter a bit. They lost, fair and square from what I could see.
Team Bama strikes me more and more as playing smart when they really need to.
Rob and Kim, as others frequently note, always manage to come through almost despite themselves. They’re probably better racers than they’re edited.
Not sure what to make of team Male Anorexia. But they’re still in it somehow.
I don’t have a strong preference for a winner but as usual I hope winning doesn’t come down to picking the lucky cab driver who actually knows where he’s going.
I’m also glad they had a food challenge that was more interesting and less “lets make them vomit disgusting foreign delicacies.”
You know, I don’t like them much, either. In fact, I used the phrase mean as a snake last night when the smaller one was bitching out the other one at the Roadblock, and the only snake I’ve ever been up close to was actually a pretty neat snake.
Anyhow…using alliances is part of an overall race strategy. If they made it this far because the Chos sacrificed themselves…well, sucks to be the Chos, but there’s really nothing that says it’s the Bamas’ fault per se.
Back when Amber and Rob were on, I really didn’t like them, but even I had to admit that they raced smart. Rob did some things that were questionable (pocketing the other teams’ money that they put up to bribe the driver comes to mind), but as long as nothing was strictly against race policies, it was fair game.
Anything that gets a team as far as that team gets counts, as long as they don’t break any rules. Again, I don’t like the Bamas and I don’t want them to win, but I can’t say they don’t deserve to be there.
It’s not just that they suck, but they also complain about how other people, like, make them suck. All the griping about how the Chos weren’t driving fast enough and how the BQs were so unethical for Yielding them and what-not. If they’d put the same sort of effort into racing that they did into complaining then they’d be a legitimate threat. I compare then to a team like the Bowling Moms who were similarly non-physical but who raced smart and didn’t whine. When Go Home Alabama shut up last week and started racing, they posted their best finish ever.
Some people liked the caviar but there was just so damn much of it. As noted, this was really the only eating challenge where the amount of food was something approaching something that human beings might actually eat in one sitting, as opposed to four pounds of organ meat or an entire ostrich egg. Well, I guess the fish eyes were something like an amount that a normal person would eat, if a normel person actually ate fish eyes.
I don’t agree that the BQs tried to sabotage the cabs. They just wanted to be sure that when their cab got there it would pick them up and, since they apparently left their crowns and sashes at home, gave the only other physical characteristic that would immediately identify them.
Some thoughts upon re-watching the episode:
One half of Team Brokeback Models seemed to call the other half of Team BBM “Trevor.” More than once.
The BQs actually complimented Go Home Alabama on their racing skills. Rob (I think) said something about how they always get to stuff even when they walk and one of the BQs said it was because they remained calm and that it was a good strategy.
I want to know what was going through Rob’s head when he insisted that Kimberly take the camel eating Roadblock. He was standing right there when she threw up cow lips left and right; why he’d think she’d do better with camel I have no idea.
Kimberly’s meltdown at the tomato fight was even bigger than I realized, careening fule-bore into Killer Fatigue. Which didn’t make it any less hi-freakin’-larious.
To be fair, I don’t think Rob actually pocketed anyone else’s money. He collected the money from the other teams for the bribe then didn’t contribute any of his own.