… except three legs so far, a couple of vacation trips, celebrity as a professional reality contestant, a free televised wedding, a hottie fiancee… who split half a million with him… and is currently scoring a bunch of free stuff from the registry…
Rob may not have won any of the grand prize(s), [YET!] but he’s definitely a competitor, so give the Devil his due.
I don’t find anything likable about Rob. Sorry. The comment about Joyce and Uchenna being stupid stung, particularly since Ron and Kelly are wayyyy dumber than Joyce and Uchenna could ever be. It was just unnecessary meaness. The upside is that the resulting schadenfraude lulled me to sleep last night.
As annoying Gretchen is, I was cheering for her while she was climbing up that wall. I kept worrying that Rob was going to tear up the wall while she was there and diminish her victory. So glad he didn’t.
I wanted Uchenna and Joyce to win the Travelocity thing. They didn’t get a prize for their first place win last week or this week, and Uchenna’s “First place is reward enough” kind of made me sad for them. I don’t know why.
I seem to recall that, too. However, I also seem to recall that Rob went about his ticket search well after Uchenna had snagged tickets (didn’t Uchenna call from the first airport they were at, and Rob looked during their layover at the second airport?). So it’s also possible that the flight had filled up in the interim
zut’s right, but fior the sake of completeness here’s how TicketGate went down:
All the teams purchased tickets for a 10:20am departure for Dehli with a long layover there, and then an unspecified departure time that arrives in Istanbul at 8:45am the next day.
At the airport, Rob says to Gretchen, “So did you get on the earlier flight to Turkey? No? Not yet?” – then walks off.
Gretchen relays this information to Uchenna. They assume Rob has gotten aboard an earlier flight. Borrowing a cell phone, Uchenna calls a travel agent and asks, “What is the earliest flight to Istanbul?” Editing would indicate he asked several times and eventually he discovers – YUP – there is a flight that leaves at “8pm… Indian Air flight from Dehli to Dubai connecting with a 3:30 flight on Turkish Air from Dubai to Istanbul.” He then asks: “And what time will it arrive…? 6:20am tomorrow morning?” A two hour and 25 minute jump on their earlier flight. He reserves the flight for his team as well as Gretchen and Meredith on the spot, and makes arrangements to pick them up in person when they arrive in Dehli. Uchenna is convinced he has made sure his group got on the same early flight Rob thinks he made up. He doesn’t even realize yet he’s secured first place this leg.
Now here’s where it gets interesting: Amber and Rob board the plane to Delhi immediately, probably to get good seats up front, and don’t yet know about the 3:30am flight. But Ron and Kelly have overheard Uchenna and do. Kelly even says, “We have to get on that flight.” But it was apparently time to board and they don’t get the chance to reserve tickets. So while everyone boards the first plane to Delhi, R&A and R&K lose precious booking time in-flight, while Uchenna’s group’s tickets are already reserved. So in Dehli, while Amber and Rob try and find any earlier flight information at a couple of travel agencies but being told repeatedly there is no earlier flight, all Uchenna’s group has to do is pick up their new reserved tickets. But I have to say this – Rob and Amber, Kelly and Ron all follow through – they even go to Turkish Air and the travel guy there STILL tells them there is no 3:30am flight (he doesn’t check his computer or anything.) Rob calls Uchenna an idiot and accepts this completely, convinced there’s no way hes wrong.
Which makes his later nervousness all the more delicious to observe. HA HA!
Is it really a “common practice” to weigh people on the streets of Istanbul? Why would that be?
I’d hate to live anywhere where I could get randomly attacked by renegade diet cops.
Why do you think they call the place “Turkey”? It’s all about healthy eating over there.
The Weight Watcher’s Lobbyists are VERY powerful in Instanbul!
My tape ran out before the end of the episode! It ended when Gretchen had found her key in the fort. Is there anything interesting to summarize from there to the end of the episode? I gather it was N/E, and that Ron/Kelly came in last. Did they gain or lose time over R/A from chosing the other task at the Detour?
C’mon, lorene, you’d be, what, 50? 55? Hardly worth the trouble of weighing.
Hard to tell, really. I’d guess they seemed to gain a bit of time, since Ron and Kelly were a couple ferry rides behind Rob and Amber at one point (Ron/Kelly on the gnome island, Rob/Amber passing them on the ferry) and they got to the castle while Rob was getting the key. However, they still finished comfortably behind Rob and Amber, so there wasn’t really any doubt (the cameraman got a nice shot of Rob on the Mat, with Ron, still looking for the key in the tower, in the distance behind Rob).
Oh, and Ron and Kelly got a prize from Travelocity, plus they get to spend the Pit Stop together in a five-star hotel room. That’ll be fun.
ABout the preview for next week.
It seems like they are going to London, because they are drving the double-decker buses. That’s kinda weird because it seems like the wrong direction.
Note: I don’t consider that a spoiler, since they’re already going the “wrong” direction (from India to Turkey).
All the better to absolutely fuck with their biorhythms!
I was wondering about the route, too. I think it would be great if they did a couple legs in England, then had them fly to New York for the finish, but wouldn’t check a team in if they hadn’t gone the long way around the world.
Well my completely uneducated guess would be that they will go through Scandanavia and Alaska before finishing up somewhere like Topeka, Kansas.
Well, just a couple legs ago, they sent Uchenna & Joyce and Gretchen & Meredith back to the Road Block because they hadn’t followed the exact wording of the clue. But they’re always calling this “a race around the world.” Which teams do you think would notice if they hadn’t actually gone all the way around?
ok i’m sorry, but if some random fan went and bought rob and amber a wedding gift, that is just sad. and i do think that they are trying to milk their fanbase by registering at these stores. rob’s a D***!!!
Aren’t the Routemaster double-decker buses used anywhere but the UK? I do recall the opening scenes showing London, though, so that’s likely where they’ll go next. But there’ll be enough time to make another stop in, say, Tokyo to force the race to be around the world.
well who better to complete this task than an ex military man and a…well…yeah she didn’t do much. go RON!
yeah, but i’m more mean. it’s not so much living happily ever after. it has to do with seeing rob’s face as they come running up and phil says “rob and amber…you’re team #2” YES that is the money maker baby!!! right draelin!
i’m with you, i’m not fond of rob at all. he’s entertaining because most of the time he’s being a huge ass. what i don’t understand is eveyone’s undying devotion to rob, while he’s being so nasty and vindictive to all the other teams. i mean yes, that’s how you win sometimes, but if it was ANY OTHER TEAM, we’d all be on here yelling and screaming like we were with victoria and what’s his name from last season. BUT because is rob from basten, everyone loves him. well i don’t, i choose to be different, i am the strong one!! 
Are you reading the same threads I am? There are a few people who like Rob, but I think there are a lot more who hate him.
I’m from Boston and I think he’s an asshole.