# Amazing Race 5/10 - Possible Spoilers **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 10, 2005, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217 "2005-05-10T14:43:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Cyros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a698b9/32.png) [@Cyros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyros)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/141 "2005-05-12T00:01:10Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Just glad that the “stupid black couple” won. I’m glad that editors including Rob’s insults about them throughout the race. And I’m glad he lost. Rob said that?? I totally didn’t hear that comment! ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/142 "2005-05-12T00:26:19Z")
> [@Cyros](#): > > Rob said that?? I totally didn’t hear that comment! He never said “stupid black couple”. But when describing the other two teams he was racing against, he said something about Ron and Kelly’s dysfunctionality and simply called U&J the “black couple”. Then there was the time he called them stupid. So in his big head, U&J were the “stupid black couple”. And he lost to them! Yeah! ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/143 "2005-05-12T00:48:59Z")
monstro. C’mon. That’s way out of context. To be fair to Rob, if I had been reassured by several ticket agents there was no earlier flight, I’d have called Uchenna stupid, too. I also prefer the obvious racial descriptor of “black couple” to, say, “the laid-off jobless couple” or “the infertile couple” or “the skinhead couple.” ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/144 "2005-05-12T00:53:00Z")
Uchenna begging to pay off the cabbie was the classiest thing I have seen on the telly in years. The Wife and I were yelling at him though, as we were afraid he would lose the race because of his integrity. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/145 "2005-05-12T01:05:42Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > monstro. C’mon. That’s way out of context. > > To be fair to Rob, if I had been reassured by several ticket agents there was no earlier flight, I’d have called Uchenna stupid, too. But why? I don’t get why Rob would think that Uchenna was stupid, based on what he could have possibly known about Uchenna’s race in the game. Uchenna doesn’t strike me as a dumb man. Maybe at the Pit Stop he’s a different man? > [@](#): > > I also prefer the obvious racial descriptor of “black couple” to, say, “the laid-off jobless couple” or “the infertile couple” or “the skinhead couple.” He was talking about his competitors in a negative way, as if someone had asked “Why do you think you’ve got this race in the bag, Rob?” “Well, Ron and Kelly are dysfunctional so they can’t beat us. And Uchenna and Joyce are…the black couple”. WTF. They were spiffy racers those last couple of legs and the only thing he can comment on is their race. That doesn’t make him a racist or a bigot, but it makes him very uncreative and stupid in front of the camera. And I never saw U&J as stupid players. None of the mistakes they made were that huge. Yes, they got lost more than R&A did, but remember–Rob wasn’t watching their race like we were. How would he know that they ever got lost? His behind-the-back meanness towards people who never did anything bad to them was unjustified. I admit that I like nice, rise-above-it-all players to the smartest, luckiest, most charismatic ones. Even if they aren’t the swiftest every time like R&A are, I root for them to win. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/146 "2005-05-12T01:33:44Z")
Okay – about eight minutes into the show, after a bunch of bragging, Rob says – “It’s gonna be fierce. The war hero and the beauty queen versus The Survivors Rob and Amber versus the black couple in Jamaica… Oh, mon!” To me, neither his words nor his tone seemed particularly deprecating at that moment… although the edited-in voiceover comments just before are, when he’s selling wolf tickets about how unstoppable he and Amber are. It’s like suddenly he’s talking about the show from a PR or producer’s point of view. I’d almost suspect the producers’ hand in that total soundbite except I watch TAR with complete unshakeable faith that we’re seeing unmanipulated, unscripted, unrehearsed moments all the time where no event is ever interfered with, re-shot, stage-managed or manufactured for more drama and they would never, ever betray me! NEVER. That said, Rob is kinda an ass but good goddamn I enjoy him for it. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/147 "2005-05-12T10:40:22Z")
> [@Mama Tiger](#): > > … time estimates between U&J and Romber arriving on the mat vary between ten minutes (Lynn & Alex’s version) to an hour (Joyce’s version). Joyce is probably including the time she and Uchenna arrived at the park entrance begging for money for the cabbie. ---
**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/148 "2005-05-12T11:35:30Z")
> [@drm](#): > > Dont’ get me wrong, U and J won and that fact alone means they are a quality team but they werent’ ever out in front until they fast forwarded. I guess the reason I wasn’t cheering for them (I wasn’t cheering against them either) was that they don’t have any sort of killer instinct. They clearly want it, hell U chopped off her hair, I thought that was total hunger right there and that really endeared me to her/them. They just weren’t as consistently good as Rob and Amber. OK; I’ll buy that – over the course of the race, Rob and Amber were overall better than any other team, including Uchenna and Joyce. I thought, though, that Uchenna and Joyce were clearly better at the end than they were at the beginning, meaning that they were learning and adapting as the race went on. And, of course, what matters most is how good a team is in the final episode. > [@drm](#): > > I’d like to see a race with no bottlenecking. None of this “we don’t open until 10am bullshit”. You can’t do much with the airlines but removing the bottlenecking would give you more of an idea of who the top teams really are. To be fair, though, you need _some_ mechanism to make the race exciting. If one team catches a lucky break (Colin and Christie in TAR 5 were 12+ hours ahead at one point, for example, after a FF and a great flight), they can waltz through the rest of the race without breaking a sweat. Bo-ring. Still, minimal bunching is better, and I don’t see why the producers couldn’t build some staggering into the hours of operation task. Like last season with the all-girl bungee-flinging Roadblock – teams sign up when they arrive and proceed in order. So any wide range in race order is contracted, but there’s still an advantage to getting there first. Seems like a reasonable compromise. > [@Askia](#): > > Okay – about eight minutes into the show, after a bunch of bragging, Rob says – “It’s gonna be fierce. The war hero and the beauty queen versus The Survivors Rob and Amber versus the black couple in Jamaica… Oh, mon!” To me, neither his words nor his tone seemed particularly deprecating at that moment… Agreed all the way around. In particular, he wasn’t talking here about how he’s got the race in the bag. He’s talking about how fierce the competition is. Hardly disrespecting Joyce and Uchenna _or_ Ron and Kelly. Standard “anyone can win it” speech that atheletes give. Which coexists with the standard “we didn’t come here to lose, so the other team better watch out” speech. ---
**Author:** ![Atrael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Atrael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atrael)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/149 "2005-05-12T12:18:18Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Okay – about eight minutes into the show, after a bunch of bragging, Rob says – “It’s gonna be fierce. The war hero and the beauty queen versus The Survivors Rob and Amber versus the black couple in Jamaica… Oh, mon!”… (snip)… Yep, that’s the quote…and to me what he was saying was that he thought the black couple might have an advantage in Jamaca, because the population is also black. _shrug_…which I think it did to an extent. The one taxi guy they stayed with all through that leg of the race basically drove them around to every spot for like $40 or something. Would he have done that for a white couple? I don’t know…and I don’t fault it in any way…that’s just the way things are. No worse than the female racers that had a tough time a few season’s ago in India, because nobody would sell them tickets for the train because they were women. ---
**Author:** ![Reloy3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c68b51/32.png) [@Reloy3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reloy3)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/150 "2005-05-12T17:50:24Z")
Not to sidetrack to badly, but what happened to the “Race Around The World”? This season was a meandering race halfway around the world and then back. I was half expecting the last episode, from Jamaica, the clue to read “Fly to Los Angeles, and you can only travel east.” I call false advertising. I am glad that U&J won, but I would have liked to have seen Romber win, just to have seen Lynn and Alex’s heads explode. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2005, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/151 "2005-05-12T18:20:53Z")
> [@Reloy3](#): > > Not to sidetrack to badly, but what happened to the “Race Around The World”? This season was a meandering race halfway around the world and then back. I was half expecting the last episode, from Jamaica, the clue to read “Fly to Los Angeles, and you can only travel east.” I call false advertising. > > I am glad that U&J won, but I would have liked to have seen Romber win, just to have seen Lynn and Alex’s heads explode. Well you could argue that race “around” the world doesn’t literally mean “around”. Kind of like saying, “we were walking around the mall all morning.”. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/152 "2005-05-13T15:32:52Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#): > > Well you could argue that race “around” the world doesn’t literally mean “around”. Kind of like saying, “we were walking around the mall all morning.”. It’s not often enough that you hear people say “we circumnavigated the mall this morning.” ---
**Author:** ![Draelin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce73a5/32.png) [@Draelin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Draelin)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/153 "2005-05-13T15:36:14Z")
> [@Fiver](#): > > It’s not often enough that you hear people say “we circumnavigated the mall this morning.” I will start saying it at every opportunity. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/154 "2005-05-13T17:09:21Z")
Uchenna is a good man. is Romber getting anything for coming in second? ---
**Author:** ![Draelin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce73a5/32.png) [@Draelin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Draelin)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/155 "2005-05-13T17:21:38Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > is Romber getting anything for coming in second? They’re getting their whole damn wedding paid for (I think), isn’t that enough? ---
**Author:** ![rockle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@rockle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rockle)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/156 "2005-05-13T17:28:30Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > is Romber getting anything for coming in second? Well, CBS _did_ shell out mucho dinero for their wedding – like, over a million dollars, I think, all told. Does that count? Otherwise, according to [TARflies.com](http://www.tarflies.com): > [@](#): > > **Do the losing teams get any cash prizes?** > Yes, the losing teams do get small cash prizes, staggered according to how long the team stayed in the race. For some reason, these amounts are kept very secret (much more so than the Sequesterville locations), but we have heard rumors that the second-place prize for some seasons has been $25,000 or $50,000, and third place was $10,000 or $25,000. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/157 "2005-05-13T17:37:49Z")
> [@Draelin](#): > > I will start saying it at every opportunity. 🙂 And just to spice things up, alternate that with “I was an anchor-store Magellan!” ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/158 "2005-05-13T18:07:39Z")
heh. no it doesn’t count, just as winning on survivor doesn’t mean they shouldn’t win again. 😉 at least he’ll have some consolation as he mumbles about how that pilot cost them a million dollars. > [@hillbilly queen](#): > > Under normal circumstances, yes. But how can somebody be pulling a scam, with a camera guy right there, filming the whole thing? that’s a scam right there. three beggars can backpack for free, financed by trusting strangers, so long as one of them is a camera man. making players beg for money is a bad idea. ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2005, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/159 "2005-05-14T11:12:37Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#): > > Well you could argue that race “around” the world doesn’t literally mean “around”. Kind of like saying, “we were walking around the mall all morning.”. Or like saying, “I’m so hungry, I could eat 4 pounds of roasted meat.” ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2005, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217/160 "2005-05-14T18:36:35Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > making players beg for money is a bad idea. Here’s an idea: at the start of the leg after a NEL one, offer to ‘hire’ the last team to do something (anything – probably something physically tiring but not difficult) at a rate of $50 per half hour, as many hours as they want. So then the couple are faced with a strategy decision: work for money? or beg? One is tiring but sure, who knows how long it will take to find generous people? And, if you pick work, how long? You know everyone else started with $350, say, which is assumed to be enough but not greatly more than than to cover the tab for the leg. Do you work 3.5 hours, so you start even on money? But that puts you three and half hours further behind. On the one hand, if one of the next few obstacles is a bunching point, that won’t matter. On the other hand, what if it means you miss a crucial flight? So maybe you decide to only work a half hour – get enough money for taxi fare to a good begging spot. Or maybe you decide you can be ‘frugal’ and work for $200 and hope to scrimp/beg later on if need be. Anyway, it opens up a lot of choices for the players to consider and watching them make strategic choices has got to be a heck of a lot more fun than watching them beg. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-race-5-10-possible-spoilers/303217.md?page=9)