I think the Brothers got moved down all on their own for their unfortunate choice in facial hair. 
Lynn & Alex would have sent that cabbie’s kid to college if it meant beating Rob & Amber.
Damn nice job by Joyce & Uchenna, but while they were trying to scrounge up the money to pay their cab driver, I figured if they saw another taxi coming down the street, they’d have been off like a shot.
What are the rules on how close the members of a team have to stay together? After rafting across the river, I noticed the guys were climbing up that hill, got the clue and came back down. (I don’t think Amber even left the raft.) Don’t both members of a team have to get to the clue box?
And they didn’t go around the world. What a ripoff.
I think you mean Kelly. Amber went up the hill with Rob. But I wondered that, too. It seems they would both have to get to the clue box, doesn’t it?
Is there a rule that prohibits racers from using the phrase “Amazing Race” when they’re talking (or especially, panhandling) to non-racers? I think it would sure be helpful, but nobody ever says those words.
Perfect finish, for me. U&J first; R&K last.
Gotta give props to Rob – he set the standard for how to work airports. Up to this point, the average racer’s conversation with a ticket agent would be:
Racer: When’s the next flight to Tashkent?
Agent: 11:45
Racer: I’ll take it.
Now, it’ll be:
Racer: When’s the next flight to Mbwebwe?
Agent: 3:30
Racer: I’ll take it. But are there any flights that leave later, but arrive earlier? Are there flights that leave earlier that I can get on standby? Can I get there faster by laying over in Timbuktu? If I take the bus to Gondwanaland can I catch a better flight there? If I beg, plead, whine & cajole can I get on the flight that’s taxiing on the runway? Never mind…I’ll ask another agent…Hey you…
Hmm, I think you’re right, it was Kelly. But since all the teams did pretty much the same thing, any penalties would have cancelled out, anyway.
By the way, do Rob & Amber have some reason to believe that all those “don’t leave unattended luggage at airports” warnings don’t apply to them? I was wondering if that was going to bite them, either with a time penalty or Team Kojak siccing security on them after they ditched their backpacks on the plane.
I thought exactly this same thing. I turned to supervenusfreak and said, “Is it really a good idea to abandon your luggage on a plane at a US port of entry? Wouldn’t it be absolutely delicious if Homeland Security and the TSA detained Romber at the airport?”
Disappointed me that it didn’t happen. It would’ve been the first thing the Bush Administration’s done in five years that I was happy with… 
The thing that drove me crazy with the raft building was Ron and ‘I’ve never built one of these before.’ Because, yeah, you know, Rob and Amber and Uchenna and Joyce are all professional builders of bamboo rafts. They teach seminars on the weekends and stuff.
Well, yeah, but I was trying to be polite about it.
Nutty Bunny is right–Amber went up the hill, Kelly didn’t. In fact, I remember Amber going up the hill so very clearly because of how she fell on her ass coming back down.
I’m a bad person.
Well, in fairness Rob and Amber did talk about how Rob’s been in construction for 9 years and how they built a raft on Survivor so this was the obvious choice of the detour. But on the whole, you’re right. In general, they design these tasks so they will be difficult or time consuming for everyone. Lack of raft building experience should not be a handicap, and lots of raft building experience should be only midly helpful.
I’m thinking it was more like the gate attendant calling down to the plane “Hey, we have a camera and sound crew here from CBS with these two people, they’re probably on some reality show (assuming they didn’t recognize it as the Amazing Race) so we’ll look real good if you can let them on the plane.”
And I think I remember reading someplace that they’re specifically not allowed to use the phrase “Amazing Race” when they’re talking to people. I would think they’d especially enforce that rule in the US.
Am I remembering correctly, or were the first season or two of teams not allowed to even say they were in a race?
I’m wondering if there was another part of the ‘dive into the water’ roadblock that got edited out. Something that was more physically challenging. I noticed the following:
– After diving, the contestants got into boats that were waiting for them. But when they finished, they got out of the water as if they had been swimming.
– Uchenna looked like he got out of the water carrying something like a boogieboard or some kind of floatation device, which he tossed aside when he got out of the water
– Amber complained that she was too tired to run back to the cab. Diving alone, and then wading from the boat to the shore, should not have been that exhausting.
Also, did they all just happen to pack swimsuits? Maybe so, I guess.
They explained it as:
Jump into the water
Swim 90 yards to the buoy to get the clue
Climb into the boat and come to the shore
90 yards on foot is no problem, swimming would be a little tiring.
No, Uchenna and Amber both did the dive in their underwear. Ron went in fully clothed.
Yeah, I wonder if he is reconsidering the wisdom of “boxer briefs” for future reference. Killer butt, though.
Not bad frontage, either, from the glimpse I got just before he went down the ladder…
Just another reason to move him up the list, eh?
I don’t know how Romber managed to miss the point of that “jump off the platform” task, but when I saw Amber with Rob on the grass, it reminded me of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
Rob: Where are you going?
Amber: I’m coming with you!
Rob: No no. You stay in the tower, and jump off the platform…
I cried like a little girl at the ending. Unlike last season, the best team won.
That’s not what I said, though. I said, “Uchenna and Joyce ran a flawless race, here at the end where they needed it.” They certainly had problems in the earlier episodes, with navigation specifically. Point is, though, in the earlier episodes, you don’t have to come in first, you just have to not come in last. Only in the final episode do you need to worry about coming in first.
To put it another way, the structure of the race favors those teams that get better over the course of the race by learning and adjusting their strategy. So, over the course of the entire race, from starting line to finish line, it was pretty clear that Rob and Amber were the superior racers. But that doesn’t matter – the baseball team with the best season doesn’t necessarily win the World Series, and the couple with the best overall performance doesn’t always win TAR. But the couple with the best performance at the end often does. And last night, Uchenna and Joyce ran pretty darn well – better than Rob and Amber, in fact – and deserved the win.
Also probably because he knew they were at the only entrance to the park, and that they had a headstart on anyone else who showed up in a taxi.
To be fair, Colin, among others, was pretty good at working the airport. I think a lot of other teams do, too, you just don’t see much of it on camera. Hours of standing in line and receiving “no” for an answer makes for boring television.
[quote=Jaade’Lastly, that yield blocking Ron and Kelly instead of U & J really looms now doesn’t it? If they’d kicked off U & J that week instead of M & G I bet the outcome would have been far different. I think that Rob just considered Ron and Kelly to be more of a threat than any other team and that’s why he yielded them.[/quote]
For sure. Apparently, though (I haven’t seen it) one of last week’s insider videos gives more details. Rob and Amber had the impression, somehow, that Ron and Kelly were actually in last place, behind the other two teams. Obviously an incorrect impression, but had that actually been the case their Yield would have been exactly the right move.