TeaElle. I got the impression that the Pizza dudes quit and refused to finish the leg, not have Phil come and make them quit.
That elimination was the Amazing Race equivalent of a suckout; our poor eliminees just ran into a batch of horrible luck. I’ll miss them.
The bales and the bears make me wonder; were the producers reading The Myth of Sysiphus when coming up with these? Hades would be proud.
Small favors; Adam/Rebecca and Jonathan/Victoria got less face time this episode and the annoyance level was lowered this week.
Wonder how Kris/Jon and Aaron/Hayden decided who would step onto the mat first? They certainly weren’t racing for it. Whatever, these two teams are the clear frontrunners. I haven’t seen Kris/Jon make any mistakes, and despite running a pretty crappy leg in Norway, A/H still managed to come in 4th.
Gus slowly seems to be getting into the spirit of things, and he and Hera are turning out to be a better team than they looked in Iceland. I still suspect they’ll run into trouble when they hit a physical task, but they’re doing really well right now.
Freddy/Kendra are turning out to be a really, really dull middle-of-the-pack team. At least Kris/Jon – who haven’t gotten much air time despite finishing 2-1-2 – are great racers.
Oh, just to dispell any confusion, my username is supposed to be based on the song/legend… not the show. 
What Askia said.
Please, great gods of TAR, if you should ever smile upon my team and let us run our best for you…
please never make Phil come out and find us… In a dark, isolated hay field… Hours after everyone else has reached the pit stop. 
I dunno. Phil. Dark. Isolated field.
I think I could live with that. 
[QUOTE=TeaElle]
My nephew worked at IKEA. We’re IMing right now and he’s laughing his face off because he hated inventory day because of the counting of the stuff like the stuffed animals. (Right before Thanksgiving, IHRC) I’m amazed at how badly some of these teams did.
Ya know, I’ve worked at Circuit City, Sears, Mall Wart and Gordon’s Jewlers. We did DAILY inventory. (You haven’t lived until you’ve counted 500+ diamond rings & bracelets twice a day.) And I have to agree with the nephew: It ain’t that hard.
Did anybody else notice that some of the teams were off in their counts by hundreds? One team came up with a count that was *over 500 short! * How does that happen? 
Did these people fail kindergarten?
I really had to question the wisdom, intelligence and sanity of anyone who chose the counting over the building. It’s so, so easy to lose count under stress. I lose count at the track when I’m running a 4-lap mile. And having two counters just makes it worse, as we saw tonight.
On the other hand, I’ve put together countless pieces of IKEA-esque furniture in my lifetime, and it’s, well, not rocket science.
And I’m utterly flummoxed by Lena and Christy’s inability to find their clue. It’s really a shame they lost to Don and Mary Jean. But for this bad luck, Lena and Christy were strong competitors, while Don and Mary Jean are clearly marginal and can’t possibly win.
Has anyone noticed how often Dickhead pulls his arm up and back as though he’s gonna slap Victoria and how she keeps flinching when he does so?
Also, I heard a rumor–believe it or don’t, I got no evidence beyond the “a friend of a friend read it somewhere” stuff and one tiny bit of possible supporting evidence. I’m spoilering it Juuuuuuust in case although I doubt it…
[spoiler]
The tiny bit of evidence: The source my friend’s friend cited mentioned that Jonathon threatens to hit Victoria again this episode–on one hand, the source predicted right. On the other hand…well duh..
The rumor: Apparently Dickhead bonks Victoria or shoves her or something in front of Bolo who picks Dickhead up by Dickhead’s shirt lapels and says something of the nature of "Lissen up–you wanna hit someone? How 'bout me big man. :mad: "
If it’s true, I’ll stand up and cheer (Hmmm…come to think of it, that prediction also by necessity includes the prediction that Bolo wouldn’t be eliminated this round–which wasn’t a sure thing for most of it. Hmmm…) [/spoiler]
Crap–I’ve requested that tag be fixed. Sorry folks.
I suspect some of that confusion may have come from the pots and pans that were packaged together – was each package one, or was it three for the three individual pans in the package? They never really clarified that, but that could easily account for a several-hundred difference.
My favorite part of the counting? Bolo: “66 … 68 … 80 … 82…” Bwahaha!
Man, that mercy Philimination was just sad. Poor Lena, working so hard – you know she almost had to have missed a couple of clues in all that work. But she was probably so exhausted she couldn’t tell. And how hard must it have been for Kristy to sit by and watch her do that – and yet stay supportive and encouraging the whole time? Bye, girls, you did a great job!
I disagree–nuthin’ humiliating about Phil saying “Damn you tried hard, but sorry, you lost.” but it is humiliating to give up, sit down, pout and make Phil say “You quit? Buh-bye.” like he did for the Pizza Brothers.
Also, there’s too damned many bottlenecks this season–c’mon folks, can we have an episode without two of 'em? Please?
Who’s Amazin’ Grace?
The Old Couple really lost it in my eyes when they tried to play the Old Racers Card with the IKEA babe. “We’re 40 years older than these other guys. . .” sobs the Old Guy. “Count the stuff again,” says the unyielding Swedish chick! “Let’s go build a desk,” they grumble. And yet they’re not eliminated!!!
Here’s how I would have done the counting: sort out each kind of object into sub-groups. Examples: groups of 100 bears; groups of 10 packaged pans, etc. Then count the groups and add the leftovers. Voila! The total.
Teach Bolo about the 70s, please!
Poor Mormon girls. I really felt bad for them. I doubt that they’ll ever be able to look at a hay bale again. But, really. . .how often do we have to look at hay bales anyway?
So now all we have left are various guy/girl teams. OK. I can deal with that.
Why Victoria needs to have her head examined (other than the fact that she married Jonathan): “He’s so unpredictable. That’s why I love him!” UNPREDICTABLE? The weather is unpredictable! Jonathan is a head case! Run away! Run away!
My biggest beef with the show are these random type challenges, where it’s just luck of the draw - like tonight’s hay bale thing and last season’s “find the white chocolate” challenge. I just don’t like it when luck plays that big a role. Personally.
OTOH - “68, 69, 80, 81…” was hysterical.
At first I thought the counting looked hard, but after some thought I don’t think it had to be. Especially the counting of the stuffed animals. If my wife and I we are the show I think we could have done it in pretty short order. The teams’ mistake was in trying to count one by one. I would count one hundred animals. I would then recount. She would do the same. Recount. We then check each other’s work.
It might be tedious to do it that way, but you can hardly lose your count when you are going by hundreds. The key is to get it right the first time. They were chucking everything in the bins in a mad frenzy and trying to do all the arithmetic in their head. Seems like a recipe for disaster.
Yeah, but at least the white chocolate episode had Charla, who kicked ass.
I’m going to hell for giggling, just remembering the chef’s hat.
Lena must’ve missed a couple of clues. The odds against doing a hundred bales and not finding a clue are incredibly low.
Could Hayden wear any lower cut spaghetti strap t-shirts? I thought her boobies were comin’ out.
NOOOO not my blonde chicks!!! Who am I gonna ogle at now? None of the models are my type, Lori is too scary, and Mary Jean…well, she may be pretty sexy for a grandma, but she’s not likely to remain in the race much longer. Oh well, there’s always Phil I guess…
That infamous “elbow in the cab” scene from last week’s preview turned out to be another textbook piece of creative editing – it’s pretty clear that he was ripping something out of Victoria’s hand and not, as the preview edit suggested, that he just barely stopped himself from backhanding her. (Although there was a moment in his eyes…just a moment.)
Gus & Hera are doing great, surprisingly. They seem poised to be this season’s Bowling Moms. Cool!
I would have kicked ass at the detour. I used to do inventory for a living, and while it wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating job in the world, I was damn good at it. On the other hand, I can’t assemble a desk to save my life.
As for the Hay Bale Roadblock From Hades…I sure hope they checked the field later to verify the correct number of clues were still out there, it would suck if somebody only put out eight by mistake! Maybe they should check Freddy & Kendra’s pockets?
That was a monster leg; easily the harshest in some time even with the bunching. I definitely would have avoided the counting, not because it was that hard but it is easy to make a small error. I think a lot of the teams were unclear on how to count the pans which is why you got some of the really off counts.
And following up that counting or build task was a bike race and then a very physically demanding search task. Those typically aren’t that bad since they favor the later racers on the luck while still letting skill affect the outcome. And to top it off with our second on task elimination (though they get more respect from me than the pizza bros because they kept going regardless).
And there seemed to be less Jonathan this week. He still got his fits but he didn’t seem to get as much attention.