Welcome back to another exciting episode of “Who’s going to freak out over the tiniest thing this week?”
For those who came in late (sorry, wrong show), last week Uchenna & Joyce came in last on the non-elimination leg, and have a half-hour penalty awaiting them at the end of the leg if they don’t check in first at the mat.
I haven’t checked 60 Minutes yet, so I don’t know if CBS is on time or running late.
See you all during / after the show?
I just checked 60 Minutes, and it’s running about 35 minutes late. I hope you all set your VCRs to allow for sports overruns (as usual).
Stupid basketball! Stupid Oregon! Arrrrrgh! They’re wrecked my bracket and screwed up my TiVo! Those Duck bastards.
The constant schedule issues (and my reliance on TiVo) are why I am not watching Amazing Race this season. Too much extra effort to watch.
On the plus? side, the fact that the Amazing Race has not yet started, has given me a chance to adjust the stupid antenna for my TV while 60 minutes is on, rather than during the Race.
(OK, so a smart person, or a person who cared about basketball, wouldn’t have waited until 8:00 to start messing with the reception. But I’m feeling generally cranky and lazy, and kept putting it off until just recently. Besides, it’s a real pain in the but to adjust, since I can’t tell when I’m standing next to the TV what the reception will be like in the far corner of the room, where my chair is. (I live alone, so it’s not like I could get someone else to help me adjust it. And even when two people do adjust the antenna, whenever someone walks away from the antenna, it messes with the reception. In my next apartment, I’m getting cable). )
Those of us living in God’s Country don’t have these issues.
I don’t like this leg – there’s no racing happening on this leg of the race. It’s all a matter of who has the best or worst luck with standby airline seats. By my count, the tail is over a full day behind the lead.
And the shot they just showed on the lead boat was totally unnecessary.
I don’t know that I want to live in a world where Mirna and Schmirna come in first two legs in a row. I mean, they vaguely deserved it this week for having the nerve to take the risk on the connecting flight but on the other hand I can’t deal with the broken English and the random accents that get busted out at seemingly random instances.
I hate episodes where they agonize over getting to the airport and getting seats on the best flight, only to all end up arriving within a half hour of each other, or over a slightly more spread out time frame–only to be canceled out by the 6 hour wait for the shop to open.
But I think I hate this episode more. People finished in an order much more heavily influenced by what flight they ened up being on than anything else.
I’m not clear how much time there was between first and last finishing up the leg, but either they will continue to be strung out on the next leg, or they’ll all end up sitting and waiting somewhere. Don’t know which to hope for.
I know I’m starting to sound like I have a macro or something, but I SO love Oswald and Danny. The fact that they made a “working this corner” joke, AND that neither Charla nor Mirna got it, AND that the editors left it in, makes me incredibly giggly.
Is the Johannesburg airport always that much of a nightmare to get out of if you don’t have reservations a week in advance or something? It looked like the standby list needed a standby list…
And as much as Charla and Mirna annoy me, it’s just plain wrong that their huge lead was completely destroyed by that boat scheduling. I wasn’t happy with that.
I just wanted to note that I’m absolutely certain that their driver saying “This is the ferry station” triggered a joke from Oswald and Danny that must have been cut, because I know that there’s no way that I would have been able to resist making it in that situation, and I’m nowhere near as funny and quick-witted as they are…
I’ve flown throught the Johannesburg airport. It’s pretty zoo-y. Made worse by the fact that it is a hugely busy airport, and (in my limited experience, I’ve been there once) there are no seats at the gates. There are plenty of seats at the shopping area in the middle, but no seats down by the gates.
On the other hand, I was flying from Botswana to the U.S. at the end of a trip. Leg two of the return flight deposited us at the Jo-burg airport, and I was feeling pretty crummy before before that point. In hindsight, it was mostly dehydration. By the time we hit Joburg, I was feeling better, but that was counterbalanced by way too much noise, too many people, and too much luggage to keep track of. I was SOOO relieved when we were loaded safely onto our flight and the plane took off. Barring something unforeseen, the hard part of the journey was behind us.
Obviously, I don’t know anything about the standby thing. Our tickets had been reserved far in advance.
Yup. Those two are officially my Favoritest Racers Ever, and I’ve decided that Cha is the new Zen. They had all the best bits tonight – among them the bench joke and the line on the dhow, when they said they were trading Mirna & Charla for food. Classic.
And I am loathe to admit it, but I actually really like Mirna & Charla, too. I’ve always liked Charla, but on the last two legs Mirna has been something of a revelation to me. She remains completely bonkers, of course, but I dig her drive. Dunno what they did the past few seasons, but they really are working better as a team. I kind of find the Random Mystery Accents amusing, and while they can’t seem to figure out how to say “Fast!” in any of the 900 languages they claim to speak, at least they know how to say “Please” and “Thank you.” And you gotta love a team that wins a prize and has to ask what it is.
{ I mentally pictured Charla screaming in her head: “Oh, great, now I get to own the boat I’m going to puke over the side of! Whoopee!” }
I don’t have the patience or the focus to put a timeline together for this leg (I sprained my ankle yesterday and the Vicodin is kicking in – whoooooooooo!), but I think that the first 4 teams to arrive are about 24 hours ahead of Eric & Danielle, and about 36 hours ahead of the last two teams. Which means: some kind of überbünch next week. Grr.
PS – Even on Vicodin? Eric is a jackass. I think he might actually be more insufferable this time than he was last time. Is such a thing possible, or am I imagining it, from the painkillers?
I imagine Team Guido is having deja vu all over again. Didn’t they end up a day behind on the first Race?
And Oswald demonstrating his hand model technique with the first clue – LOVE, LOVE, LOVE those guys!!
The irony of the Guidos nearly getting Guido’d again, this time in Africa, was definitely not lost on anybody in this household.
I was really sorry to see Teri & Ian go, though – I liked Ian SO much more this time around. Teri still gets pretty cranky, although I didn’t blame her for the look of extreme pissed-offness she gave Ian when she found out she’d get to spend TWO nights in the J’burg airport!
That dhow ride to Zanzibar must have taken quite a bit of time – it was 8 pm when Teri & Ian and the Guidos left Tanzania, and by the time they got to the roadblock site it was daylight again. That would be such a neat way to get to Zanzibar! Those are the kinds of things the racers get to do that I am so jealous of – the unexpected ways of traveling or the people they meet along the way. Like Uchenna with the Masai; he was having the time of his life jumping with them, wasn’t he?
I hope so, because he sure wasn’t getting any love from his wife. She recoils every time he gets close to her. I doubt they’re even a couple anymore.
Oh, I forgot – Danny & Oswald’s “Where’s Andre?” was wonderful! That HAD to be a Project Runway reference.
I read an interview with Phil about this season wherein he said there was a leg where the last team was more than twelve hours behind the first team. I assume this week was the leg he was referring to.
How does the show handle that? Are all the teams delayed another few hours, or will Mirna and Charla set off on the next leg before the Guidos and Teri and Ian have even arrived? That seems really unwieldy.
I hope those Masai tribespeople were well-paid for having to pull that all-nighter.
Unless things have changed enormously, the teams will leave 12 hours after they arrive, whether other teams have checked in or not.
I had to pause the DVR I was laughing so hard! Could you imagine Danny, Oswald and Tim Gunn in the same room? 
They could all discuss Phil’s sometimes unfortunate wardrobe.
They may make this one an extended pit stop We’ll find out next week if Phil doesn’t give the times the teams arrived at the mat and just when they leave.