The Amazing Race 3/4: "Bust Me Right In The Head With It"

Kind of disappointed to see those who went go. Especially with one of the teams that stayed not finishing ANY task tonight.

I think those bottles were breakaway bottles…an awful lot of them got broken by careless squeezing and I’m pretty sure a standard winebottle won’t do that unless you’re Clark Kent.

The greeter tonight was stunning! I can tell when the lake view is pretty even if I don’t care to dive in.

I’m always torn between Rachel being a huge drama queen and Rachel being seriously emotionally dysfunctional. She actually improves a lot when Brendon isn’t around. Unfortunately, the structure of THIS reality show precludes a solo redemption arc…

Was I suppose to recognize the greeter? Is she some sort of National Heroine of Paraguay?

No Matter, I want to marry her, because she was frick’n gorgeous.

I had mixed emotions about the divorced gal commenting on BB Rachel’s Camel-toe, over and over again. It was in very bad taste.

But then again it was BB Rachel and she is disgusting.

I find surprising that those comments did not find the cutting room floor. Perhaps there is some later drama between those two teams?

Phil tweeted that she’s Fiorella Migliore, the winner of an international beauty pageant open to women of Italian descent.

I want to give the greeter the million, and I’m a straight woman. She reminds me of the woman who plays Shae in Game of Thrones.

Team KY is growing on me. I love their attitude. I laughed out loud when one of them (not sure which is Bopper and which is Mark) ate a handful from one of the busted melons. I also love Vanessa and Ralph–I think their determination is what kept them going on while the twins, who seemed to do nothing but snipe at one another, are going home.

Brendan and Rachel kick ass at most tasks, which is why her propensity for utter meltdowns is so infuriating. They’d be a top-tier team if she weren’t crazy go nuts. He actually seems half-decent as a person; goodness knows what he sees in her.

This leg was utterly diabolical. A deceptively difficult Detour task alongside a task that requires precision and time. And the wine bottle thing? I’d have just swept all the bottles off the table when I got there, then headed to the Pit Stop and waited.

Bopper is the white guy.

See, Brendon’s getting a great edit so far. He’s half the reason she has the breakdowns she does. Keeping up with the 24-hour live feeds during their BB seasons really gives a different view of them as a couple. It’s a feedback dynamic…he feeds her insecurity, which makes her more drama-prone, which give him more opportunity to put her down (but always making it SOUND like he’s just comforting her). It’s the major reason I consider them to be an emotionally abusive relationship.

Yes, but if you’d made it that obvious instead of simply being deliberately clumsy, would you have gotten the two-hour penalty or the standard four-hour penalty for refusing to complete a task?

A Paraguayan wins a beauty contest for women of Italian descent? That would not be first guess of country of origin, but whatever. She’s GORGEOUS and that is what counts.

The watermelon stacking should not as difficult as they were making it. It appeared as if they were not stacking them as neatly as the samples and they were not nesting as well. They were taking too many shortcuts.

But the harp task appeared to much easier and I would have chosen that one first one. Did they not have to tune them at all? just string them?

Didn’t Rob (and Amber) quit on a huge food challenge, convince a couple other teams to do the same, and stay in the race?

Those were some good challenges.

Phil meant the first team not to actually finish ANY challenge in the leg and stay in the Race. They Xpress-passed the Detour and he disqualified out of the Roadblock.

I was going to say the same thing.

Nice finish to the race. It is rare a team that is that far behind actually catches up.

Ah.

They must have been, they were falling apart in people’s hands. Since part of the task was to get on their hands and knees, real glass would have probably cut them to ribbons.

I thought the same thing; but we have the advantage of seeing Phil’s video explanation of the Detour options. And wasn’t the eliminated team the only pair (or at least the first pair) to go directly to the harp-stringing? If they’d just been competent at it, they could have leapfrogged ahead of several teams.

And usually the Roadblock hint is something slightly cryptic, so you have to make your best guess at who’s the best person to do it. But the bottle balancing was taking place right there. The teams could see what they had to do, not just guess based on “who’s ready to use their head”. Anybody remember how often that sort of thing happens?

Remind me to look at the start times of the next leg. The spread from first to last must be several hours.

If it is like tonight, you will only see the start times of the first one or two teams, then you will see everyone at the airport.

I neglected to mention that this is the first time where Joey Fitness and the other douche (I refuse to call them Guidos, that’s been done) actually did a decent job. I could see that their physical fitness–they are clearly the most athletic team remaining–set them apart from others. They also seem to just put their heads down and work–I’m not sure if it’s the edit, but it seemed like they barely even spoke during the tasks. Which removes interpersonal drama that can bog teams down. I’d not taken them seriously at all until tonight, but they have potential to move up if they hit a groove and don’t have to think too much.

Previews for next week show more of Rachel whining and crying. Please, someone, put her out of my misery.

Seems like a silly thing for Phil to point out, considering they’ve had only a few challenges where it was possible to “fail.”

You mean this season or ever? Phl was saying it was the first time ever in the history of the show.

These were some interesting tasks this episode. I know the producers think viewers want a steady stream of bungee jumps and parachute drops, but I really like tasks that give teams a chance to jump ahead of other teams, rather than just sequentially perform the tasks. And in this episode, two teams from the later flight actually made up the two-hour difference and hit the mat before three of the four earlier teams.

Taxi Assessment:

Stuck in the Desert and Officially Detained - or, Philiminated with extreme prejudice.
Misa & Maiya and Dave & Cherie - Already eliminated.
Elliot & Andrew (down from “Stopping”) - I’m not sure what it was about the harp stringing task that was so, so hard, but clearly it was. Elliot & Andrew went straight for this option, unlike other teams that switched, and still managed to finish far behind almost everyone else. Wouldn’t guitarists and soccer goalies have the finger dexterity to string a harp? Clearly not. Elliot & Andrew finished in the pack of the pack on each of the three episodes, so even if they hadn’t been eliminated here, they didn’t seem like strong contenders.

Flat Tire - or, not likely to get anywhere soon.
Joey & Danny (holding steady) Crazily, Joey & Danny had a really good leg, finishing in the top three despite the fact that they got to Paraguay two hours behind the lead teams. I have to think this episode is an aberration, but I’m entertaining the notion that I’m wrong. If they have a decent leg next week, I’ll move them up a notch.

Stopping for Gas - or, not broken-down, exactly, but not a good sign.
Brendon & Rachel (holding steady) - Second place again for Brendon & Rachel, this time ending in a literal blubbering mess. Any other team, I’d have them ranked near the top, but I’ve always been suspicious of “dating” teams with sketchy relationships, because sooner or later they literally sit down and “work on their relationship” rather than actually Racing.
Vanessa & Ralph (down from “Rapido!”) - It’s not too much of a stretch to guess that there will be airport bunching at the begining of the next leg, which will probably erase the deficit Vanessa & Ralph have from hitting the mat far behind the rest of the non-eliminated teams. (Although my wife noted that the shadows were pretty long when other team hit the mat.) Heck, they might even get a better night’s sleep for not having to get up in the wee hours of the morning. However, the effort that they put into this leg, and the stress they got out of it, are going to be a little tough to recover from.

"Rapido! Por Favor?" - or, making meaningless ineffectual comments from the back seat, but in no immediate danger.
Kerri & Stacy (holding steady) - Kerri & Stacy still haven’t made much of an impression on me. They haven’t been terrible, but they’ve neverbeen all that good, either.
Mark & Bopper (up from “Stopping”) - Two good legs in a row for Mark & Bopper; I think they might actually be much better than my initial impression (fueled by their ninth-place finish on leg one) led me to believe. Maybe I should move them up even one more notch in the rankings, but one leg at a time.
Nary & Jamie (holding steady) - Art & J.J. criticized Nary & Jamie for alerting the other teams about the standby flight. I think that does more to highlight Art & J.J.'s myopia when it comes to helping other teams than anyhing else, though. Consider: No way do all teams make it onto the sandby flight; in fact, it’s quite possible Nary & Jamie don’t even make it. Moreover, the chance other teams will find out about the flight themselves is pretty good. So Nary & Jamie get the goodwill of all the other teams without actually helping most (or all) of them. Worst case scenario is probably exactly what happened: one of the teams they “helped” comes in ahead of them, and Nary & Jamie score a fifth-place finish rather than a fourth-place finish. Big deal. Other team’s goodwill isn’t something you can bank on, but when it’s so cheaply bought, why not? The teacher thing is still weird, though.

In the Passing Lane - or, ahead of the pack, but not quite comfortably.
Dave & Rachel (down from “Cruisin’”) - And to think I had Dave & Rachel pegged as the favorite to win it all. Well, I still do, actually, but this episode was clearly not a good one for them. It was much worse for some other teams, though. Still, Dave & Rachel don’t have the Express Pass to fall back on any more, and they do have a bit of a crack in their relationship. Only a crack, though. How they bounce back next episode will be crucial. Also… what happened with Dave at the Roadblock? None of the teams this year are beauty pageant winners, and it seems to me that the next-best occupational training for holding something steady on one’s head would be military drilling. Am I wrong?

Cruisin’ with Earl - or, drivin’ on the shoulder, takin’ shortcuts, and generally kickin’ butt.
Art & J.J. (up from “Passing”) - The only team now that’s finished in the top three on all three legs. That probably won’t last, just due to random chance, but Art & J.J. look pretty strong.

I think the guitarist had the “hometown” penalty - he was so certain he knew what he was doing, that he didn’t actually find out the correct way to do the task.

I don’t think pilots do a lot of (or any) drill, especially once they get out of basic training. Plus his technique was bad - it looked like he was holding his head down and trying to balance the bottle on the curve at the back of his skull, instead of holding his head upright and using the flat top of his skull.

I thought for sure Mark would take the penalty on this task too, just because the lack of hair meant no friction to stop the bottle from sliding around.

I was trying to figure out what word was being deleted and blanked out in the subtitling. My wife and I were tossing out all possibilities: “You can see her whole __________!”

-crotch?
-butt?
-ass?
-hole?
-hoo-hah?

“Cameltoe” didn’t even occur to us. And in the shots of Rachel we saw when the subtitling was on screen, I didn’t notice her cameltoe.

I worry about a woman who obsesses so much over another woman’s hoo-haw. And by “worry” I mean “if you set up a webcam I’ll watch.”