Greetings from Brisbane!
Hubby and I are up here visiting the very good friends who first gave me the idea of running a Survivor Sweep, and we’ve had a few Amazing Race moments of our own along the way (namely rocking up at the War Memorial to discover the opening hours were yet to commence, and driving from Canberra to Yass via Goulburn because we didn’t read the instructions properly). Anyway, we JUST made it into Armadale last night in time to catch this week’s episode so here’s what I can remember of it without having taken any notes.
Ron and Kelly had to beg some cash in Istanbul to get around, and Kelly (who has been stripped of all her makeup along with the less important possessions like clean clothes) actually begged a woman at the airport ticket desk to borrow her lipstick so she’d feel human again. It was a very nice gesture from the woman, but there’s some things I wouldn’t share with a complete stranger and lipstick is one of them, especially someone whose skin is clearly suffering from the daily layers of Polyfiller.
The feature city this week was London, or more particularly the pre-bombing London Underground (and not long after the episode finished we got the news of the newest attempt, which was kinda creepy). Once again Rob and Amber managed to get the best flights and a helpful local who was more than willing to tag along and provide specialist advice in exchange for his fifteen minutes of fame. It made a big difference, because he knew that the best way to get around London us underground, not in a taxi swamped by the traffic above. It also meant they had three people looking out for the next clue flag from the massive London Eye ferris wheel. Actually even Meredith and Gretchen managed to spot it fairly easily so it can’t have been that hard because their eyesight hasn’t been the best so far (I just hope that their kids inherited their ‘inability to read instructions’ genes because if they have they won’t have been able to program the VCR, and the oldies won’t have to see how crap and/or sheer lucky they’ve been).
Rob and Amber continued to demonstrate the difference smart Detour choices can make. This week was “Brains or Brawn”, and was literally labeled thus. Hmmm, if you were the oldies who’d struggled a bit on the physical challenges all the way along, which one would you choose? Maybe brawn was the right choice if they don’t have the brains to make that decision. The brains challenge meant tracking some really clichéd Sherlock Holmes clues down, while brawn meant hauling five rowboats out of a lake and half a kilometer up a path. Naturally Rob and Amber picked the brains one, and with their sherpa’s help were so far ahead that they completed the Roadblock challenge and were out again before Ron and Kelly even turned up to discover they’d been yielded. The roadblock was a driving test in a double decker bus, which seemed to frustrate everybody to screaming point (ie. excellent choice by the producers). Kelly volunteered to do it – go figure – and immediately had Ron shouting instructions. He later claimed he could have done it with his eyes closed on the grounds that “I drove a $35 million machine”. Hubby and I both screamed at the TV, “No, you CRASHED a $35 million machine” but I don’t think he could hear us and he clearly wasn’t listening to Kelly either by that stage.
It seems like they almost managed to beg $35 million because they had plenty of taxi money to spend. Some of that came from Meredith, paying back what Ron and Kelly had spared him when it was their turn to be non-eliminated. The other big caring and sharing moment came when Uchenna tried to help the oldies with the boats. In the end it didn’t make much difference, and Meredith and Gretchen miss out on a place in the final three. At least they said really nice things about each other, unlike Deanna and whatsisname, who deserves to be erased from memory because he’s a pig. You know who I mean.
So who’s going to win? The ad for next week shows everyone hitting major hurdles, but Rob and Amber have probably a two hour lead judging by the daylight difference between their arrival on the finish mat and the remaining teams. They’ve played the game extremely well so I’d be happy for them to get it. Joyce also won a substantial amount of respect from me for the dignity with which she just got on with the head shaving (and may I say again that she probably looks even better with the new cut than with the skanky dreadlocks) so likewise I’m happy for them to win. It would be very, very funny however if Ron and Kelly win just to see them pretend to be happy about it when they’re both just waiting for the whole thing to be over so they never have to see each other again. This time next week we’ll know.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Amazing Race: week ?
Sorry not to have done updates for a while, but it's tough when the show doesn't finish until my bedtime! Anyway I promised a friend to do a report this week since she's got a family thing tonight and will miss the show. Karen, sorry to rub it in but you missed a good one.
One of the frustrating things about The Amazing Race is that we don't find out how close together the teams are at the end of one episode until the start of the next when we get their departure times. (The truly frustrating 'time' aspect comes when Channel 7 decides to skip an episode in favour of the cricket WITHOUT ANY PRIOR WARNING! OK I've had my say now.) For example, last week I would never have thought that Joyce's follicular sacrifice got them on the finish mat in first place but only nine minutes ahead of the last team to arrive and survive. Unlike Samson, however, Joyce claims the heavy-handed-haircut has made her stronger.
Rob hopefully learnt a lesson this week. The teams all managed to find the same 'Open 24 hours' travel agent (go figure) and book tickets on the flight to Istanbul via Delhi, but Rob just had to tease Gretchen by asking if she'd managed to get on "the earlier flight". It was kind of funny seeing the panicked look on her face as she replied, "Y-y-y-eah-h-h". Usually believing Rob on a matter of strategy would be a huge mistake, but in this case it worked because the token oldies and the token black couple kept looking until they actually found an earlier flight via Dubai. Rob was so cocky he even joked about having a big enough lead already, and not wanting to overdo it. He certainly wasn't overdoing it with joy when he found out that two other teams were hours ahead.
I keep hoping that Meredith and Joyce will learn a lesson and start reading the clues properly, but they don't. This week - like every week - they climbed the same tower two or three times looking for the clue box, which was right out the front. At least they knew what a garden gnome is, unlike Rob. I suppose it helps a bit that Meredith distinctly resembles a gnome, although I don't think gnomes typically carry all their stuff around in a plastic supermarket bag. More about the gnomes later.
The detour was a choice between columns and scales. On the first one the teams had to use a grid as a reference to find four specifically numbered columns in a chamber with an elaborate roof held up by dozens of them. The numbers then matched the combination lock on a box they had to pull out of the well that the entire structure housed. Ron and Kelly were the only team to try this option, and managed to get it right first go. They're on the brink of a major relationship implosion, but they're still being mostly nice about sniping at each other. Ron has a bad track record with sniping, although my husband assures me that an Iraqi farmer standing in his field pointing a shotgun at an American helicopter does not really qualify as a sniper. Ron's subsequent POW experience did get him out of the army though, which Kelly is using as evidence of him being afraid of commitment. The logic didn't make much sense to me either, but she's a beauty queen and we don't expect much of her.
The other option was to weigh people in Instanbul's version of Federation Square. Each team got a set of scales, a clipboard and a calculator, and had to keep weighing the people who wandered past until they'd reached a certain total. Apparently this is a popular local pastime, but I suspect it was just the same half dozen loafers that all three teams weighed.
The detour was a pretty boring one that involved climbing a rope ladder up the side of a tower, finding a key, rappelling down a castle wall, and opening a big leather-bound book using the key. The best scene, though, was Ron watching from the top of the tower as Rob and Amber stepped onto the finish mat in third place, behind Joyce and Uchenna in first place and Meredith and Joyce in second. Since this turned out to be a non-elimination round, Ron and Kelly are still in the race but down to the clothes on their back and their passports for the rest of it. It'll be fun to see how Kelly copes with no grooming aids of any kind.
In a weird new twist on the weekly prize (and I felt really ripped off for Joyce that she won nothing after shaving her head last week) the teams had to find a gnome early in the episode and carry it with them all the way to the finish mat. Each one had a different symbol on the bottom and the couple with the plane symbol won the prize regardless of what order they finished in. We saw Ron and Kelly's gnome on the floor in a taxi – accompanied by some scary music to tell us they'd left it behind – and didn't see it again. Since none of the other couples had the plane symbol on their gnome, and Ron and Kelly were last to arrive, it was obvious that they'd let the prize slip through their fingers. Oh no! How will they react when they find out?
Nah, we should have known that the scary music was a red herring, and sure enough Ron pulled it out of his back pack. They won $20,000 worth of product-placement travel from an on-line booking service that needs no further promotion and shall remain unnamed on this blog. Hopefully for them they can take it as two separate prizes of ten grand each, because if they keep going this way their relationship is going to have a shorter shelf life than a bucket of prawns in the sun.
One of the frustrating things about The Amazing Race is that we don't find out how close together the teams are at the end of one episode until the start of the next when we get their departure times. (The truly frustrating 'time' aspect comes when Channel 7 decides to skip an episode in favour of the cricket WITHOUT ANY PRIOR WARNING! OK I've had my say now.) For example, last week I would never have thought that Joyce's follicular sacrifice got them on the finish mat in first place but only nine minutes ahead of the last team to arrive and survive. Unlike Samson, however, Joyce claims the heavy-handed-haircut has made her stronger.
Rob hopefully learnt a lesson this week. The teams all managed to find the same 'Open 24 hours' travel agent (go figure) and book tickets on the flight to Istanbul via Delhi, but Rob just had to tease Gretchen by asking if she'd managed to get on "the earlier flight". It was kind of funny seeing the panicked look on her face as she replied, "Y-y-y-eah-h-h". Usually believing Rob on a matter of strategy would be a huge mistake, but in this case it worked because the token oldies and the token black couple kept looking until they actually found an earlier flight via Dubai. Rob was so cocky he even joked about having a big enough lead already, and not wanting to overdo it. He certainly wasn't overdoing it with joy when he found out that two other teams were hours ahead.
I keep hoping that Meredith and Joyce will learn a lesson and start reading the clues properly, but they don't. This week - like every week - they climbed the same tower two or three times looking for the clue box, which was right out the front. At least they knew what a garden gnome is, unlike Rob. I suppose it helps a bit that Meredith distinctly resembles a gnome, although I don't think gnomes typically carry all their stuff around in a plastic supermarket bag. More about the gnomes later.
The detour was a choice between columns and scales. On the first one the teams had to use a grid as a reference to find four specifically numbered columns in a chamber with an elaborate roof held up by dozens of them. The numbers then matched the combination lock on a box they had to pull out of the well that the entire structure housed. Ron and Kelly were the only team to try this option, and managed to get it right first go. They're on the brink of a major relationship implosion, but they're still being mostly nice about sniping at each other. Ron has a bad track record with sniping, although my husband assures me that an Iraqi farmer standing in his field pointing a shotgun at an American helicopter does not really qualify as a sniper. Ron's subsequent POW experience did get him out of the army though, which Kelly is using as evidence of him being afraid of commitment. The logic didn't make much sense to me either, but she's a beauty queen and we don't expect much of her.
The other option was to weigh people in Instanbul's version of Federation Square. Each team got a set of scales, a clipboard and a calculator, and had to keep weighing the people who wandered past until they'd reached a certain total. Apparently this is a popular local pastime, but I suspect it was just the same half dozen loafers that all three teams weighed.
The detour was a pretty boring one that involved climbing a rope ladder up the side of a tower, finding a key, rappelling down a castle wall, and opening a big leather-bound book using the key. The best scene, though, was Ron watching from the top of the tower as Rob and Amber stepped onto the finish mat in third place, behind Joyce and Uchenna in first place and Meredith and Joyce in second. Since this turned out to be a non-elimination round, Ron and Kelly are still in the race but down to the clothes on their back and their passports for the rest of it. It'll be fun to see how Kelly copes with no grooming aids of any kind.
In a weird new twist on the weekly prize (and I felt really ripped off for Joyce that she won nothing after shaving her head last week) the teams had to find a gnome early in the episode and carry it with them all the way to the finish mat. Each one had a different symbol on the bottom and the couple with the plane symbol won the prize regardless of what order they finished in. We saw Ron and Kelly's gnome on the floor in a taxi – accompanied by some scary music to tell us they'd left it behind – and didn't see it again. Since none of the other couples had the plane symbol on their gnome, and Ron and Kelly were last to arrive, it was obvious that they'd let the prize slip through their fingers. Oh no! How will they react when they find out?
Nah, we should have known that the scary music was a red herring, and sure enough Ron pulled it out of his back pack. They won $20,000 worth of product-placement travel from an on-line booking service that needs no further promotion and shall remain unnamed on this blog. Hopefully for them they can take it as two separate prizes of ten grand each, because if they keep going this way their relationship is going to have a shorter shelf life than a bucket of prawns in the sun.
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