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.