Bucky's here with a recap of this week's Amazing Race. Thanks, Bucky!:
After a two-week rest, the remaining teams embark from Singapore on what, for me, was the most boring leg of this season's The Amazing Race. (More on that later.) They fly to Shanghai, where they will need to take a taxi, then a water taxi to the Road Block.
The Detectives and the Brothers draw the short straws, as far as cab drivers go. They get cab drivers who don't go—at least where they are supposed to go. Both get hopelessly lost. This turn of events puts these two teams waaaay behind.
The Road Block requires the participating team member to make one kilo of noodles by hand. They are closely watched by the World's Shortest Man, who will give them their clue when they finish. This seems a little freak-showish to me. Did anyone else think it was gratuitous?
Caite and Jet start at pretty much the same time, but the Cowboys move along quickly when Jet figures out the key to hand-making pasta is to use copious amounts of flour so the noodles don’t stick together. These Cowboys pick up on things quickly. They finish and depart for the next clue in first place.
Louie, for the Detectives, begins the noodle challenge next, saying that this should be easy because he used to help his granny make pasta all the time. Confidence was never so misplaced. The Brothers start last, with Jordan doing the pasta-making, and he struggles.
The Cowboys arrive at the Detour, which requires them to go in a fashion design studio, pick a model and a picture of an outfit, and then find the individual pieces of the outfit on racks and tables of clothing. If they dress the model correctly, they move on to the next clue. They have little trouble with this and finish the Road Block before any other team arrives to start it.
Caite finishes the noodle challenge, followed shortly by Louie. Jordan struggles and Daniel is very supportive of him, to the point of hugging him for encouragement at one point. Nice to see. (In fact, all the teams work well together tonight…)
Brent & Caite arrive at the fashion challenge and note that, because they are both models, if they blow this one it will be embarrassing. The Detectives arrive next and go wandering around the streets looking for the fashion design studio. (The entrance was, like, two feet from the clue box.) This wastes a lot of time and, while Brent & Caite have no trouble and move to the next clue, the Detectives’ wandering gives the Brothers time to catch up.
The next clue informs the teams that there is—for the first time in Amazing Race history!—a second Road Block and the team member who didn’t perform the first one must accomplish this one. That means Cord, Brent, Louie and Daniel will be doing the challenge.
The second Road Bock takes place in (what I think was described as) the World’s Largest Football Stadium. Maybe it was Shanghai’s largest football stadium. (It looks strange without goal posts. But I digress…)
The racers must assemble a “card stunt” consisting of a whole bunch of large puzzle pieces that form a Chinese picture. They then give them to fans in the stands and when the fans flip them over, they will display the stadium seat under which the directions to the Pit Stop are located.
Cord starts first, with Brent in second. About halfway through assembling the puzzle pieces on the ground, a gust of wind comes up and scatters the pieces across the field with no goal posts. This sets them both back.
Michael starts assembling his puzzle and he approaches the task the way I imagine a Detective starts solving a very complicated crime: one piece at a time. Well, anybody does a puzzle one piece at a time, but Michael takes this to an extreme, laying one piece down and then going through every other piece until he finds the one next to it.
Daniel, like Cord and Brent, lays all his pieces out and is able to move ahead of Michael.
Cord finishes and the Cowboys head for the Pit Stop on the train, arriving first and winning a trip to Alaska. Brent finishes second and he & Caite take the train to the Pit Stop.
Daniel finishes and the Brothers catch the train. But--NO!--the train driver gets lost! Hahaha. Not really, I’m just making that up to add excitement to the recap. (More on that later.)
Michael takes forever to finish his puzzle and the Detectives arrive at the Pit Stop after dark. Phil informs them that, “You are out”…and then, FAKEOUT!!...he says, “You are out of the cold…” This is a non-elimination leg. The Detectives will have to successfully do a Speed Bump next week if they want to make the final three teams racing for the million-dollar prize.
Here’s why I’m irritated at this week’s leg: I was doing some scheduling and looked ahead on my DVR recording schedule. This week’s episode information said “The teams travel to Shanghai blah, blah blah.” Next week’s episode information said, “The four remaining teams blah, blah, blah.” So I learned that it was a non-elimination leg before I began watching. That took all the excitement out of it. Did this happen to anyone else?
So, next week, the four teams race to determine who will be the final three and I already know where the race ends, too, but I’m not telling. I will say this: Neither Russell nor Parvati win this season’s The Amazing Race.