What's So Amazing?
Monday, December 18, 2006
Finale: Every Time I Think I’m Done, They Pull Me Back In
Previously on The Amazing Race:
The only team worth rooting for (as opposed to rooting against) was eliminated, leaving us struggling to find someone to cheer on. Our candidates, and their credentials:
Rob and Kimberly – Con: Rob alternates between wanting to marry Kimberly and wanting to throw her under the nearest form of public transportation; Kimberly gives screeching harpies a bad name. Pro: Rob has displayed occasional flashes of humanity over the course of the season and you only need a minimal amount of alcohol to consider Kimberly doable, provided she has no means of contacting you afterward.
Lyn and Karlyn – Con: They rank pretty high on the hypocrisy scale, constantly decrying behavior they themselves engage in. Pro: Could genuinely use the money, and have sincerely appreciated the opportunity to travel around the world.
Tyler and James – Con: Would blow the million dollars on crack, forcing them to return to being homeless on the streets giving handjobs for cash. Pro: Would blow the million dollars on crack, forcing them to return to being homeless on the streets giving handjobs for cash.
Speaking of
Sorry about the sound quality on that one. That’s You Tube for ya.
Anyway, we’re in Spain. Barcelona. Cue music.
Okay, lousy picture quality on that one. Oh well. I don’t really care all that much. I mean, if CBS could only be bothered to schedule an hour for the finale, why should I be bothered to do much for the summary. Anyway, two clips is two more than the most recent Survivor summary got. So let’s proceed, and quickly.
Barcelona. Find a church that’s been under construction for 124 years. Search park behind said church for next clue.
Rob and Kimberly are amazed to still be in the race, probably because they both figured Kimberly would be dead and Rob would be in jail for her murder by now.
Lyn and Karlyn want to win because the money will change their lives.
Tyler and James believe they are both too sexy for the race, which is of course a cue for me.
All teams find the clue with varying degrees of difficulty. The clue sends them off to Paris and the Eiffel Tower.
Airport waiting. Flights can’t be booked until 4:00 am. James wants to find an Internet connection and try to find tickets that way, Tyler tells him no. James breaks down, gives a wino a handjob in the bathroom for change for the vending machines.
Ticket offices open, Rob and Kimberly get first flight to DeGaulle. Lyn and Karlyn get seats on later flight coming into Orly. Tyler and James, after some fake suspense, get stand-by seats on flight with Rob and Kimberly.
Rob and Kimberly and Tyler and James land and are off, but since DeGaulle is farther from Eiffel Tower than Orly, Lyn and Karlyn get there first. Clue sends them to airport in city of Caen. Hey, didn’t Springsteen sing a song called “Adam Raised A Cain”? Sure did. Sure did.
Teams get to the Caen airport. Roadblock! One person will skydive over the beaches at Normandy, then have to dodge German fire. The other person will ride in the plane, which will do surprise nosedive. Kinda like ARod.
Tyler, Karlyn, and Kimberly do the task. Tyler and Kimberly claim to be choices to do the task because their partner has done more roadblocks, but we have never heard any discussion of this during the course of the season. Rob is pissed that he isn’t skydiving, because he has always wanted to go skydiving and it was the one thing he really wanted to do on the race. Rob will continue to bitch about not getting to skydive for the rest of the episode. Rob, can we talk? Lean in close, okay? That’s it.
SMACK
Listen, idiot, you don’t need to go on The Amazing Race to skydive. Hell, I’ve gone skydiving, and none of this pussy tandem shit. Real skydiving, by myself, just me and a chute. It was great, up until the point when I landed and broke my foot. Hell, it was still great, even though I broke my foot. I don’t know if I would do it again – you feel a lot less invulnerable at age 47 than you do at age 20 – but I’m glad I did do it. And you can do it too, Rob. There are United States Parachute Association-certified schools in every state. You can find one here, if you are so inclined.
Okay, everyone completes their jump, gets their clue, and are instructed to head back to Paris. There is a brief fakeout that Rob and Kimberly will miss the train, but alas. We all get to Paris at the same time, and find the next clue box and roughly the same time. The next clue is a detour, and, because this is the last time for this season, here’s the song:
A detour is a choice between two tasks
Between two tasks
Between two tasks
A detour is a choice between two tasks
Each with its own pros and cons.
Okay, our choices are Art or Fashion. In Art, teams carry a panting from a gallery to a painter. Quick, easy, relatively effortless. In Fashion, teams build an outfit on a tailor’s model using clothe and patterns. Teams need the approval of the Audrey, Nazi-Collaborator Seamstress. Difficult, lengthy, and effort heavy. All three teams choose Fashion, of course.
Tyler and James, as models, finish first. Lyn and Karlyn, as mothers, finish second. Rob and Kimberly, as assholes, finish third. The clue tells them to go to New York City and find the globe in the Daily News building. Tyler and James and Rob and Kimberly head back to DeGaulle; Lyn and Karlyn head to Orly, where they discover that they need to go to DeGaulle to get an international flight. This doesn’t prove to be as fatal as it could be.
What does prove to be fatal for them is that Rob and Kimberly and Tyler and James are able to get on the first flight to New York, although it comes down to Tyler and James getting pulled off the stand-by list and Lyn and Karlyn not getting pulled off the stand-by list. As a result, Lyn and Karlyn are doomed to finish third.
The first flight lands in New York City, and Tyler and James and Rob and Kimberly are off. Tyler and James are familiar with the city, and direct their cabbie to lose the cab following them. The cabbie can’t. What the cabbie can do, however, is produce an EZPass, allowing him to bypass the tolls, the tolls that stop Rob and Kimberly’s cab. This will prove the difference.
Tyler and James arrive at the Daily News building, see the globe, get the clue, and get instructions to find woman by a sculpture in Union Square. They find the woman and get the last clue, directing them to the Pit Stop about an hour north of the city. Rob and Kimberly are edited to be closely behind them, but there is no race to the finish. Tyler and James walk to their win, Rob and Kimberly finish second, Lyn and Karlyn third, and the season is over. So goodbye until next spring, when the All-Star edition pops up. Thanks for reading, both of you. ¶ 4:21 PM 1 Comments
Monday, December 04, 2006
Episode Eleven: The One With The Flying Tomato Brothers
Previously on The Amazing Race:
The blonde’s asses were saved due to a non-elimination, though they were given a 30-spanking, I mean, a 30-minute penalty on the next leg. MMMM. Spanking beauty queens. And no, that’s not just a blatant attempt to drive up traffic.
We open in Morocco. Tyler and James, the first team to arrive, are the first team to leave. Dweeze, the first person to summarize, decides to take the Evelyn Woods route on this baby. After all, I still need to crank out a Survivor summary, and I got a big mad-on brewing for that one. So we’ll go fast.
Tyler and James leave. The clue says go to a market in Casablanca and find Sidney Greenstreet. Lyn and Karlyn are next. Both teams are focused more on eliminating Dustin and Kandice as opposed to running their own race.
Rob and Kimberly are next out. Rob tells us he wants to win a million dollars, marry Kimberly, and ride off into the Moroccan sunset. I’d be much happier if they just did one of those three things. Actually, they can get married too if they promise not to breed. Kimberly says that she hates that there are so many dogs in the desert. Uhm, Kimberly. Those aren’t dogs. Okay?
Dustin and Kandice are next out, talking about how the other teams hate them and how they are facing a 30-minute penalty. This will not be the last time we hear mention of the 30-minute penalty. It’s pounded into us so much over the course of the show that it has to come into play, right? It can’t turn into a non-factor, like if the blondes finish first (negating the penalty) or finish last (no penalty needed), right?
All four teams are on the road to Casablanca, which was my favorite Crosby and Hope movie. Dustin and Kandice charm a local into riding with them and leading them to the destination. No such luck for anyone else, though it must either be a short journey or Tyler and James got a big lead because they arrive before anyone else.
There’s a Roadblock at the market. One team member must get some camel meat, grind it, give it to a cook, then eat it. James, he of the cow lips eating challenge, takes the task. Like I said before, after you’ve sucked off the homeless for crack, eating camel meat is no challenge. On this challenge, the person doing the task can have the cook add a variety of spices to the food.
Dustin and Kandice arrive next at the Roadblock. Kandice opts to do the task. She grinds the meat (yes, I’m leaving the obvious joke alone) and takes it to be cooked, shocking Tyler and James. James finishes up as Kandice’s meat is cooking, and the next clue sends them to Barcelona.
Where they going? Barcelona. Oh. Don't get up.Do they have to? Yes, they have to.
Don’t get up.
Sometimes the jokes are just for me.
Meanwhile, Rob and Kimberly and Lyn and Karlyn are struggling to find the market. Back at the grill, Kandice comments that the camel meat is the protein missing from her diet. I gotcher protein right here, Kandice. She then asks the cook to prepare her camel meat medium well. I gotcher medium well rig… Okay. That makes no sense. He cooks the meat, she eats it, and they are on their way.
Tyler and James run into Rob and Kimberly at the parking lot outside the market. They tell them the blondes are already there, but they don’t bother to tell them how to find the camel meat. I gotcher camel… Nevermind.
Lyn and Karlyn arrive, and they are searching with Rob and Kimberly. Of course, Rob and Kimberly are yelling and acting like idiots. Lyn and Karlyn are calmly searching. There’s a brief scene as the blondes run into Rob and Kimberly as the blondes are leaving. They hide the clue and run to the car. Kimberly doesn’t fall for it, telling Rob the blondes are leaving, not arriving, but Rob drags Kimberly all the way to the blondes’ car before finally listening to her. He makes one last attempt to get the blondes to help them, but they drive off.
Rob and Kimberly and Lyn and Karlyn finally get to the cluebox. Kimberly chooses to do the task, or more accurately, Rob makes Kimberly do the task. Lyn does the task for their team. Lyn is able to grind meat faster than Kimberly, and I’m not getting anywhere near a joke on that one, either. Lyn seems to indicate that it has something to do with being a mother. She finishes first and gets her meat on the grill first. Kimberly is not far behind, and both women start eating at about the same time, both of them getting the same kind of encouragement from their teammates. In other words, Rob is yelling at Kimberly and Karlyn is yelling at Lyn. Lyn points out that it is difficult to eat the meat any faster because it just came off the grill. Calm down, both of you. The airport bunching that is about to occur is obvious to anyone.
Indeed, all four teams eventually end up on the same flight to Barcelona. Where they going? Barcel… Right. Already made the Company joke. Dustin and Kandice attempt to convince Tyler and James to let them step on the mat ahead of them. Tyler and James, politely enough, do not tell the blondes to fuck themselves. There is much bitching about the blondes, much talk about a 30-minute penalty, and not a whole lot of anything else.
So we get to Barcelona, and the teams have to find a park and search for the clue box in a hedge maze. A HEDGE MAZE THAT COMES ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Alive with bunching, that is! See, the park doesn’t open until the next morning. Dustin and Kandice ask some construction workers to call them a cab for the next morning. Rob and Kimberly do the same, asking for two cabs, one for them and one for Tyler and James. Lyn wants to also request a cab, but Karlyn is noncommittal, so Lyn doesn’t do it.
The next morning arrives, and the teams enter the park, get the clue, and leave the park. It’s detour time, and you know the song by now. Our choices are Love It or Leave It. In Love It, teams unquestionably love the United States no matter what policies the administration… Sorry. Our choices are Lug It or Lob It. In Lug It, teams put on giant costumes and walk around until they find their next clue from another person in a giant costume. In Lob It, teams look for a clue among a pile of tomatoes as bystanders throw tomatoes at them.
Tyler and James decide to do the same task as the blondes, no matter what task they do, correctly calculating that all they have to do is arrive at the mat either just before or just after the blondes to secure a spot in the final three. The blondes choose Lug It, and Tyler and James follow them.
Rob and Kimberly both decide to do Lob It, though, because Lyn didn’t call for a taxi the night before, Rob and Kimberly get there first. We are then treated, and I don’t think treated is a bad choice of words, to the sight of Rob and Kimberly digging through tomatoes while being pelted, and I don’t think pelted is too harsh of a word, by bystanders. Kimberly starts to freak out. At first Rob tells her to ignore the people throwing tomatoes, although in a few minutes we will see that Kimberly is the only one looking for the clue and Rob is, instead, throwing tomatoes back at the bystanders. Kimberly starts to cry, prompting Rob to regress to third grade and say “Way to cry”. Nice dude. I bet she can’t wait to marry you. He finally agrees to switch tasks, but they then find out how far away Lug It is. They instead return to searching, and, thanks to the magic of editing, immediately find the clue. It sends them to the next Pit Stop.
Over at Lug It, Dustin and Kandice and Tyler and James have found the costumes, putting them on and setting off. Tyler and James have also regressed, though only as far as junior high. Ty – what’s that you say? Oh, yeah. Good point. Tyler and James have never matured beyond junior high. As they put on their costumes, Tyler says “I’m up some giant chick’s skirt,” a statement that reminds me of some of my dates.
Cut back to Lob It, where Lyn and Karlyn have arrived. For some reason, the crowd doesn’t seem to be as into throwing tomatoes at them as they were into throwing them at Rob and Kimberly. Maybe it’s because Lyn and Karlyn aren’t having a complete breakdown. They quickly find the clue and set off for the Pit Stop.
Meanwhile, Dustin and Kandice and Tyler and James have finally finished the task. They get the clue and head off to the Pit Stop.
Over at the Pit Stop, Rob and Kimberly have arrived in first place. Phil greets them, and Rob breaks down crying. Manic depression at its finest, folks.
The remaining three teams arrive at the part where the Pit Stop is at the same time, though Lyn and Karlyn’s cab driver drops them off right at the fountain where the Pit Stop is placed. They finish second, the first all-woman team to make the final three.
Tyler and James finish third, which means all the talk about a 30-minute penalty was just time filler. Oh well. It also means no blondes in the final three, just teams without a shred of likability to them. Oh well again.
On the next Amazing Race – a summary by someone other than me! YAY!!!!!! ¶ 12:03 PM 1 Comments
