We started the night with three teams in China -- Tammy & Victor, who used their knowledge of Mandarin to come in first in the previous leg (the third of three legs in China where they had a definite advantage over other teams); Margie & Luke, a team I used to love but have come to strongly dislike after Margie's understandable but regrettable overreaction to the blowup between deaf son Luke and fellow racer Jen (her poor attitude toward Kisha & Jen in subsequent weeks, combined with Luke's incessant whining despite being a grown man hasn't helped either); and Jaime and Cara, former NFL cheerleaders, one of whom is one of the sweetest on the race and the other of whom is an outright raging bitch. So it was kind of tough to find a rooting interest. I guess Tammy & Victor. They haven't done anything too bad this season.
The teams take an 18 hour flight to Maui... and then they start racing! Tammy & Victor are first to the beach, where they have to prep a pig for a luau. This includes carrying the 130 lb. carcass across the sand some distance to the pits. Jaime and Cara are close behind, but both Cara and Tammy struggle mightily with the weight and Margie and Luke - using Margie's superhuman 50-year-old woman strength -- power ahead of them. They finish the task first and head off to the next destination with a 10-minute lead. Tammy & Victor finish second. The cheerleaders are close behind.
The next phase uses a waverunner to search around some buoys for a clue underwater. Margie and Luke struggle a bit but finish the stage with their lead in tact, while Jaime and Cara move into 2nd and Victor & Tammy trail. Margie and Luke find the next phase quickly -- it's a Roadblock, and a familiar one to regular viewers of the program. In fact, Luke, as a regular viewer, has studied for this phase extensively during the race. So he handles the Roadblock while Margie watches. His task is to find surfboards with pictures among a huge pile of surfboards, and put the pictures in order, with each picture corresponding to one of the 11 stages in teh race. Of course, many surfboards have pictures unrelated to the race, just to confuse the contestants. Luke is confident and starts off strong, putting in surfboard after surfboard in the correct order. In the meantime, Jaime and Cara get lost with the cab driver from hell, and Victor & Tammy only arrive when Luke is almost finished. I believe he had 8 or 9 of the 11 surfboard in place when Victor begins the task for Team Asian-American Lawyers. And then he falls apart...
Luke puts the wrong surfboard in the #10 position and then struggles mightily to find the #11 surfboard. Since 10 and 11 were the last two stages (just completed), it's kind of surprising to see that he can't find the right surfboard, but I think Victor's arrival threw him off his game. He began to get quickly flustered while trying to find the 11th board, and he could see that Victor was having a relatively easy time finding his own boards. Once he got flustered -- as we've seen happen to him on several occasions, especially late in this race -- he just loses it and can't think or react and usually tries to quit until his mom talks him into continuing to try. He doesn't really quit here, but he can't think straight anymore and cannot for the life of him find the 11th board. He eventually realizes that his 10th one is wrong too (and one of the 11ths he's tried is the correct one), but by then, Victor is nearly complete and Jaime has arrived to start the task as well.
Victor finishes first and gets the clue -- head for a nearby golf course and race to the mat -- and since the other two teams are still struggling to finish, the race is over. Margie suggests that Luke and Jaime help each other, and they do, but it's too late. In the cabs on the way to the golf course, Tammy is crying cheers of joy while Jaime is cursing at herself for failing to find one of the surfboards quick enough, and Luke is weeping like a baby. Victor & Tammy reach the mat first and celebrate the victory, with the cheerleaders in a distant 2nd, and Margie and Luke further behind.
It was a pretty good 14th season and most of the racers were rather likeable. The producers have trended away from the controversial, "hated" racers that were cast in the earliest seasons, and these nicer, more friendly racers in the past few seasons have made the show much more watchable and enjoyable. I can see disgusting cast members fighting with each other on shows like The Real World / Road Rules Challenge. I don't need that in the Amazing Race. That being said, the fight between Kisha/Jen and Margie/Luke had a negative effect on the final stages of the race, soiling both likeable teams and three of the four players (Kisha came out looking largely ok), and since they and the unlikeable Jaime were part of 75% of the final four teams, the ending of the Race lost quite a bit of luster. In the end, though, the team that stayed out of the fray (and were literally caught in the middle of the mat blowup between Margie and Kisha/Jen) won the million dollars, so I guess all ended up right in the world. Or at least on The Amazing Race. Congratulations, Tammy & Victor. I will not remember you two months from now, but you have a million more dollars than I do.
Nice, nice. Hot Lesbian Cheerleaders. Good call.
Posted by: LegFuJohnson | May 11, 2009 at 08:04 AM
No one said they were lesbians!
Posted by: Bill | May 11, 2009 at 08:56 AM
we can dream right?
Posted by: Switsky | May 11, 2009 at 12:31 PM
You didn't say they weren't.
Posted by: LegFuJohnson | May 11, 2009 at 01:46 PM