The Amazing Race – Bringing up the Rear: Season 13, Episode 7 (Nov 14)
Team Sports Bra heads out, and they are happy with their second-place finish. Toni and Dallas are next out, and it looks like the finish times were clustered pretty close last week Fourth-place Terence and Sarah leave less than an hour after Nick and Starr, which means it was tighter than it looked. Terence is impressed to see an entire family on a single motorcycle. Team SB discusses whether they’d choose to make out with Andrew or Dan, if forced. Andrew is a popular choice because “he’s different”, but Dan would just start pacing. Accompanying is funny footage of Andrew being different and Dan pacing. Hee. As usual, the SB cabbie gets lost. What’s up with that?
The aforementioned Team Eeyore departs, and Andrew tells us they’re both very strong, but in opposite ways. Or else neither are strong in the exact same way. That seems more likely. Unsurprisingly, Dan starts out the leg by whining. Ken and Tina are very intense about hunting down a cab driver.
Road Block
“Who’s ready for a cultural experience?” The selected Racer will run through a Holi festival. This Festival consists of revelers throwing water and colored dye everywhere. The Racer has to get to a ladder and search a ring of hundreds of clue envelopes, only six of which are real. (The false ones are labeled “Try Again”, so you can tell the difference.)
Starr takes the Roadblock and runs through a mass of people, clouds of paint, and super soakers. Starr is not hassled by anybody until she’s on the ladder, and even then, she comes out of the task only a little dirty. One suspects this is not unusual for her. While Nick is wiping her face (which is weird), a guy walks up and casually rubs a handful of purple dye in his face. Ha!
Toni and Dallas get there next, and Dallas gets pelted pretty good. This actually looks kind of fun. Kelly takes it for Team SB, who’ve already slipped a spot in the standings. By this time, there’s blood in the water, and the paint guys are all over Kelly. People actively chase her with buckets, and she turns tail and runs back to Christie, thoroughly covered. She covers up her face and makes another run, which just gives the revelers time to form a gauntlet. By this point, even the camera has paint all over it. Sadly, Kelly misread the clue, so she just grabs one envelope and runs it back. Ouch.
Terence leaps into action, asking “Who’s my girl?” and Sarah responds with “You are”. Hee. That was not the question Sarah thought he would be asking, is my guess. Kelly runs back for another envelope, and returns with another empty one. She is absolutely coated by now. Terence comes back with a good envelope, covered in crap. Team SB is shocked that he got it on the first try. Oh, that should be a clue…
Team Eeyore arrives and Dan mopes through a festival. He tells us it was like a rave, only “It was a sausage fest. The girls never bothered to show up.” I feel like that’s true of most of the parties that Dan attends. Andrew gets attacked on the sidelines, and Dan finds an envelope. Kelly comes up with yet another fake. Now, after watching two other teams do it on the first try, she had to think she’d made a mistake. But then, she is getting slammed by crazy people in a chaotic environment, so logic is sort of at a premium right about now. On her next run, she wipes out hard. By this point, she’s really frustrated and actually has to blow dye out of her nose. After a moment to collect herself and read the clue, she realizes she has to find the “marked” envelope.
Ken and Tina get there, meaning Team Sports Bra has lost a lot of time. Once she figures out the rules, though, Kelly gets an envelope. By this point, both of them are absolutely covered. They have a hard time getting a cab, as they’re covered in crap. While Tina cheers Ken on, some kids attack her with dye, and it sounds to me like she calls them “assholes”. Hee. They get their envelope just as the girls physically stop a cab.
Bird Hospital
This doesn’t fit anywhere else, but it’s too awesome to leave out. They have to find a clue in a hospital for injured birds. A lot of injured birds. Nick thinks it might be a hospital for people and the birds are therapeutic. What kind of illness would birds help cure, do you suppose? Anyway, they find the clue quickly. Toni and Dallas have no problems, either.
Not so much for Terence and Sarah. Terence is pretty sure that the clue is underneath the seed. You know, in the cages where the sick birds are recuperating. He sends Sarah into a big cage to root through the seeds. I can’t even tell you how funny this is. Especially when she picks up the tray, and one bird is still sitting in there, refusing to move. For the most part, the birds look pretty shocked. “Holy crap!” they seem to be thinking. “I did not expect that to happen!”
Team Eeyore finds the Bird Hospital, while a punchy Team Sports Bra roars out the window of the cab like monsters. Ken and Tina hit their Speed Bump – they have to serve holy water to worshippers at a temple. This is awkward, because they can only leave when everybody has been served. Potentially, people could trickle in forever. This is not what happens, but it worried me. Tina’s hair is completely green at this point, which looks pretty funny. They serve up the water, and Ken seems to miss the “Holy” part and acts like a miracle cure salesman in a traveling circus. Apparently, they complete it pretty quickly.
The Detour
“Bleary Eyed” or “Teary Eyed” In “Bleary Eyed”, they walk a street and follow a power line, keeping track of tiny number tags that appear sporadically. It looks tough, because that street is a mess. In “Teary Eyed”, teams take two forty pound bags of dried chiles to a shop, where they have to grind enough to fill a bowl. If you’ve ever tried making salsa, you know, that stuff hurts! Nick and Starr pick “Bleary Eyed”, as do Toni and Dallas.
Nick and Starr figure out what they’re looking for after they’ve gone a bit down the road, so they go back to the beginning to start fresh. Team Wolf Too catches up, and Nick claims they don’t know what they’re looking for. Ah, this is the “white lie” foreshadowed earlier. Alas, Dallas quickly spots a tag, and they agree to work together. Now, if it hadn’t been the first tag that Dallas saw, then Nick and Starr would have had the correct answers and Team Wolf Too would be missing the earliest tags. But it was the first, so none of that played out. They don’t actually tell us that, to make for some drama at the number stand, but I don’t like to mess with people like that.
Terence and Sarah pick “Teary Eyed”, while Team Eeyore whines and Team Sports Bra pretend to be interested as their cab driver points out landmarks.
Nick and Starr and Team Wolf Too progress quickly, while Terence and Sarah are overwhelmed by the power of pepper. Terence’s nose is already full of dye powder, so I imagine he’s kind of a mess at this point.
Team Eeyore wanders aimlessly through “Bleary Eyed”, as they do. Nick and Starr and Team Wolf Too present their findings to the judge, who acts like he’s disappointed and then gives them the thumbs-up. They have to go to a stationery store to plug a light-up Ganeesha into a power strip. This is the most awesomely tacky thing ever, by the way. Apu would think twice before letting them into the Kwik-E-Mart. With a major religion thoroughly trivialized, they are sent to the Pit Stop, a tomb.
Terence and Sarah keep grinding. Not like that. Sarah tells us that the shopkeeper was “not very generous” in his evaluation of their peppers, now was he sympathetic to their pain. It’s all in the delivery here, folks. I’m telling you, Sarah is funny.
Team Eeyore is picking numbers off of street signs and missing the tags entirely. Team Sports Bra makes the same mistake, but also rides in a cab down the street, making spotting the tags practically impossible. The judge rejects Team Eeyore’s numbers and gives them a dismissive wave of his hand. Ken and Tina start on “Bleary Eyed”. Team Eeyore decides the problem is that they didn’t write down the wrong numbers often enough, and the judge rejects Team Sports Bra.
The increasingly irritable judge shoots down Eeyore for the third time. Ken and Tina spot the number tags right away, but still manage to argue about it. Sports Bra is very worried that Eeyore is trying to copy their wrong answers, so they shield their paper from view and a now hostile judge gives them the thumbs down. Dan offers to work together, but Sports Bra rejects him because they’re fighting for last place, and also, he is Dan.
Ken and Tina pass Eeyore, and Sports Bra remains commited to the damn cab. They shield their answers again, and now the judge openly mocks them. When Ken and Tina present their answers, she gets too close, and the judge shoves her away. Still, he approves. Tina is happy because “The boys are out on the street, workin’ it.” If there’s a remake of Midnight Cowboy starring Team Eeyore, I will not buy a ticket.
On their millionth pass, Sports Bra spots a number tag, and now they know what they’re looking for. Ken and Tina actually tell Eeyore what they should be looking for. So now both teams are racing to get the numbers. The judge covers his head with a newspaper when Eeyore shows up. Hee. He gives them the thumbs-up and sends them on their way. When he approves Sports Bra, he not only has newspaper on his head, but a pair of dark sunglasses that seem to have come from nowhere. I hope the judge comes back!
The Pit Stop
OK, this is awesome. You know how Phil’s always waiting with a local? Phil is by himself as the first team approaches. When Phil spots them, he calls over the nearby man who’s watering the grass. The guy sprints to the mat, welcomes them to India, and then immediately goes back to watering the grass. Ha! Like they couldn’t find anybody with some free time in the entire country. They had to get the poor greenskeeper to pull double duty. And man, he can’t get back to watering fast enough.
Nick and Starr are first (again) and win a romantic brother-sister vacation (again). Toni and Dallas get there shortly after. Next are Terence and Sarah, and it’s pretty funny to see everybody show up at the Pit Stop in their various Day-Glo shades. Ken and Tina show up in fourth place, largely due to the mistakes of others rather than their own successes.
Depressingly, Team Eeyore comes in fifth, which means Team Sports Bra is eliminated by a very busy maintenance guy. Awww. I liked them. They were prone to mistakes, but they had moxie, and I like moxie.
Next week: There’s a Fast Forward, and Dan and Andrew have a fight. This last part sounds exactly as witless as you might expect.
