Amazing Race: Champagne Misses And Duct Tape Dreams

This week "The Amazing Race" teams continued their adventures in France. The teams had to drive themselves to Reims, find a statue of Joan of Arc and get their clue from a musician playing a "singing" saw. I didn't know France was so impoverished that they couldn't afford real instruments. The clue was a cork from a champagne bottle with "Champagne LeClerc-Briant" written on it. The cowboys, Jet and Cord, drove off in search of a town named Champagne because they saw that name on the map and the cork said "champagne." Ummmmmm....okayyyyyyyy. The rest of the teams asked around and went to Epernay, where the winery was located.

But that wasn't the only driving-related misdirection. After completing a Roadblock task at the winery, the next clue give the teams was a label that read "Tattingers - LaMarquetterie." This is a castle in Pierry, where the teams had to go to complete a Detour. Unfortunately, Tattingers also has headquarters in Reims. Again asking for help from various locals, only two teams -- detectives Louie and Michael and annoying lesbian couple Carol and Brandy -- were sent to the proper location. They completed their Detour and headed to the Pit Stop, with L&M finishing first for the third week in a row and the lesbians surging into 2nd place from 5th last week.

Four teams -- including Steve Smith and his daughter Allie (he got bad advice, just like those Phillies baserunners he sent home to be tagged out...karma?) , and the cowboys (driving to the wrong town for the second time) -- were given directions to Reims, only to have Tattingers employees keep having to send these weird Americans away. And then there's the case of Brent and Caite. They weren't able to find Tattingers, and ended up driving around until spotting Carol and Brandy driving. They decided to follow, and ended up following C&B...to the Pit Stop! The morons were sent back to their car, with Caite, Miss Teen South Carolina bimbo, whining: "Damn, I want to get the stupid lesbians out. I hate them." Bitch, whose fault is it that you two are the dumbest people in the Race? They pretty much spent the entire leg sniping back and forth at each other.

Meanwhile, as Steve and Allie arrived at Tattingers in Reims, they ran into another problem. They ran over something and wrecked the front right bumper of their car. When they left for the castle in Pierry, the plastic bumper was dragging along the tire and they had to stop. Steve tried to break it off, to no avail. Then he remembered the duct tape that his wife packed in his stuff, and used the duct tape to repair the bumper enough to resume their trip. Oh, the wonders of duct tape! They still managed a third-place finish.

The two Detour tasks were: find a specially-marked bunch of grapes in a vineyard, or stack champagne glasses into a tower (15 levels high) and pour a giant bottle of champange into the top glass (so it could flow down into the glasses below) without any breakage. Only the brothers Dan and Jordan completed this. It was time-consuming, what with their somehow having 3 single glasses remaining with 3 levels still to complete. They had to stack them on top of each other, and still pour the champagne successfully. Combined with their being sent to Tattingers in Reims in error, this caused D&J to drop from 4th to 5th, one spot behind Jet and Cord. The moron couple, arriving from the Pit Stop, tried to find the grapes, got frustrated, tried to build the tower, broke some glasses, and went back to the vineyard, bickering all the way. Yet they managed to find their grapes and finish 6th, ahead of Big Brother couple Jordan and Jeff, who were eliminated.

I have to admit that Jordan and Jeff weren't really annoying to me at all this week. I actually enjoyed them, and wish they had managed to beat out Brent and Caite, the moron couple.