Amazing Race: Still All Good For Steve Smith

I'm not sure which qualifies as better news: the fact that Steve Smith, the ex-Phillies coach, and his daughter Allie are still doing well in "The Amazing Race," or the fact that they're getting some more screen time -- enough that they've won over the Entertainment Weekly recapper:

(T)hey're proving to be one of the most adorable racing couples ever on the show. They're funny, competent, charming, and supportive. And, by the looks of the past few weeks, they're going to be around much longer.

This week's episode featured a bus trip from Germany to France, where the teams had to perform tasks involving a reenactment of a World War I battle (complete with explosions and old-style planes overhead). Every team chose "Under Fire," in which they had to crawl under barbed wire to get a message from a "soldier" in order to get their next clue, over "In The Trenches," which involved deciphering Morse code for a message. Last week's leaders, cops Louie and Michael, retained their lead position (with Steve and Allie again in second place) and got the benefit of a Blind U-Turn: they got to pick one of the other teams and force that team to do both Detour tasks. They chose Joe and Heidi, apparently because of comments from Joe during the bus trip bragging about how well he and his wife were doing, even with his leg bothering him at the time, and how they weren't worried about the other teams.

The two teams annoying me the most are the Big Brother duo and the models. This episode's editing (not to mention the duo's commentary) really plays up the fact that Brent and Caite are bimbos. Failing to go south, as instructed, they neglected to pick up their clue after completing "Under Fire" -- they somehow found the next task, to ride bicycles to the next pit stop, by accident and had to ride back to the clue box to get the clue, then return to the pit stop.

And the obnoxious Jeff and Jordan from "Big Brother" got lost immediately after getting off the bus, where each team had to take a car and drive to a bakery to buy a baguette (in which they found the instructions to head to the battlefield), and they had a Speed Bump (an extra task because they hadn't been eliminated last week after finishing last). And still both of these teams finished ahead of poor Joe and Heidi, who never could figure out the Morse code message properly. The Jon Gosselin-lite and his wife fell from 3rd place all the way out of the Race. The model bimbos were 6th both times they got to the pit stop (they started in 7th), and the BB duo finished 7th.

Cowboys Jet and Cord moved from 4th to 3rd, with brothers Dan and Jordan up from 6th to 4th. Lesbian couple Carol and Brandy (who are pretty annoying in their own right) remained in 5th place. I'll be surprised if these two haven't broken up after they're done with the show.