Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Amazing Race: Morons, Cops Get Their Wish

Our first episode without Steve Smith. Yep, I'm still watching even though the tenuous Phillies connection is gone. So, I'm just gonna start right off with this: Caite, the former Miss Teen Whatever and one-half of Team Moron, is the epitome of what RuPaul refers to on "RuPaul's Drag Race" as Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent.

Except for the "harisma," "niqueness," "erve" and "alent" portions.

The whining about Carol and Brandy continued almost nonstop. She sounds like Yosemite Sam, except she's not talking about Bugs Bunny: "Oooooooh, ah hates them lezzbeens!!!!!" As the teams made their way from Malaysia to Singapore via bus and train, the teams knew that a U-turn was ahead. Gee, I wonder what Brent and Caite would do if they got the chance? Let's ask Miss Teen Moron: "I’m a hundred percent U-turning the lesbians if we get there first." Similar phrases poured out of her mouth throughout, to the delight of the detectives, Louie and Michael, who've made nice with the Morons and fed their anti-Carol/Brandy hysteria. (So I sort of enjoyed seeing Caite trip and fall running out of the train station. Karma!)


And when the train neared its destination, the teams -- all on the same train -- lined up near the door to disembark. (By the way, what's the point of taking the lead in these stages if the rest of the pack is so easily allowed to catch up again by the fluke of transportation schedules? Don't kill yourself to finish first, just don't be last.) Carol and Brandy decided they wanted to pass the others to get to the front of the line. Naturally, no one let them through. As the male half of Team Moron so eloquently put it: "Ladies get their way. Bitches don't." Dude, you won't think that if you end up in divorce court with Caite someday. Run now while you still can!

In this leg of the race there was a Fast Forward -- a task that the first team to complete successfully would be sent directly to the Pit Stop without having to complete any Detours or Roadblocks. At the Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore teams had to find Allan Wu, host of "Amazing Race Asia," to get their clue. He was sitting outside, but four teams went inside looking for him. Only brothers Dan and Jordan looked outside first, so they got first crack at the Fast Forward -- going to the Singapore Flyer, sort of a ginormous ferris wheel with enclosed "capsules," riding one of the capsules until it reached the top, then climbing out of that capsule and crawling along the beams to the next capsule.

Jordan went first and was extremely scared, but got the job done, and announced after he was safely inside the second capsule he said, "I'm just surprised I didn't pee myself." America is grateful, Jordan. Brother Dan followed shortly thereafter, and the brothers now have the lead, after being the last team to leave at the start of this leg.

Meanwhile, the rest of the teams had a Detour choice: "Pounding Drums" (go to a park, learn a routine on traditional drums and then perform the routine on stage) or "Pounding Pavement" (go to a pedestrian mall, pick up needed supplies and go to a cart to sell 25 ice cream sandwiches -- blocks of ice cream on actual slices of bread!). They all chose the drums at first, but struggled to get the right beat. The detectives bailed on it and went to the street mall -- "Ice cream from some crazy Americans!" one of them yelled. They got a break when their cab driver purchased no less then 10 ice creams to put them over the top.

Back at the park, eventually the morons, of all teams, finished their drum routine first of the remaining three. And when Brent and Caite got to the next clue box, their dream came true: they got to U-turn those mean lesbians! This didn't sit well with Carol and Brandy, mostly Brandy. The insults came fast and furious: "They U-turned us cause you're prettier than she is...it shows their level of intelligence...She’s an idiot, she’s on YouTube to prove it!...Stupid is as stupid does. It's Brent and Caite Gump!"

So Carol and Brandy had to sell ice cream as well, and managed to do so despite this salesmanship: "Ice cream sandwich, there’s no swine flu!" Not to mention they started sniping at each other again.

The team with the most drum trouble? The not-musically-inclined cowboys, Jet and Cord. "The closest thing to a musical instrument we play is the radio!" Still, they eventually managed.

Next was a Roadblock in which teams had go to a shipyard and "inspect an anchor chain" -- which meant, count the number of chain links and sign a form with the correct number (521) on a little clipboard, all while loud noise from the shipyard work blared. None of the teams were distracted by the noise, not even Team Moron. Granted, it was Brent who did the counting, because I'm sure Caite said, "Math is hard -- let's go shopping!" Michael had a little hand-held counter with him but was delayed because he didn't have his clipboard to sign. That allowed the cowboys to get ahead of them. And when the cops finally finished, they found their cab driver abandoned them, so they tried to steal Carol and Brandy's cab, saying "they'll be mean to you." (Yeah, it's the lesbians who are the bad guys, not the cab-stealing cops!) The driver refused them, and they ended up paying a stranger $20 to give up the cab she was riding.

The final task was riding a zip line down a 1200-foot incline before heading to the Pit Stop -- one of those seemingly scary things that probably even I could do.

So Team Moron finished this leg second, followed by the cowboys and the detectives. Poor Carol and Brandy have been eliminated. I never really liked them much. Forget Caite's whining -- they saved most of their vitriol for each other. But the whole "let's get the lesbians" drumbeat from the morons and cops made me hope they'd stay around longer.

I'm increasingly warming to Dan and Jordan. I wouldn't mind if they won the Race. I also wouldn't mind if Jet and Cord won. Louie and Michael I'm slightly negative on because of their siding with Brent and Caite. But if Team Moron somehow wins, I'll go insane. That, or the Apocalypse will happen. You have two weeks to contemplate the possibility of a Moronic victory, because the show is preempted this week and won't return until April 25th.

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