You've been warned.
I began watching this year's iteration of "The Amazing Race" only because former Phillies coach Steve Smith was a contestant. At the time I figured I'd only watch until he was eliminated. However, Steve and his daughter Allie not only hung in for 8 of the 12 legs of the race, but were in the top three for the five weeks prior to being eliminated (in fact, finishing first one week before falling to last). And besides being part of the coaching staff of the 2008 World Series Champions, Steve Smith brought me some blog hits, so I'll always think of him fondly.
By the time the Smiths departed, I was compelled to stick around for the final few weeks, which was highlighted by the drama between lesbians Carol and Brandy and models Brent and Caite, a.k.a. Team Moron, leading to Caite's giddy U-turn of her "mean lesbians," which got Carol and Brandy eliminated. Throughout the race I was charmed by brothers Jet and Cord, the aw-shucks, sunny, optimistic, always polite cowboys. Oh my gravy! Even to the end, the cowboys performed well, but the final leg of the race found them upstaged by another pair of brothers, Dan and Jordan, who resorted to a bit of questionable sportsmanship and a clever in-flight maneuver to take a lead that they never relinquished and win the million dollar prize.
Needless to say, this didn't go over well with the cowboys. They whispered back and forth about it ("If they wanna drop the gloves, I can drop the gloves"), with Dan standing by trying to look menacing, but decided they couldn't get away with grabbing Jordan's backpack (or Jordan) and tossing it (or him) to the back of the line. In an interview segment Jordan said, "Hate the game all you want, just don't hate the player." Dan and Jordan got their tickets and Jordan, as they left the counter, said, "Don't hate." Jet just muttered, "Get out of the way."
Then came a smart piece of mid-flight strategy, as Dan and Jordan arranged with a flight attendant to let them sit in first class seats, allowing them to leave the plane well before the others upon landing. From that point on they were always a step ahead of the cowboys.
From the San Francisco airport the teams had to find the Battery Godfrey (a former military outpost) in the Presidio for their clue. At this point Brent and Caite, struggling all along with the natives and the language barrier, and not very pleasant, got screwed by finding a cab driver in San Francisco who struggled with English and couldn't find the Battery Godfrey. (Brent: "Why are we in America and nobody knows how to speak English?") They spent so much time in the cab -- bickering and yelling all the while, with Caite referring to the driver as a dumbass and a few times saying she wanted to punch Brent in the face; such a violent girl! -- that they fell behind. At each stop of the leg Dan and Jordan arrived first, followed by Jet and Cord.
At the Battery Godfrey they got a clue with a riddle which, when solved, led to the Coit Tower. There, teams had to climb it from the outside using ropes and a "mechanical ascender" to get the next clue, which took them into the world of George Lucas and Star Wars. At Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic special-effects studios, with stormtroopers wandering around and Star Wars paraphernalia in abundance, each team had to make their way through a virtual reality world. As one person walked onto a soundstage wearing a motion-capture suit, the other sat in front of a nearby video monitor directing him through two levels of the virtual reality via headsets.
Dan and Jordan got there first and began, with Jordan in the suit and Dan directing. When the cowboys arrived, before Jet even got into his suit Cord sat down at the station next to Dan (they were separated by a partition) and began giving loud and ridiculous fake "directions" to try and distract Dan: "Hop and skip! Crawl to your right! Ballet move!" Jet described more in an interview: "Cord’s hollering, 'Do a back flip! Do a two-step! Sashay!'" Sashay? Does Cord watch RuPaul's Drag Race?
At the end of the second "level" of the virtual reality maze the final scene was another riddle, swirling rapidly around the image of the person in the suit. Dan found that if Jordan turned to the left the words slowed down, so he had Jordan spinning around in a circle as he wrote down the riddle, with Jordan feeling dizzy and threatening to vomit. During this, Jet's walk (directed by Cord) led him right to Jordan, but Jet needed Jordan to move to go any further. Jet refused to walk forward any more until Jordan moved, and veering left or right would take him out of the reality world. Cord told his neighboring director Dan, “Direct him out of the way.” Dan's reply was censored. Cord: "I’ll get one of these Star Wars guys to take you out."
Finally Dan completed the message and Jordan ran off the soundstage. (The message ended with a reference to Tonga, which meant the teams had to go to the Tonga Bar tiki room. There, they had to pick up a trunk and carry it to their next stop, the Great American Music Hall.) With Jordan gone, Jet was able to continue along the virtual path. He then had to do the same spin move in order for Cord to write down the clue, but the cowboys took a while to figure that out. That allowed the models to arrive and catch up, as Brent directed Caite and they figured out the spin move quickly. The cowboys and models left nearly at the same time, jumping in cabs to get to the Tonga Bar.
But on the way to Tonga, Caite asked Brent, "Where's our money and stuff?" "You had it! Are you serious?" Brent replied. Yep. They left it all back at the studio. One last piece of cluelessness and bickering from Team Moron. They weren't even seen again until arriving at the finish line in third place...but when they finally got there, well, "Oh my gravy" hardly does it justice. But that's still to come.
At the Music Hall, Dan and Jordan both had shining moments that proved they were worthy competitors. The instructions were to open the trunk, finding eleven 1960s-era psychedelic rock-style posters. The posters depicted the previous 8 eliminated teams and the 3 non-elimination legs. They had to hang them in order of occurrence to get their final clue. The entire race we've been hearing how "The Amazing Race" was Jordan's dream and how Dan was helping him live his dream. So of course Jordan knew there was a memory challenge, and was prepared: "We got this! I wrote them all down!"
The final clue: "Jack be nimble, jack be quick, to find the finish line jump over to ______" -- and sports guy Dan knew it immediately: Candlestick Park. It was over at this point, although the show's producers tried to ramp up some suspense by showing Dan and Jordan having trouble finding a cab while Jet and Cord, after also hanging the posters correctly and figuring out the where the finish line was, were seen jumping right into a cab.
On the field at Candlestick, Phil Keoghan and the eliminated teams were on hand to greet the final three teams as they raced to the finish. Both on the field and in later interviews Dan, Jordan, Jet and Cord each talked about how great it was to experience the race with his brother and best friend. Jet also added that "in the end, having our character and our integrity intact, we can walk out of here with our heads held high." Just a little slap at that line cut at the airport, eh?
The final drama then played out. Brent and Caite arrived. As the other teams cheered, Carol and Brandy were unenthusiastic, to say the least -- a huge difference from their reactions upon seeing that their enemies hadn't finished first or second. Carol clapped slowly while Brandy stood with her arms folded. Phil asked Caite what she wanted to prove in the race. Caite began with "I mainly just wanted to prove I’m an intelligent person..." Cut to Brandy rolling her eyes while Carol just smiled.
Phil, to Caite: "You’re the only woman to finish in the final three, but there are two women over there who feel that--" Caite turned to those mean lesbians: "You guys, I'm--" only to be interrupted by Brandy's bitching (as Carol just turned away with a grin on her face, looking embarrassed -- now that the show is over I can't wait for the gossip about them to really start flowing). "I don’t want to hear 'sorry' from you. You purposely whacked us, you said you wanted to be the only woman left standing, and you are. Logically you U-turn teams that are stronger. The cowboys should have been U-turned but you can't seem to think logically. I don’t want to hear 'sorry' from you."
At this point I have to...gulp...say something nice about Caite. Although throughout the race she was utterly inept, nasty, ignorant and many other things, she stayed calm and stood her ground well, telling Brandy "Maybe y’all should have treated people a little bit nicer." When Brandy answered with, "Hey, I'm sorry, you can’t handle it--" Caite shot right back: "I am handling it. Obviously I’m the one standing here and not you." Game, set and match!
Had Jet and Cord won I wouldn't have been disappointed...although I must confess, I'm a tad concerned that in the future we may end up seeing them supporting a right-wing political cause or joining the nutso birthers and teabaggers or something. I just get a slight vibe that way. I hope I'm wrong. It took a while for me to really warm up to Dan and Jordan. But as the race went on and it was clear how much Dan, who hates to travel, was running the race to make Jordan's dream a reality, and seeing how Dan calmed Jordan's nerves during the pasta-making challenge two weeks back, at the end they became the team I most wanted to win, so I'm happy. Here's to the winners! And can you loan me some money by any chance?
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