AMAZING RACE FINALE – 12/11/11

I get my hopes up when Jeremy and Sandy get it right the very first time. Of course, my hopes are quickly dashed when Cindy gets it on the second try. Then she proceeds to tell us “That was so whack!” Cindy, you are NOT cool, nor will you ever be. Don’t even try. I get a total nerd vibe from this chick. Anyway, she immediately starts obsessing and asking about where Jeremy and Sandy are. Isn’t Cindy supposed to be this really smart person? Hmm, let’s try this deduction. You and Ernie arrived last at the simulator. Jeremy and Sandy, having departed first, were already there when you got there. When you left, they were missing. I think it’s safe to conclude they finished before you and are already on the way to the next location? And this chick probably did better on the SAT than I did. Totally unfair.

Looks like Marcus failed his simulation a couple more times. Too bad it’s not a simulation where he’s navigating a giant football or something because he totally sucks at this. I don’t think this guy should be driving a Vespa, let alone an airplane.

Jeremy and Sandy get the next clue leading them to “The Dump.” This is apparently meant to direct them to the former home of Margaret Mitchell, the writer of “Gone With the Wind.” Unfortunately for Jeremy and Sandy, some goof in a truck gives them the wrong directions. As soon as the guy said he was leading them to a place that used to be a Home Depot, I knew they were screwed. Not sure if everyone has these “The Dump” stores around them, but they are basically stores that sell crappy furniture that failed to sell the first time around at other stores that are only marginally better than The Dump stores. A former Home Depot certainly didn’t seem like somewhere Scarlett O’Hara would have lived to me. It started looking pretty quickly like Ernie and Cindy would be catching up pretty quickly on this one.

Wow, Marcus just flew off the runway again. Why didn’t Amani do the flying part of this task?

And, just as I feared, Jeremy and Sandy were directed to the crap furniture store and can’t seem to find the clue box. After a while you really started to wonder how long they were going to wander around the store before they figured it out. You’d think after a minute or two you’d start saying to yourself: “Hmmm, this doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of the type of place that this show would send us.” I mean, just because you’re back in the US doesn’t mean you’re going to start racing from Walmart to Walmart or anything. There are at least a couple of cultural things to see in this country. Anyway, as feared, Ernie and Cindy get to the Scarlett lookalike first.

The clue tells Ernie and Cindy they need to use a really old typewriter to type out their next clue. There’s also a little glitch where they have to figure out to use a lower case L as a 1 because there’s no 1 key. Wow, a million on the line and Cindy the perfectionist picks the person that totally sucks at typing to do this one? What is that about? And Ernie’s definitely into hunting and pecking. Cindy says: “I probably should’ve done this one.” You think?! Ernie seems like he’s never seen a keyboard before.

Oh boy, we’re back to Marcus and he’s still trying to land his fake plane. He fails again. I’m sure this is a hard task but the weird thing is that it seems Marcus is okay until he’s on the ground. He lands the thing and then all of a sudden keeps veering off into the grass. Had this been a real landing there would’ve been some dead ground crew for sure.

We’re back to Ernie and the typing challenge. He keeps messing up on typing, which I’m happy about, but it’s also taking forever for Jeremy and Sandy to figure out to effing leave the furniture shop already. I’m ready for them to actually buy one of those horrible pleather couches or something. What exactly are they waiting for? No clue box, guys. Move on.

Ernie had trouble with the missing 1 for a little while, but then figured it out. He and Cindy leave and then finally Jeremy and Sandy arrive. You can tell it’s the finale because Jeremy basically jumps out of the van before it had even stopped. Sandy was on the ball with this task and figures it out pretty quickly. Unfortunately, they are still clearly behind Ernie and Cindy.