Well, hello again. I’m going to warn you in advance that this column kind of blows this week. You’d think with two million on the line that the show would be getting more compelling, but it is kind of a snoozefest this season. Couple of dance moves, a little math, and eliminations due to missing passports. Yawn. Anyway, looks like we are picking up right where we left off last week—on the pit stop mat. James and Abba are in some serious trouble. They don’t have their passports and they can’t check in. Meanwhile, about seven hours have passed in the pool and Brent is still diving like a bird that’s been shot repeatedly. Those synchronized swimmers finally tell these two that the pool is closing and they’ve got one last shot to pull this one off. Unfortunately for Brent, he isn’t getting any better at this. You know it must be bad if they’ve seen him do this routine 400 times and still shoot him down on the last try. If this were the US, where everyone gets a trophy, crappy job or not, he’d be good to go. But this is Russia, folks. They aren’t playing around. They take their sh*t seriously. They tell Brent he still sucked *ss, and gave him the clue along with a nice four hour penalty. I’m surprised Aquadesiac didn’t drown his uncoordinated ass.
The teams move onto the next task—the locks task. Abbie can’t figure out how locks work and crumples onto the ground like a big baby, so Josh helps her. They finally get to the pit stop as a foursome. Well, not quite, that would be a pretty strange foursome. Anyway, Abbie & Ryan check in as team 4; Josh and Brent as team 5. Then James and Abba trudge in, all despondent. They seem to think the longer they mope around, the more likely a passport will just fall out of the sky. Phil tells them it’s a non-elimination leg so they are technically still in, but if they don’t get a passport, they aren’t going to last long.
Phil tells Josh and Brent that their penalty will be assessed at the beginning of the next leg. I wasn’t really sure why this was. I’ve seen penalties on this show before, typically they are assessed before the team can even check in. It was very strange to me that they let Josh and Brent check in before James and Abba. Technically, they didn’t finish that leg of the race until they finished their penalty, right? To me, you let Abba and James check in because they actually finished that leg of the Race. Technically, the passport wasn’t an issue yet, but what do I know. Anyway, it created some ridiculousness where Abba and James are lying around the hotel room waiting for Josh and Brent’s four hour penalty to finish so that they could start doing research about their passport. This was all kind of annoying if you ask me.
On to the next leg: Trey & Lexi are off first. Lexi says they are going to run the Race like there’s someone right behind them so that they can come in first again. Uh…isn’t there actually someone right behind you? It’s not like Josh and Brent and their four hour penalty were behind them or anything. I didn’t really understand what she was yammering on about, but whatever. So, their taxi driver tells them he knows right where to take them for the first clue and then promptly takes them to some real sh*thole instead. Their second driver is dressed like a golfer from 1970 or something. They get the idea that he doesn’t know where to go because he doesn’t understand them and gets him to veer off to a hotel to find someone to translate for them. That was really worth it because they found someone who says IN ENGLISH, “They need to go HERE” and pointed at the clue. Not sure how that helped, but somehow the driver got them there .
Next is the Roadblock, “ Who’s in the zone?” They must’ve read my mind about having no clue if Russia was still a country or whatever, so they came up with this one. Basically they show a map of Russia indicating all of the nine different time zones. Moscow was listed as +4 and the racers had to do conversions of what time it would be in other cities based on their time zone in relationship to Moscow. This was like rocket science for some of these racers. You’d think after the guy was telling you that you were adding 4 + 2 incorrectly 700 times, you’d figure out that some basic assumption was wrong, but it took some a while to figure that one out. Jaymes and Lexi decide to work together because one brain is better than two halves for these two. Just kidding, I actually like these two. They take at least twelve tries to figure it out, though that still wasn’t as bad as some.
I also felt the whole penalty thing was not the same as in the past. Other racers have sat off to the side before they can check in. Perhaps it was obvious those passports were not showing up so they changed the rules. I believe this was the last leg of the race to use the express pass for the girls. Use it or lose it. But in the past hasn’t the express pass let you go straight to the Pit Stop? They should not have had to do another task. Maybe I am wrong. Poor James and Abba. I liked them. They will be on the next All-Stars I hope. Love your recap as always!
I agree about the whole penalty thing. In the past, contestants had to sit and wait until their time was up before checking in.
Also, I didn’t know that contestants could not check in unless they had their passports on them. Why would they not be permitted to continue the race until they had to leave the country they’re in? That could have given James & Abba time to get a new passport, or perhaps even find the lost passport.
I don’t know. Smells fishy to me – the penalty delay and the passport requirement to complete the leg of the race.
Also … who am I going to root for now?!
I was also confused by the whole penalty situation. I have seen the last team have to wait the penalty time at the start of the next leg if they are the last ones in and it is a nonelimination round, but I would have thought that James & Abba could check in. mcords – great idea to have James & Abba in an All Star show!
I was surprised they didn’t just let Brent & Josh “complete” the water challenge also – too funny watching him dive – poor guy.
LOVED Ryan in the time zone challenge – bwahahaha! He is soooo smart, the CHALLENGE must be wrong – he couldn’t possible be wrong. His ego really got in the way of him completing that one. It only took the blond cheerleader and the Chippendales guy 12 times to realize they were doing it wrong. He was . . . was he into triple digits?? But after everyone else’s trouble, I was impressed with Brent – can’t swim, but the man can solve a math problem!
Hmmmm – who do I want to win now? I’ll admit to some preconceived ideas about James & Jaymes, but they seem to be pretty nice guys. Might be rooting for them now 🙂
You may have thought that the episode might have blown, but once again I loved your recap!