AMAZING RACE – 11/25/12

Only three episodes to go! I’m hearing there’s a two hour finale planned for December 9th, so we are almost there. Hope everyone in the USA had a great Thanksgiving weekend and were able to feel genuinely thankful for everything and everyone they have. Now, you can officially put all that mushy sh*t aside and start running old and disabled people over for toys and gadgets you don’t yet have. It’s Christmas! Time to start punching people for Xboxes, right? That’s what I hate about Internet shopping. There’s just no way to tell other shoppers to go f*ck themselves. Even better is when you tell someone—or they tell you—and they are wearing one of those Santa hats with the stupid bell on the end of it. Does it get ANY better than that? Nope. This whole Christmas season is really missing something when you don’t go out and shop at the actual stores. ‘Tis the season for a*sholes, for sure. There are certainly a bunch of them out there driving. Ever been flipped off by someone driving around with those freaking Rudolph antlers and nose on their car? Crazy, demented look on their face and that happy sh*t all over their car. It’s just an awesome contrast. Oh, how I love Christmas.

On to this week’s show. We’re down to the final five teams, who are headed for Amsterdam. Lots of time wasted again this week on booking airline flights. I guess they were setting the stage for certain teams to be screwed over by the flights they booked. Anyway, you kind of could figure at least one team was going to run into trouble since they all seemed to be on different flights. Josh and Brent were at the very back of the pack with a four hour penalty delay, so you pretty much figure they are screwed. You never know with this show though.

Very early in this episode, Natalie and Nadiya, James and Jaymes and Trey and Lexi make a pact that whichever team is first to the Double U-turn will U-turn Abbie and Ryan. Then, they agree that the second team to get there will U-turn the first team (voiding the second U-turn basically). Clearly, these teams like Ryan and Abbie about as much as I do. It was clear early on that Jaymes was not all that happy with screwing over Abbie and Ryan, so I definitely thought it would be interesting if Jaymes and James were the first to the U-turn. (Do I get extra points for using that foreshadowing crap they taught us in high school?) Abbie and Ryan are only ahead of Josh and Brent (though they do have that 4 hour buffer) and must realize that with the U-turn in play, this may not mean as much. They book a couple of connecting flights, just in case they miss the first one.

Josh and Brent muse over the fact that everyone will want to keep them in the race because they are seen as the weakest link. They are so far behind, they are trying to book flights after all the other teams’ planes have already left. They basically need to find a ticket counter for a time machine. It was looking like they’d arrive at least two hours after Ryan and Abbie, and that was if Ryan and Abbie didn’t catch their first connecting flight. But this episode just goes to show that you should never give up.

Natalie and Nadiya are first to the clue in Amsterdam, which includes a Fast Forward. They have to find some café and catch a bus. Knowing this season, that’s the extent of the Fast Forward. I thought they’d probably have to serve coffee and then catch a bus to the pit stop. I must say (AGAIN) that I have been underwhelmed by this season. Other than offering that extra million in prize money, not much has been going on. The tasks haven’t been all that hard. Maybe we need to bust out of these pretzel making countries or something. You know, Amazing Race: Iraq. Shouldn’t you have to take a couple of bullets for the chance at a million bucks? This “Cook a danish and then eat it” sh*t is getting old. You have them sign releases for a reason, CBS. Put it to use. Enough with dressing up in silly costumes! They seriously need to get more of a “Fear Factor” vibe to this show.

Anyway, Natalie and Nadiya have to find some Floating Dutchman bus. I guess it was kind of scary because the bus crashed right into the water. What a surprise: The stupid “Floating” bus actually floated, so that was the extent of the challenge for the most part. They had to down some disgusting looking fish within a couple of minutes and then could head off to the pit stop. Yawn. Come on, CBS. At least make them swim down and grab a key off the bottom of the river or whatever it was. These Fast Forwards should take more than two minutes to complete.

Next, we see Abbie and Ryan trying to catch that first connecting flight. The chick at the airport tells them no way, they are too late to board. Ryan, in his typical gentlemanly manner, gets rude and spits and barks at her: ”Thanks for nothing!” Hey, this isn’t 1985, pal. We are post-9/11 and you aren’t just going to argue and bully your way onto a plane thirty seconds before take off. But hey, that verbal abuse you just served up really helped things. These two start acting like babies and blame it on Frankfurt. Apparently, they’ve been screwed over in that airport a few times. In his usual cute fashion, Ryan says “We got Franked.” Haha. That’s hilarious. Dumbass is probably trying to trademark that phrase to put on t-shirts or something. Whatever. Anyway, these two get franked again because their second connection has mechanical difficulties. In the normal “mechanical difficulty” fashion, the airport people d*ck around for three hours before telling them they need to switch planes. Seriously, I almost wondered if this whole thing was contrived to screw over Abbie and Ryan or at least to make things closer between them and Josh and Brent. Who knows though, that same “icing” issue crap has happened to me a couple times on planes and I barely ever go anywhere. Abbie says that she is SO over it about thirty times, which was really annoying. But it was Abbie, so maybe that’s why. Those two were definitely dejected over this whole Frankfurt airport thing. So much for being in first place for these two.