AMAZING RACE FINALE – 12/9/12

December 10th, 2012 | 8 Comments | Posted in Amazing Race 21

On the trip to France, the twins quickly turn on the Beekman boys (sorry to call them that, but having to use their names constantly or referring to them as “the gays” just doesn’t feel right). They talk of their impending Speed Bump and try to rally the other teams to basically screw over the Beekmans so that the twins can catch up. The twins talk of how the Beekmans have just coasted through and that other teams “wanted it more” than them. I love that kind of talk on these shows. I’m guessing everyone probably wants the million as much as the next guy (or girl). What the twin means is that she thinks the Beekmans just aren’t as good at the challenges and that they got through basically because of the strategy to get Abbie and Ryan out instead. Sure, mostly true, up until now. But in terms of “wanting it,” I just don’t understand that talk, though someone says it each season. Just because you may not be as good at challenges or as cutthroat does not mean you don’t want the million just as much.

I must say I felt really bad for the Beekmans when they overheard the plotting and planning against them by all of the other teams. Anyone else feel like you were back in high school for a second? That awkward moment happened when a person who is going off and bad-mouthing someone else realizes that the person they are attacking has heard everything that’s been said. Yikes, that was uncomfortable, even sitting in my family room. Then everyone gets nervous about it and Jaymes or someone says “Hey, how about a group hug?” And no one does it. Ugh, I couldn’t wait until that segment was over. AWKWARD. I felt horrible for the Beekmans. They handled things with tremendous class, I must say. They didn’t say a word. How hard must that have been?

It totally made no sense to me why anyone would want to eliminate the Beekmans over any of the rest of the teams. They WERE the weakest team going into the finale, in that (unless I’m mistaken) they were the only ones who had not yet won a leg of the Race. THAT’S the team you want to keep IN, right? I just don’t get what these people are thinking sometimes. Anyway, you see how that one turned out.

One thing I noticed in the first half of the show was that the twins are much nastier than I realized. I thought they were more funny and snarky than nasty in the previous shows, but that was not the case in the finale. When the groups are all running together toward the next location, the twins are yelling loudly to lose the Beekmans and leave them behind. They aren’t even trying to keep the Beekmans from hearing. It’s just nasty, and basically for no reason. The twins decide that Josh was faking his ankle injury because he’s just way too fast in this footrace. She had a point there; he was pretty quick and uninjured suddenly. Jaymes commented that he was gimpy before but had a bionic ankle all of a sudden. Not too far off. Maybe Josh exaggerated the injury because he sucked at tennis, but I doubt he faked it altogether. I guess when there’s a million on the line, you might be amazed at what some people suddenly are able to do.

Anyway, while the teams are all running, the twins are yelling, “Lose the gays!” Had to love it because the Beekmans were yelling, “Don’t listen to these bitches!” Awesome. Finally, some drama. I mean, I don’t get what the twins are thinking. This isn’t a show where six people win; yet they are yelling “Top six!” like there’s some meaning to that. I guess it means “final three” but who really cares? If Jaymes/James and Trey/Lexi had a brain, they’d realize they’d be better off with the Beekmans than the twins anyway (or so I thought when I first wrote this…haha).

The twins head for the Speed Bump while the other teams head for their first task. The Speed Bump is putting a corset on a lady and lacing it up. Wow, compelling stuff. This should have taken five minutes tops, and that’s basically how long it took. Maybe less, actually. These Speed Bumps aren’t anything anymore. Pretty soon it will just entail reading the extra Speed Bump clue or something: “Read this clue and then join the other teams at the next location.” I mean, seriously. The only “Speed Bump” part of it is having to veer off from the others and then rejoin them. This is for a million dollars, right? After the twins finished with it, the corset looked too tight and nothing like the example one, but the lady approved it anyway. At least mix it up by failing them once, huh?

We are back to the other teams, who are looking for Leonardo Da Vinci’s grave. Actually, James is looking for Leonardo DiCaprio’s grave. Uh huh. Not the smartest one, is he? The Beekmans notice that as soon as the twins were out of earshot, the alliance was over. That was not a surprise. Every man for himself in the finale. You can’t be worrying about someone else at a time like that. Plus, the Beekmans speak French. The others would have had to be dummies to not work with them. Unfortunately, the French speaking didn’t help with the map reading and the teams all get lost. Since the twins were only delayed by a few minutes, they catch up quickly.

The Detour was Plow or Chow. Chow was disgusting. Cut up a bunch of different kinds of what must’ve been Grade P meat, fill up some buckets of it and then feed it to hunting dogs. Plow was using a horse and an old school plow to “till four furas.” Whatever the hell a “fura” is. If that’s even what was said. I was going off of the closed captioning and that is usually completely unreliable. I looked up “fura” and apparently it’s a “ferret.” As in, the ANIMAL. So, what the hell? A horse plowing a ferret sounds like a completely different show to me. And, to be honest, a bit inhumane. Thanks for that image, CBS. Those poor deaf people. I have no clue how they keep up with most shows.

There were only two spots available at once with “Plow” so the farmers choose “Chow” instead. That made sense at first, until the Beekmans realized that only one other team was originally doing “Plow.” So the farmers who mention “the farm” 400 times an episode didn’t choose plow? That was interesting. I guess “Chow” wasn’t that far off from farming either though.

Trey and Lexi originally chose “Chow” with the Beekmans but then switched to the plowing task. Lexi, ever the strategist, picked the “pretty” horse. There’s a good idea. She spoke with real agricultural genius too. This is a direct quote: “We had to make four rows of plowing that were straight.” “Pretty horsey.” Mensa, looking for any new members?

As proof that the corset Speed Bump was a ridiculous crap task, the twins beat Jaymes and James to the plow and chow tasks. It got pretty interesting when the twins and the gays were both working the chow task side by side. The twins were relentless with the insults and attacks, and I found myself liking them even less. What a bad week they had for me. I know that such a show is stressful and probably brings out the worst in people, but they were just plain nasty. They kept calling Josh and Brent the “evil gays.” I honestly don’t think either of those two have an evil bone in their body, which is essentially why the twins had decided that they “don’t want this enough.” Apparently they did, but the twins didn’t know that yet.

Anyway, the Beekmans are smart guys and come up with a strategy. They decide to load up the buckets with the meat that doesn’t need to be deboned first. It gives them a lead over the twins. While they are all cutting, the Beekmans ask them why, if they are the weakest team in the Race, do they want them out? “Don’t you think you can beat us easier than the others?” Natalie and Nadiya tell them they have an alliance. Yeah, how did that work for you? The Beekmans finish quickly and move on to the next clue. The twins are pissed.

Next is the Road Block. I was mad at first. “Find MUSHROOMS?” THIS is the FINALE? But when I saw more of what was involved, it seemed more challenging. They had to find the mushrooms in a really creepy, virtually underground, cave with a bunch of tunnels. And the lights kept going out. Lexi was in there for a while, but when she finally came out, she had all the mushrooms correct. Jaymes came out quickly but had one wrong. He quickly fixed his mistake and was on his way.

We’re back to the twins, who are trying to find the mushroom task. They stop a car on the road for directions and the lady looks to be using a cell phone from 1982 or something. Anyone else see it? It was HUGE, ridiculously long and had a curly cord that looked like something from a kitchen circa 1984.

8 thoughts on “AMAZING RACE FINALE – 12/9/12

  1. Hi Kim, loved your column. It was as much fun reading it as watching the show, probably more. I am really bummed that Jaymes and J didn’t win. They were def. the most fun to watch and seemed like pretty nice guys. I wasn’t too happy about the Beekmans but don’t have a legit reason. I confess I no longer liked the twins after the money incident. I agree that the show needs drama to stay interesting, but that wasn’t showing strategy, skill or even outsmarting your opponents. It was just mean and stealing. Also, my guess is they have wealthy parents and don’t really need the million. But they were fun to watch. Lexi and Trey were fine but seemed like two pretty privileged kids who haven’t ever really worked hard and don’t need the money either. I’m ready for an all stars! Or maybe put Jaymes and J on Big Brother!!

  2. I haven’t liked the “twinnies” since they stole the money, so I was super happy to see them not even make the finals. I think if you went back and watched some of the more recent episodes, you’d see that a lot of what the twins did/said was really mean and catty. They actually made the show pretty unbearable at times with their screaming. Ah well, karma got them and I was able to go into the final hour pretty happy with whoever won, although I was rooting for Team Beekman or Team James/Jaymes. I enjoy a good underdog story, so I was pretty happy with the outcome. Thanks for the recaps all season! I do agree that James/Jaymes should definitely be on a future all star season!

  3. Nice column! I hadn’t liked the “twinnies” for most of the season. They have been mean and shown a sense of “entitlement” throughout so I was so glad they were gone. I was a James and Jaymes fan too, and even though the Beekmans didn’t win any other leg but the $1 M, many of the other teams walked away with nice prizes. That’s what I like about this game – there is plenty of opportunity for other people to leave with decent prizes.

  4. Agree with you about the twins, they just got meaner as the season went on.

    To help out – in early 2010 there were high magnitude earthquakes in Chile. The Amazing Race had just visited there before it all happened and they mentioned it on the particular episode.

  5. I was SO happy that Josh and Brent won the race.

    Kim – it’s not “furas.” It’s furrows. You plow furrows – a long, narrow trench in the earth (for planting seeds).

  6. I will also admit that I starting “not liking” the twinnies when they stole the money. I know this is a race, but I found that to be pretty dirty. And it would have eliminated the Rockers if they hadn’t been able to beg up enough cash to continue. But the twins definitely got worse as the shows went on and if I had to heard them say “The Gays” or “The Evil Gays” one more time, I would have slapped them both.

    I found most teams treated their teammate better than previous seasons. Maybe it was because the tasks were so easy there wasn’t much to be stressed about – I don’t know.

    I also was surprised by the final task. They have learned to take really good notes along the way, but who the heck writes down what was said to them at the end when most languages sound like, “aspodijawelfkj” to you. I get Lexi’s tears and probably would have been like that also. It wasn’t until that point that I really thought the goat farmers had a good chance. The tall guy knew a couple of languages and they are both pretty smart. Thinking of it as a puzzle instead of randomly trying flags was a much better plan. I think the twins could have really dominated this part if they had made the final because they seemed to speak several of the languages throughout the race – at least the most basic words which would probably include hello & goodbye.

    Although they seemed to hang on by their fingernails almost every leg of the race, I wasn’t upset to see the goat farmers take the million. I was hoping for James & Jaymes, and I’d like to see them on an All-Star season . . . but I am o.k. with Josh & Brent. Good for them! I’m sure most people were surprised by the ending.

    Oh – and I agree – when looking at some of the teams, I couldn’t even remember their faces!

    Thanks for the great recaps – and I hope you are here next time 🙂

  7. Kim, I totally enjoyed your work this season. I rejected the dark side of the local recapper to come toward the light of your wit. I’m already looking forward to next season. I bet you’re a blast at PTA!

  8. Thanks so much for the comments! I really appreciate them. The idea of Jaymes and James on Big Brother….ah, it is genius. Another of my favorite shows and these two would be great in the house.

    “Furrows”….that is good to know. Tells me the closed captioning screwed up yet again with “furas.” I should’ve know. Thanks for the info!

    Chile! Thanks so much. That was the other disaster I was thinking of. I thought that we were at about 3 times that this has happened. Honestly, I only started watching the show probably in 2004 or 2005, so there may have even been times prior to that where this happened.

    Thanks to everyone for reading! 🙂

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