Amazing Race: Too Many Connections

beardedhelmet

This week teams spent a lot of time on airport drama before finally traveling from Chile to Portugal. Once there, the teams encountered fairly easy detours and a road block, which didn’t stop some teams from making silly mistakes anyway. Please join Amy, Steve and me as we break down the third episode, “King Arthur Style.”

Before moving into the recap, I’ll need to make a distinction. I watch this show with Amy and Steve and share what they say while we watch it. This season, there is a contestant also named Amy. I’ve never referred to her by name in my recaps up until now so when I do refer to her during this recap, she’ll be Racer Amy.

During the last two episodes, Amy correctly guessed who would be eliminated. At the beginning of this race, I thought the Oklahoma team was going home since they didn’t seem to be too quick and also weren’t very exciting so I wouldn’t have mind them being gone. She also was going to go with the Oklahoma guys, even though she thought the baseball wives would be second to last again, most likely due to everything being the hardest thing Kim has ever done.

Airport Fun Times

When the episode started, a lot of time was spent at the airport. The airport drama usually bores me, especially since most of the time everyone catches up after they get off the planes so we watched all the drama for nothing. This time, the flights everyone picked made a big difference in how the race was run.

The NFL guys left the pit stop first, thought they had a great flight that would put them five hours ahead of any other team, but then lost that flight due to a travel agent making an error and booking the wrong day. Instead of traveling with the other teams, they decided to go on another flight that would put them ahead of other teams, but also had two connections. Amy, Steve and I all thought this was a bad idea. As we have seen many times on this race, multiple connections do not work out. When the NFL guys made their first connection, their next flight was delayed four hours and they lost the lead they had. They found another flight and then that one was delayed. After wasting so much time, they almost caught up to the other teams, when they just missed a connection and had the sad time of Phil meeting them at the airport.

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Phil has met teams when it was an elimination race to tell them to stop working on a detour or road block because they were so far behind everyone else. This time, he told them they didn’t even need to leave the airport since everyone had finished the entire leg before they arrived. They went from first to last and were eliminated. If only this leg had been non-elimination like I had guessed it might be. Sad! I liked them.

That was not the only drama at the airport. The Afghans found a flight and convinced the blondes with boobs to get on it with them, even though it was later than flights other teams had found. They thought it would be better to have another team to compete against so they tried to convince the Oklahoma team to get on their flight. I was surprised when Oklahoma guessed what the Afghans were trying to do and did their own research to find an earlier flight. What I am wondering is why the Afghans spent almost six hours in the airport waiting for the blondes with boobs to show up from the pit stop (they were that far ahead of them) and they didn’t find a better flight that the Oklahoma boys found as soon as they arrived. Dumb!

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The final drama came from the Exes (shocker!), baseball wives and the random no-name team that has Racer Amy on it. They were all on a flight with the ER docs to Sao Paolo. Then the ER docs were on a much earlier flight that was getting into Lisbon hours before any other teams. The other three teams wanted to get on a wait list to get on that same flight instead of waiting for their much later flight.

When they got to the airport, they found out the gate agents didn’t show up until an hour before the flight. The random team and Exes waited at the gate while the baseball wives wandered. The other teams didn’t believe the baseball wives would figure anything out so no one worried. They underestimated what Kim said later. The baseball wives “did not come here to lose.” Obviously. They found an executive lounge that put them on a waiting list. When the other teams found out about it, they were mad until the random team got on the flight too. That just left the Exes all by themselves trying to wave their Express Pass in people’s faces, but they already didn’t give it to the baseball wives when they promised they would so why would they be nice to them now? Marie told them, “You are dead to me now.”

Arriving in Lisbon

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The ER docs, random team and baseball wives arrived in Lisbon. They had to go find a singer who handed them a painting of a coach. They figured out they needed to go to the Coach Museum to get their next clue. The baseball wives got to the painting a little after the first two teams. They shrieked the entire way to the painting, which was alarming and unnecessary. The Oklahoma boys and bearded guys were on the same plane together. They decided they would work together to figure out where to go with the painting.

When the Afghanimals and blondes with boobs arrived, one of the girls said her grandfather was from Portugal. Amy asked, “Is that going to help you win?” Leo called the girl his “race wife” and we all found that dorky. When the Exes landed, they were convinced they were the last team to arrive (not having a clue about the NFL guys). They said they might use their express pass but they would wait to see first. Marie was super pleasant when she picked up the painting clue. She ran around asking who spoke English. When someone said they could, she didn’t ask if they could help her. She said, “Help me!” Ah, Marie.

Mapping or Puzzling

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At the museum, teams found a detour. They had to choose between putting a bunch of tiles together as a life-size puzzle piece or use a huge navigational tool on a huge map to figure out how many miles Magellan went when he sailed around the world. We all thought the tiles looked easier than the mapping, but the random team and ER docs chose the mapping task. The mapping task turned out to not be very hard since they had the list of cities they were figuring out the distances and the cities were all listed on the world map. When they added it all up, they had to turn it into “Magellan” to see if they were correct. ER docs and random team worked together. When they turned it in, Racer Amy said she was scared, waiting to hear if they got it correct. What was she scared about? Was it scary? Does she understand the term?

The baseball wives chose to put together the tiles. It was easy for a while and then it became a bit tougher. Amy and I waited for them to say it might be the hardest thing they had ever done, but sadly, no one said it. No drinking game this time!

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The brief alliance between the bearded guys and Oklahoma boys didn’t last long since they both picked different detours. The bearded guys went to the tiles. Adam was very happy about doing it since he said they were pretty good about piecing together puzzles. Brandon said that of course Adam was good at puzzles. He lives in the wood. What else does he have to do beside make puzzles? Indeed! The Oklahoma boys didn’t have too difficult of a time with the mapping quest. For one moment they did get confused with the flat map and how they had to go to the other side to pick up the route again. It was just a brief relapse that Tim had when he said that the world was flat back in Magellan’s times. I’m glad the world inflated since then.

The Afghanimals and blondes with boobs picked the mapping task. One of the blondes said she didn’t understand what they were doing, while they were moving the navigational tool around the map, calculating distances. Jamal told them not to worry, since they were going to get it on the first try, guaranteed. He spoke too soon! They were the only team that didn’t figure out that when you reached one side of the flat map, you just picked it back up again on the other side since the world is round, just the map is flat. Up until this point, Steve said he was amazed that neither detour was taking very long. I said that someone had to get messed up with the world being round and these two teams came through. Amy said, “The world is sneaky with its roundness.”

Both teams were stumped. Ashley said they couldn’t sail through land so he was going to have to sail all the way around and it was going to take forever. One of the Afghanimals said she made a good point. Yes, she did. Then Jamal wondered if they used the Panama Canal. Err…. There was also some talk about nautical miles not being the same as regular miles. The girls gave up and switched to the tiles. The guys decided to try a little bit longer before they finally switched. When the girls showed up, they realized they should have chosen the tiles first. The guys said they should have listened to them when they chose a detour to work on together. Jamal apologized to Ashley. She did not seem to accept his apology because she said, “Don’t listen to the blonde girl.”

While the girls finished up the tiles, the Exes arrived at the detour task. The Afghanimals were still working and decided they needed to hurry up since, as far as they all knew, they were the last two teams. Tim and Marie were laying out the tiles to figure out how they went together. At least this is what it looked like to us, but not to Marie. She asked Tim, “Are you productively doing anything right now?” Oh, she is a treasure! The Afghanimals decided to mess with them so Jamal told them they had been there for two hours working on it and the girls had been there for three hours before them. Marie didn’t believe them but then it did mess with Marie’s head. She started to yell more at Tim, she started dropping tile pieces, and breaking them. They debated using the Express Pass, but Marie refused to use it. They finally finished the task by Marie pushing Tim out of the way and just doing it herself. Later on, she said that there were times that she was sure he would be better at something and she would step aside and let him do it, but not really. Tim looked at her in disbelief and then just started laughing at her ridiculousness.

Heavy Metal

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After the detour, teams headed out to shoot arrows at a shield while wearing a bunch of chain mail and goofy metal helmets. The road block wasn’t too difficult of a task. Some people were able to hit it right away while others had to take a few tries. Jason hit the shield on his first try so the random team was out of there first. The ER docs decided they were seven minutes behind them by the time Travis finally hit the shield. Travis did comment about how he gets frazzled. This alarmed Amy who said, “He makes me nervous when he gets frazzled. I think, no frazzling in the ER!”

When the baseball wives arrived at the road block, I had hope again that the task would be the hardest thing ever. Kim was going to do it. She’s the one that likes to say it! Unfortunately, she did not find it hard. She got it quickly. They both started yelling when she got it. Kim screamed and cheered when Nicky helped her get the huge outfit off of her and then they screamed all the way back to the car to head to the pit stop. Steve said, “Why are these girls screaming so much?”

Even though we thought the tile detour would be quicker, it seemed like the mapping one was faster since the Oklahoma boys finished up first and were outfitting Danny with his heavy metal for the task. Tim said Danny would be good at it since he had Native American in him. After Ally made the Portugal grandfather comment earlier and then this Native American comment happened, Amy said, “Wow, lots of ancestry.com going on here.” The Oklahoma boys finished just as the bearded guys showed up. The bearded guys finished up quickly though.

Ally said she had to do it since her grandfather taught her how to shoot an arrow. The Afghanimals showed up right when the girls were done getting suited up. Jamal was quicker about it so the guys took off before the girls finished. The girls had just left when the Exes arrived. Tim was going to do it. Marie said if he did it well, then they wouldn’t fight since he couldn’t do anything at the tile task. He got the shield in one shot. He can do something!

Castle Pit Stop

The random team headed towards the pit stop first but had difficulty. Jason and Racer Amy were arguing with one another and the driver about which sign to follow. It turns out there were signs on how to drive up to the castle, which was the pit stop, and also signs about where to go to walk up to the castle. Whatever they did, they wasted enough time that the ER docs checked into the pit stop first and won a trip to Costa Rica. Does that make up for not winning the Express Pass in the first leg? I wouldn’t mind the trip! The random team came in second.

The baseball wives were in third place. I had to warn Steve there would be much yelling again when they checked in. There was much screaming. The Oklahoma team came in fourth place, which means that both Amy and I were wrong about them getting eliminated. I was glad they were able to show more of a personality during this leg of the race.

When the Afghanimals and blondes with boobs showed up at the same time, they checked in together. That left the Exes to show up in last place (not counting the NFL guys who were still stuck at an airport at this point). Phil really messed with them. He told them they were the last team to arrive….except for one. Tim told Phil he hated him. Then the guy in armor that was on the mat with Phil wanted to Marie to trade Tim for him. You don’t know what you are asking for, dude! Of course, the NFL guys were eliminated, like mentioned previously.

Are you sad the NFL guys are gone? Would you have liked to see them at least do some of the tasks before they were eliminated this leg? Any favorite teams at this point? Who do you think will be the next team to be eliminated? Will the next leg be a non-elimination leg?

 

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