The Amazing Race – “If You’re Not First You’re Last”

…except in a show like this, where you can come in second-last and be juuuuust fine.

Lots of airport shenanigans went on during tonight’s episode of The Amazing Race! I don’t think the details are worth recapping, but the baseball wives seemed to come out on top (they didn’t arrive in Lisbon first, but beat a couple teams at Airport Strategy including the sour pink-haired girl) and the football players came out on bottom. They ended up by themselves in Brazil, hugely delayed.

Tiles vs. Miles

For the Detour, teams had to choose between assembling an art piece of tiles, or using a navigation device to measure distances on a large map. I would have gone for Tiles, since my artistic skills trump my sense of direction.

The doctors and the dating couple were in the lead, and the navigation challenge actually wasn’t very hard at all. They finished quickly. Meanwhile, the baseball wives chose the tiles – again, it didn’t look particularly challenging.

Slings & Arrows

For the Roadblock, a team member had to wear a suit of armor and hit a shield using an arrow machine. Jason, the guy in the dating couple, nailed it on his first try. They left first for the pit stop, but got lost along the way – the doctors nabbed first place instead, and the dating couple in second. The baseball wives shot the arrow into the shield on their second try, and arrived at the pit stop in third place.

Second Wave

As the first couple teams were checking in, most of the other teams were just arriving in Lisbon. The football players had only just made it to London, still facing delays.

This episode was a little dull, because the challenges were all so easy. But I guess there’s no accounting for plain stupid. The “Afghanimals” and the Blondes were total morons when it came to the map challenge, forgetting that, y’know, the world is round. They switched tasks, which lost them some ground. They’d just started the tile puzzles when Team Pink Hair arrived.

The Blondes finished the puzzle first and raced off to the pit stop, where Tim and Danny had already arrived fourth, and the bearded guys fifth.

Once the Blondes were done, the Afghanimals set to work convincing Miss Pink that the challenge had taken hours. They made it sound really, really hard ever though it wasn’t. I can’t believe they actually considered using their Express Pass on such a simple challenge. Despite themselves (why were they building it standing up instead of flat on the floor?), they eventually finished.

The Afghanimals made it to the arrow challenge and finished just ahead of the Blondes, and Pink Lady’s ex-boyfriend nailed it on his first try. They arrived all in a row – Afghanimals sixth, Blondes seventh, sour pink lady and her beleaguered ex eighth.

Because the football players were stuck in London the whole time, this episode wasn’t very exciting. But there’s nothing you can do about that – the guys made a dumb move and it hurt them. They arrived in Lisbon very late at night, and didn’t have to bother with any tasks. Phil met them at the airport to eliminate them – oof.