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Sign up for FREE nightlife text alerts: More Info « 'Project Runway' finale recap: And the winner is ... | Main | 'Dancing With the Stars' recap: 200th episode celebration » November 1, 2010 'The Amazing Race' recap: The word of the day ... Bucky's back to report on last night's Amazing Race, which was a little more dramatic than the past few weeks. Check it out:
This week’s leg of The Amazing Race begins in Norway and the teams will have to race by planes, trains and automobiles to Stockholm, Sweden and then on to St. Petersburg, Russia, to get their first clue. We quickly find that the staggered start will be erased at the Norwegian train station, as the first train to Stockholm doesn’t leave until the morning after the start. All teams will travel to Russia together.
The producers have been very generous, it seems, and booked the teams into sleeper berths for the train ride. The Doctors, Kat & Nat, and the TV Hosts, Brook & Clair, share a berth and spend at least part of the trip smelling each others’ shoes and socks. I have no idea why. I know train rides are boring, but ...
When they detrain (is that what it’s called?) they have to catch taxis to the airport, and Chad & Stephanie can’t find a cab. They argue and Chad is pushing Pathetic Nick for being the most chauvinistic racer. Everything is Steph’s fault. But, in the end, they make the same flight as everyone else. Chad, Granny Bucky always said, “You can draw as many flies with honey as with vinegar.” Shape up, mister.
In St. Petersburg the teams have to taxi to some very famous columns, which commemorate some rivers (I didn’t understand that, either). There they get the instructions for tonight’s Detour, the choices for which are:
Classical Music – teams must listen to three pieces of Russian classical music being played simultaneously on three gramophones, then go into a rehearsal hall filled with maybe a dozen pianos. There they find pianists playing Russian classical music all at once. The teams must identify which three are playing the three gramophone pieces in order to get their next clue.
The word of the day, Reality Check readers is: “cacophony.” That’s what is going on in the rehearsal hall. A veritable cacophony of Russian classical music.
Classic Movies – teams must go to the first theater in St. Petersburg that ever showed a movie and, from a pile of I’d guess, a thousand, random film strips, find the one that is showing on the screen in front of them.
Whew. These are both challenging Detour tasks tonight.
Brook & Clair, Michael & Kevin and Jill & Thomas choose Classic Movies. The other teams choose Classical Music.
The Music teams, as expected, encounter an almost impossible task. I suppose that if you are an expert in classical music, you can tell one Russian piece from another. And when they are all playing at the same time, it is even more difficult. Eventually, all the Music teams except for Chad & Stephanie give up and switch tasks.
Over at the theater, the challenge seems almost as impossible. Until Thomas (quietly) notices that the film playing on the screen has titles between scenes and hits on the shortcut: scan each film strip for frames with just titles on them.
Voila!
Jill & Thomas, who started the Detour in fifth place, finish it first and head for the next stop in the race.
One by one the teams discover the trick and wrap up the Detour, with one exception: Pathetic Nick & Our Heroine Vicki.
Back at the Music challenge, Chad & Stephanie are struggling mightily. Chad is being a negative dork, while Stephanie is trying to remain positive and to approach the task systematically. Finally, after a whole lot of whining, Chad basically gives up and Stephanie begins to figure it out on her own.
Meanwhile, Pathetic Nick and Our Heroine Vicki decide — having never figured out the trick to identifying the correct film strip — decide to switch back to the Music challenge. They go back to the rehearsal hall, where ...
... Stephanie has succeeded in identifying the correct three pieces of music without help (read: interference or negativity) from Chad. Wow. The male species is getting a bad rap on this year’s TAR.
Now significantly behind, Pathetic Nick and Vicki start the Music challenge over and Vicki has the idea to work on each piece individually, until they are sure they have it right. This proves to be the correct approach, and they do it without Nick flying off the handle. They also move on.
The next clues take the teams to tonight’s Road Block, which requires the competing team member to dress up as a Russian babushka, which I always thought was a scarf, but which turns out to be a grandmotherly woman who does all the hard work while the Russian men apparently drink vodka and play Moscow Hold-Em. (The irony is not lost on me, but I think it is lost on Nick and Chad.)
Once dressed in traditional babushka garb, the competitors must get a sack of potatoes, fill a wheelbarrow with manure, go to a field and, under the watchful eyes of some real babushkas, correctly plant a row of 50 potatoes.
When they finish, they get directions to this week’s Pit Stop.
Brook, Kevin and Jill begin the Road Block in the lead and finish it thusly: Kevin, Brook & Jill. However, on the taxi ride to the Pit Stop, Brook & Clair’s taxi has to stop for gas, and at the Pit Stop location, Michael & Kevin wander around trying to find Phil and the big mat. (Michael tells Kevin where they need to go, but Kevin won’t listen) So, Jill and Thomas finish first, and win a trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The rest of the teams, save Pathetic Nick & Awesome Vicki, finish straight away, with only Mallory struggling a bit trying to find the wheelbarrow and manure. In the evening’s comic moment, she is invited in by one of the lazy Russian men for a drink of vodka. She demurely declines.
Poor Nick and Vicki finish the leg and arrive at Phil’s mat after dark. However, Nick says some very nice things about Vicki and says he is going to be mellow and not yell at her the rest of the race, so I’m not going to call him pathetic anymore, until the next time he does.
The complete order of finish is:
1st – Jill & Thomas
2nd – TV Hosts Brook & Clair
3rd – Michael & Kevin (Kevin, listen to your dad next time ... you could be on your way to Brazil.)
4th – The Doctors, Nat & Kat
5th – Chad & Stephanie (Chad also acknowledges that Steph carried them this leg.)
6th – Gary & Mallory
7th – Nick & Vicki, who are ... NOT ELIMINATED!!! Yay for Awesome Vicki!!! (They will have to do a Speed Bump next leg, however.)
I thought this was a better episode than the previous ones this season. The challenges were challenging, for one thing. What do you think?
Comments I like this season. Two reasons, the challenges are more challenging. You don't have the bickering and fighting 24/7 among the teams. Yes, there are some words here and that. Which is expected, this game is also a mental game at the same time.
Posted by: Capt Jack | November 1, 2010 12:33 PMBucky, my dear Granny (we called her Nan) put it somewhat differently: "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Doesn't that make more sense?
Posted by: Dahlink | November 1, 2010 5:20 PMHa ha ha. Yes, Dahlink, I think you remembered it better than I. Chad, if you're reading this, listen to Dahlink's granny.
Posted by: Bucky | November 1, 2010 7:02 PMDahlink and Bucky, one of my favorite uncles used to say - out Granny's hearing, of course - that "Y'all'll catch more flies with *@!% than anything."
Posted by: Eve | November 2, 2010 9:38 AMEve, I'm pretty sure your uncle was correct.
Posted by: Bucky | November 2, 2010 11:01 AMWe missed last week's episode due to being on vacation, so thanks for last week's recap Bucky.
The whole time they were trying to do the piano challenge, we couldn't figure out why they weren't trying to do 1 song at a time. Trying to memorize parts of 3 songs, of course it's going to run together. They made that challenge way more difficult than it needed to be.
Posted by: Chris in KS | November 2, 2010 11:51 AMThe running commentary (thoughtfully subtitled for us) from the Russian women was hilarious.
Posted by: peej | November 2, 2010 11:57 AM Post a comment All comments must be approved by the blog author. Please do not resubmit comments if they do not immediately appear. You are not required to use your full name when posting, but you should use a real e-mail address. Comments may be republished in print, but we will not publish your e-mail address. Our full Terms of Service are available here.Name:
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Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Please enter the letter "e" in the field below: About Sarah KelberSarah Kickler Kelber, an editor in the features department since 1999, got sucked into reality TV with the first episode of MTV's The Real World in 1992. Then came Survivor and American Idol, and suddenly, the genre was everywhere. She started blogging about it for The Baltimore Sun in January 2006 and has logged more hours watching and writing about such shows as Dancing With the Stars, Big Brother and, of course, Idol, than she'd like to admit.Follow @realityck on Twitter
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