3:00 AM. Dustin and Kandice. The clue says they're traveling to Madagascar, which Phil says is 700 miles away. Barely a jump! Phil says that they have to search for a statue called the Black Angel. The trick is that this "local landmark" has recently been painted white, probably because of hegemony. The BQs note that the clue does not specifically say that they have to take the same car, probably because TPTB failed to adequately plan for anyone getting in a wreck and then try to dump their fuck-up off on someone else. So, seeing the loophole that's been left, they leave the car they wrecked for someone else to deal with and take a different one. I can't explain it, but that really rubbed me the wrong way. I've defended all their much-maligned maneuvering up to this point, but the idea of leaving something you specifically are responsible for to be somebody else's problem isn't quite the same in spirit as just trying to get ahead on your own. I mean, most of these clues say "drive yourselves." If this happened in the middle of a leg, would it be kosher to take somebody else's car at the end of a task because yours wasn't working?

I suppose my real beef is with the show for not keeping them from doing this, but as I said, it's not like the show is going to anticipate that someone is going to wreck the car through sheer stupidity and then attempt to leave it behind for someone else. Racing principles aside, this just struck me as...icky. Instincts of distaste prove well-founded when on top of making the questionable move in the first place, they gloat and giggle in the car about how someone else is going to be stuck with their rotten car in case they've wrecked it. I have to say, I'm starting to be afraid that Dustin and Kandice kind of suck, which really disappoints me. Kandice follows up with a completely clichéd "I'm not here to make friends" interview moment, which does nothing to make them look cooler. "That's what you get for checking in last at the pit stop," Dustin gloats about leaving car she wrecked for someone else. You know...I understand saying that you're just doing what the race allows and exploiting an obviously unintentional gap in the clue, but gloating about how very fair it is, which is what you're doing when you say "that's what you get for [whatever]," strikes me as bitchy in the extreme.