MONDO EXTRAS

As Colin sweated and panicked and waited to do the Detour, his brain began to develop a series of tiny short-circuits. By the time he and Christie were able to go forth and complete said Detour, he was in full meltdown. And by the time they arrived at the next task...well, the next task required the team to steer an ox and plow around a muddy field until the plow plowed up a clue. Unlike all the other teams, who cooperated with one person holding the ox's rope and pulling it from the front while another person followed behind with the plow, Colin and Christie decided that he would do all the work while she stood delicately out of the mud and took him through a psych-tacular tour of all his worst fears: she insulted his manhood, made like a disappointed mom, and basically gave the guy every reason to believe that he was not going to escape without his own girlfriend running his underpants up a flagpole.

As this became clear to Colin, he began to panic. He yelled; the ox didn't respond. He insulted the ox; the ox was unimpressed. Finally, he reached the only conclusion he possibly could: "My ox is broken! This is bullshit!" And in that moment, Colin passed into history, and no matter what else he did, then or ever, he would always be Broken Ox Guy. Did the show know what it had when it saw that footage? Probably. Did the rest of us? Ohhhh, yes.

Season Three, Episode Eleven: "Don't Try To Play The Moralist Now!"
A.K.A. The Wonder Twins Run Out Of Luck

The third season of Race is widely thought of as "the Flo season," so it makes sense that its greatest episode marked the beginning of her spectacular meltdown. This is the leg where she pushed Zach so far during a fateful taxi ride that you could tell he very nearly told her once and for all to go fuck herself, pulling it together only at the last minute to prepare himself to bodily carry her through the rest of the race and across the finish line.

But what makes this episode a standout is not Flo or her extravagant ridiculousness, or even Zach's apparently limitless patience. It isn't the unexpected flashes of personality, like Derek and Drew exchanging Mr. Burns-ian "Eeexcellent!"s, proving that they aren't at all the dull hunks they could have been. It isn't even the affecting scenes of veteran Ian returning to Vietnam for the first time since the war, which alone pack more punch than most shows would give you in a full season. What makes it a standout is the sweet -- ultimately, the bittersweet -- end it brings to the story of the warm and unexpected friendship between hot model twin brothers Derek and Drew and fabulous wiseacre brothers Ken and Gerard, which developed very early in the race and continued until literally the last possible minute.