MONDO EXTRAS

At the close of the leg, with only four teams still in it, the two pairs of brothers were running in third and fourth place, with one of them likely to be eliminated. In a frantic sequence set at the edge of the Saigon River, Ken and Gerard received a critical tip-off from Flo, which they instantly realized they simply couldn't pass along to the boys, even though the teams had been working together for almost the entire race up to that point. They had to hide, and fool, and sneak, desperate to edge out the team they liked the most. A confused Derek and Drew, successfully misled, wound up going through the always painful routine of trying to check in at the pit stop, only to realize they hadn't completed the leg, and had to take an entire ferry ride across the river to backtrack to the last task. Getting on the ferry, they ran into Ken and Gerard, who were about to finish the leg ahead of them. Without rancor, the teams exchanged greetings, and Gerard prodded the boys -- with a sincerity to which you earn the right only by running an entire race without being a dick -- to run out the leg, because it might be a non-elimination.

Exhausted, Derek and Drew endured the long, almost certainly futile ferry ride back across the river and then back to the finish line, at which point the glimmer of hope of non-elimination was extinguished and they were sent home. But the voice-over in which Ken and Gerard explained, with great warmth and a gratifying lack of bullshit, how difficult it was to abandon an alliance based on true friendship and affection -- something they knew had to happen sometime, and still dreaded -- lent a surprising and poignant grace note to an episode packed full of the opposite. The fact that Flo inadvertently put the hosing to her own putative boyfriend Drew, proving that indeed Flo Ruins Everything, was only the spiteful, petty icing on the warm, gooey cake.