After hobbling to victory two legs in a row, Dave is summoned home for emergency surgery on his injured ankle, forcing him and Connor to report to the mat in Hanoi at their earliest opportunity and offer themselves up for Philimination. Phil regretfully obliges.
That leaves seven teams still running the race, and it turns out that John isn't done screwing things up for other people. His and Jessica's former allies, Joey & Meghan and Mona & Beth, are targeted by a suddenly cohesive alliance of the other five remaining teams. And with a U-Turn coming up this leg, it couldn't come at a worse time. Things get started when a Roadblock requires racers to watch a musical performance extolling the virtues of Vietnamese socialism and then locate a key phrase amid hundreds of political posters. Pam aces the task and gets out of there first, and she and Winnie never look back. Well, that's not actually true, but more on that in a minute.
After a brief diversion to a bamboo-dancing task where longtime spouses Chuck & Wynona seem unable to grasp the key concept of holding hands, the Detour seems like an obvious choice between arranging human pieces on a life-sized Chinese chess board, or undertaking a terrifying combination of schlepping, shopping for ingredients in precise amounts, weighing them, and using them to make a bowl of pho, or Vietnamese soup. A surprising number of teams opt for the latter option, however. Pam & Winnie go for Chinese chess, and after a brief hiccup, they're still in the lead by the time they reach the U-Turn. Which turns out to be both double and blind. Per their agreement with their alliance, they U-Turn Joey & Meghan, and then proceed to win their first leg. As they themselves more or less admit, it helps to not having an injured old dude out ahead of them.
Joey & Meghan reach the U-Turn sign in second place, but too late; the damage is done. They U-Turn Chuck & Wynona out of self-preservation, unaware that Team Mullet is having problems of its own, most of them stemming from Chuck's refusal to listen to his wife. By the time Joey & Meghan get to the pho task, Chuck & Wynona are still there. As Max & Katie come in second, the derby moms third, the hockey brothers fourth, and the country singers fifth (despite Caroline and Jennifer experiencing some bad taxi luck and a total misunderstanding of the chess detour), Joey & Meghan pass Chuck & Wynona and beat them to the U-Turn sign again, coming in sixth and vowing to now be out for blood. Which they probably expect to be pink. As for Chuck & Wynona, it's no shock when they come in last, but Phil has news for them: this leg's elimination has already occurred, and it was Dave & Connor. Which means Team Mullet is still in it. So in the end I'm not really clear on what the point of all the running around in Hanoi was, other than to give Pam & Winnie a nice ski trip.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
"The lush island of Bali is known as the last paradise on Earth," Phil announces from the third or fourth paradise shown on this season of The Amazing Race alone. "Today, these cliffs on the edge of the southern peninsula are the start of the fifth leg in a race around the world." Dave and Connor, who won the previous leg, are starting off this one well before sunrise, at 5:01 AM. And yes, Dave is still on crutches, for the third leg in a row. He's also wearing a Livestrong T-shirt, which he might now be wishing is something that could have been corrected in post-production. The clue tells them they're going to Hanoi, Vietnam, which Phil's narration helpfully informs us is more than 2,000 miles away. He always says that as if they're traveling by stagecoach or something. After landing, they'll have to go to the center of town (which looks very busy, in the famous tradition of exotic metropoli) to Rap Cong Nhan Theater, locate Gallery 42 inside and find their next clue. Dave says they need to get to a travel agency as they hop into a taxi. In a pre-leg interview, he credits Connor's strength with getting them out of here in first place. Don't forget his sneakiness, Dave. He also adds that his orthopedic surgeon back home says he needs surgery within seven days, so Hanoi's going to be the end of the race for them no matter what. Well, thanks for defusing the suspense, Dave. They reach Abbey Travel Agency in Denpasar at 5:18 in the morning, and find it open and staffed with alert agents in sunny yellow polo shirts. They announce their need to get to Hanoi as fast as possible. How lucky for them that Balinese travel agencies are open 24 hours. And how lucky that travel agencies still, you know, exist.
Pam & Winnie start the leg in second place, at 5:21 AM, from a totally different spot from where the last one ended. That was on a wooden deck clinging to a cliff, but this looks more like a beach or marina resort. Winnie reads from the clue, "Caution, U-Turn ahead." Nice -- that's always good for some idiocy. In the taxi to the travel agency, Winnie interviews that their goal for this leg is to break up the three-way alliance of Jessica & John, Joey & Meghan and Beth & Mona, unaware that Jessica & John already did that in the prior leg. And it was spectacular.
Max & Katie begin at 5:25, and you know they're the kind of team to get all excited about the U-Turn even before Max says he's looking forward to going after Jessica & John. He says it would be like "smoking out the Express Pass," unaware that Jessica & John already did that as well in the prior leg. And it was also spectacular.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15Next
Television Without Pity • © 2013 Bravo Media LLC • A Division of NBCUniversal •
Comments