Fortunately, we are now in a new season, and the final one from the challenge is coming, and I’ll try to throw in another one or two if I can. There was a little bit of biting off more than I could chew here, and also a little bit of bad timing and bad luck, but we’ll get on track. I take full responsibility for not giving you an update sooner. I assure you, my intentions were entirely honorable (or I wouldn’t have done the first however many), and they still are. I’m no longer in the wrist braces all the time, and I think that situation is moderately under control after an ergonomic makeover of my work space, so its’ looking up.

Again, I’m really sorry, and to those of you who chose not to be rude and scolding, I very much appreciate it.

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And tomorrow is the finale!

They will all be done. They will all happen. I will try like crazy to crank them out as soon as I can, but I promise they will get done, and I’ll see if I can knock one out tomorrow pre-finale.

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Credits. Hey, I wonder where Canaan is right now. Probably telling Mika that if she doesn’t play this particular hole of mini-golf, he’ll never forgive her, and she’s saying she’s too scared to confront the giant clown face, so once again, they are both dweebs. Just a guess. Also, I really miss Zev and Justin.

Stockholm, Sweden! By the way: To those of you who noticed that I lost track of WHAT COUNTRY we were in last week, I apologize yet again, and can only tell you that I tend to orient myself by the opening segment, which means that unless there are powerful visual clues reminding me that we have changed countries in the middle of the episode, this is a mistake that is very, very easy for me to make. This means that it is very possible that I will place the entire remainder of this episode in Sweden. Again, I am sorry; I am ridiculous. I will try to make sure that if I use the word “Netherlands” in this recap, it is only in a situation in which it applies.

Phil reminds us yet again about Sweden’s connection to Nobel Prizes and blowing shit up (which probably required them to embrace socialized medicine in re: lost fingers), and also ABBA. Never has one country been praised for such an actually impressive list of accomplishments while also kind of being laughed at. (”Thanks for praising other people, blowing stuff up, and ‘Fernando,’ there, Sven.”) And, of course, Sweden is also the home of the Field Of Many Hay Bales where the teams checked in last time. We watch Flight Time and Big Easy investigate the vacation they won from Travelocity (under the watchful eye of their gnome, whom I am still calling Louisiana Shorty), and then it’s time to get moving.

2:23 AM. Flight Time and Big Easy. The clue tells them to take a ferry across the Baltic Sea to Tallinn, Estonia. (Which is not in Sweden! Yo, brain! Listen up!) When they get there, they will have to use a set of keys to open a door to Mustpeade, which is supposedly a “secret lair.” I think somebody doesn’t understand the word “secret.” Or, really, “lair.” I believe that in the classic book Secret Societies For Dummies, it says, “Don’t put your secret lair on an American reality show.” As they leave, Flight Time says that all the remaining teams are deserving, so who knows, really? Big Easy, on the other hand, hopes to get some separation from Sam and Dan, whom he calls “a tough team.” They find a cab driver who can lead them to the ferry.

When they find the spot where the boat will depart, it turns out that the first ferry to Tallinn isn’t until 5:45 in the afternoon — that’s roughly 15 and a half hours from when they left the pit stop. Ouch. “So much for our lead,” Big Easy says. Not to mention “so much for not spending quite a bit of time kicking back in the parking lot.”

4:12 AM. Spiky and Perky. Hmm. Almost two hours — I guess Big Easy got luckier than I thought finding his flag. Perky says in an interview that she and Spiky had some communication issues in the next leg (consisting, she does not mention, of her haranguing and him passive-aggressively ignoring her, to my eye), but they’re hoping that this leg will go better. They stop a taxi and get him to write down directions for them. I hope they paid him something, otherwise that’s a little bit … questionable, courtesy-wise, to flag down a taxi and then finagle free directions. That guy is working, you know? Lars The Cab Driver has to make a living, too.

4:37 AM. Brian and Ericka. Brian says they’re not worried about not having won a leg yet, and he points out that Ericka didn’t win any preliminaries when she was Miss America. You know, on a show full of self-directed completely irrelevant pep talks, that’s still a notably irrelevant one. They get a taxi they can follow as well.

5:04 AM. Sam and Dan. Sam interviews that the last leg “put [their] bickering into perspective,” by which he means that it seems to have demonstrated to Dan that being a hectoring jackass isn’t necessarily the most productive way of encouraging a teammate. I was really hoping they’d work some foreshadowing into this interview, like, “The race so far has really been a blur.” No dice.

When Brian and Ericka reach the ferry terminal, they are amused to see Flight Time and Big Easy’s shoes sitting outside their car. Spiky and Perky pull up next. Spiky is also amused by the Globetrotters sleeping in their car, but neither of the arriving teams is excited about the fact that the boat isn’t leaving for another twelve hours.

6:29 AM. Gary and Matt. Gary nonsensically says that he was afraid, coming into the race, that Matt would think less of him upon seeing his flaws. I say “nonsensically,” of course, because Gary is awesome and everyone knows it, and there is no reason anyone would think less of him — which I think is what Matt thinks, also. I imagine Matt being like, “Whatever, World’s Best Dad, I’ll try to forgive you for not running like a seventeen-year-old, which I do not do either, really.”

When Sam and Dan arrive at the ferry terminal, the GTs note their arrival. Big Easy interviews that Sam and Dan’s behavior during the last Roadblock — or the part of it he was there for, presumably — wasn’t really ideal. Both teams, it seems, wish to beat each other. These are the seeds of conflict! Or winning! Gary and Matt show up as well. They, too, are not pleased to hear about the departure time.

And then it’s 5:45, and everybody is gearing up for sixteen hours on the boat. Gary and Matt are hopeful that this has saved their bacon as far as the fact that they were an hour and a half behind the team in front of them as of the beginning of the leg, and now they’re caught up — though they still have their Speed Bump to contend with. Matt tells us that he put on his black headband, just to be extra-tough. Aw.

The next day, we are in Tallin, Estonia. In the Netherlands! Wait, no. In Estonia, actually. All the teams are pressed against the glass exit doors like iguanas trying to get out of a terrarium, and then they’re all running off the boat down a very, very long gangway. Big Easy interviews that he was teasing everybody about the long run and how much it wasn’t bothering him. I can see how that guy would drive you a little bit crazy on a long race, the same way North Carolina will drive you crazy during a long basketball season.

Outside, all the teams look for taxis to Mustpeade.

Spiky and Perky are the first to the building, followed closely by Sam and Dan. It turns out you have to just try all your keys to get in the door, but if there’s more than one team there at the door, you’re allowed to go in together. In fact, it would be difficult to keep someone from coming in behind you, probably. Brian and Ericka don’t quite make it to enter at the same time as these lead teams, who eagerly pull the door shut behind them.

Inside, Spiky and Perky and Sam and Dan read about this week’s Roadblock. In it, the Roadblocker heads down some stairs to where the brotherhood whose lair this is is having a loud feast of sorts. Again with the loose interpretation of secrecy! Anyway, when you get down there, you pick a candelabra with a number hanging from it. You find the room with that number. There you will be handed a scroll, and if you hold that scroll up to your lighted candle, you’ll be able to read the words “Pik Herman Tower Garden.” Sam and Spiky take the task.

Down in the cellar, they both pick their candelabras.

Outside, Brian and Ericka are still trying the door when Gary and Matt get there and find the clue for their Speed Bump. Their task requires them to find a Saunabuss (which is indeed a bus with a sauna in it, which is the kind of thing you might see featured on the Swedish version of Bridezillas, it occurs to me), where they must take a five-minute sauna. First, of course, they have to find it.

Ericka works on the door, and Flight Time and Big Easy show up. When she gets it, these two teams go in together. Ericka and Flight Time take it.

Gary and Matt, with a little help from the friendly locals, find the Saunabuss. Inside, they strip down and get in their towels, then they go into the sauna, where Gary strikes up a conversation about his Finnish heritage in Northern Minnesota. So Gary may be from Montana right now, but he’s Minnesotan originally. I knew I could trust that guy. It’s interesting that the northern Minnesota connection to the Finns came up, because it is totally true that up on the Iron Range, there is a lot (lot lot) of Finnish blood. I once listened to two Minnesota state legislators — one hardcore Democrat and one hardcore Republican — banter in Finnish. True story!

Flight Time is first to find his room with the scroll. Because there’s a little red crayon-like thing with the blank scroll, Flight Time thinks that he has to rub the crayon on the paper to make the message appear. “I proceeded to start scribblin’ and colorin’ like I was in kindergarten,” he says in an interview.

Spiky finds his room, too. He immediately figures out that he needs to hold the message up to the light. For he is Spiky, and what he lacks in personality, he makes up for in efficiency. I have to say, the casting of Spiky and Perky kind of confuses me. There are lots of blondes in the world, and while I have nothing against them and they’re probably absolutely lovely people, they are bad television. Her mildly high-strung tendency to get frustrated at tasks doesn’t make up for the fact that they basically never speak about anything other than what they’re doing at this very moment. It’s hard for me to imagine what their interviews were like and who thought, “We have got to get these people on our show right away.”

Back in the Saunabuss, Gary is having a great time chit-chatting with the locals. Matt is particularly fond of the very pretty blonde sitting next to him in her towel. Gary sings a little song about the sauna, even, which I’m sure mortifies Matt rather a lot. My parents are fairly whimsical, but I am confident that in the event we ever found ourselves in the potentially mortifying situation of taking a sauna with strangers, they could refrain from singing.

Ericka also figures out quickly that she needs to hold it up to the light. Flight Time? Still scribbling. Sam holds his up to the light, but has trouble reading it.

Spiky is the first to get the words — “Pik Hermann Tower Garden” — off the scroll, and he runs for the door. Ericka gets it next. So those two teams are off.

Matt and Gary are finally done with their sauna, so they can start the Roadblock. Matt starts trying keys in the door. They get the door open, and Matt takes the Roadblock. When he gets downstairs, though, it turns out that he’s never heard of a candelabra, and doesn’t know what that word is. I would make fun of him more if I weren’t perfectly confident that Matt has run into many, many words in his life that I haven’t run into in mine, and I can’t claim that knowing what a candelabra is has ever been of much use to me. I found it interesting that some observers were so hard on him for not knowing that word, which basically would have no reason to come up in the life of a 22-year-old farm kid. I mean, seriously. Vocabulary is a good thing, but it’s pretty easy for me to believe that it simply never came up, and as I said, I’m pretty confident he could unload some vocabulary relevant to his existence that wouldn’t mean anything to me.

Brian and Ericka and Spiky and Perky get directions to the tower garden.

Sam finally sees the letters in the clue, but he thinks the word “tower” is something like “tuver” and proceeds to pronounce it that way for quite a while, which is very entertaining to me. I’m not sure not recognizing the word “candelabra” is any more embarrassing than not recognizing the word “tower.” Flight Time. fortunately, was scribbling on the side of his scroll that doesn’t have the writing on it, so when he turns it over and holds it up to the light, he can see the words. So now, it’s just Matt, who’s downstairs asking the guys whether any of them is, by any chance, a candelabra (pronounced “CAN-dell-a-bruh”). Eek.

After a set of commercials, it occurs to Matt the it sounds like the word “candelabra” has something to do with a candle, so he figures it out and gets looking for room 88.

Spiky and Perky and Brian and Ericka find the clue box in the tower garden — which is next to, and not part of, the tower. The clue leads them to the Detour, which offers two choices of fun things to do in a bog. (Estonia is very bog-heavy, apparently.) The first option, Serve, involves playing volleyball in thigh-deep mud against two locals until they score five points. The second, Sling, involves shooting tiny vegetables at a target with a slingshot, and when you hit it, a table of cabbages collapses (?) and you get your clue. Don’t drink and design detours, is the lesson here.

Spiky and Perky take Serve on the basis that they’ve both played before. There’s a little moment where both they and Brian and Ericka are going for the same taxi, and Brian tells Spiky to have that guy call for another cab. Ericka becomes irate that he gave away “their” taxi, but it’s not clear to me that they were ever going to get that taxi anyway. Of course, in the taxi, Spiky and Perky tell the driver to definitely not call another taxi for Brian and Ericka. This is what passes for Spiky/Perky intrigue.

Matt holds his secret scroll up to the candle, but because he can just barely see the words, he reaches the same conclusion as Flight Time and starts rubbing with the crayon.

Brian and Ericka get another cab, and Ericka teases him more about giving away the taxi.

Sam and Dan are looking for what they’re calling “Pik Hermann Too Ver-Garden.” Flight Time and Big Easy are right behind.

Matt finally gets the words to show up on his scroll, but he only sees the first three — “Pik Hermann Tower.” He doesn’t see the word “Garden” at the bottom, and if this is really his clue we’re looking at, I can’t blame him, because it looks like that word is well separated from the others. He and Gary leave, but they’re not pointed in quite the right direction just yet, owing to the problem reading the clue.

Sam and Dan get to the clue box at the tower garden, followed closely by the Globetrotters. They both want the volleyball, but they’re going to the same place anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Sam and Dan beg a lady in a taxi to give up the taxi so they can have it, but nothing doing. They ask the driver to call another cab. When another cab shows up almost immediately behind the one they’re talking to, they decide that must be the one that was called for them. They’re all, “He was calling for us!” Which strikes me as completely absurd, because how is that cab, which looks nothing like the first one, going to get there fifteen seconds after they asked the driver to call? But they’re never going to miss an opportunity to be pissed at the GTs, so Sam and Dan believe they’re entitled to this cab, while the cabbie is perfectly okay to take all four of them, since they all want to go to the same place, and isn’t willing to kick the GTs out on Sam and Dan’s say-so, it appears. Note that Flight Time reached the cab first and talked to the cabbie first, and the GTs nevertheless make no attempt to kick Sam and Dan out of the cab; they just stand their ground about not getting kicked out of it themselves.

Sam interviews that the GTs “aren’t doing anything for themselves; they’re literally just following us.” Are they? Because I haven’t seen that at all. I’ve seen them getting to this taxi before you, however, and you getting there after them, which isn’t how “following” is defined in my version of standard English. Furthermore, this “following” argument is always so dumb, because it only applies to moving between destinations where you are right together, and if you are right together, then you are … right together. If you don’t want them to follow you, then get ahead of them. Note that the GTs are not currently following Spiky and Perky, you dig?

Gary and Matt are at the tower, but they’re not figuring out where the clue box is, because they don’t have “garden.”

Perky notices in the cab that the clue gives permission to do the Detour in your underwear. She’s like, “Ew, I’m not doing it in my underwear.” Might want to consider why they’re offering that option, there, Perky. Brian posits in his and Ericka’s cab that it might be something at a nudist colony. Ericka tells him that if that’s the case, he’ll be lending her some of his underwear, because all she has on is a thong. Hee. “I’ll be going in the underwear for fun,” he declares. “For fun, I”ll be going in the underwear.” And she giggles. I still think they’re delightful.

In the Sam/Dan/Globetrotter taxi, there’s some talk about Sam’s absolute conviction that it took five seconds for the driver they asked to arrange another taxi and for that taxi to arrive, meaning that this is their cab, dammit. Sam then interviews that the GTs have been the ones they’ve been wanting out of the race all along. “It’s frustrating to see them doing so well,” he says. Well, at least that’s honest. See also: North Carolina.

Gary and Matt are at the tower, but they’re still off the mark, because they’re looking for the tower itself and trying to figure out how to get up into it. “We’re gettin’ way behind,” Gary remarks regretfully. “Yeah,” Matt agrees quietly.

More commercials.

When we return, Gary and Matt finally spot the clue box and get the clue sending them to the bog. They hail a cab, thinking they’ll do the slingshot option. “We’re doin’ terrible today; we’re off our game big time,” says Gary in the cab on the way. Aw. I think that’s quite true. I think what’s happening to Gary and Matt today is mostly about small mistakes building up. It’s taking them just a little bit longer to do things than it would need to take if they were going to make up ground, which they had to since they got to Mustpeade fairly late in the sequence and had to go do their Speed Bump.

Matt and Gary’s cab driver calls Spiky and Perky’s cab driver. Matt claims that their driver is telling the other guy to go slow, but Spiky and Perky’s driver tells them that Matt and Gary’s driver wanted directions, but smugly brags that he said he was too busy. You don’t think Spiky and Perky’s driver could be trying to increase his tip, do you? Perky nevertheless buys it, completely.

Spiky and Perky arrive at the bog. They find an arrow that leads them through the swamp on a little walkway, and then we cut to Estonians playing volleyball in the mud, accompanied by wacky piano noodling. Volleyball is silly! They select the team they consider weakest, but when they get in the mud and discover it is at least knee deep, they’re still a bit surprised. “I don’t know if this is mud,” Perky remarks uncomfortably. Heh. They start scoring points pretty quickly. It looks like mud volleyball doesn’t require a huge amount of skill; it’s kind of an excuse to get muddy.

In the GT/brothers cab, Flight Time and Big Easy are putting their jerseys on, the better to compete with.

Elsewhere, Gary says somewhat grimly that they’re never going to give up, because after all, on the race, “anything can happen.” And they would need it to, it seems.

Spiky and Perky continue playing volleyball.

Brian and Ericka are approaching the bog at the same time as the GT/brothers taxi. These three teams do not have Spiky and Perky’s good luck finding the marked path to the Detour options (which are basically right in the same place).

Sam and Dan, the GTs, and Brian and Ericka continue to wander.

Spiky and Perky score their final point, and their clue tells them to run to the pit stop, which is at the top of a nearby wooden tower. Phil claims that the tower rises “high above” the bog, but it looks like it rises perhaps … 20 feet? I don’t know that I’d call it a “tower” so much as “two flights of stairs with a flat area on top.” Spiky and Perky run for it. Welcome, Spiky and Perky, you are team number one … again. And you have won a “red cedar sauna.” You can kind of see this moment where they’re like, “Uhhhhh.” Because what are normal twentysomethings going to do with their own sauna? Aren’t they probably renters? This is a nice prize, but not one of the most practical the show has ever provided. I predict that sauna will never actually be delivered.

Sam and Dan, Brian and Ericka, and Flight Time and Big Easy are all walking around in a group looking for some kind of marked path. It sounds like the first person to call out upon spotting it is Big Easy, and then they’re all running along the path.

And somewhere, still in their cab, Gary and Matt are trying to stay positive.

Now, because Sam and Dan and Flight Time and Big Easy get to the Detour ahead of Brian and Ericka and both choose the volleyball, Brian and Ericka are sort of screwed, because there are only two courts, so only two teams can do volleyball at a time. For that reason, as they explain, they sort of had to do the slingshot if they wanted to have any chance at all of not finishing behind these teams. (They presumably don’t know for positively sure where Gary and Matt are, though they may have a decent guess.)

For Sam’s part, when they get to volleyball, he’s just happy to see “some hottie Estonian guys.” I hear you, Sam.

Now, we get to the most embarrassing and difficult discuss portion of this episode: What Are They Blurring? As Sam and Dan walk across the bog, Dan’s crotch, in particular, is blurred. Dan is wearing stretchy gray underwear that does not look to be particularly tight. So it would seem that there are three options here for what it is that has led them to believe that Dan has to be blurred. One would be peepage, one would be flopping, and one would be that volleyball is more exciting to Dan than you might expect. These are the only things I can think of, because I don’t think his cotton briefs are sheer enough for the problem to be actual visibility. Even wet, I would think there’s not much to see when he’s standing still, and they’re not even wet yet, are they? There’s a following moment, featuring Dan, from the reverse angle, in which he is not blurred, and you can see that it’s not that the underwear is tight, particularly.

I realize this is way too much thinking about this, but it was totally what everyone I know was talking about after this episode: The Mystery Of Dan’s Blurry Junk.

Brian and Ericka start taking shots at the target with the slingshot and their little vegetables. This whole thing, incidentally, is very weird.

And then we cut over to Sam, and now SAM is blurred. And Sam appears to be wearing cargo shorts. Isn’t that a pocket in the side? How is Sam getting blurred while wearing cargo shorts? I would not think they would be flimsy enough to make your everything visible to the naked (har) eye. Moreover, now Sam and Dan are both being blurred while standing still, and since shots seem to be being chosen selectively for the need for blurring, this would seem to eliminate flopping as the reason. And the cargo shorts seem to suggest it’s not peepage.

Is it excitement? Because I always feel bad for dudes, in a way, because they tell me this business is unpredictable, so I would totally believe that somebody’s body might betray him in some bizarre moment, the way some people sweat uncontrollably or shake or whatever.

But … BOTH of them? They BOTH require blurring? I just find this entire sequence utterly bizarre. It could be that wet cargo shorts are the equivalent of a wet T-shirt, I guess, but then why are we going back and forth between blurred and unblurred shots? I realize I’m always way too fascinated with production mysteries.

Flight Time and Big Easy and Sam and Dan start playing unpredictable mud volleyball. Over and over, someone has gone to the trouble of tastefully blurring their netherlands. (THERE IT IS.)

Elsewhere, in the cab, Gary says that they don’t know where any of the other teams are, and their only hope is to catch up at the Detour.

Commercials.

When we return, Flight Time and Big Easy and Sam and Dan are still playing volleyball. The blurring of Sam and Dan continues.

Brian and Ericka keep it up with the slingshots.

Flight Time and Big Easy and Sam and Dan finish the volleyball close together and are leaving for the very nearby pit stop. The GTs are a bit ahead, but they turn in the wrong direction, and when they figure it out, they turn around and run, and now they’re behind Sam and Dan. Now, Flight Time and Big Easy are faster than Sam and Dan, pretty clearly; the trouble is to pass them on this narrow little walkway with wet feet and so forth. Flight Time slips once, then pops back up (but not the way Sam and Dan apparently were earlier — hiyo!). Then, as Flight Time is making a probably unwise move to try to pass them, Sam flails his arm out — not to knock him down, I don’t think, as much as to discourage him — and Flight Time trips again, taking Dan down with him. Flight Time shouldn’t have tried to pass without room, but Sam definitely threw the arm, also. I don’t think anybody intended for anybody to get injured, though.

Sam and Dan get to the pit stop first, so they are team number two, and Flight Time and Big Easy are team number three. There’s some talk back and forth, where Dan says he was pushed, and Big Easy says it’s perfectly okay with him if they want to play more physical (always the kind of comment I don’t like). This seems like kind of a nothing fight to me; they’re just wound up from the end of the leg. I think Big Easy, who wasn’t even in that confrontation, saw the arm fly and doesn’t like those guys anyway and is overwound, while Sam and Dan are insecure about this other team and have been saying so for a while. It’s also interesting that Dan is the one defending himself, but Sam is the one whose arm I saw fly. I think one thing that’s happening here is that Sam doesn’t want to get into the fact that he threw more of an elbow, and Dan’s the one who went down.

At any rate, this hardly looks like a blood feud to me, but neither of them is covering themselves in glory.

Gary and Matt reach the bog. Brian and Ericka are still working on the slingshot. Brian finally knocks it down, and they venture out into the bog to get their clue. I would note this about Ericka: Since her very bad leg in which she admitted she acted like a jerk, I haven’t seen her make a peep of complaint about anything. She goes into bogs, she does Roadblocks, and she seems to have actually meant it when she said she wasn’t proud of her behavior the day she was snapping at him and so forth. She seems to have gone right back to having a lot of fun, and I respect that. They don’t know for sure that they’re not last, but they’re very happy to hear they aren’t.

Gary and Matt. As they complete the Detour, they both voice over about what a great experience they had together, how hard they worked, and how much they learned about each other. “Just the experiences we shared on this thing and the things we’ve done, I mean … ” Matt is clearly very happy. In fact, they both look happy in their post-boot interview. I’m not sure a kid and his dad ever think they are the most likely to win, but this is a pretty good showing, and they got to spend a lot of one-on-one time together. I am a big advocate of making sure you spend grown-up time with your parents as an adult, so I can totally believe this would be a lot of fun. For all that people make jokes about living at home, the fact that I lived with my parents for a couple of tide-over periods during my adult life was actually pretty cool, and that’s the kind of thing I always hope people get out of this kind of thing, is the experience of learning that you actually like your family and would hang out with them even if you weren’t related to them. Their relationship also has just a really healthy vibe to me, really generous and good-hearted, and I think it’s safe to say that they’re a lot more similar to each other than the people who cast them set them up to be. In a lot of ways, that’s the same guy translated through two different bodies and ages and backgrounds.

Next week: Flight Time sings, and Sam and Dan snag a cab from Brian and Ericka. Oh, cab-stealing. You are such a boring source of conflict.

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Previously on When To Hold ‘Em, When To Fold ‘Em, When To Walk Away, And When To Leave Everything Up To Tiffany: Ericka became wildly frustrated by the counting of tower bells, while Maria became wildly frustrated by having to do half of everything. Well, 40 percent of everything. Maybe 30? Okay, more like 15. Also, golf was cold and girls have girl arms, so what’s the point, really? Five teams left. Who will be eliminated … next?

Credits. Watching this show always makes me think I need to spend more time around monuments, and then I remember that it’s kind of a long walk down the National Mall for the opportunity to mingle with the winners of Kentucky’s Mr. And Miss Totally Bored Teenager Pageant, and then I’m all, “Monuments still work on television, and here, I can have a Diet Coke whenever I want.” And then I stifle a little burp and say, “Mountains are pretty.”

We are in Sweden! It contains extensive history as well as windmills! Speaking as a former resident of Minnesota, I have to wonder whether windmills are the lutefisk of the Netherlands, like, “Please stop asking about that, because no, that is not part of my daily life.” Not that windmills are as intrinsically nonsensical as fish preserved in lye, but still.

Phil reminds us that teams, dressed up as characters from the classic myth of Holland known as Doofuses Riding Bicycles, checked in here a while back, and now they have to keep going, and on and on.

9:33 PM. It’s still light outside when Sam and Dan take off in first place. The clue sends them to Stockholm, Sweden, where they will take a train and a ferry to an amusement park with one of those giant free-fall rides, where their next clue will be. Sam and Dan are bickering lightly as they drive off, with Dan in the front seat acting like The Tense One and Sam in the back seat acting like The Infuriatingly Calm One, especially from the perspective of The Tense One. I think that between these two brothers, Sam plays the role of Amused Needler, while Dan plays the role of Actual Nag. I’m not saying I’m not cheating a little bit by reading ahead, but honestly, you can already tell.

Sam opines in an interview that they are probably embarrassing their family. Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. No, for that, someone would have to act like a berating, obnoxious bonehead and then break down boo-hooing all over himself about how painful it is to know that you are guilty of bonehead-osity.

9:48 PM. Spiky and Perky. Spiky explains as they leave that they’ve been dating for “over four and a half years,” and they’re definitely thinking marriage. Perhaps after five and one-third years. He also claims that running a good race is a great sign that you’re compatible. Which is true, provided that you intend to spend a lot of your marriage crammed into half a taxi and yelling at each other in fanciful costumes. Which doesn’t really apply, unless you are J.Lo.

10:32 PM. Flight Time and Big Easy. We learn that it’s FT’s birthday, and they’re thinking that a nice gift/celebration would be finishing in first place. FT suggests a trip to the red light district, which they could claim was an excursion to “use the Internet.” I do not encourage the development of “use the Internet” as a dirty euphemism, by the way, because some of us will be persistently misunderstood and slandered as pervs.

11:08 PM. Gary and Matt. Gary reads off that they are getting $220 for the leg. Gary says that, as the oldest competitor still in the race (which I’d think he’s been for some time), he has some motivation to keep working to prove what he’s capable of. Matt kindly comments that his dad “doesn’t seem old.” Given that Matt’s dad is 47, part of the reason he doesn’t seem old is that he isn’t, particularly. At least I hope he isn’t.

Sam and Dan arrive at the airport, with Spiky and Perky close behind. They spot two flights to Stockholm: one at 6:55 in the morning and one at 9:25. They’re eager, as you can imagine, to get on the earlier one. But as these two teams discover, the ticket counter isn’t opening until 5:30 in the morning, so there’s nothing to do but line up and wait. I feel like the airport has gotten a lot simpler this year. It’s not that it was any great hoot to sit around explaining how six teams were maneuvering at six different ticket counters, but I did think of it as an element of logistics and negotiating that was sometimes interesting, and I wish it hadn’t gone away quite so completely. “Good at the airport” has sometimes benefited people I didn’t like (Mirna), but I’m not sure it’s a positive development that right now, I have no idea who is and who isn’t good at figuring out actual nuts-and-bolts travel logistics.

Flight Time and Big Easy and Gary and Matt also arrive at the airport. “Another night in the airport,” Matt says.

1:38 AM. (Two and a half hours after the previous team.) Brian and Ericka. As they drive off, Brian mentions that they’re on the same road they erroneously walked yesterday (instead of riding bikes as they were meant to). Brian says, in what sound like spliced pieces from two interviews, that the race is partly helpful in proving that they are a good team, and that by the way, Ericka’s mother is not wild about her being married to a white guy. That may explain some of their more out-there humor about zebras and jungle fever, I’d think, in that at some point, you’d have to make a joke out of that lest it become painful, right? Also, Dear Ericka’s Mom: If you think that guy isn’t good enough, expect a long battle to find someone who is, especially if you are hoping it will be someone who won’t tune her out after ten minutes of freaking out. That’s the irony, of course — that guy is *perfect* for her. Sigh. Oh, world. They join everybody else at the airport.

In the morning, Sam and Dan, Spiky and Perky, and Flight Time and Big Easy get on the 6:55 AM flight. Gary and Matt and Brian and Ericka, not so much. My favorite sound effect, Marble Bouncing Around Inside A Bucket, indicates that this is Very! Bad! News! (Clang clang clang clang … ) Both teams get on the 9:25, not happy about being two and a half hours behind first thing in the morning.

The three lead teams arrive at the airport in Stockholm. They’re running for the train, which seems to be leaving right from the airport. There is a fair amount of messing with the ticket machines and whatnot, and in the end, FT and BE are the odd men out on the ticket machines and don’t make the first train. Sam voices over that the Globetrotters are his and Dan’s big rivals, since they’re “the other [cut/splice] all-male team.” Perhaps what was cut was “young and cocky,” because last time I checked, Gary and Matt were also both dudes. Unless dudes with pink hair aren’t dudes, or over-40 dudes aren’t dudes.

Brian and Ericka and Gary and Matt hop on board the Flight of Suck and Misery.

Sam and Dan and Spiky and Perky get off the train and onto a ferry. “No Globetrotters,” Sam says, pleased at having lost them for now. Meanwhile, the Globetrotters get on their train.

Back at the amusement park, Sam and Dan and Spiky and Perky pull their clues. The clue explains that one member of the team has to get on the freefall ride (too bad Mika’s not here to have this be the worst thing she’s ever had to do in her whole life!) and go up to the top, where it will be possible to spot an arrow on the ground that points to the clue. Of course, you’ll need to spot the clue before the ride drops you hundreds of feet to the ground as if you are about to die. Sam and Spiky board the freefall. The awesome part is that although Sam is sitting to the left and Spiky to the right, Sam says, “You check to the right, I’ll check to the left.” It’s not a big deal since they’re sitting next to each other, but why not just … you know, look the direction you’re sitting? Fortunately, at the top, they ignore this particular idiotic division of labor, and Sam spots the arrow off ahead and to the left. “We got it!” he hollers, and Dan and Perky give each other ten up top, and then the ride falls. Sam and Spiky do this: “AAAAAAAARRRRAAAAHHHHHGG!” When they disembark, they lead their teammates toward where they saw the arrow.

Periodically, I pause to be sad that Sam doesn’t interest me more as a person, because wowza, he is still so pretty. It causes me to make sad little noises.

Flight Time and Big Easy board the ferry.

Spiky and Perky and Sam and Dan find the clue box by the arrow. It tells them to play what Phil calls “Roaming Gnome Ring Toss.” That’s right — it is time for your grotesque Travelocity crossover promotion for the season. You throw a ring until you get it around one of the gnome hats, and you hope that there’s a gnome under it. And if there is, then you get the gnome and read your clue — and take your gnome with you, for God’s sake. If you leave your gnome behind, it will follow you from city to city, haunting you and leaving bloody little footprints all over your room, and if you win the race, it will jump onto the big red mat and stab you through the heart with its little hat. That is what I learned from the Stephen King book, The Gnome.

Both teams find their gnomes pretty quickly, and the clue they retrieve is for the Detour. Phil explains that Sweden’s history includes Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, and also the Vikings. (If only one of your Detour options were kicking the crap out of Brett Favre.) The dynamite half of the Detour sends you to a pit to build a wall of sandbags and then set off an explosion. The other one involves reading, and I’m just going to tell you right now, you don’t need to worry about it, because what kind of a soft-bellied wuss likes reading?

Both of these teams, obvs, pick blowing stuff up over reading.

When FT and BE reach the freefall ride, they learn that Big Easy is actually too tall for the 6′4″ height limit on the ride, so only Flight Time can do it. FT does not seem to particularly enjoy free-falling, but he sees the arrow and they find their way to the clue. Big Easy turns out to be the master of the ring-toss, and when they finally get a gnome, he takes charge of it, declaring, “I’m on gnome duty.” At this point, I was sure that gnome duty was somehow going to backfire, and Big Easy was going to wind up neglecting the gnome or blowing him up or something. But this is merely a red (pointy-hatted) herring.

Hey, the Globetrotters are also interested in blowing things up more than reading! Boooo, reading.

Oh, hey, here are Gary and Matt and Brian and Ericka arriving at the airport! Once again, there is some futzing around with the ticket machines, and by the time it’s over, Gary and Matt are in last place, having missed the train that Ericka and Brian got on. They are not dudes; they are not on the train. They cannot catch a break today.

When we return from commercials, we relive the Gary and Matt door-closing agony.

Meanwhile, Sam and Dan and Spiky and Perky have had to stop and get themselves some directions on the way to the Detour, so as they note, if the Globetrotters do everything without any problems, there’s a chance they’ll catch up, since the space between trains from the airport is presumably not great.

Speaking of whom, the Globetrotters chat in their car about naming their gnome. FT suggests “Sweet Pea.” BE suddenly decides to stand on ceremony regarding silliness and calls that name “dumb.” He suggests, instead, “Louisiana Shorty,” but FT declares that one “ghetto.” “Harlem Gnome,” BE suggests. They seem perhaps to settle on this. (I will say that for me personally, being addressed as Sweet Pea or Louisiana Shorty would be acceptable, to a greater degree than Harlem Gnome.

Brian and Ericka — off the train and onto the ferry.

Gary and Matt — boarding the train fifteen minutes after Brian and Ericka, very bummed about being all alone in last place. Matt is very quiet. My sense is that when he’s discouraged, he does not share that too much with Dad, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

At the freefall, it turns out that Brian is afraid of heights, so Ericka gets on the ride. See? That’s very reassuring to me, not only that she isn’t the one who nixes herself for all tasks, but that they both assume that he has the right to nix himself for tasks as well. She doesn’t do water, but he doesn’t do heights, so. She’s so excited when she spots it on the way up that she chair-dances while strapped into the amusement-park ride, which is pretty cute. He fist-pumps for her. They seem to have largely recovered from last week. She’s also the one who does the ring-toss, and they both jump up and down excitedly. I don’t know, you guys — I know she was a hag last week, but they’re really cute.

And guess what: more dynamite! Booooo, reading!

Matt on the freefall. He sees the arrow. Gary ring-tosses. DYNAMITE GO BOOM! READING FOR BABIES!

Sam and Dan and Spiky and Perky have finally found their way to the Blow Shit Up side of the Detour. They have to start by putting on hardhats, goggles, ear protection, and boots. Sam might want to hang onto the ear protectors. Juuust saying. Meanwhile, FT and BE are talking about how surprised the front two teams would be to see them catch up: “Where did that big black man come from in that red shirt?” BE imagines. “Big black ugly man, too,” FT offers. “You talkin’ about you,” BE banters back. Theirs would definitely be the most enjoyable car to be in.

Indeed, when the Globetrotters appear as the other teams are suiting up, Dan comments, “Did your FANS help you get here?” Since he’s speaking as a guy who got somebody to lead him here, I’m not sure what the point of that little outbreak of bitterness was supposed to be. Kind of poor form, Dan. Moreover, do you really think FT and BE have rando fans running around Sweden the way, say, Rob and Amber might? I think not.

The teams head into the dynamite pit and start filling sandbags to build their bunker. Sam and Dan scoop dirt into their sandbags with their hands, which Dan sees as a great innovation, since the other teams were using shovels. Perky declares that they should work on the same bag, with one holding open and one shoveling — which, interestingly, is exactly what the GTs are doing. After doing one this way, Spiky declares this “a waste of time,” and goes to fill his own bag. Perky again  protests. “You’re not working with me,” she says angrily. Perky packs kind of a bitchy aftertaste at times, it is true.

Brian and Ericka, meanwhile, find a taxi to lead them to the dynamite.

And now, Gary And Matt Try To Maintain Seriousness While Reciting Many Names Of Streets In Sweden. It sounds approximately like this: “Are we on Hasselbaggen?” “No, we’re on Foozelnaggen.” “We need to make a left on Forvenblaggen.” “What are we looking for eventually?” “We’re looking for Boozenhaagen.” I’m approximating, but the bottom line is that Matt and Gary have wound up confronted with unfamiliar street names out the Woozenklachen.

Unfortunately, as amusing as this is, it becomes less so once they are actually lost.

I feel for Perky, kind of, until she starts telling Spiky, “Encourage me.” Eh. I kind of think when you’re on a task together, it’s good to be encouraging, but you don’t want to NEED out-loud encouragement from your partner who is trying to do exactly the same thing you are. “Encourage me” is a little bit “say my name” for my tastes.

Sam and Dan finish building their sandbag wall and set off their explosion. Hooray! When they find the little metal box that their explosion has unearthed, they retrieve a clue that sends them to a farm. A farm that will live in infamy. The farm where Lena and Kristy were Philiminated after Lena unrolled many, many bales of hay without finding a clue.

Not long, it appears, after Sam and Dan drive off in their car, the GTs complete their wall of sandbags and set off their explosion. “Come on, [Spiky],” Perky whines. “Help me.” Spiky is not pleasing her at all.

After the GTs are gone, Spiky and Perky finally finish and get to blow up their dynamite. In the car on the way to the hay bales, she complains and blames him for the “awful teamwork,” saying she asked him over and over to work with her and he wouldn’t. He’s ready to be over it, but she’s not. “The task is over,” he says. “But you didn’t even listen to me the whole time!” she says. I am not sure she is grasping the concept of “over.”

Brian and Ericka are approaching the dynamite, but Matt and Gary are still lost in the Floogens and Boogens of Sweden. “What a day,” Gary oogenboogens unhappily.

After commercials, Gary and Matt finally get some directionkachens, and they’re off.

Meanwhile, Brian and Ericka arrive at the dynamite, and Ericka comments that this is pretty dirty work, but she dives in, and in an interview, she says beauty concerns have officially gone by the wayside.

Sam and Dan are the first to find the farm. They park and run toward the farm, which appears to require a bit of a hike. Spiky and Perky — having passed a lost FT and BE — are just behind. When Sam and Dan open the Roadblock, Phil reminds us of Lena and Kristy’s terrible experience — saying they unrolled 100 bales over ten hours — and says that this time, in what they’re calling a “Switchback,” there are 186 hay bales and 7 race flags to find. Once you find it, though, you’re golden, because the pit stop is right beside the field of hay, perhaps in case they have to walk over and put you out of your misery. I think Phil just wants to avoid another long trip.

Sam says he’s going to do the Roadblock, and Dan disbelievingly looks out at the 186 bales and says, “Wait, ALL OF THESE?” Right away, as Sam gets underway, Dan is screaming at him about how he has to break open the netting around the bale so he can unroll it. He’s right, but he’s already using his You Dumb Jackass tone of voice, which isn’t the direction you want to go right out of the gate. Dan also chooses to reveal that this happened once before, and “one person did it for eight hours.” “Why on earth would you tell me that right now?” Sam asks. Heh, good point. I’m also curious about why Dan was so shocked by “all of these” if he saw this done the last time, which makes me wonder whether an on-set whisperer gave them the skinny about the eight hours (which Phil said was actually ten).

When Spiky and Perky get there, she asks him who should do it, and he hesitates, undoubtedly thinking about the physical part of it, her capacity for frustration — but he doesn’t answer quickly enough, so after a few seconds, she says she’s doing it and heads out into the field.

Dan continues coaching Sam to just unroll them and not look through them, and Sam stops and tells Dan to stop talking to him for ten minutes. Dan agrees, but obviously has no intention of shutting up, like, at all. Spiky throws Perky her gloves, which is a very good idea, and she asks him to keep talking to her. She should have been Dan’s partner! Dan is totally happy to keep talking! All you want! More talky-talky!

Perky is struggling with how heavy the bales are, though it looks like once she gets a layer or so off, they’re not too terribly bad. They’re definitely really heavy, though.

As the GTs arrive, Dan yells at Sam that he’s going too slowly, he’s not unrolling fast enough, and so forth. Sam asks Dan — again — to stop talking for ten minutes, to which Dan replies, “STOP SPENDING SO MUCH TIME ON ONE!” Not sure Dan is grasping Sam’s point.

Now here’s the problem with Dan’s theory: You know what’s worse for you than spending an extra minute to kick the hay around and make sure you didn’t miss a flag? Missing a flag. I get what he’s saying, and no, you don’t have to pick through every quarter-cup of hay, but a minute to make sure is probably time well spent hedging against total disaster, especially since you have no idea how the flags were inserted into the bales, and they could be right between the layers or they could emphatically not be.

Big Easy takes the Roadblock for his team, and he heads out into the field.

Back at the dynamite, Brian and Ericka are finishing up their wall of sandbags, hoping they’ll be done before Matt and Gary arrive. But then: Matt and Gary arrive.

Perky will note that Matt and Gary also adopt a one-shovels, one-holds method of filling bags.

After asking Ericka to “cover up our gnome” (hee), Brian sets off the explosion at last. They set off for the farm as Matt and Gary calmly continue working.

Hay Field Of Misery. For the second time, Perky calls this the worst thing she has ever done. Dan is now sarcastically heckling his own partner, saying, “Oh, still going through that last one.” Sam can only scream at Dan to shut up. Dan is, I must say, putting on one of the worst performances in history by a Roadblock partner. I mean, really, dude. Flight Time, meanwhile, is perfectly mellow: “I feel good, baby, I got faith in you.”

Sam and Dan keep screaming at each other. FT and BE keep bantering: “We didn’t have no hay in the projects,” BE points out.

Brian and Ericka pull up, as do Gary and Matt.

Sam will note that it is as Big Easy kicks away some hay that he looks down and spots a race flag and runs off with it toward FT, who happily notes that this is appropriate, since it’s his birthday. So that flag apparently did not present itself to Big Easy immediately upon unrolling. Sam grumps about how the GTs are “the luckiest team in the history of the race.” Eh. Sam only came into this with a very short lead and has probably only unrolled a bale or two more than BE if at all; I’m not sure there’s much of an argument that BE was wildly lucky there. Moreover, Sam grouses about how they were “third to get here,” but of course, once a team shows up, they have exactly the same chance as anyone else that the next bale will have a flag in it. Once a team shows up, your advantage over that team is entirely kaput. The next bale doesn’t know how many you’ve already opened; there’s no reason you’d find flags in order, or approximate order, of arrival out of those that have already arrived. This is a task where the only advantage to getting there early is free time before other people show up, during which you might happen upon it. If you don’t, then it’s effectively a bunching point.

Welcome, Flight Time and Big Easy, you are team number one. And you have won a trip for two, which you can enjoy after the race. FT interviews that they’re on a roll now, and they’re “here to win the race.”

Sam grumps some more that he hates Big Easy. He hates Big Easy? How can you hate Big Easy? That’s like hating Phil. That’s like hating fun. That’s like hating Christmas.

And here come Brian and Ericka, so now they’re effectively tied with all these teams, and here come Matt and Gary, so now everybody remaining has essentially the same odds, except that the early arrivers are tired.

A weepy Perky notes that she’s now been at the bales of hay for two hours. She knows not what to do. “Are you all right, baby?” Spiky asks her. “No, I can’t do this anymore,” she replies.

Commercials.

As Dan continues to harass Sam and Sam continues to ask him to shut up, Brian happens to be standing near Dan and intervenes: “Daniel,” he says calmly in what is very much a Dad Voice, “it’s harder than it looks.” Heh. In an interview, Dan says that he eventually had an “epiphany” that it probably wasn’t helping for him to be screaming at Sam every thirty seconds. It’s not clear whether Brian really helped with this, but if he did, it’s possible that what led to Dan’s “epiphany” was, in part, the realization that he was attracting attention from third parties who thought he was being a dick.

Matt repeats to Ericka the information about someone having done this once for “eight hours.” She is not encouraged.

While pawing through the end of a bale, Perky finally finds her clue. She decides to surprise Spiky, so she approaches him complaining that she can’t do it anymore, and then she flashes the flag and says, “Let’s go.” He whoops and laughs as they run to the pit stop mat. “Oh my God, [Perky], I love you so much,” he laughs. They are team number two. I’m actually really glad that Perky did that task, because if Spiky had done it instead, I would have spent the week reading that no woman could possibly have done it because the bales were so heavy. Ask yourself which harder: doing that for two hours or hitting a plastic ball with a toy golf club. Juuuust saying.

And then Brian finds a flag out in the hay. He actually climbs over a bale of hay on his way back to his wife. Aw, that guy is cute. So Brian and Ericka check in as team number three. Now, it’s just Sam and Dan and Gary and Matt.

Dan has changed tactics, so even when Sam sits down for a minute — exhausted, naturally — Dan tells him, “Take a break, it’s all right.” I think this may work better than “YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG YEEAAARRGH!”

Sam unrolls. Gary unrolls. And finally, as Sam gets to the very end of a bale, he finds a flag. “Thank the Lord,” he says. He and Dan run to the pit stop, where Dan proceeds to have a breakdown and weep all over himself about having been a mean jackass.

“That’s not a good sign,” says Gary. “No,” Matt quietly agrees. “Not our day.” And he throws his dad a water bottle. I’ll tell you, for guys who claim that their differences have affected their relationship, these two seem awfully fond of each other.

When Gary has been looking for two hours, Matt is still encouraging him. In an interview, Gary points out that while this was difficult, you can’t quit, and after all, he has “a pretty strong work ethic.” “‘Pretty strong’?” Matt asks with a slight smile. As Matt talks about his dad, there’s actually a shot of Gary unrolling a hay bale that is shot through the giant, stretched-out hole in Matt’s ear, which has the unfortunate effect of pointing out those huge lobe holes I had actually managed not to notice. I really do not like those, but the shot is hilarious. At about two hours and 45 minutes, Gary finally finds one at the end of a bale. “Son of a bitch,” he says. Heh.

Matt and Gary proceed to the mat. They are the last team to arrive. And Phil is sorry to tell them … that the next leg is going to be very difficult, and they will still be here! Non-elimination! Not surprising. Of course, they will have to do a speed bump on the next leg, but if it is anything like Maria and Tiffany’s earlier speed bump, it will take about five minutes and consist of something like, “Walk ten feet and put these five numbered cards in order.” Matt calls his dad “Superman,” and it’s pretty clear that he means it. Gary points out that they weren’t kidding when they said they would never give up. So we get to keep the likable dad and son … for now.

Next week: Matt runs into the word “candelabra.” Yoiks. Also, Big Easy trips and accidentally trips Dan, which is sure to lead to some sort of massive controversy, because Dan is a big baby.

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Who will be eliminated … next?

Credits. Nothing makes me happier than looking at that cornball shot of Mika and Canaan singing Big Sandwich Country and knowing that things ended in a ball of flames for them.

[Note: I once explained to a friend that there was a particular kind of female country singer -- let's say the kind they tend to favor on American Idol -- that drove me up the wall, because (I am pulling this out of an old email) "to me, that is the most uninteresting kind of female singer to be. Because it's (1) boring; (2) reactionary; (3) neutered; and (4) the beginning of a life sentence of terrible music. And you have to sing in that growling but completely PRETEND way that says, 'ho-ho-ho, I'm a tiger,' but implies that you will also make your man a really big sandwich and be quiet if he prefers that." From that beginning came Big Sandwich Country.]

Dubai! The Atlantis Resort! Phil in a … pith helmet! There are people who claimed that this was a Tilley (a/k/a Hating Hat), but if it is, I think it is a different sort of Hating Hat than the original. (Eight years ago! Adjust your dentures!) It is styled more like a pith helmet, which makes me imagine that Phil is a crazy explorer and I am a princess and … never mind. Moving on.

1:13 PM. Spiky and Perky. Leaving in the middle of the day again, as most legs seem to, even if they arrived in the middle of the day previous. This is a weird race. Also, Spiky is wearing some sort of jauntry yellow thing tied around his neck, like a fratty ascot. They are quite the picture. The clue tells them to fly to Amsterdam, where they’ll drive themselves to a monument in the middle of a great causeway, and there will be their next clue. Seriously, in the cab on the way to the airport, Spiky looks like he’s in a Duran Duran video. As the girl.

At the airport, they learn that the next flight to Amsterdam doesn’t leave until midnight. Wah-wah-waaaaaaah. So much for their lead. They’ve been carrying that lead a while; it’s probably time for them to have to reestablish it.

3:09 PM. Maria and Tiffany. (Almost two hours later. You can see why the Spike and the Perk were hoping that they might hold on to at least some of that lead over at least some of the teams.) Tiffany is wearing stretchy pants, a purple tank top, and over it, a sort of … gray sports-bra-length cut-off T-shirt with roll-up sleeves and a pocket on the boob. I am verrrry confused by what goes in that pocket. Because when you put a pocket over your boob with no discernible purpose, you’re asking for trouble.

Tiffany explained that they’re happy to be in second place, but they’ve “learned from poker that it’s really, really easy to get comfortable and get involved in pots that you shouldn’t,” so they won’t get cocky. Which makes no sense. Overconfidence in racing has no relationship to overconfidence in poker that would cause you to bet when you shouldn’t. I call nonsense!

3:10 PM. Sam and Dan. Sam says some weird thing about how his degree in anthropology makes him want to see the world. I’m thinking everyone who chose this particular thing to do probably wants to see the world. Dan insists that Sam is “book smart,” while he is “street smart.” I can’t wait to see any evidence of either of those things being true! Well, unless Sam’s book is the Harmless Hapless Himbopedia and Dan’s street is Usually Slightly Confused Boulevard.

3:25 PM. Brian and Ericka. She interviews that she knows she gets nagging sometimes, and she doesn’t like it, and she hopes that if they can recognize it, they can stop it. See, this is why I mind her less, is that she says that, instead of “I know I nag him sometimes, but it’s just who I am and I’m keeping it real and this is what works for us.”

3:34 PM. Gary and Matt. They’re excited to be going to another continent, because Matt’s entire history of international travel before the race was “Canada for a week of fishing.” Hey, I like Canada.

At the airport, Dan asks for “the fastest nonstop flight to Amsterdam.” Which is interesting, because I’d think that would be the wrong query. I would think the right query would be, “the fastest way to Amsterdam whether it is nonstop or not.” I wonder if they were required to fly nonstop. Undesirable connection points the show didn’t want to deal with? Interesting detail. Everybody learns that they’re not going anywhere until midnight, and at this point, it’s only afternoon.

4:20 PM. Flight Time and Big Easy. Big Easy says in the cab that he understands that a lot of teams probably wish they’d been eliminated last leg, because they’re going to be tough in a footrace, so nobody wants to wind up actually racing them for anything. Note that they are 45 minutes behind Gary and Matt, which lends credence to the Mika/Canaan story from last week that they stood at the top of the water slide for 45 minutes before the fellas got there.

Everybody is hanging out at the airport, and they all want to know what happened with Canaan and Mika. So apparently, there wasn’t much mingling at the pit stop? Anyway, Big Easy explains how Mika was upset, and how he goaded her not to go — which everybody seems to think is hilarious, which in turn tells you a lot about how attached they felt to Mika.

It is at this point that Sam and Dan decide to tell everyone they’re gay, which doesn’t seem to be an enormous surprise to their pals Maria and Tiffany (who later said the boys had, indeed, already told them this). I think Maria and Tiffany count on charm-based persuasiveness, not necessarily sex-based persuasiveness. Everybody seems to take this entirely in stride, and they tease Dan after he says that they have family and friends who don’t even know this. “They know now,” Ericka teases. Tiffany interviews that they don’t care that the guys are gay, and Gary says around the table, “Should I tell Matt he’s adopted now?” Hee. I love that scene, because nobody cared, except in the sense that they seemed to think it was funny and surprising that they didn’t already know. Compare that to the stone-faced Millie and Chuck reaction on Chip and Reichen’s anniversary.

The Amazing Red Line shows the teams heading for Amsterdam. And then we are there, and while you might think the establishing shots would all be of hookers and pot, they aren’t. It looks like your basic European city! Full of hookers and pot. Everybody hustles into their cars, but Brian has trouble getting his and Ericka’s car in gear. They actually are both snapping at each other a little bit at this point — he is indeed being a bit short with her over her attempts to help, and she is very much bothered by his taking it out on her that he doesn’t “know how to work the damn car.” They eventually find somebody who helps them put the car in drive, and they get on their way. He keeps muttering about it in the car, and my sense is there’s something that’s missing, because the next thing you see is her asking him to stop being upset, because “you dictate my mood, and you know I have a shorter fuse than you.”

Oh, honey. No. Your short fuse is your problem. I get what she’s saying — I totally get that in some partnerships, you count on one person to be the calming presence. I have some of those myself. But if they’re not doing it, you can’t actually get mad. “You dictate my mood” is not really going to fly, ever. But he sees the writing on the wall, and he calms down immediately, because if he doesn’t, it will not help any. He is the spaz-wrangler!

Teams, led by Spiky and Perky, arrive at the monument where they pull a clue telling them to go to the Martinitoren, which Phil says is “the highest building in the city.” Just another day that would have been all about sniffling and pathos for Mika. I feel like a lot of her days are like that. Maybe that’s how her country career got started — maybe she started using it as an outlet for crying about her fear of heights.

Today’s theme continues to emerge as, leaving the monument, Flight Time comments that if they only knew one person’s name on the race, it would be Brian’s, because they hear Ericka bark it at him. I will say, I said something very similar about a couple I used to know, that she said his name a lot, but they were actually very happy. I think the older you get, the less you try to make those guesses, and I’m not sure FT is making one either, except teasingly.

When Spiky and Perky get to the Martinitoren clue, it’s the Roadblock, and it says, “Who’s got strong legs and keen eyes?” Phil explains that the Roadblocker has to climb up the winding stairs to the tower and count all the bells, which are sort of scattered and include small ones and big ones and in-between ones … you get the idea. If they correctly come back with a count of 62 bells, they’ll be victorious, and they’ll be allowed to descend to Whoville and carve the roast beast. Perky takes this one for her team, and Sam takes it for his, and they decide to work together.

Flight Time takes the Roadblock, and so does Matt, and they head up into the tower. When Tiffany and Maria arrive, Tiffany takes charge of the Roadblock. Ericka heads up for her and Brian.

Sam and Perky are counting the bells at the top of the tower when Matt squeezes up through the trapdoor thing and starts in as well. Just as they’re all counting, the player (to whom they will soon be showing their answers) starts playing all those bells, which, as you can imagine, is a little distracting. (”All the noise, noise, noise, noise!”)

The first to hand in the correct answer is Matt. He and his dad open a clue directing them to Vierhuizen de Marne (God bless you!) (Hiyo!), a town where Phil says they will need to find a windmill to get their next clue. Sam and Perky hand in their answers, and they’re right, too, so they get going. As Tiffany is heading up, Sam gives her the answer, so she goes directly to turn it in. That strikes me as … not doing the Roadblock, right? Didn’t she not count the bells? I’m not sure how you’d write a rule to prohibit that, but it seems kind of like having somebody else carry your golf ball and put it in the hole, instead of doing the golf. Sam says that he thought it was a smart move, because they’d rather be up against Tiffany and Maria later by helping them avoid getting knocked out now. Eh, maybe. But I wouldn’t get in the habit of trying to cherry-pick the teams you’ll be up against at the end when there are this many left.

Sam and Dan and Spiky and Perky leave, but they break the news that Sam fed Tiffany the answer, so the girls won’t be far behind. Those two teams pay a taxi to lead them to the windmill. In fact, they get going before Matt and Gary, who are still getting directions. Maria and Tiffany, without actually doing the task, get their clue and go on to the windmill.

Flight Time and Ericka are still counting bells. Flight Time takes his total to the guy, and he’s right, so they’re gone, leaving only Brian and Ericka. Ericka’s first guess, on the other hand, is 43, meaning that she missed a row, or a bunch, or a pod, or whatever bells come in.

After a set of commercials, Ericka is still looking, but she’s starting to think Brian should have done it instead. Can’t go in that direction, lady. She keeps counting.

Sam and Dan, with Spiky and Perky, are heading for the windmill. When they get there, the clue is for a Detour with the choices being Farmer’s Game and Farmer’s Dance. Phil explains that “farm families” in this part of the country enjoy various “pleasures,” and the Detour offers a choice between two ways the locals “unwind.” Note that the two dudes hitting golf balls behind Phil are not, by any means, swinging as hard as they can. There is a specific way they are doing it, like a dig, where you connect solidly but don’t swing through like they’re swinging a baseball bad or even a real golf club. It’s not a strength thing; it’s like croquet. They make the ball go, but they don’t make it take off like a bullet. It’s like a very motivated chip shot.

In both, you “don traditional Dutch costumes” and ride bikes to your Detour option. In Farmer’s Game, you find a creek, strip to your (provided) “farmer’s underwear” and swim over. There, you have to complete three holes of golf, each in under eight strokes. In Farmer’s Dance, you start by swinging a hammer and ringing a bell (a carnival game, basically), and then you learn a dance and eat a herring. Sam and Dan and Spiky and Perky both pick the golf. Matt and Gary initially pick the dance. One member of each team has to dress as a woman, so Gary takes that part, explaining that he’s done drag before, for “pranks” and Halloween, but “nothing kinky.” Matt looks both amused and mortified, like maybe he can’t decide which is predominant.

Ericka is still counting. She thinks she has the right answer, but she has 56 now. Still wrong. She takes a deep breath and goes back up.

Sam and Dan take off (Dan is in the dress) on bikes, followed by Spiky and Perky, who exchange “you look cute” compliments. Hee.

Maria and Tiffany are pretty sure they can complete either Detour, so they decide on the dancing.

Ericka is still counting.

Sam and Dan get down to their underwear. It’s getting pretty windy at this point, but they dump in, talking about the fact that it’s very cold. Spiky and Perky jump in the creek just after them.

Sam and Dan start on the golf. The “club” is a stick with a wooden shoe on it, and the golf balls appear to be plastic. Sam, giving about a half-swing, gets a nice shot off. Dan immediately snaps at him for hitting it too hard, but Sam insists he didn’t hit it hard. As Spiky and Perky struggle with the golf, Sam and Dan make the first hole on, apparently, their first try. As they take on the second one, you can see that they’re making solid contact, but they’re not swinging as hard as they can — in fact, they’re being careful not to.

Ericka? Oh, she’s still counting. And she’s wrong again.

Matt rings the bell in one hit. He and Gary go inside to learn the dance. They giggle in their interview later as they recall trying to learn it.

Maria and Tiffany get into their clothes, and Tiffany says that “for once, Maria was the man in the relationship.” Hee. That’s pretty funny.

Frustrated, Ericka comes down for some love. She tells Brian she’s not giving up or anything, but she’s really, really frustrated. He brings her outside for a five-minute break. Note that if her later comments bear any resemblance to reality, this up-the-stairs, down-the-stairs goes on for two hours.

Sam and Dan finish the second hole of golf. Spiky and Perky are really frustrated, partly because she can’t get the motion down. When Sam and Dan get done with the golf, they receive a clue sending them on bikes through town to Zoutkamp Harbor, where the pit stop is.

Spiky and Perky are still finding the golf very tough.

After commercials, Perky finally has the hang of making contact, and her shots are going plenty far now. It’s not brute strength, I don’t think; it’s hitting it the right way. “It took us a really long time to get the hang of it, ’cause it wasn’t regular golf,” Spiky interviews.

Dan and Sam are swimming back across the creek, hoping the dancing was good and tough.

Matt and Gary are indeed finding the dancing to be okay, but then they learn that they have to eat the herring. Rather than eat the herring, they switch Detours and go to the golf. Zoiks. That is the most surprising Detour switch I’ve ever seen, to switch just because you don’t want to eat a fish.

Ericka collects another hug and then goes back into the tower.

Spiky and Perky are done with the golf, and they move on.

After about five swings at the bell, Maria and Tiffany are having no luck.

Flight Time and Big Easy decide on the dance.

Ericka psychs herself up and turns in her next answer — 62. And she’s right, so she finally collects her clue and a kiss (heh) and leaves. Brian welcomes her with lots of hugs.

Sam and Dan are at the pit stop. They land on the mat, and they are team number one! They are very excited about this, and they win a sand buggy. Sam says they were “very, very excited.” So I understated it, apparently.

Spiky and Perky are getting dressed as Matt and Gary are getting undressed.

Tiffany and Maria are still trying to ring the bell.  They are on Attempt 29. You can find all kinds of fault with how they’re doing it — Maria isn’t really making any significant effort, and Tiffany is holding the mallet two-handed with her hands spread wide apart, rather than holding it at the end to get better leverage — but that’s not really the point. The point is that they’re not getting closer to being able to do it, and time is a-wasting, and they’re making themselves tired. This many attempts only make sense if (1) it’s chance, meaning if you keep going, it will probably work, or (2) you have ideas for a way to do it differently. This would be, for instance, moving your hands to the end of the mallet. If you are getting nowhere and you are doing the same thing every time, there’s just no point in this. Finally, they agree with me and head off to do the golf, where Gary and Matt are already at work.

Flight Time rings the bell. They learn the routine, and their showman experience comes out as they take to entertaining the crowd.

Spiky and Perky, you are team number two.

Brian and Ericka read the Detour clue — well, sort of — and they pick the dance.

Tiffany and Maria swim across the creek.

Gary and Matt are really fighting the wind as they do the golf. Tiffany and Maria arrive, and on Tiffany’s first shot, she throws the club. Maria’s first shot, she swings just a tiny bit, like she’s putting. As was the case witih ringing the bell, there is no real effort from Maria at this point.

Brian and Ericka completely miss the part about riding your bikes to your Detour option, so they set off on foot in the incredibly uncomfortable wooden shoes. That is regrettable for several reasons.

Matt and Gary are still swinging. Maria and Tiffany are still halfheartedly swinging. Maria very, very quickly wants to give up on the golf, but Tiffany points out that they already know they can’t ring the bell, so they should do this.

“Once we got it, it was Soul Train,” says Flight Time of the dance they learned. Indeed, they seem to be having a marvelous time. It’s safe to say I like this better than Soul Train. In fact, I would definitely watch a show called Flight Time And Big Easy Do The Traditional Dances Of Europe. When they’re done, they eat the herring.

“We’re not going to be able to do this, I can tell you that right now,” Maria complains about the golf. “Look at them,” she says pointing out Gary and Matt doing so much better. Which would have been like Perky saying, “Look at Sam and Dan; we’re obviously not going to be able to do this.” It appears that at this point, they have been trying for quite a short time. Clearly knowing it’s the wrong decision, a very unhappy Tiffany — who is pissed off because Maria won’t even try but knows there’s no point in arguing — says, “Let’s go try and hit the stupid thing.” So they leave. At this point, Gary and Matt, who seem to have taken to this very well and weren’t there very long before the girls, aren’t even done yet, so that’s how much of a try they’ve given it. So they’re back into the water, heading back to try the bell that they already tried to ring 30 times.

Now, here’s my thing. Maria knows SHE can’t ring the bell. She knows that’s not happening. She’s basically telling Tiffany, “I want YOU to go ring the bell, because I don’t want to stand around in the cold trying to put actual effort into figuring out the golf.” Remember, the very athletic Spiky and Perky talked in their interviews about how they took some time to get the hang of it, because it was an unusual club and an unusual ball, and it wasn’t like regular golf. And part of that was Perky figuring out how to connect so that the ball would travel and they could get the distance down in a few shots so they’d have enough left to get it in the hole. If we had seen shot after shot of both of these girls swinging with all their strength and connecting well and the ball not traveling far enough, I’d feel differently about it. But it’s not my sense that that’s what happened.
My sense is that Maria was cold and uncomfortable and decided to write a check for Tiffany’s arms to cash. And since she was giving up anyway and wasn’t willing to try, Tiffany decided it was  better to abandon the golf. Because the golf would have required both of them to improve — just as Spiky couldn’t carry his team on his own, Tiffany couldn’t carry the team on her own in that task, and she knew it. She could, in theory, ring the bell all by herself. Together, they could have done it, but Maria wouldn’t try and said she wouldn’t try.

Brian and Ericka are running (oops) toward the Detour.

Maria and Tiffany return to the scene of the ring. Maria hits it about six inches. Tiffany gets a good windup and a good swing and gets it probably 80 percent of the way up — as opposed to the two-thirds or so she’s been getting. This is on their 40th attempt. Maria’s attempts all consist of half-assedly hitting the bell and then complaining that she doesn’t know what she’s doing wrong.

Ericka begins complaining about her sore feet, particularly after two hours of up and down in the tower, which she feels Brian — who may be the most supportive man in America — isn’t adequately supportive about. I’ve really liked them, so I’m trying to ignore this, but it is becoming more difficult.

As Maria and Tiffany continue to fail at the bell-ringing, they decide to “hug it out for a minute.” They’re now crying. Oh my holy God, go do the golf. This isn’t happening. You just made your 50th attempt. What’s going to change?

When we return from commercials, Maria pours on the pressure by telling Tiffany she’s her “hero,” and “I’ve never heard you say you can’t do something.” Of course, Maria would happily tell you that she herself can’t do it; it’s just that she doesn’t want Tiffany to admit that Tiffany can’t do it, because Maria doesn’t want to play golf, because it’s cold and windy.

As Brian and Ericka are walking, she tells him to read the clue again, and it is here that they realize they were supposed to take bikes. Now, if you look at this from their point of view, they know they are way, way behind. They probably figure that if they walk all the way back to get the bikes, they’ll be dead for sure, because they don’t know the situation with Tiffany and Maria. We cut to a moment sort of out of nowhere, in which she angrily says, “The least you could do is be compassionate.” She certainly sounds like she’s being horrible, although I’ve never seen that before this week, and it makes me suspicious (also: hopeful) that this is very specific to these circumstances.

Flight Time and Big Easy are biking to the pit stop. “Flight Time and Big Easy,” says Phil, “you look ridiculous.” They break out laughing, but Phil tells them they are team number three.

Gary and Matt finish up the golf and get on their way to the pit stop.

Brian and Ericka keep bickering. Maria and Tiffany keep swinging at the damn bell. Tiffany moves her hands all the way out to the end of the handle, and she’s very, very close on this swing. Imagine if she’d figured this out sooner.

More Brian and Ericka bickering, more of her sounding horrible.

Tiffany tries again; no luck. Finally, Maria suggests that they go do the golf, since Tiffany has failed in her essentially solo effort to ring the bell. But by now, they have tried 71 times to hit the bell. That means that Maria, who has been useless all along, will be even more useless, and Tiffany has now tried really hard to swing what she later said was a 40-pound mallet 35 or 36 times. In other words, her arms are now made of rubber.

Welcome, Gary and Matt, you are team number four.

Maria and Tiffany return to golf. Brian and Ericka get to the ball, and Brian rings it.

Now, Maria and Tiffany are trying the golf, but you can see that Tiffany’s arms have no power in them at all, and they’re both extremely cold. The basic story of watching them do this is that Maria can’t make decent contact — she does this the same way as the bell; she’s just kind of not doing it very well. She’s not coordinated. She’s not good at physical stuff, which is fine — I’m not either. But there are women, of course, who are.

Brian and Ericka have so much fun doing the dance that they agree that it stopped the bickering. Remember, at this point, they still totally think they’re eliminated, which is very, very key. As they eat the herring, their moods have recovered. When they’re done, they realize that the clue says to continue on their bikes to the pit stop, and since they don’t have any bikes, they borrow some so they at least don’t have to walk. (I don’t think they have any illusion that this will fix the problem; it’s just better than walking in the wooden shoes.)

Maria and Tiffany are still golfing.

As Brian and Ericka are walking to the pit stop, she says, “Brian, I really do love you. But this is not my finest hour.” Remember, they still totally think they’re done, or at least in last place, and they’ve gotten things right before they get to the mat. When Phil says they are the fifth team to arrive, they are shocked, but they know it’s not right yet. When Phil points out that they didn’t ride the bikes and are getting a penalty, they’re clearly well prepared. They go to wait out their half-hour on the bench.

The reason I forgave Ericka — for now — is that she tried to make up with him by acknowledging her bad behavior before, not after, they found out they weren’t last. When somebody like Flo admits after finding out they aren’t last that it was her fault, then it doesn’t mean anything, because she saved up her chance to blame the other person in case they were last. But when Ericka still thought they were in last place, she affirmed that she loved him and knew that her behavior had been regrettable. It’s not perfect. She still shouldn’t have done it. But in terms of what I, personally, will overlook, it makes a big difference.

Maria and Tiffany. “We could do it if it wasn’t this windy,” Tiffany says. When she tries again, she says, “I don’t feel like my arms are working anymore.”

Brian and Ericka’s penalty runs out and they are checked in as team number five.

Maria and Tiffany hug and give up, and then Phil comes to them. Tiffany says that they don’t think they’ll be able to finish “with this weather.” She has never said — neither of them have ever said — that they couldn’t get the ball to go far enough. They consistently were getting bad contact and pulling the ball to the left. If they’d fixed the aim, not wasted time and arm energy swinging 70 times at the bell, I am very, very confident that they would have finished the golf. Hilariously, Maria says that they’ve given every challenge, including this one, their all. Oy. Tiffany sure has, but Maria did nothing today to help. Really, truly nothing. Less than Ericka.

A lot of people saw this Detour as hopelessly biased agianst female teams. I didn’t. Point 1: Tiffany was so close to ringing that bell once she moved her hands out to the end of the mallet, even though by then, she was very tired from having done it many times. If you had two fit women — say, Dustin and Kandace — trying that task, or two fairly strong and sturdy women — say, the bowling moms — I’m pretty sure they would have eventually rung the bell. I don’t think it requires superhuman strength. I think it requires some strength and, if you can’t just muscle it, some technique and some experimentation to see what works. Tiffany is quite a petite girl with very small arms, and she still got it almost up to the top. Based on that, I think there are plenty of women who could ring the bell.

Point 2: There’s no indication that they couldn’t have done the golf as a result of inherent physical limitations. Point 2a: They gave up unbelievably quickly the first time they tried the golf, and they gave up because Maria almost immediately insisted she couldn’t do it. Maria declaring she can’t do something does not indicate its difficulty. Tiffany could theoretically carry them both on the physical portion of the bell-ring/dance, but she couldn’t carry them both on the golf thing, even though it didn’t require brute strength. They both had to be willing to work at that one (see: Spiky and Perky), and Maria immediately announced it was impossible and gave up. You could see it was against Tiffany’s better judgment that they left in the first place.

Point 2b: They said themselves, at the time, that it was the weather. Tiffany said, <em>specifically</em>, that she felt the problem was the weather, not that they couldn’t do it. And part of the reason the weather affected them so much was that they dicked around changing Detour options and spent a ton of time outside and swam across the creek three times. It was cold. Everybody was cold. Sam and Dan were cold. The wind was cold. The wind got worse. This is partly what happens when you waste time going back and forth and swinging at a bell 70 times the same way hoping the outcome will change.

Point 2c: The teams that got the hang of the golf were, by the end, trying to put in short shots after about three or four longer shots. It didn’t require eight shots of brute strength to get to the hole. If we were talking about just hitting a ball a certain raw distance, I might believe how far you could hit it was the main problem. But that didn’t appear to be the case. Spiky and Perky, once they figured it out, were covering holes in six shots. If a man and a woman can do it in six, I certainly believe two women can do it in eight. I think they found that they couldn’t hit the ball in any kind of controlled way at all. They whiffed, or it only went a few feet, or it curved off to the left into the grass. I don’t think physical lack of strength resulting in an inability to move the ball was the issue. They weren’t good at it, and they didn’t stick with it during the part of the day when the weather and their exhausted arms didn’t create a problem.

(A little extra math, for those of you so inclined: Spiky and Perky were doing it in six shots. Suppose they used four alternating shots, two from each of them, to cover most of the distance and two more to actually get it to the hole. Suppose Spiky was hitting it TWICE as far as Perky was. That means the brute-force part, the distance-covering, was six Perky Shot Units — 2x plus 2(2x) = 2x + 4x = 6x. That means two Perkys could have covered that distance in six Perky-style shots and had the same two shots to get it in the hole. See what I mean? It is EXTREMELY unlikely to me that it was outside the ability of any team of women for inadequate-swinging-force reasons if a man and a woman trading shots could do it with 25 percent of their shots left over.)

Point 3: Even if it was a lack of arm strength, who cares? There have been tons of teams that have lacked some quality they needed to competitively perform tasks. These two have weak arms; Mika had a fear of heights; some people have no sense of direction; some people run faster; some people have no stamina. Everybody has something that makes it harder for them to do certain tasks then other people. Every running/walking task gives an advantage to taller people over shorter people — and, on average, men over women.

If you were talking about some theoretical task where, realistically, there was almost no chance that any woman could do it, then that would be one thing. But Maria and Tiffany are not good examples of how much arm strength women are capable of having. I fully believe there are countless women who could have done either or both halves of this Detour. I believe two Perkys would have gotten the golf done. I believe two Perkys might well have gotten the bell-ring done. It might have taken a little longer, yes. Did Tiffany and Maria stick it out long enough to find out whether they could do it or not if they didn’t give up and tried to learn it before the wind got so bitter and they got so exhausted? Not at all.

Lots of tasks were almost impossible — or at least much harder — for Charla. Or Luke. Or the tiny stuntmen. People blessed with good educations have advantages if they’ve learned foreign languages. Cristina and Ron had an advantage when they could speak Chinese. Things happen. I’m not convinced that “harder for me because of the pluses and minuses I bring, as opposed to the ones other people bring” constitutes “unfair.” If I believed no women could have done either of those tasks, then I’d consider it unfair. But I don’t, at all, and I don’t think Tiffany does, either. And I don’t care what Maria thinks. You can’t judge what two women who were genuinely trying would have been capable of from looking at a team where only one of them was trying.

I agree that it was a tough Detour. I agree that it was more physically demanding than some. I understand a lot of people argue that if you hadn’t had the bell-ring, that side of the Detour would have been completely undemanding physically. To me, they’re not required to have one side of the Detour be something you can do without any physical effort. Contrary to what Maria told TV Guide, there isn’t always one that doesn’t require anything physical at all. Her insistence that it’s supposed to break down into “physical” and “not physical” is her opinion, and her insistence that the dance was “supposed to be” one way, but they messed it up, is kind of ridiculous. (Note that, in that interview, Maria insists that “we” could have done the bell-ring (!) eventually if “we” had just stayed there. So she still, after all this time, ultimately believes that salvation lay in Tiffany saving her ass by ringing the bell, because she certainly does not think she was going to ring it and she certainly does not think the problem was her whining and quitting the golf so quickly.)

This team went a long, long way on this race having only one person on the team really doing anything other than talking, and if you ask me, what doomed them wasn’t the fact that they ran into a task requiring arm strength no woman possesses. It was the fact that they ran into a task where the obvious choice for them, the golf, required both of them to participate. THAT’s what knocked them out, to me.

Oh, and final point? For some reason, people keep saying that all-female teams are always knocked out for lack of physical strength and that’s why they’ve never won, which is not true in the slightest. The BQs were knocked out in All-Stars by the final task, which was a quiz, and in their original season by wandering around looking for a Detour. They were probably the team with the best chance of winning, no? Charla and Mirna were knocked out in their first season by bad navigating and slow consumption of scrambled eggs, and in All-Stars by that same final task that killed the BQs. Strength is not how Lena and Kristy went out. It’s not how Emily and Nancy or Dark Hair and Light Hair went out. It’s not how Heather and Eve went out, or Christie and Jodi (remember them?), or Kisha and Jen, or Jaime and Cara. It’s certainly not how Debbie and Bianca went out, given that they drove literally hours in the wrong direction. You could go on and on, but this isn’t really how the all-female teams have typically gone out, at all, so when People hands Tiffany and Maria the excuse, “It must hurt to be yet another all-female team knocked out due to a lack of strength,” I’m not sure what they’re talking about. I think people are thinking of the Bowling Moms, and it’s true that Colin passed them on that ascender thing, but Colin was a super-athlete. Being passed by Colin on that task is something that would have happened to anyone who wasn’t a super-athlete.

In the end, I just can’t wave the flag for all-female teams based on a team with a half-assed competitor like Maria. The fact that they didn’t win is of absolutely no concern to me and tells me absolutely nothing about whether female teams, in general, have a fair chance at winning. They already survived a non-elimination based on screwing up a fairly simple task (herding tourists). Their being knocked out says absolutely nothing about whether the whole thing is biased against women, because we all know it’s biased — not hopelessly, but somewhat — against teams where one person is trying to do all the work.

Aaaanyway. Next week: More recappage! Thanks again for your generosity and your donations to Donors Choose, and we’ll be back.

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You guys funded through the ninth episode of the season, and I intended to put up propsals for the last couple of episodes of the season and didn’t get around to it. But, of course, since you all helped Sarah raise more than $300,000 for Donors Choose, and because you’ve been so wonderful about coming back after I’ve been away from this gig for almost two years, I will happily finish out the season to thank you for your generosity and your goodwill.

It’s been great to see everybody again, it’s been great to feel like I’m working in a little bit of a tag-team with my dear pal M. Giant, and it’s been great to experience the frustration of hearing myself talk for pages and pages about something I know I shouldn’t care about quite so much.

So we’ll finish out the season, don’t worry. You’ve all been grand.

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Credits. Sphinxie! I’ve missed you. I wonder if we will be seeing you again. [BOMP.]

Phil explains to us that Dubai has gone from Expanse Of Sand Dunes to Booming Metropolis in fifteen years. That’s what you get for introducing the Frappuccino to a population of perfectly happy Bedouins. We are at a “luxury resort” that constitutes the pit stop.

8:17 AM. Spiky and Perky prepare to leave. Their hair continues to signal that while much in Dubai has changed, the power of mousse has not been diminished. Their clue tells them to choose one of a bunch of waiting briefcases and proceed to the Boardwalk Marina at the Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club. There, they’ll search the boardwalk for the clue box. (Don’t underestimate how hard that last part is sometimes.) Perky tells us that she’s never been so stressed out, and Spiky clarifies that Perky is not a relaxed girl, so that’s saying something. Huh. I hadn’t really pegged her as “intense” based on events thus far, but all right. Spiky also refers to Dubai as “Island Vegas,” calling it “very fabricated.” I’m not sure what that means, but I think we can agree that elements of Vegas are indeed fabricated, including most of the food. Spiky and Perky also introduce one of the themes for this week, which is that it’s extremely hot in Dubai. Spiky even mentions how much he is sweating, and when you can make a droid perspire, you are cranking things up, meteorologically speaking.

They reach the club and find their way to a Roadblock, which requires someone to paddle a little inflatable boat out to a yacht and collect a watch from a sheik. (Much the way inflatable boats have functioned in ancient societies since time immemorial, as in the famous case of the Trojan Dinghy.) Then they return to the shore, where they have to figure out that the time the watch is set to — 8:35 — is the combination to the briefcase, which contains the next clue. Spiky says that he took the Roadblock, because he’s familiar with “the logistics” of rowing an inflatable raft. I think the “logistics” are basically “remain upright,” but perhaps he has room for that on his Day-At-A-Glance calendar.

9:59 A. Brian and Ericka. Brian insists that Ericka can “rough it” if necessary, but Ericka tells us that she starts the day with her makeup all done, and over the course of the day, it sort of melts. But she doesn’t see any reason not to at least try. Hey, me neither. Start the day with a spatula; end it with a scraper.

Meanwhile, Spiky is having a hard time rowing the boat. I’m not sure what kind of body of water they’re in, but it does have the appearance of rowing against a current of some sort. Quick, Spiky, what are the logistics? Hurry!

10:42 AM. Big Easy and Flight Time take off. Big Easy refers to Dubai as “too hot,” “extremely hot,” and “hot.” I’m not sure what he’s getting at. HOW’S THE WEATHER IN DUBAI, BIG EASY?

Finally, Spiky reaches the yacht and gets his watch.

10:45 AM. Gary and Matt. As they leave, we learn that Matt redid his hair color last night — and his dad helped him. Now that is some father-son bonding.

When Spiky returns, Perky asks if he got “the treasure,” so apparently that’s how the clue refers to the watch in the course of, I suppose, explaining that you use the treasure to figure out the combination. Spiky figures out that it’s 8:35 on the watch, so he has no trouble opening the briefcase. Their clue sends them to the Abra Station, a water taxi port. In the cab, Spiky points out that rowing the boat wasn’t easy, so some teams may struggle.

Brian and Ericka reach the marina and he does the Roadblock, because, as he explains, she “doesn’t do water.” Well then. Doesn’t do water, doesn’t do cold, doesn’t do hot … perhaps Ericka was expecting The Amazing Race Around A Giant Terrarium.

11:34 AM. Sam and Dan. They explains as they leave that they are still in this stupid alliance with Maria and Tiffany, so they’re sticking with that. They feel like if they have to, they can out run every team “except possibly the Globetrotters.” The professional athletes? Yes, probably. They would like to see the Globetrotters knocked out. I congratulate them for concluding that the one team they could not outrun would ideally be eliminated at some point. They are catching on! Sam thinks they’ll maybe ride on a yacht, or “be in a music video.” I’m sorry … a music video? He hears “yacht club” and thinks “music video”? Isn’t he too young to even remember “Rio”? Come to think of it, isn’t he too young to remember music videos?

As Brian clambers onto the yacht, Ericka remarks that “he’s so cute.” It’s good to retain this kind of affection for your husband, and to express it while he is doing all the things you do not so much wish to do. I still kind of love her, but I admit that this leg is not her finest.

Speaking of the Globetrotters, they find that their cab driver has taken them to the wrong club. But he assures them that he knows where the right club is. So … miscommunication? Big Easy wasn’t so much Big Enunciate?

Brian returns to Ericka, and he figures out the combination. In the cab, she bandages up his blistered hands, saying, “Mama’s got you.” Hey, she’s at least all over the nursemade skills.

Gary and Matt reach the Roadblock, and Gary takes it. Unfortunately, he’s “a canoer, not a rowboater,” so he’s unable to get used to the motion when he’s trying to row backwards, as he’s meant to. Thus, he lies on his stomach in the dinghy and paddles it like a canoe. Huh. Well, it’s improvisation, anyway. It’s not a terrifically long distance, and it’s not like it’s an outrigger that’s going to go wildly off-course. It’s practically floating in a tire; you just have to move any way you can.

As Spiky and Perky approach Abra Station, he says he sees the clue box. “No you don’t,” she says, thinking she knows what he’s looking at and it isn’t the clue box. But then she realizes he does see it, and she says, “Oh … I do, too.” Fortunately, she is appropriately sheepish. And by “appropriately sheepish,” in this case, I mean “really quite sheepish.” The clue is for a Detour, which sends them to a marketplace to perform one of two tasks. In Gold, you have to use a scale to count out exactly $500,000 worth of gold, which means dealing with the changing exchange rate displayed on the wall. In Glass, you open a crate full of parts that can be assembled into 12 hookahs. You have to assemble all of them perfectly to match the ones you see as examples before you’re done.

Spiky and Perky think the entire idea of an exchange rate sounds “confusing,” so they decide to pursue the hookah option. Math is hard!

Gary reaches the Roadblock yacht. He gets his watch.

At 11:47 AM (an hour and fifteen minutes behind the last team before them), Maria and Tiffany finally leave. They pray to leave Dubai, but their prayers are not answered. There are so many worse things that could happen than remaining in Dubai, ladies.

11:54 AM. Mika and Canaan. Mika explains that she’s never played team sports or “really ran in my whole life,” so she isn’t necessarily as competitive as Canaan. This has clearly been very well thought out: “I’ve never really ran in my whole life and I am afraid of water and heights, so you know what would be the perfect next reality show for me to try? Something with lying around. Or, barring that, something with racing and terrifying stunts.”

Gary figures out the combination to the briefcase, and they’re off.

Big Easy takes the Roadblock for the Globetrotters. Flummoxed by the paddling, he eventually gives up and just paddles with his hands. Hee. He interviews that in New Orleans, you can’t go boating in the Mississippi. True, but nevertheless: lame.

Spiky and Perky find the hookahs. They open the crate and start pulling out the pieces.

Ericka, meanwhile, is window shopping from the taxi. Priorities, people. You can do tasks anywhere, but cheap crap for tourists is hard to come by.

“You’re going down in history as the biggest man ever in a lifeboat made for a five-year-old!” Flight Time calls out encouragingly to Big Easy as he paddles with his hands. That’s what you need, is a buddy who will encourage you in your hour of need. Sam and Dan arrive, and Dan takes the Roadblock. Dan winds up paddling with his hands as well.

Spiky and Perky continue to put together hookahs and even start to bicker a little. SIGNS OF LIFE! SIGNS OF LIFE!

Brian and Ericka have chosen the gold. They do not, however, seem to know that they are allowed to ask for a calculator. And in fairness, if you try to tackle this as long division, you’re essentially dividing five digits into eight (once you take care of the decimal points), and that is a very unwieldy math problem. I’m fairly decent at math, and I timed myself doing it and gave up, not done yet, at two minutes, because I think if it takes two minutes to do, you’re going to lose the exchange rate before that. And it’s not like only the last digit of your divisor changes, either, so you can’t really do much approximating that’s going to be useful. I think you would have to be very strong in math to do this without a calculator in the time you have available.

As Big Easy and Dan both paddle back toward their partners with their watches, Flight Time yells out “Do it for the hood!”, which causes Sam to yell, “Do it for the suburbs!” WOOOO, SUBURBS! When Big Easy returns, Flight Time tells him to pull his pants up, but Big Easy says, “From the hood, remember?” Hey, nobody is too cool to pull his pants up. That’s an important rule that I always wished was better understood when I rode the subway in New York a lot and wound up with a lot of young men’s behinds at eye level.

Maria and Tiffany run toward the Roadblock, and because it involves any exertion whatsoever, Tiffany has to do it. Maria is saving all her energy for … something. Else. Other than Roadblocks.

At this point, Big Easy hits his major snag, which is that he knows he’s looking at the face of the watch for a three-digit combination, but rather than thinking “8:35,” he’s thinking more literally about the numbers displayed on the watch — the two that the hands are pointing to, and the date. It’s not a terrible guess; it’s just a different way of looking at the same thing. It’s hardly absurd to think that when you’re supposed to be reading a watch face to get a code, you’d use the numbers that the hands are pointing to. Unfortunately, he gets brain-lock and cannot get himself to step back and think about it from another angle, which is what he needs to do. I think the fact that he has trouble reading the number on the date portion also keeps him from figuring it out as soon as he otherwise might, because he convinces himself that something is wrong in that department, when in fact he is shopping in the wrong department to begin with, if I can stretch my metaphor to that point.

Dan, on the other hand, reads the “8:35″ and gets moving. In their cab, Sam says he wants the Globetrotters out, so this is fine with him. Sam and Dan are one of my most disappointing teams ever, I have to say. They’re bland, but they’re not even smart and bland. They’re kind of dumb and bland and efficient, which is my least favorite thing.

Meanwhile, Tiffany rows her boat, while congratulating herself in an interview for doing things men do, like rowing inflatable boats. As you undoubtedly know, women fought very hard in various suffragette rallies for the right to row inflatable boats, so she is stepping into a storied part of feminist history, to be sure.

Mika and Canaan get to the Roadblock. Big Easy continues to struggle, not happy about seeing this trailing team catch up. “We stay here long enough, Lance and Keri might show up,” Flight Time jokes. Canaan takes the Roadblock, naturally, as Mika points out that “it’s water,” adding in an interview that she’s “pretty scared of water.” Hey, how scared can she really be?

Tiffany’s briefcase opens.

Spiky and Perky keep working on the hookahs.

Over in the Wonderful World Of Long Division, Brian has the right first digit — a five — but he has too many zeroes, thinking that the number of ounces will be five thousand and something, rather than five hundred and something. “Damn, we need a calculator,” Ericka says, but she doesn’t apparently ask for one. She mutters sadly that her American education has dumbed her down so she can’t do math without a calculator. Heh.

Flight Time encourages Big Easy to rethink how he’s looking at the watch, but before that has a chance to happen, Canaan pops his briefcase open (with a helpful Mika wondering aloud whether there’s a different “Muslim clock”), so now it’s just the Globetrotters, in last place. And now, Big Easy is worried.

Commercials.

Finally, when we return, Big Easy — who has admirably declined to panic this entire time — figures out that he’s reading the time on the watch, not the literal numbers on the face of the watch. He tries 8:35, and the briefcase pops open. “Don’t worry about it, we can go catch ‘em,” says Flight Time. In the cab, Big Easy beats himself up. “Talking about ‘for the hood,’ the hood’s mad at me now! The hood say, ‘what the hell’s he doing? Read the watch, dummy!’” Aww. It’s been a long time since I saw a team take that kind of adversity quite that well, I’ve gotta say.

Spiky and Perky are almost done with their hookahs, except that there are pieces sitting around that they haven’t used, and Phil was explicit in the explanation that you have to use all the pieces.

Brian and Ericka, meanwhile, are still struggling with the gold. He wants to switch to the hookahs, but she still thinks he’s “really smart at this kind of stuff” and can do it. In my experience, when someone tells you they’re really, truly not going to get this math problem? You should usually listen.

Spiky and Perky learn that their hookahs are not done right.

Brian and Ericka learn that their gold guess is not right. Man, this seems to be a tougher-than-usual Detour.

Matt and Gary decide to go to the hookahs, too, and when Matt explains what a hookah is, his father says, “We used to call it something else.” GARY! I am shocked. You can see where his kid got the instinct to have pink hair. Rebel!

Spiky and Perky again ask for an inspection on the hookahs, and again, they are out of luck. “Fudge,” says Spiky. I wonder if he really said “fudge,” or if they dubbed him saying something really wicked, like “piffle.” Perky doesn’t understand why the hookahs aren’t okay because they’re “close enough.” (”In this Detour, teams will choose between Close Enough and Eh, Whatever.”)

When Brian and Ericka are wrong about the gold again, they give up at last. Meanwhile, Spiky and Perky finally figure out that the gold washers they’ve been neglecting have to wind up somewhere. At last, once they’ve attached the washers, they are cleared to leave. The clue tells them to head to the Atlantis Resort (woooo! more about that later) and find the Leap Of Faith, which Phil explains is a six-story-tall water slide, at the bottom of which they’ll get their next clue. On the way there in the cab, Perky says the hookah thing was “so stressful.” I can think of things that may be more stressful, at least for some people. DUN.

Brian and Ericka start on the hookahs.

Sam and Dan get to the Detour clue box and pick the gold. Tiffany and Maria, shortly thereafter, choose the gold, too.

The first time Brian and Ericka have their hookahs checked, it’s a no go.

Mika and Canaan reach the Detour clue. Two times in a row, she tears part of the clue off, throws it on the ground, and tells him to “pick that up.” Do people forget that they are on camera, and that things like “Pick that up!” will not look good? At any rate, they don’t know the gold exchange rate (and apparently don’t understand that it will be displayed on the wall), so they pick the hookahs.

Brian rearranges one of the hookahs, but he thinks it’s not right. Ericka encourages him to “try anything.”

Matt and Gary arrive at the Glass Detour and start unpacking their crate.

Dan and Sam arrive at the jewelers, where the Gold option is. They have — hey! — a calculator, which they apparently threw in their stuff just in case they had some use for it. I’ve always thought that what would be handy on this race would be partnering with a lady with a big purse, but a dude with a big backpack full of random crap will do just as well. Unfortunately, they don’t have any idea how to use the calculator to solve the problem. I maintain that, at least at first, Brian was doing the right math — that’s why he came up with a five as the first digit. I think the multiplying he was doing later was an effort to see if he could estimate the answer by multiplying instead of dividing. These guys, on the other hand, don’t understand what to do with the numbers — that they need to divide the 500,000 by the exchange rate. So for my money, they’re dumber. Brian needed a calculator; they appear to need a third-grade math teacher.

“I just don’t understand their exchange rate.” Sigh.

Maria and Tiffany show up, fortunately for the boys, and their great facility with money means that they understand that in order to figure out how many ounces you can get for $500,000, you divide $500,000 by how much an ounce costs. (I have just strained my eyeballs from all the rolling.) And fortunately for the girls, the boys have a calculator. So they each have half the ability to do this, meaning that they cooperate and can do it just fine.

Flight Time and Big Easy choose the hookahs, figuring they’ll catch up with someone — and in fact, they’ll catch up with several teams, possibly. Mika and Canaan, for instance, are just getting to the hookahs, where Brian and Ericka are really frustrated.

Meanwhile, Sam and Dan and Tiffany and Maria collaborate to finish the Detour and receive the clue for the water slide.

Speaking of which, Spiky and Perky are almost there. They interview that they’re actually both afraid of heights, but they go anyway. When they’re done, they get a clue that says they are to search for Dolphin Bay Beach, which is the part of the pit stop where the resort is.

Here is where I will explain that the minute I saw the Atlantis, before they said its name, I thought, “Wow, that looks a lot like the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, where I spent a lovely day all by myself, doing crosswords and wandering into the incredibly blue water now and then, during the only vacation of its kind in my lifetime.” Seriously, if anybody ever offers you the opportunity to lie around in the Bahamas, don’t think to yourself, “I am not so much a Bahamas kind of person,” because you might miss the opportunity to discover that it is not for nothing that rich, idle people enjoy that sort of recreation.

Anyway, Spiky and Perky are at the pit stop mat in no time, and Phil welcomes them as team number one. They each win a personal watercraft, WOOOOOO!

Okay. Back to the competition. When Flight Time and Big Easy get to the hookahs, Brian and Ericka, Matt and Gary, and Canaan and Mika are all still there, at various stages of completion. Brian and Ericka still have something wrong with theirs, and they still can’t figure out what. I cannot muster the energy to make some sort of joke about how it seems like they may have already hit the hookahs, but rest assured, it has occurred to me.

Commercials.

When we return, Matt has to sit down and take a break, just to recover from the extreme heat. And then, Brian finally figures out that the striped bases have to go with the striped hoses. They are finally done and get to leave.

Flight Time and Big Easy decide that if Brian and Ericka are just leaving, this isn’t going to go quickly and they aren’t going to make up ground. It’s actually not a bad piece of analysis, except that they don’t know that Brian and Ericka tried the other Detour first.

Tiffany and Maria go down the water slide. Sam and Dan follow. The girls check in first, and then the guys show up, and it’s all a big happy reunion. And in an interview, Tiffany talks about how “fine” the boys looked in their suits. I can’t help wondering whether these girls are still living in fantasyland where this alliance contains the promise of smooches. I bet they’re not.

For the gold task, Big Easy goes next door and borrows a calculator. Giant friendly American in need of tech help!

Gary and Matt finally find the last couple of pieces they need for their hookahs, and they leave.

On the way to the water slide, Brian explains that he’s afraid of heights, while Ericka is afraid of water. When they get there, he presses her to go first, figuring that if he goes and leaves her alone up there, she might not go at all. “I’m only doing this for you,” she says unhappily before going down the slide. Brian follows. They find their way to the pit stop and check in as team number four.

Flight Time and Big Easy continue working on the gold weighing.

Canaan and Mika are finally done with the hookahs. As they head out in the cab, she expresses concern about what this Leap Of Faith thing is going to be, and he says they probably have to “jump off something.” We flash back in black and white to previous mentions of her fears of water and heights. If you have watched this show a lot, you undoubtedly suspect, as I do, that she is about to make a big deal about being afraid of water and heights, and then go down the slide anyway, and then talk about how proud she is of herself, because that’s what generally happens in these situations.

Matt and Gary go down the water slide. Welcome, you are team number five.

So now, it’s just Big Easy and Flight Time and Canaan and Mika.

In the cab on the way to the slide, Canaan tells Mika that she has nothing to worry about — after all, she can wear her “floaties.” Um, really? She brought floaties? Floaties are not a good sign. Floaties indicate both infancy and a misunderstanding of physics, as two things the size of blown-up Ziploc sandwich bags are not actually going to keep a grown adult from sinking. They arrive at the resort and find their way to the stairs leading up to the Leap Of Faith.

When they get to the top, Canaan’s first idea (and one of his better ones) is to get this over with so quickly that she doesn’t have time to get scared. Unfortunately, she is scared before that can happen. She stops probably twenty feet before the top of the slide. “Stop it; hold my hand,” he barks. Her back is up immediately: “Don’t tell me what to do.” “This is not going to be bad, get up there,” he says. She doesn’t want him to push so hard.

He strips off his shirt and throws it aside, saying, “We’re not losing this race because of this. Get your butt on the slide. Let’s go.”

Note that he chose, from the beginning, to treat the fact that she was scared — not her ultimate refusal to do it, but the fact that she was afraid to do it — as completely ridiculous. He didn’t try, “Hey, I know this is really, really scary for you, and I totally understand, but this is all about doing things even though they’re really scary. I know you can do it, and I’m going to be right behind you.” He showed zero sympathy for her fears from the very beginning. There was no effort to work around the fact that she was scared; it was just basically, “Pretend you’re not.”

And the thing is, you can’t take a rational approach to defeating anxieties and phobias. You can’t tell people who are truly terrified of heights that they’re being stupid. They aren’t doing it on purpose. I don’t think Mika wants to quit. Her reactions, from here on out, are flawed in many ways, and she can absolutely be faulted for being here at all. But the mere fact that this is really, really frightening to her is not her fault. Or at least you can’t know whether it is. People with genuine phobias are not panicking because they’re sissies; it’s exactly like telling someone who’s genuinely depressed that they should snap out of it. I’m not afraid of heights or water, but I am mildly claustrophobic, and it has nothing to do with rationally believing that there’s a high likelihood that the (for instance) incredibly crowded club jammed with people is going to burn down and trap me inside. It’s a panic response. It’s like getting mad at people for breaking out in hives. Once it happens, the panicking person retains some responsibility to handle it as well as possible (which she doesn’t), but the thing itself — which is what he’s mad at her for — is not a character flaw.

I’m not saying it would have worked for him to take a different approach, but the one he picked was pretty much guaranteed, I think, to make everything worse.

At any rate. the more he tries to order her around, the more she stands there with her feet planted, getting more and more scared. He is not being a calming presence.

Finally, Flight Time and Big Easy finish up the gold task.

“It’s water, and it’s a slide. GET IN THE WATER!” Canaan barks. “This is my worst nightmare,” Mika mutters. Canaan pauses to blow up her floaties — while they’re on her arms — saying, “A million dollars. To go down a slide.” Which, of course, isn’t the deal: even if she does it, they probably won’t win. If the million bucks were waiting at the bottom, you might be looking at a different calculus. Or, to be honest, you might not.

In the one moment where he seems to be doing anything right, Canaan says, “Let me walk you to the slide.” This, I think, is the approach that was most likely to work. One step at a time, you try to break it down into things that are less scary. Legitimately trying, I think, she walks over to the slide. When they get over there, he says, “Start by sitting down.” She asks him to “calm down,” which … I don’t understand at all, because … well, for several reasons, including that he’s clearly not going to calm down. But I think you can sense how panicky this all feels to her, given that she seems to read him as no less calm than she is.

“Start by sitting down,” he says, pulling her toward the slide as she starts crying. When they get close to the top of the slide, she loses her nerve and tries to pull away, off to her right. He yanks her back, over to the left, trying to force her down onto the slide, or at least physically restrain her from backing away. This yanking motion, when she is perched at the top of a six-story water slide she is terrified to go down, sends her into what’s obviously a true panic response, and she screams, “Help me, help me,” to the attendant standing by the slide. Canaan, even after she screams, doesn’t take his hands off her, but keeps them locked around her arms, trying to force her to sit on the slide.

Okay. Do I see this as physical abuse in the same way as hitting? Of course not. But you cannot physically overpower another adult to get your own way. It may not be abusive, but it’s disturbingly disrespectful.

It’s not even just the fact that he put his hands on her. Even if there’s no touching, you can’t physically block the door to keep another adult from leaving a room. You can’t pull the phone cord out of the wall so she doesn’t call someone you don’t want her to talk to. You don’t get to physically restrain other adults from exercising their will just because they’re not doing what you want them to do. I mean, you can take the keys away from a drunk driver to avoid injury, but not going down the slide isn’t dangerous to anyone; it’s just not what he wants. He’s trying to physically force her to do something that he wants her to do, even though she doesn’t want to. Her reasons, and how good they are, are not the issue. She gets to decide whether to go, and you can be angry about that choice, or you can blame her for that choice, or you can judge her for that choice, or you can resent the money it cost you. You can never forgive her for what she decides. But you cannot interfere by force. That’s why I hate this scene. It’s not just the fact that trying to push her into a sitting position — or even just trying to physically hold her at the top of the slide — is idiotically dangerous and would have been even more so if he had actually succeeded in forcing her down while she was trying to get away from him. It’s that he doesn’t have the right to overrule her. He has the right to hate her if he chooses, but the rules of basic bodily integrity dictate that it’s her choice to make.

You can try to convince, cajole, bribe, wheedle, beg, whine — hell, you can browbeat her, if that’s the kind of person you want to be. But you can’t take the decision away from her.

Anyway. His response to her developing panic attack is to yell in her face, “YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE US LOSE THE RACE!” I should point out here that, in addition to being disrespectful, his entire approach is very, very stupid. People who feel panicky panic more and more as they have less and less control. Once they have this confrontation where he grabs onto her and tries to physically move her, they are no longer on the same side, and she’s legitimately afraid of him every time he walks toward her. She tenses up every single time he takes a step in her direction, and that means that he can’t come over and be soothing, he can’t come over and be supportive. He has to stay back, and every time he tries to come over and give support — where he might otherwise be able to rub her shoulders or something, something to get her to relax — she freaks out because of that moment where she screamed and he still didn’t let her go.

When we return from commercials, Canaan has decided — too late — to go with a better approach, which is to just sit down near the slide and encourage her to start by just sitting down also. But he can’t fake patience, so he goes over and takes hold of her arm again. Of course, now, she thinks he’s going to start trying to push her down the slide every time he touches her, so she tells him to stop and “do not force me.” He briefly backs off. Now, she stalls for time by talking to herself about why people want to “do this stupid stuff” in the first place. Hmm. For whatever reason you showed up yourself, missy?

She starts to sit down, and then she says, “I can’t do this,” and she pats her belly. A couple of commenters I saw took the position that this looked like she was saying she couldn’t because she was pregnant. I’m sure that’s not what it was, I’m sure it’s just a reference to butterflies, but I see what they’re talking about. “I’m begging you, you are breaking my heart,” he says. He tells her that she’ll regret it if she doesn’t do it, and that actually seems like it’s penetrating a little bit.

Flight Time and Big Easy are on the way.

With Canaan far away and leaving her alone, Mika voluntarily sits on the slide. “That a girl,” he says. She has her hands on the bar. And then she looks down and says, “I can’t do this.” He comes over and tells her how to grab the bar, but she tells him to stay away. He’s all disgusted, like, “Mika, TRUST ME,” and she says she doesn’t. Because quite understandably, she doesn’t. And she’s right not to, because his next move is to go over and squat down behind her and try to pull her hands off the bar. There’s no way they could have gone down together; this “I’m going to sit behind you”  business has no purpose except that he wants to pry her hands off the bar and push her down. But again, they’re past the point where his physical presence, whether or not it might once have been comforting, does anything except make her more scared. So now, with him behind her, she’s scared again, and she makes him get up and go away. “I hate my life right now,” she says. She is seriously the least sympathetic panic victim of all time.

Flight Time and Big Easy arrive at the Atlantis.

“I can’t do it,” Mika says. “Yes, you can,” Canaan insists. “I CAN’T DO IT!” she wails. Oy. And then she says, “Why? Why?”, which I don’t even understand, and Canaan tells her to shut up and go down the slide (basically).

Flight Time and Big Easy head for the Leap Of Faith.

“This is ridiculous,” Canaan says angrily. “Canaan, why do you hate me?” she asks. Aaaaaaargh. He answers, “Because you’re being a complete moron.” I don’t think “moron” is the issue, dude. The part where she’s saying “Why?” and “I hate my life” is ridiculous, obviously. She’s handling it horribly. But the part where she’s too scared to do it, which is what he’s talking about, really has nothing to do with being a moron. It has to do with panic, and if you’ve never had panic/anxiety issues, I think it’s extraordinarily difficult to understand it when other people do. She’s sitting on the slide; she intends to go. She’s trying. She went over and sat down and put her hands on the bar when he left her alone. She’s not stilled by a desire not to get her hair wet.

And finally, Big Easy and Flight Time arrive at the water slide. Canaan interviews that the way this works, once another team shows up, you have two minutes to do the thing, or else you have to step aside. I think that’s amazingly generous to Mika and Canaan, who had apparently been at the slide for 45 minutes already. If I wrote the rules, they would say, “If you’ve already been there more than two minutes, then when the next team comes, you have to step aside.”

But that’s not the rule, so now the pressure is on Mika. “You have two minutes,” Canaan says angrily. “Your life is going to change in two minutes.” Canaan starts telling her that she “can do this,” but she’s long ago stopped feeling like they are, in any way, on the same side, so there is no trust here at all and his assurances mean nothing. I’m not sympathetic to her overall, in any way, and I’m especially unsympathetic to her decision to come on the race in the first place. But the panic part itself — the part where she genuinely bugs out when he puts his hands on her — that’s not rational, and you can’t just berate her out of it. As I said, I think it’s very hard for people who don’t have something that makes them panic — not “get scared,” but physically panic — to understand that this was probably just as frustrating for her as it was for him. I guess I’d put it this way: if you broke your leg and then you whined about it incessantly, then I could be upset that you whined. But if I were mad at you for being unable to walk on your broken leg, then that’s pretty stupid. And he’s mad at her long before the whining starts. He’s mad at her for being scared and not letting him talk her out of it.

As Canaan keeps telling her to go and she looks like she’s considering it, Big Easy bellows, “Don’t do it!” “Don’t listen to him,” Canaan says. “Don’t do it! I wouldn’t do it!” Big Easy says. “It’s high. It’s a long way up here.” “You guys, come on, that’s not cool, y’all,” Canaan says. Yes, that’s not cool. Grabbing her and dragging her toward the slide until she screams? Totes cool! Big Easy just keeps jawing that if she’s scared, she shouldn’t do it. He even tells her that if she’s scared, they’ll walk her down from the slide. Okay: heh. Much, much too late, Canaan tries to play the “I believe in you” card, and he’s like, “Oh, they say you can’t do it, but I know you can.”

“Time’s up; step aside,” says the attendant. And as soon as Mika can step out of the way, Flight Time is tucked, rolled, and whooshing down the slide. As Big Easy follows, Canaan’s all, “I thought you were decent, Big Easy. You’re a piece of crap, man.”

Oh, man. Look, I sort of wish that hadn’t happened. I wish there had been the same outcome without taunting her. But that was really mild taunting, all things considered, and the purpose was to psych her out and win the game, not to wound her for life. And I guarantee you that if we’re talking about making her miserable, what Big Easy did was peanuts compared to what Canaan did. Big Easy interviews that he didn’t enjoy that she was crying, but … it’s a race. They were on the edge of being eliminated. If a psych-out helps, then … that’s what you do.

So now Flight Time and Big Easy are done. Canaan tells Mika he’s going down the slide now. When he’s at the bottom, she’s still at the top, whimpering, “I wish I was in Nashville, doing anything but this.” Yes, yes. So she doesn’t do it at all. As she slowly starts down the stairs, she says, “He’s going to hate me.”

Improbably, Flight Time and Big Easy land on the mat and are not eliminated.

Mika and Canaan come to the mat, and they are eliminated for … sucking, and being last, and so forth. In an interview, Canaan praises himself for finding “freedom in forgiveness,” and if he’s lucky, Mika will find freedom in forgiveness, too.

Executive Producer? Jerry Bruckheimer.

Next week: Ericka is upset, and Flight Time and Big Easy dance. Aw, yeah.

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Also: Shambo’s mullet.

Seriously, the claim that Russell changed his mind about getting rid of Liz, as opposed to losing the argument with the rest of the group about getting rid of Liz, is 100 percent fiction, as far as we know. That is not supported by ONE SINGLE THING that happened on the show. They are frequently guilty of a little revisionist history in the previouslys, but this has become ridiculous. Probst is literally telling a story in the voiceovers that never EVEN ARGUABLY happened on the show. I’m sorry to act like I care about the credibility of Survivor, but this is important stuff if you want people to care about watching your freaking program.

Foa Foa, Day 15. It is raining. (Expect to hear that a lot.) Toes are crazily pruny. Mick is shaking, a state of affairs on which someone comments, because shaking doesn’t seem like a particularly good sign. Mick explains that it’s Day 15, and the rain has been coming down since about Day 10. He even admits that when he saw Ashley voted off to a nice warm bed last night, he was a little jealous. Heh. Done with being on television, but also done with waterlogged fingertips and peeing in the bushes.

Russell tells Jaison that they should go and sit in the water, because he’s sure that will be warmer. Not sure why that would be the case, but as usual, Russell takes the position that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot, whether anything he’s saying makes any sense or not. Jaison interviews that when he was a kid, he watched Captain Planet, and one of the characters on that show had what was called “heart,” and he wouldn’t mind having that power right now. I think he has mixed up “heart” and “an umbrella and/or space heater.”

Jaison and Russell go and sit in the water, but Jaison goes from cold to shivering. Russell Interview #1: Russell proclaims that he is awesome, because he can stand the rain and he wanted it to be more miserable. Bring it on, nature! Fuck you, clouds! Jaison tells Russell that he is still really cold — shockingly, the “lying in the water” plan for warming up didn’t turn out to be an awesome idea. Russell Interview #2: Russell tells us that the conditions are “really no big deal.” Spreading his arms, he adds, “Matter of fact, this makes me stronger.” Somewhere, Jeff Probst is impregnated and doesn’t know why. So that’s two Russell interviews prior to the credits.

After the credits, we are underwater, where majestic music plays and sea creatures frolic. “Consider this turtle,” I say to my television in a sophisticated British accent, because I love talking to the TV. Out on the shore, Purple-Russell is fishing. Fishing, fishing, fishing … and then for a second, it looks like he loses consciousness. well, I’m sure that wasn’t important, even though they played Doom Music. What could go wrong?

People at Galu are not any happier than people at Foa Foa, and they may even be less happy, because they had a chance at a tarp (which would have made this an entirely different experience) and didn’t take it, because they took the blankets and such. (Idiots.) John explains this in an interview. (John would be the rocket scientist who has barely been seen.) He blames P-Russ for the whole thing. P-Russ, meanwhile, is the only one working to keep them from completely losing their fire, it seems. The rest of them are all huddled together by a tree, and Brett (that’s right, “Brett” exists) notes that it was pretty impressive to see P-Russ working while the rest of them chilled out. He says, however, that P-Russ may have actually been overdoing the work ethic. Whatever that means in the context of being the only guy keeping the fire going during the epic rainstorm.

P-Russ, meanwhile, tells us that he’d rather hang in the shelter, but these are “deposits” of work that he will later be able to remove as “withdrawals.” That is so, so, so not how Survivor works, buddy. Survivor works more on a system of successive robberies, where you just hope that you can rob the previous guy and keep the next guy from robbing you, and the person who commits the last robbery wins. Similarly, he uses an analogy about buying and selling stock, which again implies that he thinks there is some return on investment involved in this particular game, and as relates to work at camp, there almost never is. Work is a junk bond, man.

He stumbles into the shelter. He does not look good. Everyone notices. Kelly (who exists, surprisingly, and is a hairstylist) thinks P-Russ is pushing too hard.

Over at Foa Foa, everyone is still waiting out the rain. Mick is still shaking as he presses himself against a (lucky) tree. (Uh, sorry.) Mick says that the tree cranny he’s crammed into sort of stays a tiny bit warm, so that’s where he will stay.

In Russell Interview #3, Russell goes on and on about how lame and weak and sissy the other people in his tribe are, because they won’t do anything to, I guess, stop the rain from falling. Seriously, as usual, you can tell he’s full of it from the lack of specifics. He says he could help them if they weren’t such babies, but he doesn’t say how, and there is not a single shot of him trying to get the tribe to do anything at all. It is all talk — literally ALL talk — there is not a single piece of video evidence to support the idea that this story (in which Russell tries to get people to take steps to improve the situation, but they won’t) ever happened. You never used to see this on the show, ever — you’d see an interview to underline a point, but you wouldn’t be expected to take it entirely on faith that an event that an entire scene had any basis in fact. If they had footage of Awesome Russell suggesting some great idea and someone else saying, “I’m too cold,” don’t you think they’d probably use it? Hint: THEY DON’T HAVE IT. IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.

My short take? The entire story they are trying to sell this season is a string of Russell delusions and Probst bluster, and only people who do not watch television very carefully at all could possibly fail to notice. It is uninterrupted horse manure, which is the same reason you saw nothing to support the story about Russell being responsible for booting Ashley that they told in the previouslys. This isn’t editing or shading — they are trying to tell a story through interviews and voiceovers about Russell running the show and being stronger and more motivated than everyone else when it just didn’t happen that way except in Russell’s head. You can pretty easily tell it didn’t happen, because if it had happened, there would be film of it happening, considering that they film these people constantly. I mean, you’re basically stuck with (1) it didn’t happen; or (2) they decided not to show any of it; or (3) the camera guys were on a coffee break every time anything that would substantiate this version of events occurred. Come on. You’ve watched television. You know which one it is.

I mean, as a for instance, note that in the previous sequence, you saw people talking about P-Russ working and overdoing it, but this was substantiated with footage of P-Russ working and P-Russ stumbling, exhausted, into the shelter. That’s how they do it if it’s a thing that really happens. This here, where Russell tells you that he had awesome ideas but nobody would listen and it is substantiated with nothing except yap-flapping, is how they do it if it’s a thing that didn’t happen, but that sounds more interesting than what’s actually happening, which is, “Everyone is sitting around in the rain, because there’s not a hell of a lot they can do about it.”

Also awesome: Russell says that if you don’t throw up at every challenge, “you didn’t do your job.” Have we seen Russell throw up at every challenge? Why is all of this BLATANT NONSENSE being played without any of the wit or observant sense of the absurd that the show often brings to this kind of grandiose fantasy of your own awesomeness?

Seriously, if last season had been edited like this season, Probst would have flat-out told everyone that Coach was a genius, a great man, a conqueror, and the prime minister of Canada.

All right. Anyway.

The next day at Galu, Erik climbs out of his hole in a tree and tells us that he prayed all night for Samoa to understand that they all recognize its power, and now it’s stopped raining, and there’s a rainbow. He’s very, very happy, because he believes this means it has stopped raining for good. Galu agrees that this is a great sign that everything is going to be great from now on, WOOOOO!

Hey, challenge time! This should be a lot of fun. Challenges are always fun!

So the way this challenge works is that you put one person inside a ball-shaped cage, and two other people pushing the cage through a course are blindfolded. And then after you’re done pushing that person down the course, you set her (it will be a her) up so she can see one of those tilt-ball mazes, which the two pushers and two other people will operate. The reward is pizza, which will be eaten at tribal council — because both tribes are going. Ruh-roh! The team encourages P-Russ to sit out, but P-Russ is having none of it, so he wants to participate in the challenge pushing the ball. Sigh.

So both teams roll their balls toward the end of the course. Foa Foa gets a lead and is finished first, so while it won’t help them not eliminate anyone, they seem like they might be ahead in the fight for some pizza they kind of need. P-Russ is already in trouble as they’re rolling the ball, looking kind of disoriented and weak.

As P-Russ heads toward his corner of the maze, he starts to wander aimlessly. Note that Probst calls out, “No idea where he’s at right now.” Yeah, no shit, you prick. Glad you’re enjoying THE SHOW.

(For a while here, P-Russ will be known as “Russell.”) And a few seconds later, it happens. Russell slumps forward with his head on the maze table and his arms dangling lifelessly. He is patently unconscious. Patently, obviously unconscious. A three-year-old could tell he’s unconscious. I count almost 20 seconds of film between that point — which is a long time if you count it out — before Probst calls for medical. At first, because they pull him up instead of down, Russell mutters that he’s “good,” but then he collapses to the ground.

“Russell, can you hear me?” the woman working for medical asks.

When we return, they’re kneeling over Russell, who’s weakly protesting, and then they’re taking his blood pressure. Probst realizes that they’re not going to be finishing the challenge, so he has everybody take off their blindfolds. Medical listens to Russell’s heart and seems rather concerned. They report that Russell’s BP is even lower than Mike’s was when they pulled him out of the game, and if he stood up, he’d black out.

Probst, never missing an opportunity to make the situation about himself, says he’s “going to make a call right now,” and announces that the challenge is off. No pizza for anyone, they’ll just have tribal council, and Russell will either show up or not, depending on whether he is, among other things, still alive.

Back at Galu in the aftermath, it’s raining again, some more. Dave and Erik are talking about the fact that they’d be surprised if he came back, and Rocket Scientist John doesn’t much figure they’ll see him again. John does, however, interview about how they’re all really impressed with P-Russ’s work ethic, but his body gave out. They hide in the shelter under their soaking wet blankets, which they cannot transmogrify into a tarp, no matter how hard they try.

Back on the challenge course, medical is giving P-Russ water. P-Russ still has an oxygen mask, but medical is at least going to let him sit up. He slowly sits up. But almost as soon as he sits up, he passes out again — this time with his eyes open, which is all kinds of creepy. They lower him back down to the ground, his eyes open and completely not aware of anything. “Talk to me,” says medical. They shake him, and he comes to. So that’s it for P-Russ, for sure. Medical notes that P-Russ’s heart rate was 97 when he sat up, but now it’s 68. Meaning that his heart rate is kind of all over the place — not exactly what you want.

So Probst tells P-Russ that he’s being pulled out of the game, and P-Russ winces. P-Russ starts going on about his family depending on him, so Probst gives him this big speech about how everything was going so great for him and now he has to leave the game, and I’m not sure how THAT’S supposed to make him feel better, but that’s the direction Jeff decides to go. It’s basically a “Wow, this sucks maybe in even more ways than you are thinking of” speech. He assures P-Russ that he’s not “a quitter,” reinforcing his ethic that quitting because you realize you’re GOING to almost die of dehydration would make you a pussy, but quitting AFTER you almost die of dehydration makes you a fucking superstar. Finally, Jeff agrees to shut up and shove off, and he leaves P-Russ alone to weep for his lost opportunity.

You know, it seems to me that there would be very little lost in this game if producers gave everybody water. I understand that the grit that can result from the struggle is all very whatever, but I don’t actually want to see anybody die, and it seems to me that dehydration is the biggest potential system-destroyer. Why not give water? Why not at least monitor how much people are drinking so you know if this is about to happen? Do you really think nobody would watch the show if they didn’t think people could potentially become dehydrated enough to require emergency medical intervention, and what kind of an operation are you running if you deny water on that basis?

Anyway, when we return, we are at Foa Foa, where Liz explains that she feels weird about the fact that they were excited about possibly winning, and then they had to stop because P-Russ might die. She and Natalie talk about the fact that the guys are likely to pick one of them to get rid of at tribal council, so they’ll be voting for each other. Liz interviews that voting off her or Natalie would be smartest, so that the tribe can “continue to win.” I’m sorry … “continue”?

Russell tells Natalie that Liz is going home, and Natalie’s like, “All right, we don’t have to talk about it.” Would you want to talk to him any more than necessary? What’s great is that he’s like, “VOTE FOR LIZ,” and she’s like, “Okay,” when we already saw that this is what she was going to do anyway. So he will give himself the point in his head that he told her what to do, when in fact, he had absolutely nothing to do with what she did, because she has just agreed to do exactly what she was already going to do, because it was her only shot at saving herself. In next week’s previouslys, this will be described as, “Russell used magic powers of persuasion to get Natalie to give up her vendetta against Mick and vote for Liz, which she desperately did not want to do until Russell talked her into it.”

Meanwhile, Liz lobbies Jaison and Mick to stay. Mick doesn’t really want to discuss it. Jaison interviews that they really are frustrated by the fact that they were so close to winning, even though they understand that the important thing that’s going on right now is P-Russ. That doesn’t mean it’s not irritating to finally be on the verge of winning and then be interrupted by bizarre developments.

Over at Galu, Monica, Laura, and Kelly (is it Kelly?) are walking and talking about how much they hate Shambo. In fact, Laura interviews that if tribal council were right now, Shambo would definitely be gone, because she has this relationship with the other tribe. Then they have to stop talking, because Shambo is right there, and she wants to know whether they intend to vote her out. She argues that she has made fire; Monica argues that she has also voted for Monica. Those are both things that have nothing to do with whether she is the right next person to vote out, so I congratulate them both on having exclusively irrelevant thoughts.

Elsewhere, Brett, Dave, Erik and John are talking about how Shambo may be a pain, but she’s not as useless as Monica. She also doesn’t pose any sort of a threat. Unlike Monica, of course, who might team up with all the other purple girls who are indistinguishable from each other and create some kind of alliance post-merge.

What’s a “Brett”?

John explains, also, that Laura is so tight with Monica that Laura will instantly be out of options if Monica is gone. Their plan is to use P-Russ for their fifth if he’s back, or else Shambo if not.

What follows is a legitimately hilarious scene in which the boys’ decision not to tell anything to Shambo falls all apart. She comes over and is like, “Don’t vote me off.” And they’re like, “We’re not telling you.” Erik unleashes this: “Just because I’m not telling you I’m not writing your name down doesn’t mean I’m not writing your name down.” Which isn’t what he means at all, but I think he gets confused when there are a lot of short words.

John wants Shambo to vote for Monica without “telling” her anything, so he says, “Erik, if you were Shambo, who would you vote for tonight?” And Erik carefully says that he’s NOT HIMSELF NOW or anything, he’s Shambo. And then he says, “I would probably stay consistent.” She almost laughs, because it’s so idiotically circular if they’re just going to tell her to vote for Monica. “What if you were John?” she asks Erik. “I … would … follow the leader.” And it turns out that the leader is Shambo! So MONICA MONICA, although for some reason, they don’t want to just fucking SAY SO OH MY GRACIOUS. “And if you were Erik, who would you vote for?” she asks John. “I’d vote for Monica,” John finally says. Oh thank goodness.

And then he’s like, “DO YOU GET IT?” and she says she does, and then Erik’s like, “WE’RE STILL NOT PROMISING ANYTHING,” and seriously, these guys are not made for espionage. This is like watching two golden retrievers try to keep a secret.

Tribal council. This is a big group. Jeff breaks the news that P-Russ is gone. The doctors weren’t able to get him stable enough, so he had to go. “It was the scariest moment I’ve ever had on this show!” he says. Well, I certainly hope they won’t allow dehydration to set in again, RIGHT? Jeff swears that now, P-Russ is in good hands.

What’s Shambo’s reaction? She says she’s really sad, because he’s such a hard worker. Russell, of course, just wants to beat everyone in the most honorable way possible.

Oh, and there’s more thunder, so it’s going to start raining again.

There’s more talk about how hard it is, how hard the rain is, how hard the conditions are (Probst agrees). Erik says he spent 22 hours in a tree. That is fairly hardcore, I will admit. Erik makes an interesting comment about the rain, which is that it’s not only that it goes on; it’s that when it’s going on, you don’t have any idea when it might end, and it feels like it might not ever. Interestingly, I experienced the same thing recently when a subway car got stopped in a tunnel under DC. It scared the living crap out of my mildly claustrophobic self, because while it was only for about a half-hour, I had no idea how long it was going to be.

Jeff asks Dave how the game is going, and Dave says that “just based on numbers” Galu would seem to be “ahead,” and Foa Foa hasn’t had the opportunity to feed itself as well as Galu has. Liz smiles bitterly. Because she’s really hungry.

Russell, of course, says that Foa Foa is doing just fine, and he insists that they will come back and “even up” the situation. Erik laughs. Jeff asks Mick whether being ahead in the challenge is a “moral victory,” and Mick says that they do indeed “take this as a win.” Erik shakes his head. Asked for his reaction, he mocks Foa Foa for thinking that staying even with them in a challenge (actually, they were ahead but okay) means there’s some kind of “momentum shift.” He’s really feisty for a guy who spent 22 hours in a tree.

Jeff now drops the news that there is going to be absolutely no vote tonight. Instead of both teams sending someone home, nobody will send anybody home. He comments that some people look happy about this, and some do not. Erik says that Galu is bummed about P-Russ anyway, while Russell agrees that this is great for them, because they are feeling strong in their five people. Also, he’s pretty sure that “the table’s about to turn.” Erik keeps giggling, and Jeff points out that he looks rather dubious. This leads Erik to give a sort of “win one for the Gipper” speech about how they will put “every bead of sweat” that P-Russ put into the game into beating Foa Foa. Dude. Your team is dominating. This is probably unnecessary and a little less cool than just saying, “Hey, if they think they can finally start winning some challenges, I encourage them to give it a whirl.”

Jeff tells Galu that they will now have to assign themselves a new “leader” in the absence of P-Russ, and he sends everybody home. So that was … completely anticlimactic, right?

In the end, P-Russ tells us that being taken out of the game was terrible, he played as hard as he could, he never intended to become life-threateningly dehydrated, and so forth. He’s glad he tried. He is carted away. Goodbye, P-Russ.

Next time: Russell Russells a Russell, Russell Russell Russell Russell!

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Previously on Is That Your Passport In Your Pocket, Or Are You Just About To Be Eliminated On A Procedural Matter: Everything was going really well for Zev and Justin all the way up to their first-place finish. That is, of course, right up until the part where they discovered that what they had believed to be Zev’s passport was merely a receipt from a Cambodian Fuddruckers. Despite admirable help from their cabdriver (played by a lovely schoolgirl named Fern) was not adequate to save them from Philimination, because although you can check in without your wits or your common sense, they actually check to see if you have your travel documents. Never has “keep it zipped” been such poignant advice for a departing team that did not go home with suspicious itching. Eight teams are left; who will be eliminated … NEXT?

Credits. I have to say, I miss the old music. I understand that this makes me sound like a lady who is sad that people don’t do their laundry by whipping it on a washboard anymore, but it’s true. I miss the old music. This sounds like the dance mix, like next season it’s going to be three Phils dancing in black bodysuits against a plain white background. (Absorb it. I’ll give you a minute.)Also: shut up, Lance’s bicep. And also … wow, there was a “Garrett and Jessica”? I forgot them even more fully than I forgot those yoga people who turned out to be attached to the starting line with a bungee cord. (”The world is waiting for you. Good luck … travel safe … GO! [sproing] Wait, not you.”) Have you noticed they don’t make people do those slow turns toward the camera anymore? I was watching Season 3 recently, and honestly, the world has not recovered from the way Teri and Ian turned toward the camera. In retrospect, I found it terribly endearing.I miss you, you Asshats.

Phil is in Phnom Penh, wearing his salmon-colored shirt with the wrinkly elbows that make it clear that he has been wearing it all day with the sleeves rolled up. This city, he explained, is “renowned for its historical institutions,” such as yelling at taxi drivers and losing your passport.

12:25 PM. Sam and Dan. They are rocking the baseball caps today, the better to identify themselves as Dudes. Duuuuude. The clue says, “Fly to Persian Gulf and find the world’s tallest building.” Phil explains that the world’s tallest building is the Burj Dubai. So “Persian Gulf” has to be narrowed down to “Dubai,” and then you have to find the actual building. Y’know, like a clue. Once they figure out where the building is, then they have to fly to Dubai, proceed to a fountain, and then sign up to be in one of two groups that will take an elevator up to the 124th floor. Sam and Dan talk about how they hope to finish first this time, because they’re leaving first as a result of the Zev/Justin passport debacle. And then they ask the cab driver this: “Where is the Persian Gulf?”

Um. It’s … where … the war was? That is named after it? I have been assuming they waited a long time to tell each other they were gay because it was hard to talk about, but now I’m starting to think they just might not have noticed. When I first saw them, I thought Sam was just about the best-looking dude they’ve ever had on this show (really, I did; it’s the eyes), but the more I see him not know the locations of entire regions of the Earth (that’s his home planet — “and stuff”), the more I lose interest.

12:27 PM. Flight Time and Big Easy. In their cab, they immediately demand to be taken to an Internet cafe. Now is no time for LOLcats, you guys! Big Easy interviews that he’s from New Orleans and has been through “the hurricane,” so he figures they can take anything. I generally do not really sign on for comparisons of racing to tragic events in your personal life — it falsely implies that doing well in this environment is about nothing but grit, which only holds up if you think, for instance, that Eric and Danielle had the most grit of anyone racing in the All-Star season. Given that they would not have the most grit of anyone in your average grade-school library, I doubt that is the case. Still, I like Big Easy, and I like The Big Easy, and based on those two things, I give it a pass.

12:30 PM. Brian and Ericka. He rips their clue open with exceptional vigor, pointing out that they have $160 for the leg. In an interview, he explains to us that “in the end, it’s a big game of karma.” So he has once again confused the question “In the end, what is it?” with the very similar but not identical question, “In the end, what are you going to say it is?” He says they are trying to “be nice to everybody and help people out,” because that has been the key to victory for teams including Nobody, Empty Set, and Zippedy-Doo-Dah. Ericka seems to know that Dubai contains the world’s tallest building — what do you want to bet she studied that for the multiple-choice portion of the beauty pageant standardized test where they quiz you on the relationship between maps and The Iraq? I realize I am being hard on Brian, but as a matter of fact, it’s shocking how much I dig that dude, given his hard-to-overlook facial hair.

Flight Time and Big Easy find out from the Internet that the world’s tallest building is in Dubai, meaning that they found Wikipedia. Or possibly they made their way to IdentifyVeryTallBuildings.com. Or to some Internet spoiler site, where someone had already reported that they spied on someone’s clue using binoculars and can report that teams are on their way to Dubai, where they will be besieged by people who want to know whether they have ever met Guido. They decide to look for flights while they’re there, you know, on the computer. Big Easy finds a good flight, but he can’t book it online less than 24 hours in advance. Thus, it is on to the airport.

12:35 PM. Gary and Matt. They lament the fact that they do not know where the world’s tallest building is, and they hope that they can “forge ahead without the others.” You know, I don’t know whether Matt’s bright pink hair bothers Gary normally, but I think it’s pretty cool how it clearly doesn’t bother him anymore. Nor the nose ring. Nor the lip rings.I think Gary is, relatively speaking, actually a pretty hip dad.

12:37 PM. Spiky and Perky. They clarify that they wish to be victorious. Aha! Now they have explained themselves. Man, Spiky has hair like an art installation. That is amazing. My only concern about them is that I’m becoming afraid that they are destined to win. I am concerned that they are going to poke along through the entire season, smile pleasantly at everything, do everything efficiently, win, hug, and then never be heard from again. I don’t object to them — they seem like nice people. But I’d like to see a couple of chinks in the armor.

Okay. So now, Sam and Dan are at the airport, and they say to the lady that they need tickets to “the Persian Gulf.” Which is kind of like, “Hi, I would like to order the complex carbohydrates with an emulsion, please.” She has no idea what they’re talking about. Sam sort of has it occur to him, in a general way, that “the Persian Gulf is like a big area.” This is like watching Joey from <em>Friends</em> try to figure out why Phoebe and her twin sister have the same birthday.

Brian and Ericka pay their cabbie and head to the ticket window, where they rescue a confused Sam and Dan, who would have wound up in the Gulf Of Mexico or at an Iranian golf course had they not been helped.

12:47 PM. Lance and Keri. Fitness For The Prosecution opens the clue. In an interview, Keri assures us, “Nothing could tear us apaaaaaaht.” Man. Her r’s are not just dropped; they have rolled all the way under the couch and will never be found again. I have socks like that. Lunkhead, J.D. also assures us that they have many nonrefundable deposits that they have put down on the wedding. This is meant in jest, to indicate that they have one of those Andy-Cappy relationships where they don’t really want to be married, har har, but they are doing it anyway, har har, because … wait, they will think of something. HILARIOUS. They, too, head for an Internet cafe.

12:49 PM. Mika and Canaan. He is wearing a t-shirt with the number “5″ on it, which leads me to believe that she asked him what came after “4″ one too many times. With a big, meaty grin, her boyfriend checks out this clue about the world’s tallest building and tells us that Mika is scared of heights. He does not seem to connect this with any potential problems, just with the hilarious idea of his girlfriend utterly spazzing out. He tells her that they’ll have to change her “little ‘tude.”  I have a feeling that in Canaan’s mind, all her feelings are little, be they ‘tudes or anything else. I realize some women dig this kind of thing.

12:55 PM. Maria and Tiffany. Tiffany yammers about how happy they are about their free gift of staying in the race because “someone else screwed up.” Maria pretends to have sympathy for Zev and Justin for about five seconds before returning to being glad that they have, once again, not paid any sort of price for bad racing. “We think we can be contenders,” Tiffany says with a grin that is so unconvincing that, if she delivered it while telling me she had a full house, I would immediately bet all the money I had.

Spiky and Perky, Mika and Canaan, and Gary and Matt get to the airport.

Meanwhile, Lance and Keri are at the Internet cafe, trying in vain to purchase tickets to Dubai, where they’ve figured out they need to go. She keeps telling him it’s not working and it’s not going to work to book online; he keeps insisting that it’s just that the site is busy from everybody buying tickets. That’s got to be it! Surely, an airline site would not be equipped to deal with eight requests to buy tickets on the same flight! How many fingers do they think these Internet machines have, anyway? Eventually, she’s like, “Sigh, okay.” Because he’s the kind of guy where even the prospect of losing a million bucks doesn’t make it worth it to have this kind of argument, and that’s why you can tell they’re not going to win. With rare Flo-ceptions, most winning teams really do require some contribution from both parties and some ability of both parties to compromise without an hour-long argument, and they seem to be lacking in that area.

Flight Time and Big Easy get to the airport. (Remember, they stopped off to play on the Internet, so they were delayed.) Maria and Tiffany show up too, and the long and the short is that everybody figures out that they’re going to wind up on the same flight again — or so it seems. Finally, Lance has given up on booking from the cafe, and they are on their way to the airport. When they get there, there’s still time for the same flight, connecting through Bangkok, that everyone else is on, so once again, we have spent most of the first act coming to the conclusion, “Everybody gets on the same flight, so now it’s a tie.” They were doing much less of this last season, and I liked it much better. Airport drama that results in something interesting, I like. If you have to be tenacious, or negotiate, or strategize, or figure out what line to wait in, I’m interested. But if it’s not going to matter, I’d rather go straight from the rip-and-read to “everybody’s on the flight.” I didn’t learn a lot from the Internet cafe business, for instance.

The Amazing Red Line on the Amaaaaaazing Google Map tells us that the teams are connecting in Bangkok before heading to Dubai. I must say, I think Google is getting a pretty sweet deal being credited for this line, which looks no different from the Amazing Line in any other season. It’s not like you can see the line passing over your house.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates! (Dear Sam and Dan: That is what we call, “The name of a place to which it is possible to fly, unlike “the Persian Gulf” or “North.”) First to run out of the airport are Brian and Ericka, then Maria and Tiffany, then everybody else. All the teams are immediately talking about how hot it is — and especially how humid, which you can tell from the camera lenses that are immediately fogged up. Seriously, it’s like they’re shooting Cybill Shepherd through those lenses. Looking at the grand structures of Dubai, Matt and Gary note that the recession seems to have skipped this city. Heh.

The teams get to the fountain, where it turns out there is a shuttle to sign up for that will take them to the Burj Dubai. Maria and Tiffany are the first to sign in (boo!). Brian and Ericka are second (yay!).

Mika and Canaan seem to be on the Tour Of Dubai’s Possibly Menacing Construction Sites, a/k/a “The Black Hole Of Tourist Wallets.” Their taxi driver doesn’t really understand them, but eventually a local fellow manages to get Canaan to calmly explain that they are looking for the fountain, and he tells the driver where it is. “The guy’s an idiot,” Canaan snaps as he throws his pack in the trunk. So we have reached the “people who don’t understand me because of a language barrier based on the fact that I do not speak the language most commonly spoken in the country I am in are idiots.” I remain curious about how speaking poor English and being unable to interpret Jackass Charades makes you an idiot, but speaking no Arabic and being unable to convey a fountain using Jackass Charades makes you a genius.

Spiky and Perky join Sam and Dan (and the first two teams) on the 5:30 AM shuttle. The other four teams will be on a shuttle that will go fifteen minutes later, at 5:45 AM. Mika and Canaan arrive next, and as you can imagine, Canaan is mighty upset with their cab driver. Lance and Keri, Flight Time and Big Easy, and Gary and Matt round out the teams on the second shuttle.

The next morning, when 5:30 AM arrives, the teams head over to the building. (The world’s tallest, you know.) (Though in fairness, it has a lot of spoke-y business going on at the top, much of which is only nominally “building.” It’s kind of like being the world’s fastest man by doing the 100-yard dash in a Fiat. The second group is hanging around waiting, and Mika is already in tears, talking about how much she doesn’t like heights. I’m not sure his girlfriend’s seemingly inevitable heights-related breakdown — should it happen this week or, say, next week — is going to be as hilarious as Canaan is hoping. Interestingly, Flight Time shows more compassion for her in an interview than Canaan does, saying that he understood she was upset and crying because she thought she might have to jump off the building (not an unreasonable guess, all things considered). Canaan: still finding it funny.

It turns out that when you get to the 124th floor of the building, you walk out onto sort of a patio, and you get your clue. And THAT IS ALL. Seriously? I mean, I realize you can’t jump off of everything or rappel down everything, but “walk out onto a balcony” is not a task. If you didn’t go over to the edge and peer down at the ground, you wouldn’t know you weren’t outside the Famous Dave’s at the Mall Of America. (Except that you would have sauce on you, assuming you had already eaten.) There’s always some value in seeing cool landmarks, but this seems like a failure of planning. Surely they could have come up with something in connection with this location that would have required something more than walking around. Even “take off your clothes and run around naked for five minutes while hoping that the Google Earth cameras aren’t watching you” would have been something.

Phil explains that the clue they are picking up (in exchange for absolutely no effort) directs them to head to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve for their next clue, which they will reach in 4×4 vehicles.
Spiky and Perky see that there is another clue in with their documentation: the Fast Forward. Phil explains that it is the only one on the entire race.

Now, I’m sure that if there had always been only one Fast Forward, it would make more sense that there’s only one and I might not question it, but removing the entire element of choosing when you want to try to use a FF kind of defeats the purpose, does it not? This way, unless it looks daunting, there is no reason for the teams in front not to do it, meaning that the teams in back (and remember, the show knew it would be like this at this point, with half in front and half trailing) have no reason to risk it, meaning that it has very little likelihood of mattering. Fast Forwards and their strategic use or non-use did used to sometimes affect outcomes and allow teams to dodge mistakes; I just feel like this is an element that I miss, since it’s one of the few strategic decisions that anybody ever had to make.The more “go here, now go here” it gets, the less interested I am.

Anyway, the Fast Forward is also boring: go to a racetrack and do a lap. Remember when Fast Forwards required long hikes into canyons or hunting through an entire store full of rugs to find one with a symbol on it? Me too. It’s been a long time. Spiky wants to go for the Fast Forward, since there’s absolutely no reason not to.

As the four lead teams are headed down in the elevator, Brian tells them they should all act like whatever they did at the top of the building was really terrifying to try to psych out the teams in back. This appears to take the form of yelling out, “That was crazy!” to which Lance says, “Don’t listen to that.” That is not the most well-executed attempt at intimidation I have ever seen. Psychological warfare FAIL. (I am so happy I got out of recapping before FAIL, for the most part. Imagine where that might have led.) (I won’t do it again, I promise.)

Anyway, so the front teams are like, “Wooo, craaaaazy up there!” Mika: “[Sniffle.]”

Since Spiky and Perky are telling everyone they’re going for the FF, everybody else passes, meaning that <em>there is no point</em> to this. In the car, a very sweaty Perky reviews the clue, and the first four teams are off.

Now the other four teams are completing their incredibly daring Tear Open The Clue At A High Altitude “task,” finding out that they are off to the desert. Of course, they (who are most likely to have their fates affected by it) ignore the FF, because they are bunched behind four other teams who have absolutely no reason not to take it, since it’s the only one. Mika is happy to realize that this is the most boring thing they have ever been asked to do, because they don’t actually have to do anything, so it’s a happy ending for her. “This is the happiest I’ve felt in forever,” she says. Sadly, I believe her.

Flight Time and Big Easy, Mika and Canaan, and Gary and Matt head for the parking garage, but Lance and Keri go the wrong way. But at least they do it with confidence! Gary is kind enough to inform us that he is “about ready to wet [him]self.” Huh. I am not sure what, in this context, has led to that problem.

Meanwhile, Lance and Keri figure out that they are not where they’re supposed to be, and since they saw everybody else go a different direction, they have reason to feel confident that they have probably screwed themselves right here.

Commercials!

When we come back, Lance and Keri are still wandering around the Parking Garage Of The Left Behind (But Not In That Sense), while Mika and Canaan are trying to reverse-follow Flight Time and Big Easy by watching in the rearview mirror to see whether the guys turn. Nevertheless, on the way out of the airport, the Globetrotters go right and Mika and Canaan go left, so once again, someone is misguided. And Big Easy seems pretty confident it’s not Flight Time, who he says is pretty good at navigating.

At last, Lance and Keri find their way to the marked car they need. She asks someone out the window about getting to the desert preserve, but the person doesn’t know, which Lance takes as evidence that asking anyone is the wrong thing to do. Again, Keri shuts down, just saying she won’t ask; he can just get there himself. In this context, that’s the wrong answer, but given that he is a bit of a complainer who’s obviously not a terrible guy, you can see how she picked this up as a habit — that once he starts being obnoxious, she just drops out of the conversation. There are worse coping strategies day-to-day, but the problem is that it doesn’t help you get to the conservation reserve.

Spiky and Perky get to the racetrack. He climbs into the car. (Hot and tight!) He tells us in an interview that he is “confident that [he] can handle any scenario.” I feel like he is a video game simulation of a race contestant, you know? Like … there’s nothing wrong with him, but everything he says, I could make up myself. He’s like Haley Joel Osment in A.I.. Inoffensive, but not really interesting. He goes on to explain that he’s more of a jump-in guy, and she’s more of a control-careful girl, so “we just handle it extremely opposite.” And then his check-engine light goes on, so she whaps him in the back of the head until it goes off again.

Sam and Dan are on the way to the conservation reserve with, as Sam explains, Maria and Tiffany and Brian and Ericka. Maria, looking out at the desert, mentions that Dubai contains a lot of sand, but other than the heat, it’s cool. That’s what I like about this show, is that it allows people to have deep personal insights about other countries.

All these teams pull up at the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve. They all hop into the 4×4 vehicles that await them. Everyone seems duly impressed with the dunes and the vast expanses of desert. I’m sure Maria is out of things to say, though, since she’s already discussed all the sand.

Mika and Canaan have stopped for directions on the way to the reserve, and they’re hoping they’ve been steered in the right direction. Mika is fearful that they are in last place, but hopeful that someone else is also having a bad day where her boyfriend mocks her terrible phobias.

“Huhhhh, boy,” says Lance, having a bad day.

Lead teams drive up in their 4×4s to a clue box. When Brian opens the clue, it’s a Roadblock that says, “Who thinks they can beat the desert heat?” Phil explains that this task will require teams to “literally drink in the landscape.” Which, of course, would involve consuming sand and brush, but never mind. He tells us that there are a bunch of urns buried in the sand, some of which have water in them. You have to go around and search the urns for enough water to fill a bag, and then when you have enough, you turn it in to the local camel-hoarding Bedouin and his camels, and he will give you a clue. This unfortunately doesn’t involve any interaction with camels. Camels are guaranteed comedy, people!You have camels sitting right there!

Brian takes the Roadblock for his team, and he and Ericka straight-facedly explain in an interview that she couldn’t do it, because “chocolate melts in the sun.” Heh. There’s something about the fact that they like all these jokes, and that they both make them, that I really like. It weirded me out at first because I wasn’t used to it, but it’s so good-natured that it’s hard not to like.

Tiffany and Dan are also doing the Roadblock. At first, nobody really knows what they’re looking for — are these urns BURIED buried, or what? They realize quickly that if the urns are entirely under the sand in these vast expanses of uninterrupted desert, they wouldn’t have much of a chance of finding anything. (Good point!) (It is probably not arranged so as to be physically impossible!)

Flight Time and Big Easy and Gary and Matt are on their way to the Roadblock clue as well, four-wheeling it through the sand.

Tiffany is the first to find an urn, but it doesn’t have any water in it. At least they know what they’re looking for. They still haven’t found any water when Big Easy and Matt go out on the course. Finally, Brian finds some water, but much of the lead over those two teams is evaporating. (So to speak.)

Lance and Keri are still trying to get out of Dubai. He tells her he’s getting on a particular road, and she says, “Use your judgment.” Which means, in this context, “Fuck you.” He says to her, “My judgment sucks,” and then he laughs bitterly. Which means, in this context, believe it or not, “I’m sorry.”

Spiky completes his lap. Perky is relieved. Beep-beep-bloop, says Spiky’s control unit. Also, as he careens around the course, Spiky yells, “I am the man,” according to the captions, but I personally believe it may be “I am a man,” in the same sense that Pinocchio once argued he was a real boy. I think Spiky is discovering that he contains internal organs, because they are being pressed against his rib cage and he can feel them right this second.

“I like to drive fast, I’m like Ricky Bobby,” he says in an interview, drawing on his internal factory-installed memory of pop-culture references.

Phil explains that they will now climb in a Maserati and they will be driven to the amphitheater at the Souk Madinat Jumeirah, which is the pit stop. In the car, Spiky says something to her and then tries to kiss her, and she seriously misses the signal of him pulling on the side of her head for what feels like an hour and a half before she figures out that he wants to kiss her. Hey lady: Almost any pressure applied to the side of your head indicates “I would like to give you a smooch.” At least while everyone’s clothes are on.

Brian gets some more water out of an urn, while trying to figure out how to avoid tipping off the other teams. I’m not sure you can conceal your ladling, but whatever, dude. As Brian passes Tiffany and Dan, he mutters to them that there’s water, though — so this is not really hiding it from everyone; it’s a conspiracy against the later-arriving Big Easy and Matt. If you were going to align with someone, why would you pick Tiffany over Big Easy? Boooo.

Brian talks in an interview about how he feels like you help others because you treat them the way you’d like to be treated. Okay, what does that have to do with this? How is tipping off two teams to screw two other teams an exercise in treating others as you would like to be treated? That seems suspect to me.

Brian and Ericka turn their water in to the Bedouin and receive their clue. As Phil explains, they have to go back to the city to Ski Dubai, “a huge indoor ski resort,” where they’ll find a clue.

Tiffany and Dan work together to take the rest of the water from the urn Brian showed them. She even lets Dan use her ladle when his is … broken? What did he do to gack up a <em>ladle</em>? “I think it’s pretty clear that we’re in an alliance with them,” Maria declares. Yes. And you know what has worked really well over the many, many seasons of this race that have been run before you? Alliances! Brilliant! Works every time! Provides fuel for unnecessary drama later!

At any rate, Tiffany and Dan return with water and get their clues, so those two teams are taking off, leaving Big Easy and Matt looking, Canaan and Mika not there yet, and Lance and Keri wherever the heck they are.

And then Matt comes back with water, so he and his dad can go, very close on the heels of the lead teams.

Big Easy is still looking. “Do it for the ‘hood!” yells Flight Time. Hee. I like the idea of “Hello, Mr. Camel, I am here on behalf of the ‘hood.”

Mika and Canaan are looking for the conservation reserve when they come across Brian and Ericka on the way out. Brian and Ericka give them directions, telling them to turn around and go back the way they came (so this is pretty important advice). “Five miles on your right,” Brian very specifically instructs. So yeah, they really do believe in helping other people, which is perfectly okay as long as you do not assume that they will do the same for you, that you have the right to expect them to do the same for you, or that any of this is related to “karma.” Uh-oh!

“I’m nice, but I’m not dumb,” says Brian. “This game is all about karma.” Really? REALLY? He’s watched it before, right? Because really, it is not about karma at all, let alone <em>all</em> about karma. He also follows this with the idea that if you help someone now, they will help you later. Let me just point out: even if that were not demonstrably horsepucky based on every season of this show that’s ever been shot, that is not karma. That is not what karma means. That is an exchange of favors. That’s like saying if you bribe a public official and they approve your building permit, you are a beneficiary of “good karma.” Hilariously, Ericka tells us that she thinks sometimes, people expect Miss America to be a certain type, but she defies that type — she can “pull the claws out” if necessary. Don’t assume women competing in pageants can’t be catty! Because you might be surprised to learn that they totally can!

As Mika and Canaan are pulling in and Maria and Tiffany, Sam and Dan, and Gary and Matt are pulling out, Maria manages to run over something with her car and breaks the radiator, which starts leaking. Well, more than “leaking.” More like “barfing.”

You will recall that in the past, if the car broke down and it wasn’t your fault (see, for instance, Jon Vito and Jill’s radiator exploding in Season 3), then you would be brought a new car. If the car broke down and it was your fault (see, for instance, everybody who put unleaded in their diesel cars in that same season), then you did not get a new car, and you had to figure out how to fix the car you had and get going as soon as possible. “Through no fault of the team” was specifically part of the explanation of the bring-you-a-replacement-car rule.

Just issuing that reminder.

When we come back from commercials, Tiffany explains that Maria ran over a stake in the ground that punctured their radiator. To me, this is very similar to getting your car stuck in the mud (see: Season 5, bunches of people) or in the sand (see: Season 2, Shola and Doyin), and at no time has it ever been suggested that you could request a different car.

Sam and Dan dither around, saying they’re going to wait around to make sure the girls are “okay.” Of course, there is no question that the girls are “okay.” There is only the question of whether the girls are “still in the race in spite of their mistake.” Phil announces the new rule, which is that if your car is “deemed inoperable” — apparently even if it is your own fault because you crashed or damaged it — you get a new free car. That seems … not quite right, to me.

Finally, Big Easy finds water. He mentions Hurricane Katrina for the several-th time this episode, saying that he’s used to running from water, and now he’s looking for it. So far, the major thing I notice about these guys is that they really do not freak out, even when they are sort of near the back of the pack, as they are here. Meanwhile, Mika and Canaan are finally out on the course. As you can imagine, Canaan will be doing this task, because my guess is that Mika couldn’t tolerate wandering in search of a water fountain at Nordstrom’s, let alone looking for a buried urn in the desert.

Oh, hey, here’s Maria and Tiffany’s free car to replace the one they wrecked. So they can finally leave, along with their bodyguards, Sam and Dan, who clearly lack the bloodlust required for this game. As they’re leaving, Maria says that it’s okay that she wrecked the car, because “I’m an Asian female driver.” Boy, there are a couple of stereotypes pulled out of mothballs. The only time I’ve ever heard the thing about Asian drivers was as a joke on The Office, and I haven’t heard the thing about women drivers said unironically in my entire lifetime. Way to dig deep!

Lance and Keri are, it seems, still looking for the desert. Who knew it was this hard to find the desert in Dubai?

Spiky and Perky are at the pit stop, and his hair has not changed a bit. Even the helmet at the racetrack did not disturb it. I do not understand his hair. It is of another time and place. They are officially team number one, and they win a trip to Jamaica. I have a feeling that Jamaica has seen a lot of these people. Again, I have no objection to them at all, but there is something about them that hollers, “Spring break! WOOOOO!”

At long last, Lance and Keri have arrived at the reserve, and she says, “We have to pahk our cahh in the mahhked ehh-rea.” I realize she did not necessary model that sentence to show off her accent, but she certainly could have. When they arrive at the Roadblock, Mika and Canaan are still there, which I’m sure is a relief if you’ve been wandering around Dubai for however long this has taken. Lance takes the Roadblock for the team. There is praying. There are shots of the broiling sun. It is Lance versus Canaan! Big D-Bag versus Little D-Bag! They’re the same, but different!

Ericka and Brian miss the interchange for the road they want to take, while Matt and Gary are convinced they’re on the right track. Among other things, Gary spots the enormous building shaped from the outside like a downhill ski run and is pretty sure that’s probably the enormous indoor downhill ski run. Sometimes, common sense is a powerful weapon. Not usually, but sometimes.

When they get there, Matt and Gary are relieved to walk inside into the very chilly environment, where they find a clue box. Phil, while skiing (because he’s cool that way), explains to us that the teams are facing a Detour (that would be a choice between two tasks), where their choices are Build A Snowman and Find A Snowman. Build A Snowman requires them to cart loads of snow into the steaming hot outdoors to … build a snowman. Find A Snowman is needle-in-a-haystack, only the needle is a tiny toy snowman and the haystack is giant snow piles.

The two awesome extra elements to the needle-in-a-haystack option are that you go up the hill and then sled down on a little shovel and that you give your tiny toy snowman to a guy dressed as a polar bear. This is a highly whimsical Detour suitable for a small child. Or Flo. (I have now picked on Flo twice in this recap and once in the previous one. Apparently, I really miss her.)

Matt and Gary, for some reason, decide they want to hunt through giant piles of snow, so they hop on the chair lift to ascend the hill.

Lance and Canaan are still looking for water. Canaan finds some, and when he returns to Mika, he falls to his knees to dramatically recover from his walking-around-the-desert adventures. He seems like a bit of a drama queen to me. I mean, I thought it was pretty cool when the guys on the high school soccer team used to dramatically collapse to the ground periodically on their knees or bellies, too, until my mother pointed out that it was kind of a show. For, you know, suckers such as myself.

Lance finds an urn, but it’s empty. This makes Lance angry, so he’s all “LANCE SMASH!” and throws it on the ground. The best part is that the captions say, “Aaaaaaah!” I’m not sure whether I’m more amused by the possibility that they captioned that to make fun of him or the possibility that they captioned that because they weren’t sure we’d understand that he yelled, “Aaaaaaah!” I like the idea of people on their couches hearing “AAAAAAAAH!” and turning to each other, like, “Wait, what did he say?” “I think it was ‘air.’” “Oh. Because I think thinking ‘art.’” “Might’ve been ‘eye.’” “Might’ve, yeah.”

Matt and Gary are at the top of the mountain. Matt is pretty sure this will be no problem, because “I snowboard in my boxers every winter.” Heh. I think that is a slightly different skill set, though I admit it is related. They head down the mountain sitting on their little shovel-sleds. It looks to me like this would be very difficult because the sled is so bitty, but they don’t seem bugged by it at all.

Brian and Ericka, Sam and Dan, and Tiffany and Maria all get to Ski Dubai at about the same time, so you can tell that they brought Tiffany and Maria’s replacement car pretty much immediately. All three of these teams decide they want to hunt for the tiny snowman. I’m not sure what everybody thinks is going to be so hard about building a snowman. Maybe they’re all tired from the desert wandering and don’t want to haul loads of snow? That’s the only thing I can think of, because these haystack Detours can be absolute death.

As Lance looks around for water and sweats his sweat upon the Earth, he mocks his early decision to do this crazy thing in the first place, muttering to himself, “‘Oh, I’ll do The Amazing Race, no problem.’” And just for a moment, I am struck with a pang of sympathy for him. Fortunately, it passes quickly.

And now: Embarrassment. Mika comments that it’s so funny that you can go 120 miles an hour in Dubai, and it feels just like 60. Canaan points out that she is looking at kilometers per hour. So in fact, she is not going all that fast. “Awww,” she says. Here’s the thing: I get the confusion, but I do not get the idea of not understanding that if you were going 120 miles an hour, you would be able to tell. Even in Dubai, that would feel different. You would notice yourself going 120 miles an hour. It would seem … fast. You would sense that you were moving through space at an exceptional speed to which you were not accustomed. Her speedometer actually says 116, I believe, which would mean she’s going … 72. Which is why it feels kinda normal. As opposed to feeling like your cheeks are flapping against the headrest.

Finally, Lance has found some water, but as he fills his bag, he’s talking to himself about how he let Keri down and so forth. He is having one of those horrible epiphanies where people realize they will have to listen more. It’s always hard.

She’s not mad, though. She cheers for him as he returns and they leave for Ski Dubai. I’ll give them this: for all the bluster, they do seem to remain in mostly good spirits. They irritate me, but they’re not villains. (And unlike the people who make Survivor, I understand what a villain is.)

At Ski Dubai, the poor anthropomorphic polar bear is like, “Over here. I’m not doing anything. Any time. I’m in my bear suit. So. You know.”

Maria and Tiffany sled down the hill, followed by Sam and Dan. Ericka, however, squeals with concern over her very cold behind, but she gets herself going eventually and giggles all the way down. They whoop hysterically as she reaches the bottom of the hill, and they are definitely growing on me a lot. She is literally laughing and squealing like, “Weeeeaaaaaah-hahahaha!” I am always in favor of that sound. In fact, I’d be in favor of making it more often myself.

Flight Time and Big Easy also want to Find A Snowman. What is the appeal of this Detour option? Is there secretly beer?

In the Lance and Keri car, he’s talking about how they didn’t come to lose — they came to win. Well, then! That explains a lot.

Ericka is the first of all the teams that are digging to find a tiny little snowman. She shows it to the rest of the teams so they know what they’re looking for. Currently in second place, they get their clue that tells them to head to the pit stop.

On the way to Ski Dubai, Lance and Keri have suddenly started cooperating more and yelling at each other less. I think it’s the relief of figuring they’re probably already out of it. Remove the pressure, and you remove the snapping, and you remove the fighting.

As Flight Time and Big Easy arrive at the bottom of the mountain to search the snow mounds, Maria and Tiffany are done, and they’re off to Build A Snowman. Matt and Gary decide the same. Sam, however, doesn’t want to give up the searching.

Back from commercials, Lance and Keri are still having trouble locating Ski Dubai. It’s amazing how you can be athletic, and you can be brilliant, and you can have all kinds of interpersonal skills, but if you can’t read a map to get from unfamiliar point A to unfamiliar point B, you are all kinds of screwed in this game.

Flight Time and Big Easy are still hunting in the snow, as are Sam and Dan. Dan is agitating to switch Detours.

The switchers head out to Build A Snowman, and the show offers, for about the third time, its “Copyright Non-Infringement Bells,” which goes, “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, You Are In Dubai!” Matt and Gary and Maria and Tiffany work on their snowmen.

Mika and Canaan are on the way to Ski Dubai, as are Lance and Keri, who are having a laugh at their own expense. “We’re directionally challenged,” she says, and he belly-laughs, very good-naturedly. They really didn’t do a good job this season casting anyone particularly despicable. (I am kidding. I do not like people who are despicable. Do not misquote me.)

Still cackling and giggling, Brian and Ericka land on the mat as team two. She offers a strange interview in which she mixes karma, helping other teams, being a kind person, and “the reasons why I decided to marry you.” Goodness. That was a conversational whirlwind.

Sam and Dan decide to bail on the searching and build themselves a snowman, but just then, Flight Time and Big Easy find their little snowman. “That’s how you be a man, baby!” one of them hollers as they run off to give their tiny toy snowman to the guy dressed like a polar bear. It is, one must admit, a pinnacle of masculinity.

As Flight Time and Big Easy are leaving for the pit stop, they run into Mika and Canaan, just out of their car and on the way into Ski Dubai. The boys caution the new arrivals to get their coats before they head inside, so Mika and Canaan do.

Gary and Matt look like they’re just building a wad of snow, but once it’s finished, it’s actually a respectable snowman, and they are the next team to be released to the pit stop.

Mika and Canaan choose to Build a Snowman — amusingly, it’s not because they sense the Sisyphean effort that it will be to look for the snowman, but because Mika declares that she cannot sled. I understand “can’t drive,” but I’m not sure I understand “can’t slide down a hill on my ass.”

Lance and Keri are still … in … the … car. She’s pretty sure they’re going in the right direction, because they’ve “passed the outlet mall.” Ha! I’m not sure why, but that amuses me so much.

Flight Time and Big Easy arrive on the mat as team number three, accompanied by “Nutcracker” music. I”m really not sure I understand this episode, musically.

Pokers, brothers, and latecoming Mika and Canaan are working on snowmen. The girls are the first to be done. Sam and Dan follow soon after. I swear, it really sounds like they say the snowman has to have “breasts for arms,” which totally confused me for a second. I mean, I don’t mean to discriminate against unusually configured snowmen, but I can’t say having breasts for arms would be of much advantage over not having arms at all, speaking as someone who has both breasts and arms. They don’t really substitute for each other very well. I suppose it would increase the importance and appeal of a firm handshake. (Thank you, I’m here all week.)

Canaan is not happy to see Sam and Dan leave, so that he and Mika are alone. I’m not sure whether he knows the current status of Lance and Keri, but he knows he’s not on very comfortable ground.

Welcome, Gary and Matt, you are team number four. Maria and Tiffany, you are a little lost. Sam and Dan, so are you.

Hey, it’s Lance and Keri, arriving at Ski Dubai!

Mika and Canaan are finally done and ready to go, but they’re concerned that Lance and Keri might be inside, having speedily completed the Find A Snowman option. Not much danger of that.

Welcome, Sam and Dan, you are team number five! Welcome, Maria and Tiffany, you are team number six!

Mika and Canaan pay a cab driver to lead them to the pit stop, while Lance and Keri get to work on their snowman.

Welcome, Mika and Canaan! You are not last. You are team number seven.

Lance and Keri work on their snowman, still in pretty good spirits. The first thing Lance wants to know when they’re done is whether he can kick the snowman. Ah, Lance’s outlook on life. Thanks for dropping by. They read the clue that tells them to head for the pit stop. On the way there, he speculates aloud that it might be a non-elimination leg, while she marvels at just how badly they did on this particular day. They arrive at the mat.

Welcome, Lance and Keri, you are the last team to arrive, and you are eliminated. They take it very, very well, and he says that they have “different personalities” but a “good relationship.” Amusingly, he comments that he wouldn’t, after all, want to be married to himself. “Two of you would be too much,” she says, touching his arm affectionately. You know, it’s not my thing, but they’re clearly not bad people. He’s hyper, but I think they like each other. I’m happy somebody wants to marry that guy, and equally happy it is not me. Farewell, Lance, of the firm of Benchpress, Latpull & Squat.

Executive Producer? Jerry Bruckheimer.

Next week: Unless the previews are showing something that will not actually occur, Canaan attempts to bodily throw Mika down a water slide when she’s afraid to go, and that is going to be a very controversial move, not least with me.

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As for the 15-4 recap (of this last episode), I’d love to get it done today, but it might be tomorrow. I’ve just been slammed this week. It’s coming, though — promise!

Thanks to everybody. I couldn’t be happier.

And now an update to the update: It might even be tomorrow (Saturday). I don’t want it to go too long, because we’re also doing Survivor this week, and I would never let it go past, say, Sunday morning so you have plenty of time before the next ep to read it. But there are a few Things What Things going on (all fine, nothing bad), so I gotta get to it when I get to it. It’s about half written now.

But even a procrastinator like me wouldn’t flake on a project for charity, so rest assured, it will happen.

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