Previously on Russell: The Story Of Russell starring Russell, Russell Russelled a Russell, but Russell’s Russell was Russelling Russell. Russell had Russell Russell Russell, and Russell Russell, “Russell Russell Russell.”

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!

First: High-five to M. Giant, the Tyler Durden to my Guy Played By Edward Norton, or possibly the other way around. I did not read his recap yet, even though he was days ahead of me, because it would be impossible for me not to steal from its inevitable genius, but I promise you it is very good, because I have read his stuff for many years, and it is as reliably good as reliably good gets.

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.

All of our chosen projects are funded! We are good through 15-9.

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.

Sarah’s challenge has some wonderful match possibilities if we can get some money moving in the next day or so, so let’s keep working on recaps.

TAR 15-7: Picture Communication For Exceptional Children (this teacher works with itty-bitty special-needs three- four- and five-year-olds, and they need pictures to help them communicate, as many are nonverbal)

TAR 15-8: It’s All About Words (that teacher can’t get DICTIONARIES, people)

TAR 15-9: Clay Animators Unite (I think this one speaks for itself! It’s Claymation! How bad do you want to know students are doing Claymation because of your donation?)

Should those three get done, we’ll go from there.

Now working on TAR 15-6. Project: Native American Reference Books.

There is something about a teacher saying, “I cannot afford reference books.” This is a pretty small one — under $400! — so let’s go let’s go let’s go.

Okay, guys. There are actually only a couple weeks left in Sarah’s drive, so in order to make sure we exhaust your interest in funding recaps (which I expect to run out, so please don’t worry about hurting my feelings!), we’re going to start funding them ahead, and we’re going to throw in Survivor. If one gets funded, we’ll put up the next one, and we’ll see how far we get in the season.

Tonight is TAR 15-4. (That means Season 15, Episode 4.) That one is already covered. The project for TAR 15-5, next week’s episode, is Sixth-Graders Make Connections To The World Of Birds, which combines writing (which I love) with birds (which my parents love).

Prefer Survivor? Survivor 19-6 airs this Thursday. The project for Survivor 19-6 is this one, called Third Graders At A Kindergarten Reading Level — Help!!, which just won me over completely.

So if you’re still game, I’m still game, and we’ll keep going until you have given all you wish to or my fingers cramp up. Heh.

Hello! As you probably know if you are reading this, the reason this recap was completed was in support of Sarah Bunting’s fundraising drive for Donors Choose, a fantastic charity that raises money for school projects. I offered to recap an episode of this season’s Amazing Race if folks would make sure that a project to provide fitness activities for at-risk students (specifically Frisbee Golf) got funded. It was funded, so here we are.

If you would like to see another recap next week, the project is Googly Eyes for kids with multiple disabilities. Please use that link to go to Donors Choose so that your donation is credited to Sarah’s drive. There is currently $455 to go as of this writing. If that project is funded before it expires on Saturday (you don’t have to mention me, you don’t have to care about a recap; just read about the Googly Eyes and see if you can stand it), we’ll be on for next week. And thanks to all who have already donated.

Previously on Hi, Phil! HI, PHIL! REMEMBER ME, PHIL?: Teams raced all over Vietnam, also known as The Home Of Flo’s Spiritual Chickens Coming Home To Roost In Zach’s Figurative Nest Of Abject Misery. Marcy thought sad, weepy things about Vietnam that suggested instantly that she was about to be eliminated. (Next time, Marcy, concentrate on the delicious cuisine of a country and not the serious feelings it causes you to have. It’s always the brooders who are moved by their surroundings who wind up getting the boot! Don’t be a victim!) Lance was like, “Keri, I’m done with you,” but Keri didn’t run fast enough, so before she knew it, she was getting love noogies and having her heart’s underpants run up the flagpole or whatever the FUCK that guy does when he wants to show affection. I can only imagine. I am trying not to.

Also last week: Zev and Justin broke an ear off a giraffe, and while I’d like to tell you that’s a euphemism for deflowering a member of the Vietnamese women’s basketball team, it in fact simply means that they broke an ear off a giraffe. Flight Time and Big Easy made it to the mat just ahead of Spiky McGee and His Perky Ladyperson. Oh, and Lance was really impressed with himself for being able to rip apart a VCR with his bare hands. Hey, don’t laugh — it’s going to look really bad-ass on the police report when he gets arrested in 1989. Phil referred to Lance as “the lion,” which I think was code for “Dear Race support staff, please make with the tranquilizer darts,” but Lance is still awake for now, while Marcy and Ron became the cannon fodder they were always probably destined to be. Farewell, Marcy and Ron.

Nine teams left. Who will be eliminated … next?

Credits. Freakish biceps! Natural wonders! The natural wonder of a freakish bicep! You know, in some ways, so little has changed. [BOMP.]

Ho Chi Minh City. Drunken careening cameramen try to be like, “Um, don’t mind all the disease-repelling face masks; it’s VERY HOSPITABLE!” Phil turns out to be standing next to a big green star in the middle of a mess of traffic, so I hope he’s being careful. Phil takes us back in history to the surrender of the South Vietnamese at the “Reunification Palace,” which it seems to me is a little like calling the end zone at Lambeau Field the “Lying On The Ground Together And Hugging Each Other Plaza.”

Either way, though, this was the third pit stop. Presumably, teams were able to use their mandatory rest period to eat, sleep, and reunify. (Chicka-bow.)

6:53 PM. Flight Time and Big Easy are ready to go, and they’re in uniform today. The clue sends them to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where Phil explains that they will go to the Foreign Correspondents Club and “make contact with” an editor who will give them a clue. Flight Time Globetrotterviews that he is having all kinds of interesting experiences on the race, such as “cleaning Big Easy’s socks and underwear.” Hee.

6:54 PM. Spiky and Perky. He is wearing a bandanna wrapped around his head to prevent the hair uprising from becoming a full-on revolt, which would only lead to civic unrest, a mousse coup, and ultimately, complete follicular anarchy.

6:58 PM. Gary and Matt, AKA Kool-Aid Man and Kool-Aid Man’s Dad. Gary tells us that Matt’s hair has been many, many colors in addition to pink, and this, I believe.

6:59 PM. Brian and Ericka. That’s Miss Am-Ericka, to you. BOOYAH! Sigh. I don’t get pageant people, really. Brian interviews that they have spotted a “jungle theme” in this year’s race. Crickets chirp uncomfortably as everyone tries to figure out where he is going with this, and then he goes on to say that they have seen a variety of animals. Unfortunately, the two animals he mentions are zebras and ducks. Now, I am quite sure zebras do not live in the jungle. I am even more sure ducks do not live in the jungle. I realize that saying you have spotted a zoo theme doesn’t sound as interesting, but that is essentially the only way you are going to get ducks and zebras to be part of the same thing.

7:06 PM. Sam and Dan, Stealth Gay Bros.

7:16 PM. Maria and Tiffany, Oblivious Pursuers Of Stealth Gay Bros.

So everybody starts arriving at the airport, where, unsurprisingly, they encounter large numbers of Vietnamese people. Unfortunately, Big Flight Easy Time and Spiky and Perky discover right away that there are no flights to Phnom Penh until tomorrow at 12:25. So that’s … eighteen hours, give or take, at the Ho Chi Minh City airport. I hope there’s a Starbucks.

7:25 PM. Mika and Canaan, the first TAR team ever named by the parents of the kindergarten class at the Arlo Guthrie Organic And Possibly Communist Alternative Preschool Of The Earth.

7:31 PM. Zev and Justin. Justin explains that he and Zev met at camp and became friends, and Zev says that Justin is a great guy who, among other things, “took [him] into his group of friends,” for which Zev is “very grateful.” My favorite thing about this team is that this is clearly true, that Justin clearly greases the wheels for Zev socially to some degree, but he likes the guy — it’s not pity, it’s not “look how great I am for dragging my unusual friend around as if he were, for instance, some short-of-stature cousin I wanted to use for martyrdom and as an occasional side-of-beef hauler.” They make themselves laugh in the cab, concluding that because they can’t pronounce “Phnom,” they’ll call it “Sean Penn, Cambodia.” Heh. That’s just stupid enough that it seems like something I might do with my friends.

7:32 PM. Lance and Keri. Lance’s arm is bandanna’d up like a Chachi leg as he explains in an interview that they are getting married after the race (you can see her brain making a “maybe, maybe not” hand gesture inside her skull), and he thinks the race is basically the equivalent of five years of marital stress. I am not actually married myself, but I would say only this: HA HA HA! It really is not that. I mean, if you want to know whether that makes sense, ask anyone who’s been married five years how the daily grind has affected her, and see if she says, “I swear, it’s been like three weeks of traveling around the world on someone else’s dime.” Lance says that he needs to “open up and listen.” And then he puts her in a headlock and is like, “JUST KIDDING NYAAAAAH! WHO’S MY BABY? WHO’S MY BABY?” No, no, he doesn’t do that. He is tooootally sincere.

Teams continue to converge on the airport and crowd around the Vietnam Airlines counter, where the lady no doubt wishes she could hang a big banner behind the desk that says “NO SRSLY 12:25 TOMORROW STOP ASKING.” Everyone seems to be getting the same tickets, but there’s some emphasis on Zev and Justin being stuck in traffic that begins to suggest that their position is going to be important — and that means ticket problems. We also learn along here that Zev’s way of sassing cab drivers is to tell them, “I’m going to call your mother.” Which I find odd and hilarious. I think he learned the mildest verson of Yo Mamma jokes that has ever been taught. It’s like he heard somebody say, “I’m going to [inaudible] your mother,” but he was nine, so he assumed it was “call,” picked it up as a piece of trash talk and never reconsidered.

Indeed, at the airport, Justin and Zev are behind Lance and Keri, which Lance is polite enough to rub in their faces before tearing the top off a can of spinach with his bare hands and then tipping his head backwards, opening his massive yap, and pouring it in. Congratulations, big fella, you’re making the bar very proud.

As it turns out, Justin and Zev and Lance and Keri can’t get tickets for the flight everyone else has, leaving at 12:25. Instead, they have to take a different flight, which leaves at 2:15. Dun! They both make it onto the standby list, though.

Electric guitar music provides the “Eighteen hours later …” segue, and we are suddenly watching the teams with tickets get on the shuttle to head out to the flight, while Biceps Biceptington and Mouthy Mouthahan and Justin and Zev endeavor to get off standby. The other teams are pretty pleased to apparently be leaving two teams behind. But wait! Back at the ticket counter, Justin asks again whether they can possibly get on the plane, although of course, if they can, that probably means Beefaroni Meathead, Esq. and Janice From Friends will get on as well.

(Side note: Would you have believed, during the pilot more than eight years ago [!], that I would one day refer to a dude as “Beefaroni Meathead, Esq.,” and it would NOT be Rob?)

Commercials. Let us pause and think happy thoughts of seasons past. Mine are all about shoulders, what about you?

When we return, the tension continues to mount at the ticket counter until — surprise! — everybody gets on the flight. That was totally unexpected based on the assumption I always carry that what appears to be disaster just before the commercial will always continue to be disaster after the commercial, because anything else would feel cheap and manipulative, right? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 157 times … wait, eventually it turns back to shame on you, right? Man, I hope so.

On the shuttle out to the plane, Justin chuckles, referring to his almost-flight-missing, “That would have been a tough way to go.” Excuse me, I have a pain in my foreshadowing bone. Won’t you pardon me while I see about a plaster cast?

Lance actually flexes his fucking bicep on the way out to the plane, like that isn’t the greatest way ever invented to announce that you are made of suck and noodles, hold the noodles. The rest of the teams see him coming just as they’re about to climb the little stairs to the plane, and you can see that part of them is thinking, “I almost got a big lead on these teams,” but the other part is thinking, “I almost got to fly to Cambodia without this guy on the same plane I’m on.” “NO CHEAP WINS BITCHES NO CHEAP WINS!” he hollers at them. Which is great, since you know he’s totally the guy who would try to win a game of H-O-R-S-E by calling ticky-tack fouls. (”Um, wrist contact! That’s your R, asshole! THAT’S YOUR R RIGHT THERE!”)

So to recap the recap up to this point, here’s where we stand: We have spent the entire first act of the show to do nothing except get as far as “So the first thing they do is: everybody gets on the same flight.”

The Amaaaazing Red Line on the New And Improved Amaaaaazing Map By Amaaaazing Google shows that they are going from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh. Hey, look! Cambodia contains a flag and some monks! At the airport, Justin and Zev are the first into a cab on the way to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. “Very fast, okay?” Justin says. “Like the cops are chasing you, but safely.” Heh. I like that: “Like a bat leaving hell in an orderly fashion.” Other teams follow, including Gary and Matt, who are happy to hear that their driver is a speed demon. Trailing teams include Mika and Canaan and Lance and Keri.

(I am now envisioning Lance in his own personal-injury ad, which I suspect would take a long time to film. “Have you been injured by a fight in a bar with an excitable kind of ragey dude with a hankie wrapped around his arm who kept flexing at you? Yeah, that was probably me, so you should sue me. Wait, cut, that’s not what I was … shit, I have to start over. Okay, in 3, 2, 1 … Have you been injured by a guy who got pissed off watching football at a bar and decided to throw a chair, only he kind of lost his grip on the chair, and it flew the wrong direction? Yeah, that was me, so … shit.”)

Zev and Justin make friends with their cab driver, whose name is Thierry. The lead teams head inside the FCC (that’s Foreign Correspondents Club, not the regulatory agency), where they are supposed to be looking for the guy who is eyeballing them suspiciously from behind a newspaper. Is this a spy club? I’m not sure “foreign correspondent” implies intrigue. Doesn’t it imply … reporting? And if so, why is the assignment editor hiding from the reporters? Are assignments given to foreign correspondents a secret? Maybe I am working for the wrong media outlet.

As the first couple of teams collect their next clues, it turns out that they’re given in the form of mocked-up newspaper sections. Because that’s what a foreign correspondent’s assignment editor does — hand out copies of the paper. I fear that this metaphor here has gone horribly awry, and/or everyone who came up with this particular clue got all of the relevant ideas about journalism from that episode of The Brady Bunch where Peter calls himself “Scoop.”

But there are more depressing things to worry about, as the clue turns out to be a picture of Jackie Kennedy standing up in a car during an official visit to Cambodia. They’re supposed to use the picture to find a hotel with a suite named after the woman in the picture — who isn’t identified for the teams. The suite, Phil explains, is at the Hotel Le Royal. When they get to the hotel and find her picture hanging on the wall, their clue will be there.

Matt and Dan immediately decide they need to find out who the woman in the picture is. Now, I wasn’t alive when that picture was taken either, but I have to tell you, that is not only a picture of Jackie Kennedy; it is a very typical picture of Jackie Kennedy in which she looks exactly like … Jackie Kennedy. It’s not a trick question.

The teams have no idea who she is, but fortunately, their drivers all know what hotel is in the picture or referenced by the picture or something, because they get on the right path. Maybe Jackie Kennedy is the David Hasselhoff of Cambodia. (Yes, I do hold the copyright on that comparison, thank you very much, please do not use Jackie Kennedy: The David Hasselhoff Of Cambodia as the title of your Jackie Kennedy biography without consulting me.)

The other teams show up at the club, and things go swimmingly until the last team — Mika and Canaan. Everyone else has said some variation of, “Can I have our next assignment?” Canaan says he wants the next “task.” The assignment editor gives him nothing. (Editors CAN be capricious and demanding, you know.) Canaan says it again. And again. And now he’s getting irritated, because the guy won’t give him the clue. Finally, he rereads the clue and figures out that he’s using the wrong word, and they manage to get what they need and get going. Well, that was agonizing.

As the teams are all piling into their cabs, the little Zither of Confusion cautions us that a couple of teams have been directed to the Royal Palace rather than the Hotel Le Royal — specifically Ericka and Brian and Gary and Matt.

Meanwhile, Justin and then Gary recognize Jackie Kennedy in the picture, at long last, and when prompted, their partners realize that is who it is. We now go to an interview montage starting with Gary, who explains that he knew it was Jackie Kennedy. Then to Canaan: “The picture was a picture of Queen Elizabeth.” And then there is a hilariously loud gong that announces that he will be repeating history at the Arlo Guthrie Organic And Possibly Communist Alternative Preschool Of The Earth. And then Flight Time says, in the cab, “It’s one of the queens from here.” And Mika adds in their interview, “It was definitely somebody of the Cambodian descent. It looked like the people of Cambodia.” Oh, yes. Yes, definitely. It was that famous Cambodian, Jackie Kennedy. Take us home, Dan!: “It was like a queen or a princess or something.” Yes. Yes, it was. It was Princess Pillbox Hat, of the Big Sunglasses Dynasty.

Zev and Justin get right to the hotel and find the picture hanging on the wall, and they retrieve their clue. The Detour offers them a choice: Cover or Wrap. In Cover, you have to sell four motorcycle helmets to a family of four, including two adults and two kids. So first you have to find the helmet stand, and then you have to find a family, and then you have to count the people in it, and I already hate this Detour option and we haven’t even talked to anyone yet, let alone tried to sell them something while not speaking their language and that is crazy.

In Cover, you go to a market and find a lady wearing a particular scarf. Unless I have to find a lady wearing a particular scarf and sell her to a family of four, I’m going to say this option is much, much easier. Zev and Justin run off to the Russian Market, where Wrap is, and the sad part about this (in retrospect) is that they are having a great time and running a great leg, with help from this awesome cab driver.

Gary and Matt and Ericka and Brian are at the palace — which is not where they should be. They do, however, find people who put them on the right track.

At the Russian Market, Zev and Justin hunt for the stalls that they need, while back at the hotel, more teams are picking up the Detour clue and picking Wrap. Thierry is still with Zev and Justin as they look in the market for a lady with a purple scarf. That is one full-service taxi driver.

The only goofballs to go with Cover are Lance and Keri, who make that choice after she asks their cab driver whether it will be hard to sell helmets to a family of four for ten dollars. He tells them “It’s okay,” and I think that’s the basis on which she pretty much makes the decision, despite the fact that I am not at all convinced that he had any idea what she was asking. In my experience, hearing the words “It’s okay” is not an incredibly powerful indicator that you are being understood by a person who has a different native language than you do, let alone a powerful indicator that he has thought through the nature of your problem and concluded that, in fact, it’s okay.

Zev and Justin find the purple scarf (with an assist from Thierry), and they get their clue and are on their way. The clue tells them to go on foot to Wat Toul Tom Pong to find their next clue. They want to stay with Thierry, so they have him drive while they run behind the taxi. Heh. If only Heather and Eve had followed their taxi instead of, you know, ridden in it. How very differently things might have turned out.

Other teams pick up their scarves at the Russian Market. When Flight Time and Big Easy pick up their scarf, they also find a couple of American women who, drawn undoubtedly by patriotism and the milk of human kindness, and not at all by television cameras and Harlem Globetrotter uniforms, walk around with them to help them find the woman they’re looking for with the scarf on.

Maria and Tiffany are sitting in their tuk-tuk on the way to the Detour. “I don’t understand what’s taking so long,” one of them mutters. Considering that they are stuck in traffic, I would tend to chalk it up to the large number of other people on the streets of Cambodia, but perhaps they are looking for a more nuanced answer.

Zev and Justin find their way to the Roadblock, which reads, “Who’s ready to go bananas?” Phil explains that monkeys are highly revered in Cambodia, to the point where the royal family has a “monkey master” who “trains dancers to behave like monkeys.” Now, I am no genius where monkeys are concerned, but if you like monkeys, would it not be cheaper to simply employ monkeys directly, rather than dancers imitating monkeys who have to be trained by a monkey master? I’m just raising the question. If monkeys are making more money than people acting like monkeys, then free-market economics would suggest that monkeys should become unemployed and should have to go to work doing something for which willing and cheaper humans cannot be substituted, such as watching The Jay Leno Show.

Phil claims that someone will, for the Roadblock, “quite literally go bananas,” by which he means that the person will make monkey-like movements, thus figuratively going bananas, because literally going bananas would pretty much require the involvement of bananas, Phil. The task consists, in fact, of three “monkey maneuvers” that the person has to master before they can move on, none of which look particularly difficult. The moves will be “demonstrated by their monkey master.” I look forward to the day when I can use this as an excuse for my own actions. “It was demonstrated by my monkey master! I HAD NO CHOICE!”

Zev takes the task for his team, and Justin interviews (looking suspiciously glum, oh noooooo) that when he saw Zev putting on the mask and tail, he thought that was great, since “everybody who knows Zev would like to see him wear a tail and a mask pretty much at all times.” Heh. As we watch, Zev finishes the first maneuver and his little graphic (labeled “Monkey Maneuvers,” which is really twee) ticks off one checkbox. Zev also finishes the second maneuver without any trouble.

We check in on Brian and Ericka and Gary and Matt, all arriving late at the Russian Market after being misled to the palace instead of the hotel, as you’ll recall.

Elsewhere, Lance and Keri grab their helmets and start walking around, calling out for someone to come and purchase them. You know, whenever I’m out shopping, I am always drawn to loud people walking around screaming in a language I do not so much speak that I should come over and pay them money for safety gear of unknown origin that, should it turn out to be faulty, will result in mybrain being splattered on the Cambodian streets along with the rest of my family of four.

Back at the Russian Market, teams are still hunting for scarf-wearers. Spiky notes that the task was difficult, because of the size of the market and how hard it was to spot people in the crowd. He calls it “like finding a needle in a haystack.” I think that is an exaggeration. If you constructed a haystack made of people and one of them was wearing a scarf, I still believe it would be easier to find than a needle in a nearby haystack made of hay, no? Brian and Ericka, on the other hand, get incredibly lucky when their scarf person is, like, walking right past the stand at the moment they pick up the scarf, so they’re on their way almost immediately. Fortune favors the tiara-blessed!

When Flight Time and Big Easy find their scarf lady, she doesn’t immediately respond to their cries, leading Big Easy to claim, “She tried to run from me; that’s cold-blooded.” Hee. As they’re leaving, Maria and Tiffany are finally arriving.

Back at Monkey Town, Zev is trying to master the final Maneuver, but this one requires him to walk on the pole all bent over, and as Justin explains it in an interview, Zev has “the body of an 80-year-old man.” Heh. Thus, he finds this part a bit more difficult. As Justin tries to encourage him, Zev eventually calls out from behind the monkey mask for him to quit it with the encouraging. Aw. Aggravated monkey!

Sam and Dan get there next to start the monkey play (none of this is dirty, I swear). Zev, meanwhile, gets more frustrated and eventually sort of plunks down on the ground.

When we get back from commercials, Zev explains that he had a kind of a panic attack over the fact that he was struggling with the task and Justin was yapping in his ear and so forth. You can see Justin struggling with how much encouragement is the right amount, and what kind is the right kind, as he tries to get Zev to focus and go back to it.

Sam and Dan actually get finished with the roadblock first and get the clue to head for the pit stop. Phil warns us that the last team to check in … may be eliminated.

Back at the Russian Market, Mika tells that the market was “hot and tight.” Okay, that is an inside joke — so to speak, hotcha! — if ever I saw one, because previous abstainers from sex have also said “hot and tight,” so either Mika is being funny or the show is, or else “hot and tight” really tends to emerge as a thing you say when you are not having sex with the person you are dating.

Zev finally finishes his Monkey Maneuvers, and he and Justin receive the clue to head for the pit stop. Back in the cab with Thierry, they head for the pit stop.

Teams continue to hunt for scarves — Gary and Matt are looking, Mika and Canaan are looking, and Lance and Keri are not looking, because they are trying to sell motorcycle helmets to random strangers on the street, but I’m sure that as their taxi driver told them, “it’s okay.”

Finally, Gary and Matt and Spiky and Perky get going, and Lance and Keri finally irritate enough Cambodians that somebody is willing to buy the damn motorcycle helmets so they’ll stop talking. Those are some Cambodians taking one for the team.

Sam and Dan were not prepared for tuk-tuks to be slow. Dear Sam and Dan: Tuk-tuks are slow. Welcome to the race. Also slow: camels. Walking. Ducks and zebras. (Crap, maybe THAT’S the theme!)

Elsewhere, Zev makes his monkey face for the camera. He is right; it’s pretty good.

Perky is, according to Spiky, “a monkey and a half.” That should totally be on her Valentine’s Day card. Though it would make rather an unwieldy wedding-ring inscription. Gary is also a perfectly fine monkey, though perhaps more like a monkey and a quarter.

Unsurprisingly, when Lance and Keri arrive at the Monkeyblock, she decides to do the work. I’m not sure “lithe” is something he’s particularly making a priority. Keri gets right to work. I wonder if one of the maneuvers involves poo-flinging. If so, I have a suggestion for her.

And now, back at the market, Maria and Tiffany finally locate their scarf-wearing target, as do Mika and Canaan.

Zev and Justin pile out of their tuk-tuk and run to the mat, where Phil welcomes them as team number one! Yay! Well, that’s a relief! I didn’t want anything heartbreaking to happen! They look extremely happy. At the moment. Soon after, Sam and Dan check in as team number two, and right behind them are Flight Time and Big Easy as team number three.

And now: tragedy. We cut to Zev and Justin, who are talking about the fact that they are down one passport. I think the way this works is that when you come in, you have to do a check to make sure things are in order, which includes showing your travel documents — unfortunately, precisely so something like this can be discovered if it happens. And Zev’s passport is not in the pack where it’s supposed to be. Reluctantly, they return to the mat and explain the situation to Phil. He tells them that unless they have their passports, they can’t continue, and they’ll have to find their passports before the last team checks in, or they’ll be eliminated. And everyone else will get to stay, including Maria and Tiffany again, and Maria and Tiffany will avoid their logical fate again, and they will chalk it up to something good about themselves, and I’m kind of not that hot on them feeling good about themselves, I’m sorry to say.

As for requiring the passports to show up before the las team checks in, I understand from a logistical standpoint that you would want to do it this way, because you would want to know by the end of the leg who was out. But at the same time, it creates such an artificial result that you’d get, it seems to me, better outcomes if the rule were that you had to find your passport before it was time for you to leave. I don’t think it would have mattered in this situation based on what I heard later (apparently, they dropped the passport while taking something out of the bag at the monastery near the monkey thing, and it was found there and turned in to the Embassy, which wasn’t open to return it to them for days), but you can imagine a situation where check-in was earlier in the day and the teams were close together, and it might seem kind of phony to boot somebody because they couldn’t find their passports in 20 minutes but found them an hour later, such that they could have continued without any problem.

After the commercial, they tease us with a sequence where Phil has them empty their backpacks, and it seems like maybe it’s going to be there when they dump everything out, but it isn’t.

Anyway, Phil says they have to head back out and look for the passports, so this is where their affection for Thierry comes in. They decide to get on the phone with him and see if they can track him down.

Meanwhile, back at the Monkeyblock, you will not be shocked to hear that Lance is hollering at Keri about various things he wants her to do differently, monkey-wise. She finally tells him to shut up. Thanks, Keri!

Maria and Tiffany are finally at the Monkeyblock also.

Thierry agrees to come back and work with Zev and Justin to find the missing passport. Obviously, the first thing they want to do is search the car, which is the single place where they spent the most time.

Keri finishes up the Roadblock just as Mika and Canaan arrive. He becomes the monkey, which Maria is busy doing for her team of crafty, cutthroat, usually lagging poker players. (It is fascinating in retrospect that they figured their biggest problem would be that they should play fake-dumb, because they’d be seen as overwhelming powerful favorites if they let on that they play poker, since they’d seem like big and intimidating successes. I think they’ve gone all the way around now and back to a whole different dumb, so that I don’t think anyone would be surprised at this point to learn that they’re lying about the poker and actually fold paper hats for a living.)

Zev and Justin return to the scene of the Monkeyblock with Thierry.

As it turns out, Maria is not the most graceful of monkey imitators, as she keeps falling off the balance beam, as it were, while trying to walk across on her feet and hands. Canaan, on the other hand, seems to be a natural, and is not only doing the maneuvers, but also apparently having monkey-language conversations wtih the monkey master from time to time. There’s a point, I would think, where it’s cool if your boyfriend can imitate a monkey, but you might not want to see him get too involved in having silent discussions with other people also imitating monkeys, or you’d start to suspect that he is going to age weird.

Brian and Ericka are very happy to be team number three, all things considered.

Canaan is finally done. Maria is finally done, too.

Gary and Matt are team number four. Congratulations, guys!

Zev and Justin are in the cab, trying to figure out what went wrong. They know they had the passport at the airport; how many places could it have gone? (I have to say, this is the only way in which I fault them — I would think when you’re out of the airport, you would secure the passport somewhere that you don’t have anything else, and not flopping around loose in the pack, which is where it apparently was, allowing it to fall out when Justin took out the headlamp. But these, of course, are the reflections of a couch-dweller, and should be taken for what they are worth, which is essentially nothing.)

Spiky and Perky are team number five. Mika and Canaan and Maria and Tiffany are in tuk-tuks on the way to the pit stop. Maria is proud, but adds, “I wish I could have been a better monkey for my teammate.” I can’t stand them, but that wouldn’t be a bad philosophy for everyone to adopt. Be a good monkey for your teammate. Otherwise: Bad monkey! Bad monkey!

So … as Lance and Keri approach the mat, he is doing … kicks. Like, I guess the idea is that they are monkey-related, or at least monkey-adjacent, but I think what they really demonstrate is that … well, you know how they say that if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Lance is one of those guys where he has a foot, so everything looks like you’re supposed to kick it in the head. I have never seen Phil shoot such a blatant “Oh my God, what are you doing, you stupid asshole?” look in my life. I am developing a narrative in my head where Phil hates Lance so much that he is having dreams about riding his long-distance bicycle back and forth over Lance’s spinal column while Lance is asleep. I think I am close.

Against his better judgment, Phil checks them in as team number six.

In the cab, Zev is growing increasingly depressed. Me too, dude. He’s sure they would have won. He can’t believe he lost a document and it’s going to get them kicked out of the race.

And here, indeed, are their chances waning, as Mika and Canaan check in as team number seven.

In a development demonstrating the basic hostility of the universe, Maria and Tiffany check in, thus snuffing out Zev and Justin, even if they were about to find the passport, which they weren’t. Phil tells the girls they are in last place, but he also tells them that someone else has gotten screwed over by lost travel documents. They are nothing but giggly over their great luck; they don’t seem to have any curiosity whatsoever about who lost their documents. From that, you can tell they don’t really have friends on the race (or they’d ask who it was), not that this didn’t seem to be the case already.

In the cab, Zev says to Justin, “I don’t think it was supposed to happen this way.” Justin agrees that it was not. In the interview that happened later as they were processing all of this, Justin blames himself and says that he feels like he’s “a little bit prone to carelessness,” and maybe he let Zev down a little. “No,” Zev says. “No letdowns.” He goes on to say that it’s just a freak occurrence that could happen to anybody and nobody would have deserved it, but it happened to them for whatever reason.

They return to the mat, and they tell Phil they still have no idea where Zev’s passport is, and he tells them they’re done. Both guys lament that they were doing really well and running a really solid race (which is true), and you can just tell that Justin, in particular, wants to die. It’s nobody’s fault, it really is a freak occurrence, it really is almost impossible to completely avoid, and that’s all really really true. But at the same time, he had the stuff in his possession, and he’s not going to stop feeling like crap for a while, even though he absolutely doesn’t need to.

Zev explains in an interview that what he learned was that he is capable of dealing with unexpected things and doesn’t have to live by a daily routine. What I like about it is that instead of being impressed with himself for making a point to other people about what he’s capable of, Zev is happy that he himself learned that he can do more than he thought. He’s not the first person to ever say it, but there’s something about the authenticity of these guys, where neither of them will tell you that Zev doesn’t have challenges that other people don’t have. Neither of them will tell you that they didn’t have questions about how he would do with the chaotic atmosphere of the race. But at the same time, it’s a very real and very heartfelt relationship that fully acknowledges, but doesn’t rely upon, this difference between them. Zev doesn’t want you to fawn all over how impressive it is that he managed to do the race, and Justin certainly doesn’t want you to fawn all over how great he is for being there. They like each other; they’re friends.

But that was a heartbreaker.

Executive Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer.

Next week: Dubai! Very hot weather! Car racing! And potentially another recap, depending.

I have no idea whether the desire for a recap had much to do with it, but the frisbee golf project is funded, and I will have a TAR recap for you by, let’s say, midnight Wednesday. I am considering adopting a similar project for a Survivor recap, but we’ll see how that goes.

Thanks again to all of you who have contributed to Donors Choose, for this project or any other. It’s a really important cause, and when you think about the fact that kids who probably have very little opportunity for recreation are going to have a chance to get outside and have what we all hope will be a great time, I hope you find it as pleasing as I do. (I realized later that they list the donors, so you can see that this is one I didn’t actually give money to, because I adopted it for this instead — rest assured I am not all talk, and I have given money to other projects. I just wanted that to be clear.)

Here’s the offer.

From time to time, I get very nice comments from people who wonder whether I still watch The Amazing Race or Survivor. If this frisbee golf project is completed before it expires, which happens on Monday (there’s about $575 to go), I’ll provide a full recap of Sunday’s Amazing Race, which you will be able to read in this space, free of charge. If that’s successful, we’ll see about repeating the stunt for future episodes of either show.

I don’t have beautiful craft projects to donate, but I can crack on muscle-bound dipwads and drool over Phil all the livelong day, so if that’s up your alley, hit it. Make sure you use the link below to enter the project so that your donation is credited to Sarah’s wonderful Bet Red fundraising drive. If you’re not familiar with it, Sarah explains here.

Frisbee Golf!