Previously on You Have Been Philiminaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghhhh [splash]: Mika flipped out at the top of the water slide, wouldn’t go down even when her boyfriend attempted to lovingly throw her down, and touched off an Internet debate that hasn’t been seen since Was Sue Hawk Faking It? Elsewhere, Sam and Dan opined that they weren’t going to tell other teams that they were gay, while wearing shirts so orange that they were literally as gay as a tangerine scarf, Big Easy had a difficult time at the Roadblock when he literally didn’t pay attention to what time it was, and Spiky and Perky came in first … again. Uh, literally.

Who will be eliminated … next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ericka is still counting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiky and Perky are still finding the golf very tough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flight Time and Big Easy decide on the dance.

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

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

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

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

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

Spiky and Perky, you are team number two.

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

Tiffany and Maria swim across the creek.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria and Tiffany are still golfing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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