Man, They Should Have Used Fake Names

The Amazing Race - Season 9, Episode 10

Well. I don't know quite how to respond to this episode. When an episode is fairly blah, but one or two good things happen, I know I liked it. When an episode is fairly blah, but one or two asinine things happen, I know I didn't. But how do you judge an episode that's equal parts awesome and bullshit?

The Good: Australia! From Perth to Darwin to Batchelor, all of the scenery tonight is stunning. I'm glad to see these people get back to nature, seeing how urban most of their destinations have been so far. The tasks are uniformly cool, well thought out, and we're allowed to enjoy some Australian culture instead of clunkily inserted product placement. The Detour actually forces the teams to consider their strengths and weaknesses, rather than being like "Here, try this one. If you suck at it, don't worry - the other's one's ten feet away!" And best of all, Ray and Yolanda (the one non-annoying team of the evening) work together, hone their navigation skills, and sail into first place. Yes!

The Bad: All the other teams are complete jackholes, ruining what may have been one of the coolest and most exciting legs ever run. The Tools blatantly cheat (yes -- cheat) by calling the taxi company and canceling other teams' cabs. Though they get no time advantage from this, the fact that they were not penalized is almost a dealbreaker as far as watching this show goes. I'm not kidding, CBS. The Hippies, who I am embarrassed to have defended last week, make me look like a giant fool by saying that yes, they did indeed threaten MoJo with a Yield if they didn't leave money in the car. You can pack those peace-love-world and understanding attitudes away now, boys. Your cover's blown. Think I'm going to apologize to MoJo? Think again. I may have, if they weren't the most hypocritical assholes on the planet. After gleefully witnessing the Tools cancel other people's cabs, they have a self-righteous snit about how clean they're running the race, and what good people they are.

The Hippies do, in fact, get to the Yield first and follow through on their threat to Yield MoJo. MoJo concludes that this is a sleazy way to play the game, even though the Yield is...part of the game. I don't know, you figure it out. After Ray and Yolanda dust everyone else, it's a three-way race for last place, which would be heart-stoppingly exciting if we didn't know we had one more non-elimination point before we get to the final three. The Tools, MoJo, and the Hippies hit the mat two seconds apart in that order, so the Hippies are again spared.

So, it's a great episode and an awful episode, and now my head hurts a little. Ice cream time!

Edited To Add: Bad news. My VCR went through a hiccup while taping this episode. I tried to do damage control by calling a friend and asking her to tape it for me, which she did. Unfortunately, her tape doesn't have any sound. So it's either a recap done in mime, or make do with the blurblet above. It's been a long day. I choose the latter.

Overall Grade: B+