Ugh. Sunday's episode should've been awesome - Brent and Caite and Brandy and The Other One both had rotten luck and I was giddy with glee watching them drive their oxes back and forth. (Especially since I was super pissed that B and C went from last to first in a matter of moments! Stupid faraway exotic locale with limited flights.) But then the cowboys were boneheads not once but twice and it made me sad. Will they be able to survive their Speed Bump next week? Oh, my gravy I hope so!!!
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The Race switched hemispheres last night, and the trip south turned the game upside-down. In the middle of the Indian Ocean, the last would become first. Black would turn into white. Pigs would fly. Hell would turn into a popular ski resort. And the phrase ''Currently in First Place'' would float onscreen underneath the pouty faces of Brent and Caite.
The promos for last night's episode made light fun of the teams' various pronunciations of ''Seychelles.'' My favorite was how Jet and Cord made it rhyme with ''Achilles,'' though I also admired how Caite said it with a bizarro-Spanish inflection. (It sounded a bit like ''Say-HYELL-ays.'') All the racers were set to depart on the same airplane. We saw the Cowboys and the Detectives set off to find food at the airport, which seems like the first tactical error in a rough day. All the other teams managed to book themselves precise seats in the airplane. Team Dating Models were up in front in row 7, followed by Steve and Allie in row 15 and JorDaniel in Row 15.
That meant Brent and Caite were the first to find the clue waiting for them in the island of Mahe. It was a day of island-hopping. The six teams would be flying by helicopter to La Digue. The first three teams flew off immediately; the next three would have to wait an hour for the copters to return. That left Team Detective, Team Cowboy, and Team Adorable Squabbling way in back. ''The three strongest teams were in fourth, fifth, and sixth,'' Carol said.
Now, that's not quite fair. The Detectives are a proven quantity, but a winning streak doesn't mean much in this game. The Cowboys are lovable but erratic. And Brandy and Carol didn't exactly dominate Europe. Plus, Carol was discounting Steve, who might be the best all-around player this season.
But without a doubt, it was weird seeing Brent and Caite in first. They both rejoiced in their own particular ways: Brent started talking like an idiot savant from a Terrence Malick movie — ''The views are sick. It's like something from a postcard'' — and Caite ignored him and started making battle plans. ''I just wanna get the mean lesbians out," she said.
The competition choice was between Turtle Toddle or Ox Trot. Given the amount of alcohol-related competitions this season, I was hoping ''Turtle Toddle'' would involve getting a century-old tortoise drunk on rice wine. But unfortunately, the game was just luring a century-old tortoise across a marker, and then carrying a mountain of bananas to the fruit merchant. Ox Trot was, I think, the clear choice here: load a cart with coconuts and drive an ox cart to the harbor. Everyone knows that oxen are more obedient than tortoises! Snooty tortoises, they think their ability to outlive the rest of existence makes them sooo cooool.
Brent declared that Team Plastic would ride an ox cart. Dan and Jordan followed suit. Steve made an aggressive move when he chose the shelled centenarian. ''I never met an ox that I could trust,'' he said darkly. ''Turtles are cool, man.'' Allie discovered some kind of turtle-whispering skills, and charmed their hero in a half-shell over the finish line. Steve: ''That's what her mom does to me all the time. Maybe with a beer or something.'' If season 16 of The Amazing Race had its own drinking game, ''someone mentions how much Steve likes beer'' would be worth a shot of tequila.
Props to the cameraperson covering Caite and Brent on this episode: he or she got a pair of awesome shots, first of the Detectives' helicoper flying over the models' pretty heads and then of the telltale coconut they left behind. Here's what Brent and Caite said to each other as they drove away, still in first place:
''You're a dummy!''
''You're a dummy!''
''You're a friggin idiot!''
''You're a friggin idiot!''
Their ox rebelled against all the inanity and stopped in his tracks. A little ways behind them, Dan and Jordan named their ox Box, in honor of their father's company. Box apparently found this charming and sped up.
Steve and Allie arrived at the fruit merchant first, covered in banana gunk. They were sent off to a boat. Success! Except then they realized they had left their backpacks behind. Failure! Meanwhile, Brent and Caite arrived at the harbor. Success! The fruit merchant took one look at the models' cart and said, ''It's not enough coconuts.'' Failure!
The two teams each dealt with strife in their own way. Steve joked with Allie about how she didn't need makeup, and then noted, ''It'll make us faster, that's for sure.'' Brent threw a fit and announced that he was going to go home and cry about it: ''I quit. I quit. I quit.'' Viewers, he lies!
While Brent and Caite were going backwards, the stragglers arrived on La Digue. The Detectives and the Cowboys both chose Ox Trot. Cord: ''Usually we're loading feed, instead of whatever these things are.'' Brandy and Carol chose the tortoise thing, which turned out badly (their tortoise wouldn't move) and then turned out badly-er (he would only move in the wrong direction.) They also ended up piling coconuts in the ox cart.
Far, far in the lead, Steve dived down to a submerged case of bottles. (Phil charmingly explained the rules of the competition while talking underwater. Is hosting The Amazing Race the coolest job in show business?) Inside of the bottle was some kind of map that had to be assembled — the show seemed to purposefully hide the map-assembly part, probably because it was a little bit silly (as we saw, one team found their way to the pit stop without even putting the map together.)
''My dad is a great swimmer,'' said Allie. ''When he goes to the gym, he'll swim for like an hour.'' Viewers, I've been a bit tough on Allie, and I realize that it's only because her papa-teammate seems like such a one-man band. Like, what can't this man do? (Okay, he can't make the Indians win the pennant, but maybe he just needs the right players.) Steve and Allie finished first for the day, and got lots of 7-themed presents from 7-Up. Phil: ''7-Up is giving you $7,000 each! And all the 7-Up you can drink!'' Allie: ''God has a plan!''
Jordan and Daniel (who everyone in the Race refers to as ''The Brothers,'' indicating that not even their fellow players can tell them apart) arrived in second place. Not bad for a team that many people (myself included) had been discounting.
Louie and Michael were making good time. So were Jet and Cord, although we saw them leave a coconut behind. Carol and Brandy made a point of checking, and they still left a coconut behind. That meant half the teams in the Race ran afoul of the Telltale Coconut. I have to say, this was a bit dispiriting — it didn't seem that hard to do a spot-check. But I enjoyed the random guy whose job was to stand by the Telltale Coconut and point. The fruit merchant, for his part, seemed to grin wider and wider when he told teams they didn't have enough coconuts.
The Cowboys responded with a nonchalant ''oh, my gravy,'' and turned around. Brandy and Carol took it harder. Carol: ''I think when you threw some in…'' Brandy: ''When I threw some in?'' Jet and Cord seemed to brighten when they passed the ladies. ''There's still hope, man! There's still hope!''
Brent and Caite got their latest bit of good luck when their boat passed the Detectives' boat. Brent dived for Team Superficial, while Michael dived for Team Bogart. They decided to do a superhero team-up when they hit the shore (though Louie looked like he was about to drown in two feet of water for a second there). Said Caite: ''There's more strategy. We wanted them to make it.''
Hmmm, but who was being strategic here? The teams arrived right behind each other, models in third and detectives in fourth. Phil played some Question Master with them. We learned that Team Model likes the Detectives and the Cowboys, but that (apparently) no one likes Brandy and Carol. Michael said, vaguely, ''You wanna be negative, be somewhere else.'' I suspect that Louie and Michael were playing up the hatred to appease Brent and Caite. Caite said, ''They just keep being mean to me,'' still upset by a ''tiara joke.'' (''Um, I've only been in, like, three pageants,'' said she.) Brent nodded. ''It's pretty anonymous amongst the teams.'' Phil's response gave last night's episode its title: ''Anonymous?''
Jet and Cord were cruising for an easy fifth place. Cord was even kind enough to offer the ship's captain his bottle. Read the directions, guys! They left the bottle behind, swam to the shore of Praslin Island, and found Phil Keoghan using only their sense of smell. They laughed a little bit as Phil flashed them a quizzical expression. For me, the moment of the night was the look on Cord's face as Phil explained to them that they would have to swim back to the ship, get the bottle, and then return. The music got crazy. Like, industrial-rock crazy.
They had to swim about 300 yards or so, and they were halfway there when Carol and Brandy showed up. Said Cord, for the second time in the episode, ''I'm not giving up until Phil says you have to go!'' I'm a big Cowboy fan — with Jeff gone, they're the season's reigning one-liner kings — so I thought this climax was a genuine nailbiter. Race, Cowboys, race! Race for your life, Charlie Brown!
Well, the Cowboys lost, but Phil didn't send them home. I'm always a bit suspicious of the non-elimination episodes (funny how it's usually the most viewer-friendly teams who benefit, huh?) but I breathed a little sigh of relief. The Cowbros will have to do a speed bump next week, but they took the news in stride. ''Champions aren't necessarily the people who ride the most bulls,'' said Jet. ''They're the people that get bucked off and still pick themselves up.''
''When you hit bottom, the only place to go is up,'' concluded Jet. ''You should write a country song,'' said his brother.
As for the standings, I'm inclined to think that we'll be back to Detectives vs. Steve next week, but I'm intrigued to see what Jordan and Daniel can do with a big lead. Since it's always possible that a blind one-legged man walking across a desert planet will find a wormhole leading to a dimension made of water, I suppose it's vaguely possible that Brent and Caite will accidentally do something right (or at least not do too many things wrong).
At this point, the only team who I've really had my faith shaken in is the Cowboys. I figured that a trip to slightly-less metropolitan surroundings would do them good. But they had to go backwards twice this week, just like last week's ''we went to the wrong town again'' mishap on the French freeway. I still think they have the best attitude of any of the teams. But attitude only goes so far. Right?
How'd you like the episode, Racers? Were you surprised to see that Cord didn't keep his hat on when he went swimming? Do you agree that Steve is just crushing it this season? Are your hearts warming to Brent and Caite? Are you confused by all the Carol/Brandy haterade, or do you think that ''tiara'' comment will come back to haunt them? And is it just me, or does Brent look exactly like Finn, Meadow's boyfriend from The Sopranos?
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