CBS
(Season 13, Episode 4)
This week, teams traveled to one of the most beautiful countries in the world as the game took them to Auckland, New Zealand. I would have liked some more aerial shots of this beautiful island country, though, Race. Tonight’s installment also featured the first of two Fast Forwards on the race.
Kelly & Christy kept bitching constantly throughout the night to remind everyone that they were still alive, while Aja & Ty argued with one another about her mood swings. Beyond that, things were pretty tame and mellow with little to no bickering between teams and virtually no major meltdowns at any of the challenges. Dare I say it, the episode was a bit boring because of that.
Fast Forward (Go to the Auckland Sky Tower and climb up maintenance ladders to the top) – Ken & Tina and Andrew & Dan raced off to give the Fast Forward a try, while everyone else decided it was too risky. But when Ken & Tina got there before Andrew & Dan, the frat boys opted to just head back for the next clue rather than wait.
Road Block – (Match a Maori tattoo on paper to one on the face of a warrior) – It couldn’t have helped that it was dark and the mob of warriors were all moving around and yelling the whole time. After the road block, the next clue had teams looking for a Travelocity gnome performing some vacationing activity somewhere.
Detour
Matter of Time (Make 12 quarts of kiwi juice) – Every single team chose this option as they thought it would be faster. But only Terence & Sarah, Kelly & Christy and Marisa & Brooke stuck with it through to the end, finishing in that order. Everyone else switched halfway through to the other Detour option.
Matter of Skill (Assemble Blo-Karts and race three laps) – Teams that weren’t Andrew & Dan seemed to have little trouble assembling the blo-karts, but Starr took a nasty tumble before righting her kart and finishing the race. She’s concerned now that she may have broken her arm, and at least to this point we still don’t know.
Pit Stop
After accomplishing the Fast Forward, Ken & Tina bypassed everything else in the race and headed right to the next Pit Stop, where they got to meet Phil’s dad! And for the second week in a row they didn’t do anything to drive me completely batshit crazy, so maybe the slow mending of their relationship will also slowly mend their annoying personalities. I hope so because it doesn’t look like they’re going away anytime soon. Here’s the arrival order of the teams:
And now, in back-to-back episodes, we’ve lost a nice quiet little team. I guess the moral of this season of The Amazing Race is that if you run a clean race and don’t have any drama with any of the other teams, you’re going home early. Maybe drama spurs you on to greatness. Toni & Dallas are the least dramatic team left, so does that meant they’re going next?
Ultimately, though, the drama is pretty tame this race in comparison to races past. I guess they did a better job of screening out the crazies, which is actually a bit of a shame. Kelly & Christy may be unraveling at the seams, though, so we at least have a chance of some craziness to come. And I’ll bet if Ken & Tina fall back into the pack, we’ll see their inner lunatics resurface.
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on Oct 20, 2008 @ 17:25 EST5EDT
Kelly and Christy need to go. No wonder their husbands ran away.
I’ve been thinking the same thing and the same goes for why Ken strayed from Tina. As long as things are going their way Tina is nice, the minute they get stressful she becomes a Bitch.
With the geeks gone, I’m left cheering for Toni and Dallas. I think Andrew and Dan are next on the chopping block.
I couldn’t agree more about Ken and Tina. Every time a couple is doing good in the race, we hear all about how they love each other and how great things are. The instant they start losing.. BOOM! The real people come out and we get to see what they’re really like. Expect more nagging and “if you hadn’t cheated on me, we would be winning right now!”