It was a real nail biter of an episode on this week’s The Amazing Race with team positions shifting throughout the challenges. Even the airport equalizer coupled with a time delay at the first clue left one team far behind the others. Also this week, the Double U-Turn reared its ugly head for the second week in a row and at this stage of the competition, no one is willing to play nice anymore (not that the team of Laurence & Zak have played that nice at all).
Yes, Laurence & Zak, probably my least favorite team of the season, have not done much to win me over. Zak is okay, he just seems pretty clueless, but Laurence has been an overbearing, mean-spirited person with his derogatory comments about his son, and chauvenistic comments about women. I thought he made a terrible move last week by using the U-Turn on Marcus & Amani, especially since they had been in last place and also had a Speed Bump to deal with, but unbeknownst to him, they had already passed the U-Turn so it didn’t matter anyway. The thing is, Laurence had no idea where Marcus & Amani were, but he knew there were two other teams still at the challenge he and Zak had just left, so why not use the U-Turn on one of them? I would have to think that Karma was coming for me if I had made that kind of game play.
Speaking of Karma, Ernie & Cindy seemed to have all the luck on their side this week as they quickly got into first place and stayed there throughout the leg. They were still a bit steamed about Andy & Tommy pretty much stealing first place from them in the last leg, so when faced with the U-Turn, what do they decide to do? Use it on Bill & Cathi, of course. Yeah, I know they did it because they wanted a nice buffer between them and the couple in second place at that moment, so it made sense but I was really hoping for a little revenge for that move. The decision did give Ernie & Cindy the buffer they wanted (we’ll have to wait until next week to see how far apart the teams are) as they arrived at the Pit Stop in first place, with Bill & Cathi in second and Andy & Tommy in third.
Lots of tension and errors dogged Laurence & Zak, Jeremy & Sandy, and Marcus & Amani. Here’s a quick rundown of what they all faced:
And now we have our final five. Who are you rooting for? I’m going with the underdogs, Bill & Cathi. They’ve been consistently strong players, but everyone keeps treating them as if their age is going to take them out of the race. I think they are a force to be reckoned with, and even after a shaky start when they wandered around Taipei all afternoon looking for the first clue (and the producers’ attempts to make Cathi look like a total klutz in a later episode), the two have worked together as a team, never losing tempers with each other (and learning that they’ve known each other since middle school and married the day they graduated from college only makes them more endearing), have played a good game and made a strategic move when it counted by taking out Laurence & Zak. There may be more physical teams around them, but I think Bill & Cathi have the smarts to make it to the end. How about you?
Clacked by Chuck Duncan 
on Nov 13, 2011 @ 23:12 EST5EDT
