The Amazing Race: Yay!

Kelly and Christy were eliminated.

What, you need more?

Fine.

As we begin the episode, the teams are leaving the Baha’i house in New Delhi for more of their Indian adventure.  Ken and Tina were granted a reprieve in the race (and, apparently, their marriage) during the last leg and have to survive a speed bump as punishment, Nick and Starr’s  “white lies” have helped them get ahead, Kelly and Christy feel as though they’ve migrated from back of the pack to the front (HA!), Terence and Sarah “yell at each other and wish we wouldn’t,” and Toni and Dallas are growing on me.

In the cab on the way to the first clue, Kelly and Christy discuss who they would make out with between Dan and Andrew.  Apparently they think that Dan is wound up pretty tight.  And they laugh about that, although it really wasn’t funny or even mean in an interesting way.  I’m so glad they are gone.

Ken says no one is successful that hasn’t overcome great challenges.  Which really explains how he can still be working on his marriage..

This week’s roadblock requires the racers to participate in the Holi Festival, where revelers pelt each other with powdered dye and water.  I confess I really thought that the producers were yanking my chain and just trying to find an excuse to throw things at Christy and Terrence, but the pelting and water-throwing are factually accurate.  Starr, Dallas, Ken, Dan, and Terence take the roadblock, and make it through with little fanfare, although some of their partners were made quite colorful themselves due to their proximity to the festival. Tina, in particular, got to find out how she would look with bright green hair.

Kelly took the task for her team and ended up running through the festival repeatedly – getting doused with the dyes so thoroughly that only the whites of her eyes were visible – due to her failure to read the clue properly the first time.  You see, the clue required you to run through the Festival to a ladder where clues were hanging from a pole, but the clues were amongst many non-clues.  Instead of staying on the ladder and sorting through them, Kelly would grab an envelope and run back to Christy, only to find that it was not actually a clue.  She did this several times, once even taking a nosedive into the colored dirt.  I’d like to think it was all for my personal enjoyment.

In the car on the way to the next clue, Terence makes a big fuss of having powdered dye in his nose and mouth, presumably to show again how incredibly put-upon he is.  *Sigh.*  I am so tired of him.

The next clue was at a bird hospital, where multiple birds were kept in cages and the teams must be barefoot to enter.  Terence instructed Sarah to actually go into one of the large cages with the birds to search for the clue, although the clue was totally not in a cage with a bird.  So Sarah was barefoot.  In a bird cage.  In a bird hospital, where presumably the birds aren’t feeling that well.   It was here that I realized that Terence frequently asks Sarah to do things that he would never do.  *Sigh,* again.

Tina, Ken and Tina’s bright green hair perform a speed bump requiring them to hand out holy water outside of a temple.  It was no big deal and they finish it drama-free.

The week’s detour is “bleary-eyed” or “teary-eyed” where the teams have to either find numerical tags on a maze of electric wires criss-crossing overhead down a fairly busy street, where each tag is on a separate wire, or mash chilies into powder.  Nick and Starr and Toni and Dallas choose bleary-eyed and realize fairly quickly that they would get through it faster if they work together, and given that they likely feel fairly certain that they are ahead of the other teams, they do so.  It pays off, and they are teams 1 and 2, respectively.

Terence and Sarah pick teary-eyed, and appear to suffer for the choice – Sarah says they experienced “incredible suffering.”  I laugh, because I do not like them.  They come in third.

Meanwhile, Ken and Tina, Dan and Andrew, and Kelly and Christy choose bleary-eyed.  Due to Team Dandrew and Team Divorcees accidentally recording the wrong numbers – there are large-print numbers that apparently are also near the electric wires – Ken and Tina easily pass them and are team 4.  Team Dandrew is 5, and the Divorcees come in last and are eliminated.

And here I thought the election was the only good thing that was going to happen this week.  Yet, like Sarah Palin, I have a hunch that they will return, although perhaps not in their original form.  Like SP, they are annoying and fame-hungry, qualities which guarantee that they will be back on my TV screen for some other reason, eventually.  Still, for the brief respite, I say, “Yay!”

Season 13, Episode 7: My Nose is on Fire (originally aired November 9, 2008)

For another take on this episode, check out Revenge of She-Hulk by Paul Secrest.

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on CBS

Photographs courtesy of CBS