The Amazing Race: Siberian Grind

After the multitude of zany charms that Transylvania granted last week’s leg of the race, I suppose I shouldn’t be entirely shocked that this latest leg was a bit more subdued, but not without its scattered moments of suspense, thrills, and brilliant race flipping power plays.

The traditional airport scramble got going with a bizarre act of coincidence and deception when Mark & Michael’s attempt to make travel plans via their cabby’s cell somehow connect them to Jamie & Cara’s cab who then pose as Lufthansa agents and deny the existence of any upcoming flights. I found myself cringing in awkward anticipation for M&M to figure out the ruse, but the cheerleaders pull it off. However, joke’s on them when a multitude of different flights lead M&M, Christie & Jodie, and Kisha & Jen to get a big jump on the detour. En route, Christie (or maybe Jodie) embraces the opportunity to completely airball ID-ing a massive photo of Lenin on the side of a hydroelectric power station. No dear, that is NOT the man who designed the dam.

Both detour options seemed much more like work than play. Why the vast majority of teams chose to stack firewood that stayed together like greased building blocks from hell over simply assembling and installing a set of shutters I’ll never know, but I suspect a pathological aversion to Ikea may be involved. There was a certain doofy charm in the brothers’ inability to find the house they were tasked to beautify, but neither of these challenges did much for me. What did get me was the post challenge genius introduction of the Blind U-Turn, which gave teams the chance to screw a fellow straggler into doing the other half of the detour without the pesky consequence of revealing who’s responsible. I have always resented teams complaining about U-Turns and Yields as if they were a grave personal offense and now there’s nothing the whiners can do about it! Margie & Luke jump on the chance to hinder Kris’s physical dominance of the race. As if my resentment of the pretty boy tool needed any more cementing, he makes it a point to refer to being U-Turned as “shady”, the oft abused adjective for double dealing popularized by *shudder* The Hills.

The Road Block of the week entailed taking a ride on a Siberian amusement park’s version of bobsledding while taking note of the hidden letters whizzing by at dizzying speed. I might have enjoyed this more had I not seen nearly the exact same task a few months back on my underrated reality fave The Mole. Each racer’s ability to unscramble the letters to form the last name of famed Russian playwright Anton Chekhov ran the spectrum from intellectual superiority to sheer dumb luck and it was especially frustrating to see the phonics impaired Luke fumble over and over before advancing.

Phil took up his precious Guardian of the Pit Stop duties at some sort of musical dance theater that looked like an unsettling hybrid of Hee Haw and the Bolshoi Ballet and greeted three of my least favorite teams into the top spots, but at least the U-Turn was too much to overcome for Amanda & Kris. I’m sure they’ll have much more fun tanning at the Thai losers villa than they would have on the race.

Season 14, Episode 4: It was Like a Caravan of Idiots (originally aired March 8, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out C-K-V-O-H-E-H spells VEHKCOH by Alana D.

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on CBS

Photographs courtesy of CBS