The Amazing Race: Quit Your Bitching

The 9th leg begins with a flight to Guilin, China.  Luke states early on that he enjoys being somewhere were no one speaks English and I don’t really blame him for wanting everyone else to experience a taste of his handicap. Yet, listening to Jaime state again this episode that she’s not so great with the foreign travel (good thing you’re on a Race around the world, there!), I think that there are a few cab drivers who wouldn’t mind being momentarily a bit more like Luke.  At least, if you could make difficulty hearing person-specific.

So Tammy and Victor think they have a pretty decent advantage over the other teams, as they are Chinese and speak the language fluently.  I don’t doubt that this is an advantage, but I don’t think that said advantage really compensates for their difficulty in communicating with each other.  Like, say when they have to jump off a diving board at the same time.  Oops, spoiler!

At the airport, Margie and Luke and Jaime and Cara and Victor and Tammy all snag flights with connections at 8:30.  Kisha and Jen catch one with a 9:10 connection.  But since flight karma rewards the eternally put-upon this leg, the 8:30 flight is delayed, and Kisha and Jen are off to Guilin first.

(Hey, remember back when, if a team realized their flight was delayed, they’d try to catch the next flight out, so they could get to their destination as soon as possible?  Seriously, have these contestants not seen this show before?)

After landing, Tammy and Victor astutely point out that knowing the language basically just means that they understand what their driver is saying when he tells them that he doesn’t know where to go.   And with that comment, I realize (again) how unfair cab karma really is.  Because here’s Tammy and Victor, being respectful and speaking the language, yet stuck with a driver who doesn’t know where he’s going.  And here’s Jaime and Cara, Ugly Americans Extraordinaire, and they have a driver who knows exactly where to go.   *Sigh*

Jaime and Cara get to the clue box first and promptly drive away.  So they miss the moment where Jen and Luke approach the clue box at the same time, forcing Jen to viciously attack Luke  from behind, full-body slamming him out of the way, causing the innocent deaf boy to be thrown sideways, fracturing his skull, and, more importantly, shattering his self-esteem.  However, he quickly recovers quickly and retaliates, knocking her away from the clue box with a frontal kick sending her flying through the air and into a nearby brick wall.

Oh, wait, that’s not what happened.  It just seemed that way from everyone’s overreaction.  Instead, from what I can figure through multiple DVR viewings, is that Luke ran up to the clue box (after he and Margie walked past it a truly ridiculous number of times) and Jen spotted it shortly after (after she and Kisha also walk past it a ridiculous number of times) and ran up behind him.  Luke threw an arm out, blocking her access inside the box, probably inadvertently shoving her aside.  So Jen calls Luke a bitch.

I wish I could offer a thorough, detailed analysis of this event, complete with opinions on exactly what side you, dear viewer, should be on. But then I’d have to care about the actions of two individuals who each walked past the clue box, like, 4 times before clocking one another trying to get to it.  I mean, you know how you avoid getting clocked in the face or clocking someone in the face?  By not walking right past the clue box.  Like, four times.  At one point Margie was standing right next to it — in all its red and yellow glory! — and missed it entirely.

Seriously, guys, is this season over yet?  Can we please find some Racers who, you know, race??

Anyway, this episode’s Roadblock involved training cormorants to fish.  As I learned through my viewing, a cormorant is a bird which a fisherman uses to catch fish by sending the bird diving into the water to catch fish with his throat tied so he won’t eat the fish. As one Racer pointed out, this seems really cruel.  Essentially, the fisherman is saying “Here, do all this work for me, but don’t eat it!  Just hold it in your mouth for me.  Actually, I don’t trust you.  Here’s a little string to wrap around your throat in case you get the munchies while you’re down there.  Think of it like a bow tie!”

On the way to the clue box for the Cormorants task, Jen and Luke again find themselves in a foot race, and this time Luke pretty much knocks Jen out of the way to get to the box first.  So they’re even, right?  Are we done now?

Not yet.  Because there’s still a Detour, where the teams must choose choreography or calligraphy.  Jaime and Cara pick choreography and the other three teams pick calligraphy.  (Yes, I realize that at this time there is a fifth team named Michael and Mark. But, really, was their presence during this leg really important enough to bring up?) Essentially, the calligraphy teams just follow Victor and Tammy around, hoping to benefit from following the Chinese team in China. Tammy and Victor manage to make me smile politely from my seat at the couch when they instruct the calligraphy teachers in Chinese to help them out because “our parents will cry themselves to death” if they lose.  Alright, I’ll give them this:  that was a good one.

Think that Jaime’s parents have felt any amount of embarrassment over her behavior during this race?  This time, the two NFL cheerleaders chose choreography because they are, well, cheerleaders.  They learn the instructions well enough, but then get quickly frustrated when they don’t get the next clue after doing the routine correctly, several times.  They are just about to ditch the task for calligraphy when it occurs to one of the redheads that maybe they should keep dancing until the music stopped.  They try it that way and get their clue. Ultimately, they are in fourth place.

In second place was Tammy and Victor, whose parents will probably not have to perform a public shaming ritual.  (Assuming of course, that none was required back when their most valued son led his sister endlessly up a mountain before he broke down in tears when he was forced to realize that he was *gulp* wrong. But perhaps they’ve moved on. . .)  The first place went to Kisha and Jen, who defied my expectations by, well, coming in first at any point during this entire race.  At the pit stop, Luke and Margie had a discussion on whether Luke should bring up the physical altercations at the various clue boxes.  Margie did not think it was a good idea, but I’m sure the producers disagreed, and some not-so-seamless editing quickly leads to Margie translating Luke’s feelings about Jen’s treatment of him – calling him a bitch in particular — during this leg.

Now, at this point I’m thinking Luke just needs to get over it. If you’re going to be aggressive physically, which he was, people may respond verbally.  But then Kisha starts giggling under her breath, and that turned into Margie accusing Kisha of laughing at Luke’s signing.

Again, I’m sure I could provide some point by point analysis over who is more wrong in this argument.  Yet, all I can say is that I believed Kisha when she said her response is to laugh in tense situations.  Yet I also believe Luke when he says that this is the kind of reaction the deaf community gets from the hearing-abled all the time.  Nearest I can tell, what we have here is a failure to communicate.  And as both of them are more concerned with being right rather than being understood, I’m not going to dignify either of them with more review space.

Oh yeah, Mark and Michael were eliminated, as we all knew they would be.  See you next week at the pool!

Season 14, Episode 9: Our Parents Will Cry Themselves to Death (originally aired April 19, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out B*tch-tastic by Paul Secrest.

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

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Photographs courtesy of CBS