The Amazing Race: When you gotta go…

Oh, poor poor Jen. We’ve all had those moments on a road trip when everything in the world stops mattering other than the fact that nature calls. But most visits to the roadside rest stop don’t cost a million bucks. No matter what words of reassurance and promises of no hard feelings Kisha may give, there is no way in hell she won’t secretly seethe every time her sister takes a potty stop for the rest of their natural lives. But I’m clearly getting ahead of myself here…

After Jamie & Cara’s disheartening first place fakeout, the leg proceeded on electric bikes past iconic Tiananmen Square to the detour: deck out your partner with traditional Chinese stage makeup, or take orders in Mandarin from a table of restaurant patrons, requiring some very precise listening and repetition skills in a language whose subtleties and tonal inflections must give it a real Cara of a learning curve. Given their obvious lingual advantage, Tammy & Victor made like waiters, but even their seeming fluency lent itself to a few hiccups, specifically the reemergence of Victor’s crazy control freak side that just would not let his sister read the answers aloud by herself, even after explicitly promising to do so. I fear for this man’s children, for they will never be allowed to do anything for themselves, no matter how much they want to. And Margie– loving and patient as she may be– seems to be letting that patience wear thin, partially thanks to Luke’s ham fisted skills with a makeup brush that left her with Groucho Marx eyebrows and more foundation than one of those Thai “party girls”. T & V’s quick finish at the restaurant gave them first crack at the race’s 2^nd U-Turn opportunity, which they readily cast upon Jen & Kisha for fear of their athletic prowess. Forced to backtrack to translation duty, viewers at home got a hilarious lesson in just how easy it is to let Mandarin go awry when what sounded like a perfect echo of “New Taste Beef” translated to “Good Western Heads Lack Fish”, not to mention whatever on earth translates to “Oil Comes Again To Please The Mouth”. But with a little persistence they left their second detour in third place thanks to Jamie & Cara getting hopelessly lost and increasingly angry at strangers while hunting for the U-Turn.

A culinary road block, the likes of which I haven’t seen for several seasons (probably letting post-Fear Factor burnout fade away) tested the limits of what can or cannot be deep fried when the racers found themselves forced to dine upon, in order from least to most horrifying, grasshoppers, larvae, scorpions, and starfish. Methinks I could never taste starfish without hearing a dopey voice scream out “why, Spongebob? Why are they doing this to me?!” Victor and Margie downed the nasty snacks like pros, netting the sibs and the mother/son duo spots one and two in the race’s final three. Jen & Kisha made it to the road block first, but Jen made the drastically ill fated decision to eat everything in tiny bites washed down with water bottle after water bottle. Jamie & Cara caught up and started heavily gaining ground (note to self: take the high road and refrain from “cheerleaders will put anything in their mouth” joke) but the sisters still finished first in a mad dash to the iconic “Bird’s Nest” stadium from last summer’s Olympics. But timing, biology, and too much dignity to wet herself in public led Jen to the aforementioned pee break, granting Jamie & Cara the miniscule edge they needed to snatch final three status from their hands.

With the finish line in sight, I’m predicting that it’ll all come down to Margie & Luke vs. Tammy & Victor, with Jamie & Cara complaining their way into third. But who knows? Once they get back onto English speaking soil, the cheerleaders might find a second wind. It’ll be a nailbiter for sure.

Season 14, Episode 11: He Made Me Look Like Alice Cooper (originally aired May 3, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Pissing the race away by Alana D.

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on CBS

Photographs courtesy of CBS and Robert Voets