(Somewhat More) Amazing Race

Last night’s The Amazing Race was a lot easier to swallow than last week’s season premiere, for a few reasons. For one thing, the show is back to its normal one-hour length and is thus less likely to make you want to kill yourself. Also, you get to learn a little bit more about a couple of the participants that makes them a little more likable. Thirdly, I watched the show on my plane back into Boston and had nothing else to do, so I didn’t feel like I was being robbed of doing something more satisfying with my time. Hey, you take your victories when you get ‘em.

As the episode begins, we see father and son team Gary and Matt traveling through Vietnam on a houseboat toward an unknown destination. Leading the way, they depart from a local dock in the wee hours of the next morning, headed toward Ho Chi Minh city, the largest city in Vietnam. There, they have to find a theater and take a clue out of the mouth of a dragon puppet. Yeah, I had to do the same thing last Tuesday. Matt whines a little about how his father doesn’t treat him as an adult as often as he should. Hey Matt, maybe if you didn’t insist on looking like a homicidal gigolo you wouldn’t have that problem.

Flight Time and Big Easy—who have as of yet defied my ultimatum to get real names—are hot on their trail. Big Easy tells the camera that he grew up poor in New Orleans but his father told him that no matter where you come from, you can do whatever you want to do. His father also died just before the race started and told him to win. I often find it a little grating when people announce the death of someone close to them in public, especially in a competitive situation. But he seemed genuine when he talked about it and didn’t seem to be using it as a ploy. So I like him a little more now, he has a personal motivation to win the race besides money.

Then we get Lance and Keri, who currently have my vote for the most obnoxious couple on the show, whining about how they’re finding the race harder than they expected. But then Lance goes on about how they are lions and are going to beat everyone. Man I can’t wait to see these arrogant Boston boobs fall. When Lance makes it back to Boston I may just have to give him a visit and see if I can’t cheer him up by dropping a refrigerator on his (numb)skull.

Marcy and Ron struck me as a little obnoxious last week too, but I enjoyed her comments about how emotional she was finding being in Vietnam. Her father was shot down there in ’68 and later rescued, but she still thinks about it and all the people on both sides who died there. I respected that, and it’s nice to see someone actually trying to say something meaningful instead of just whining or wasting oxygen.

Anyway, all the teams have to rush to find the theater in Ho Chi Minh and extract the clue from the dragon puppet. The clue is a bullet that has a rolled-up stamp inside. The stamp features a picture of the Ho Chi Minh Post Office building, which is where everyone has to go next. More scrambling ensues.

From there, the teams come to a detour and have to pick between a physical challenge involving moving heavy concrete animals around a park while collecting balloons (where do they come up with this stuff?) and a word play challenge involving spotting Vietnamese letters from an observation deck and unscrambling the Vietnamese word for freedom. I think I would have gone with the animals. Most of the teams agreed with me, with only Marcy and Ron opting for the word challenge. Flight Time and Big Easy are in the lead for virtually the entire episode. They’re the guys to beat thus far.

As for the other people, I don’t have much to say. Lance and Keri continue to act like jackasses, both towards each other and just in general. Marcy and Ron conduct themselves okay, but they don’t end up real well. Flight Time and Big Easy (jesus I’m sick of typing those names) win a trip to Aruba, and everyone else…well, who cares?

For another take on this episode, check out This One’s for Dad. by Alana D.

Season 15, Episode 2: It’s Like Being Dropped on Planet Mars (originally aired October 4, 2009)

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on CBS

Photographs courtesy of CBS