The Amazing Race: Haystacks, revisited.

We begin in Holland.  Five teams left, since we got rid of the girl who was pathologically afraid of waterslides and the team that was surprisingly quick to fold ‘em.

The teams head to Tivoli Gröna Lund Amusement Park, which is in Stockholm, Sweden, for those of you who didn’t recognize the “ö” from the directions to your Ikea furniture.  There, they have to ride the Fritt Fall, which is basically one of those drop rollercoasters where you wait for 90 minutes for a ride that takes about 30 seconds.  At the top of the Fritt Fall, the teams must find a marker which will point them in the direction of the clue box, which each team ends up doing without much difficulty.  Winner for best roller coaster face: Herbert.  If you’ve still got the episode on your DVR, I highly recommend a freeze frame.

Next, the team must land a ring on a cone to reveal a gnome (look, if a certain website wants me to name it, they’ll have to pay me for the free advertising) which they have to carry around for the rest of the leg.  The detour has the teams deciding whether to blow stuff up or to use the viking alphabet, and it’s no surprise that every team choose the former. (Kapow!  See, it was fun just writing that.)  At the Detour, Meghan and Cheyne’s 4 and a half year bond starts to deteriorate, when Meghan feels as though Cheyne wasn’t listening to her or cooperating during a fill-the-bag-with-dirt part of the detour.  Frankly, it looked to me that Cheyne didn’t like her method, but didn’t want to argue either, so he just ignored her.   He ignores her as well when she asks him who should do the Roadblock,  but I can’t really blame him here, because the Roadblock shall heretofore be known as Worst. Roadblock. Ever.

The Amazing Race aficionados probably remember the haystack challenge of Season 6, where the teams had to roll out HUGE bales of hay to uncover a clue.  The catch?  Over 150 bales of hay.  Not so many clues.   Phil reminded us that back then,  Lena and Christy (who were one of the first teams to get to the Roadblock) got stumped at the Roadblock when Christy was unable to uncover a cluebox despite searching 100 bales of hay for 10 hours.  I remember this guys.  It was painful.  Every team passed her, and she just kept on going.  The sun set and she just kept on going.  They were hoping for a non-elimination round.   They were still going when Phil greeted them at the challenge to put them out of their misery.  And then eliminated them.

It soooooo sucked to be Lena and Christy in Season 6.

Anyway, Phil informed us that this time, it was 7 clues hidden in 186 bales of hay.  That means you had an approximately 3.76% chance of getting it on your first try.  And after you rolled out that one, your chances of the next bale containing a clue goes up by the slightest of margins – 3.78%.  And what’s worse, the longer you’ve been out there, the better shot you’re giving everybody else who comes after you of finding a clue.  This is true of many needle-in-a-haystack challenges on The Amazing Race, but when the challenge requires this much physical effort (and irritation — it’s hay, after all), I really, really, really don’t envy the Racers.

Most Entertaining Team of the Episode goes to Sam and Dan, who relentlessly bicker throughout the episode, but in a fun, we’re-competitive-but-it’s-all-good kind of way as opposed to the I’m-convinced-everybody-loves-you-more-so-I’m-going-to-act-out-my-resentment kind of way.  At the Haystack Roadblock though, it momentarily turns ugly with Sam out there rolling haystack after haystack and Dan off to the side being a total backseat haystack roller.  Seriously, Dan kept telling him what to do, how to do it, even causing Brian at one point to shout to him “It’s harder than it looks.”  Sam repeatedly asks him to shut up already, to no avail, until finally Dan gets it and stops talking.  Or talks less, anyway.  Still, Sam and Dan make it out in fourth place, and Sam harbors no resentment (not yet, anyway), racing his brother to the pit stop.  Then Dan cries.  Cause he was being mean to Sam before, or something.

The haystack challenge largely relies on luck, and the Harlem Globetrotters had the most this time around.  (Happy Belated, Herbert!).  Meghan and Cheyne come in second, Brian and Ericka a (very!) lucky third (seriously, he was out there for like, 15 minutes), and the aforementioned brothers came in fourth. Last were Matt and Gary, who, unsurprisingly given the legacy of this Roadblock, were subject to a non-elimination round.

I was impressed that Gary took it for the team.  Still, he was out there for only an hour after Sam and Dan left, and for 2 hours, 45 minutes total, and was spared elimination for the effort, which is kinda wimpy compared to Christy’s thankless, gargantuan task of Season 6 (which really puts those wimpy poker players last week into perspective, doesn’t it?).  But Gary’s not a quitter, so good for him.

For another take on this episode, read Can Someone Put Me In A Coma Please? by Cameron Cubbison.

Season 15, Episode 7: This Is the Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done in My Life (originally aired November 8, 2009)

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on CBS

Photographs courtesy of CBS