The Amazing Race: Thank you, Thank you very much.

Watching the previously-on segment, I realize that I haven’t really given this season its just due.  It’s not every season when not one, not two, but three teams quit.  (I count the Harlem Globetrotters’ failure to do the task as quitting). And Zev and Justin lost their passports. And that thing with the ducks was kinda hilarious.  And remember that team with the obnoxious accents and the muscles?  They were fun.

Anyways, we’re off to a finale in Vegas this episode.  First task: visit Elvis’s chapel.  Nothing much happens here – the teams are just forced to sit through an Elvis impersonator’s “Amazing Grace” while some female extra awkwardly dances in a white minidress with her “husband.”  Second task: Rappelling face-forward down the Mandalay Bay Hotel’s shiny windows.  Ericka & Brian get there first, and when Ericka takes it, I thought for sure Ericka would complain and be negative the entire time and it would be really unpleasant.  I was wrong — she waited till later to be really unpleasant.  But for the rappelling, she was confident and positive, and I was just about to dislike her less.  But then she went and fracked it up during the third task, a Cirque Du Soleil-inspired romp requiring one team member to essentially slingshot the other one into the air until they manage to grasp a bouquet of flowers dangling from the ceiling.  Now this task was one of the best this season – it had a decent learning curve and was visually arresting.  The harness was also apparently hard on Dan’s crotch, which was an added bonus.

Ericka & Brian were the first to arrive to the slingshot, and Ericka became, like, insanely frustrated with little provocation.  Brian shoots her in the air, and after failing multiple times, she yells at Brian, yells generally, and throws the kind of tantrum we’re used to seeing in beauty pageant contestants – when they’re 6 years old.  She insists on switching with Brian, a manifestly bad idea.  It seems blatantly obvious to me that the lightest one should go in the sling and the strongest one should do the shooting.  Still, Ericka insists that because Brian is tall, he’ll have some kind of advantage.  Of course, she can’t properly pull him back for the requisite sling-ing, and they quickly switch back, losing time that ultimately really didn’t matter that much because. . .

Meghan and Cheyne, who were the first out of the Cirque du Soleil task, were the last team to arrive at the next task, because they didn’t know what the most famous hotel in Monaco is.  Told it was the Venetian, they mistakenly take a cab all the way to the north end of the strip, only to have to come back to the south end to the Monte Carlo Hotel.  My favorite part of this misguided journey is how, when they’d ask some passerby what is the most famous hotel in Monaco, they’d follow it up, forcibly, with “Are you sure?” I mean, if the passerby was not. . .what exactly could Meghan & Cheyne do?  An unsure answer was better than the one they had, which was zip, nada, nothing.

So Meghan & Cheyne, despite leaving the slingshot task first, end up coming behind Ericka & Brian at the next final challenge, which is counting out one million dollars using casino chips of various denominations.  Surely, they are going to come in last right?  Nope! I mean, c’mon people, remember that Brian & Ericka and Sam & Dan are the competition, and when the pressure is on, both of these teams crack and bicker and lose their lead. Which is exactly what happened at this final task — neither the gay brothers or the white guy and his interracial bride had a shot against the thoroughly conventional Cheyne & Meghan, who, even when they bicker, have never let bickering screw up their concentration during a task.

So, after getting the last clue which gave each team an encounter with Wayne Newton, whom Meghan and Cheyne regret not having more time with (and Sam & Dan completely blank on his name) the blond couple win the whole shebang.  And they deserve it, so I’m not mad. And hey, the dude has lived his whole life named Cheyne, so it’s not like I begrudge him the money.

‘Till next season-

For another take on this week’s episode, check out The End of the Amazing Race by Cameron Cubbison.

Season 16, Episode 11: Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound! (originally aired December 6, 2009)

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

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Photographs courtesy of Larry D. Horricks, CBS