The Amazing Race: All’s Fair in War & Race

Now, you know how when you talk about people behind their back, you’re supposed to do so behind their back?  Well, Joe does not.  And so, on a mobile pit stop that takes our teams from Hamburg, Germany, to an unknown destination, Joe tells the camera – loud enough that everyone on the bus can hear him – he doesn’t see the other teams as a threat, and that despite the fact that he has a nagging knee problem, he’s pretty confident that he and Heidi will continue to beat their competition.

In reality tv, this is called foreshadowing.

Following the pit stop, Michael & Louie take off first, interviewing that they think they’re in France.  I do too, as they have to drive to Boulangerie Defontaine and buy a fresh baguette, or as Cord puts it a “bag-goo-wet.”  The next clue is baked inside the baguette, which the teams figure out after staring blankly at Monsieur Defontaine for varying amounts of seconds.

Next, teams have to drive themselves to La Main De Massiges.  According to Phil, at the height of WWI, this was the site of intense fighting.  Teams have to dress in uniform, and pick a Detour  — In The Trenches, where they have to get down in a trench, and use a field manual to translate a message in Morse code or Under Fire, where they have to crawl in the mud under barbed wire.   For both options, there’s a lot of planes flying low overhead and simulated bombs going off on either side of you.   Essentially, this Detour looks loud and disorienting, and optically, it’s one of the better Detours the Race has had except for one nagging flaw which is. . .

Who in the hell would ever pick In The Trenches?  I mean, Morse code?  Seriously?

Completely predictably, every team picks In The Trenches, because no one in the race is a 10-year-old Boy Scout.  Thus, we get to watch Louie huff and puff while crawling on his elbows, and Jeff say to Jordan when she pauses to adjust her helmet — and I swear, I’m not making this up — “Put your boobs on the ground and drag ‘em over here.” You’d think that that would be the most vile thing someone says this leg, but you’ve forgotten that Brandy & Carol are here, too.  Sure enough, Brandy interviews that this is horrible because, you see, she never wanted to be a boy, with their silly war games and such.  Brandy is too smart for that, and only dumb people would do this.  Crawling past Brent & Caite, she says (out loud) “More dumb people” and Caite interviews that Brandy & Carol are “mean lesbians.”  Look, I’m not thrilled about Caite’s use of “lesbians” pejoratively, but. . .she’s got a point.

Brandy also says during her mud crawl “I didn’t sign up for this.”  One gets the impression that Brandy filled out her Race application envisioning nothing more stressful than, say Semester at Sea.  Sorry, Brandy.  The producers tried an easy, lame Race before.   Everyone hated it.

When Joe & Heidi finish Under Fire, they find out they’ve been U-turned by Michael & Louie.  In an interview, Louie says that he wants to “humble” Joe because of his comments on the bus.  Now, while I’m not a huge fan of the non-strategic U-turn (it would have made waaaaay more sense to U-turn Jordan & Jeff), I’m not above some good ole-fashioned pettiness in my reality TV.  So I don’t feel bad when Joe & Heidi realize they’re going to have to learn Morse code in a pretty short period of time.  Nor do I feel bad when Joe & Heidi watch the other teams pass them while they try to decipher the sound of a “V”  vs. an “I”.  Not even when they make their second repeated attempt to crack the code while watching Jordan & Jeff, who they know are the last team, pass them.  It’s not until they give up, and dawn breaks, and Phil meets them still standing in that trench to eliminate them, that I feel a little sliver of sadness.  No, not because I liked Joe & Heidi — as far as I’m concerned, they had 0 charisma on screen — but because it was fun to have a dude on the show that so easily got under Louie and Michael’s skin.

Following their WWI experience, the teams had to put on old-timey racing gear (including mustaches, for no apparent reason other than to make me giggle) and bike 4 miles on antique bikes to a mock Tour de France finish line.  Dan & Jordan enjoy their bike ride, because Jordan enjoys narrating things in his distinctly queen-ey fashion, and Dan is consistently amused by his brother. (I used to find them annoying, but lately I’ve been enjoying the easy rhythm these guys have with each other).  Brent & Caite make it to the finish, and then learn that they missed a clue.  Normally, I’d detail this more, except it was completely understandable — following Under Fire, they turned the wrong way on a road and ended up missing a clue box.  But, as far as I can tell, it wasn’t because they failed to read a clue; they just turned the wrong way and ended up skipping a (pretty small) step.

The aforementioned Joe & Heidi are last.  Other than that, every team pretty much finishes in the exact same order as the last leg, which demonstrates that the wild card this leg was the U-turn.  Had it not been there, Jeff & Jordan would certainly have been eliminated. Jordan, having successfully gotten her boobs off the ground during the Detour, interviews “The race really is a test, because it’s tense and you are going to bicker and argue and I’ve got to learn that it doesn’t get you anywhere.” Now, I know the woman thinks that dogs in South America speak Spanish, but that is still a smarter observation than a good 90% of the people on this show ever make.  Compared to the bullcrap Brandy & Carol have been spouting, Jordan’s coming off like a genius. . . .

Season 16, Episode 5: I Think We’re Fighting the Germans, Right? (originally aired March 14, 2010)

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Photographs courtesy of CBS.