The Amazing Race Review: I Feel Like a Monkey in a Circus Parade

On this week’s episode of The Amazing Race, the teams travel to India for a tea tasting, Zev finds out that a pointless challenge is just the show’s sick idea of a joke and Gary and Mallory are getting close to the lamest prize ever.

We start off this week with the teams visiting a tea shop in China for a traditional tea tasting. All of the teams are bummed that this leg will continue on in China as they’re hoping for some new ground to cover. What the teams don’t know, and therefore remain oblivious to the importance of this task, is that the papaya mango tea they are currently sipping will become important later in the leg. Oops. Zev calls this challenge pointless, which in retrospect, I assume will present itself as the first clue for him. Has Race ever had a completely pointless task? I can’t recall one, but I guess that’s just because I’m still suffering from a tea hangover after this week.

After the teams perform the tea tasting, they get their next clue which sends them out of China and on to Kolkata, India. All of the teams are shocked at their reception to this new city as there are hundreds (which is probably closer to a thousand) of people crowded around the airport. I can best describe it as a calm mob that the the teams try to push their way through as they try to hail a taxi, which it turns out provides its own form of entertainment. It always amazes me what happens when teams are confronted with different rules of the road on foreign soil. The New York City/Crazy Taxi style of driving takes all the teams by surprise as their drivers speed through red lights, play chicken with trucks, and become this close to giving Ron something to really complain about (Excuse me sir, there’s a bumper in my side. Of course, as we know Ron would probably add a few sentence enhancers in there somewhere).

When they get to their task, the teams discover the importance of the tea tasting. As for their task, the teams must perform yet another tea tasting and choose from hundreds of sets to find the same papaya mango tea that they tasted earlier. Once the teams find that proverbial needle in a haystack, they must bring the glass to the judge who will give them their next clue. Ron, probably still coasting from the excitement of the taxi ride pimp smack’s the heck out of this challenge and makes it cower in the corner like a little punk. The greatness of this feat becomes even more apparent when the other teams continue to struggle with this task. Honestly, the key to Ron’s strategy was he simply smelled the tea and found the one with mango; for everyone else, the strategy is to drink tea after tea until they find it which as you can guess takes quite a while. In fact, Zev, Flight Time, and Luke drink so much tea that at times they think about quitting this task. But in the true spirit of the game, they all continue on through their doubts. Flight Time and Zev get through after a while, and finally Luke is last at this task. At this point, Luke is completely frustrated and doesn’t feel that he can drink any more tea. But after a hug from his mother and a rousing cheer from the locals encouraging him on, Luke takes a tray full of teas and just starts to drink them one by one and hold them up to the cluemaster until he finally presents him with the right one. When Luke is given the “yes” it’s a very emotional moment; Luke is crying, his mom is crying, I’m crying, and the locals heft Luke up in the air. I swear, never on TV have I seen a moment of true solidarity and goodwill that the locals showed Luke here at this challenge. It was truly a beautiful moment. Luke gets his clue and the team continues on.

In a creative twist, the clue for this challenge is written on the inside of a top of Snapple. This provides only a momentary stop for the contestants as most of them open the bottle and see their clue right away. Kisha/Jen on the other hand choose not to open their bottle and instead start looking for a Snapple factory which of course they never find. After asking a local who attempts to open the bottle, Kisha/Jen finally realize that the clue is, indeed, on the inside.

For the second task the teams had to either decorate a statue of a Hindu god or deliver textbooks to a school. Gary/Mallory, The Cowboys, and Zev/Justin choose to deliver books to the school and this seems to be the better task. The danger here is leading the drivers to the school, but after asking the locals all of the teams accomplish this fairly quickly. Gary/Mallory move on to win this leg and are presented by host Phil Keoghan with a bottle of Snapple. What, Snapple? Yes, Snapple. You see it wasn’t a coincidence that this whole leg was about tea as  Snapple will have a limited edition papaya mango tea. And as the winners, Gary/Mallory will be the first to taste it. Are you serious? Smack my head in disbelief, this sucks. And just when I’m sympathizing with Gary/Mallory over the worse prize ever Phil goes on to tell them about everything else they have won, which includes a treat of traditional Indian feast and performance along with 1 million rubies to share (which equals out to over 20 thousand US dollars folks!) Yeah, this is sweet.

Anyway to the task, Kent/Vyxsin, Kisha/Jen, Ron/Christina, The Globetrotters, and Margie/Luke all choose to decorate the statue which involves painting the 6-foot figurine, and nailing on fabric and bracelets to finish. This task does take a bit of time and attention to detail, but the teams don’t have a problem with this until… while finishing their task Flight Time accidentally spills paint down the front of their statue, marring it and making the team have to cover over this mistake. Luke/Margie have already arrived at the task and these two are in a battle for last so this mistake is not taken well with Big Easy. The team covers over their mistake and as they leave hug Margie and Luke because this has been a difficult task for both teams. And it’s not over yet because Margie/Luke finish soon after the Globetrotters and it is now up to the mercy of the oh so dreaded traffic. In the end, The Globetrotters arrive first at the pit stop, leaving Margie/Luke to come in last. They are eliminated.

Here are the rankings:
1. Gary/Mallory- winning that sweet Snapple Indian package
2. Jet/Cord
3. Ron/Chris
4. Zev/Justin
5. Kent/Vyxsin
6. Flight Time/Big Easy

Season 18, Episode 6: “I Fell Like A Monkey in a Circus Parade”

The Amazing Race airs Sundays at 8/7c on CBS.

Photos courtesy of Robert Voets/CBS/IMdb Pro.