It's Amazing!

I really love the Amazing Race. In most reality shows you see a bunch of wanna-be actors playing a role they have decided to create for themselves. The drama is always high, but it often feels so manufactured and it is difficult to relate to anyone. On the Amazing Race, you can really recognize your own emotions in the contestants (or at least can understand how they are feeling).

This was reinforced today when I watched Joseph and Monica running with their fish looking for the market owner who had the clue. Monica was frustrated and overwhelmed because she didn't know where she was going and she was carrying a fish that was feeling heavier by the second. She wanted to get things under control, but Joseph kept running. She kept calling to him, I think, to get him to stop and sit for a second to calm down and breathe. But Joseph was also frustrated in being lost and just wanted to gut through it and finish. Monica's constant calls to him only exacerbated that frustration. So although you could watch them and think that they were really getting angry with each other, you could understand what was going on. I really love that about this show. (On another Joseph and Monica note, I was impressed with how sure Joseph was that Monica was correct when they had counted the poles differently.)

Lake, on the other hand, I cannot empathize with. He is just a total jerk. He never gives his wife credit, although she is the reason they have gotten this far. I particularly hated that when he and Michelle figured out what the Detour consisted of, he insisted she do it and then complained the entire time that she wasn't doing well enough. And what was going on with those elastic suspendered travel packs they were wearing over their clothes? They look like some kind of S&M lederhosen-inspired outfit (Santino could have included it on the Project Runway lingerie challenge) made for a midget. They are wholly unflattering, particularly on Michelle, who shouldn't be drawing such a clear line between her breasts. That, Michael Kors, is what I call verging on vulgar. Gobo and I heartily cheer against Lake every week and we both love how Fran and Barry (particularly Barry) refuse to help Lake and Michelle. It is nice to finally see an older couple that does not come across as a caricature (and is not really annoying).

I was sad to see David and Lori go--they really seem to be a great couple. Also, did anyone else notice how much weight Lori lost from the first episode of the Race?! (Gobo actually noticed. It might seem to be good to have a boyfriend who notices when people lose weight, but it also means they notice when you gain weight. Just FYI.) I now need to find a new favorite team. I do have to give credit to Ray and Yolanda, who didn't get lost for the first episode and actually passed a team!

Finally--have any two teams been as jointly dominant on the Race as Eric and Jeremy and BJ and Tyler?! The teams have finished in the first two places every single leg of the Race thus far! No one else has even managed to crack the top two. In the past there have been dominant teams (Rob and Amber; Colin and Christie) but no two teams in the same Race have ever been consistently the top two every time.

And it is nice to see that the two teams really seem to enjoy Racing with each other. My one concern is that the Hippies (Gobo's favorite team) seem to be taking the Race a little too lightly--when they were going to the finish line, Eric and Jeremy were running while BJ and Tyler were literally skipping through the streets. But I guess they figure it doesn't really matter right now--they knew they were in second place at the worst, and it isn't like it was the final leg of the Race. People who don't watch the Race often ask me if one or two teams ever gets so far ahead that the others don't catch up. It has never happened before, but I wonder if that can happen this season.

Finally, I loved that there was no bunching in this leg. Only Eric and Jeremy and BJ and Tyler bunched even a little bit.

I didn't post last week's scores, so this week we get a double dose. Looks like we are starting to get bigger gaps in the standings [Edited to add: I made a mistake on last week's scores when I first posted this, giving Bailey an extra point and Laura Holt two points too few. I have corrected those mistakes (the Holt correction has resulted in her being ahead of Wilder in the standings, not behind)]:

Bailey: 41 (first three weeks)+15(last week)+12 (this week)=68
Diane: 36+12+14=62
Red: 32+9+13=54
Laura H.: 29+12+8=49
Laura I.W.: 30+10+8=48