In defense of the Beauty Queens

Last week, I posted about the Beauty Queens on The Amazing Race, saying that they were my favorite team, but I cringed every time they called (Kar)lyn "The Sistahs" because of its clear racial implications. At the time, Bailey suggested that perhaps (Kar)lyn call themselves sistahs off-camera, and that the Beauty Queens were just picking up their own term.

And after this week's episode, it looks like Bailey was right (how could I ever doubt her?). More than once, (Kar)lyn referred to themselves as "sistah" or "sistahs." When they were heading toward the pit stop, one of them said "come on, sistah!" to the other, and later there were cheers of "yeah, sistahs!"

Other thoughts on this episode (spoilers ahead):

I was obviously sad to see the Queens eliminated, although I was happy they landed in last place this week as well: it made me feel less bad that they didn't make it to the final three, since they were in the bottom two weeks in a row. Having said that, I have to agree with Bailey and Holt that the entire leg didn't really give any one team a real opportunity to make up a half hour of time. Which I guess really just means that the Queens would have had to land in first to stay in the race, which they obviously didn't. And before leaving, the Queens actually managed to say something nice about (Kar)lyn. When (Kar)lyn got out of the maze before everyone else and the other three teams were wondering why it happened, one of the Queens explained that (Kar)lyn beat everyone else depsite walking (instead of running) because "they are calmer. It's pretty smart, actually." This is what I loved about the Queens--they were nothing if not practical.

Karlyn is just mean, mean, mean. I was impressed with Lyn in the last episode: her mom skills finally came in handy as she totally smoked Kimberly in grinding and seasoning the camel meat like a real pro. And she was so nice despite Karlyn's endless sniping at her. Karlyn really comes across as nothing other than nasty. Of course, when the crisis is over, she apologized. But what good is that? It's easy to apologize when things are going well.

Rob and Kimberly did the same thing this week, apologizing to each other once they found the clue in their huge pile of tomatoes. Crisis over, apology comes. I guess it doesn't really matter as long as they are both okay with it, but it doesn't bode well for whenever they have a crisis in their future relationship (Rob certainly seems convinced they will have one, kids and all).

So now I am completely rooting for the Addicts. Sure, it would be nice to see two women, one of which is overweight, win this race. But I can't root for nasty Karlyn, and I do like the Addicts. Their best moment this week was when Tyler got all pumped up and asked James "are you gonna dig deep?!" and James just gave him a quizzical look and said "Yeah, of course," very matter-of-factly.

I'm also hoping that the Queens are included in All-Stars, although since we already know David and Mary will be playing, I doubt that will happen.