Episode Report Card 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Nine Best Episodes Ever
By Miss Alli | Season 12 | Episode 1 | Aired on 10.27.2007
As this became clear to Colin, he began to panic. He yelled; the ox didn't respond. He insulted the ox; the ox was unimpressed. Finally, he reached the only conclusion he possibly could: "My ox is broken! This is bullshit!" And in that moment, Colin passed into history, and no matter what else he did, then or ever, he would always be Broken Ox Guy. Did the show know what it had when it saw that footage? Probably. Did the rest of us? Ohhhh, yes.
Season Three, Episode Eleven: "Don't Try To Play The Moralist Now!"
A.K.A. The Wonder Twins Run Out Of Luck
The third season of Race is widely thought of as "the Flo season," so it makes sense that its greatest episode marked the beginning of her spectacular meltdown. This is the leg where she pushed Zach so far during a fateful taxi ride that you could tell he very nearly told her once and for all to go fuck herself, pulling it together only at the last minute to prepare himself to bodily carry her through the rest of the race and across the finish line.
But what makes this episode a standout is not Flo or her extravagant ridiculousness, or even Zach's apparently limitless patience. It isn't the unexpected flashes of personality, like Derek and Drew exchanging Mr. Burns-ian "Eeexcellent!"s, proving that they aren't at all the dull hunks they could have been. It isn't even the affecting scenes of veteran Ian returning to Vietnam for the first time since the war, which alone pack more punch than most shows would give you in a full season. What makes it a standout is the sweet -- ultimately, the bittersweet -- end it brings to the story of the warm and unexpected friendship between hot model twin brothers Derek and Drew and fabulous wiseacre brothers Ken and Gerard, which developed very early in the race and continued until literally the last possible minute.
At the close of the leg, with only four teams still in it, the two pairs of brothers were running in third and fourth place, with one of them likely to be eliminated. In a frantic sequence set at the edge of the Saigon River, Ken and Gerard received a critical tip-off from Flo, which they instantly realized they simply couldn't pass along to the boys, even though the teams had been working together for almost the entire race up to that point. They had to hide, and fool, and sneak, desperate to edge out the team they liked the most. A confused Derek and Drew, successfully misled, wound up going through the always painful routine of trying to check in at the pit stop, only to realize they hadn't completed the leg, and had to take an entire ferry ride across the river to backtrack to the last task. Getting on the ferry, they ran into Ken and Gerard, who were about to finish the leg ahead of them. Without rancor, the teams exchanged greetings, and Gerard prodded the boys -- with a sincerity to which you earn the right only by running an entire race without being a dick -- to run out the leg, because it might be a non-elimination.