Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT You Can Dance If You Want To
By Miss Alli | Season 12 | Episode 4 | Aired on 11.24.2007
So Jason and Lorena slog through the mining leg of the Detour. They dig out gold from their pan.
Ron yells at Chris in Chinese as she tries to load up stuff on the bike. Vyxsin's bike tips over, and Kynt helpfully narrates that...the bike tipped over. Nick is ready to go, and he leaves in the direction he saw other people going. Chris leaves after him.
Lorena and Jason get more gold.
TK and Rachel get the Roadblock clue, followed closely by Shana and Jennifer. Rachel and Shana take it. Kynt kibitzes way too much about how maybe Vyxsin should have picked a different bike, until Vyxsin says through her teeth, "Okay, you know what, honey? A bit late for that." I think he's about to find himself on the losing end of a hurled goat. As TK and Jennifer kick back, she talks about how bad she felt about U-Turning Jason and Lorena, and how they did it thinking TK and Rachel were those two. He says he "wouldn't have made that decision." He's stupid, then, because it's the right decision to make.
Jason and Lorena turn in their gold. They can leave, finally. Yay! TK tells Jennifer that should Jason and Lorena catch up, Shana and Jennifer "have a target on [their] backs," blah blah, and it really, really, truly barely matters who puts a "target" on whom in this game, as we've often said, so can we stop with the Survivor talk?
When we return, Nick and Chris are looking for their vendors, and Vyxsin is still trying to get the bike set up, as are Rachel and Shana. Jason and Lorena get the clue sending them to the goat market, and in the van, they try to stay chipper, and he talks about "not giving up." Back at the goat market, Nick, Chris, and Vyxsin are searching. Vyxsin interviews that the conditions she saw, as far as the trash and how dirty it was, were pretty disheartening, but she met a bunch of kids who were cheering and helping and leading her to where she wanted to be. Jennifer assures Shana that the goat she's packing up will not bite: "They ram you, they don't bite you!" Pardon me while I sit quietly, waiting for the "that's what she says about boyfriends" joke to pass. ["I would have gone with 'as you may have read in the men's room,' but suit yourself." -- Sars]
Azaria leans out of his cab to, it appears, taunt Nate and Jen, who are right behind him and Hendekea. I'm not sure that seems like a smart thing to do. Both of these teams are trying to gear up for a race to the mat. And then, we see Phil, who is waiting at the mat with a local greeter in a military-looking outfit. "Open the door!" Hendekea begins shrieking repeatedly, and she and Azaria hop out. And then Nate and Jen hop out and run also. And as they run, Jen screams, "Come on, you guys, you got first three times!" This is not true; they have gotten first twice. And, on top of that, who cares? Is there some quota of first-place finishes -- like two -- that requires you to stop winning prizes and let other people finish ahead of you? Does it only apply if it's close, or do you have to step away from the mat and wait an hour for a second-place team to arrive? Anyway, both teams book it to the mat. Azaria, for all his instructions to Hendekea that she needs to focus and pay attention, runs in the wrong direction, which I hope she will remind him of every Christmas for the rest of his life. She gets to the mat well before he does, and the race becomes one between Nate and Jen on one hand and Azaria on the other. He edges Nate by literally one step, although he at least bests Jen by a couple, so she can feel slightly less tormented about that. Both teams submit their chickens to Phil, who repeats that "without a chicken, there's no check-in." Azaria and Hendekea win a pair of motor scooters, and Nate and Jen are checked in second. Phil tells Jen she seems to really want to come in first. "It's very frustrating," she says, and then she gives a chirpy, passive-aggressive shrug and says, "I want to come in first, heh-huh." She should stop here, but she can't. "I mean, we just want it really bad, and...I just feel like everyone should get their time, and they've already had their time two times before this." Oh, Lord. Is she serious? It's like youth baseball, where everybody plays and you have to step aside to let the little kids get a hit once in a while? Come on, lady. My guess, honestly, is that she probably felt really embarrassed about this, like, ten minutes later, but at the time, she simply could not keep her frustration from bubbling up. I think it's very unlikely that she would say that under normal circumstances; she doesn't really believe what she's saying. But she's so frustrated that she can't think quite straight. Hendekea says that she loves them and everything, but...well, she says the obvious, pretty much, which is that she didn't feel obligated on a show called The Amazing Race to slow down and let someone finish ahead of her.