Such A Nice Pheromone Smell To You...

Previously on Korea...Say It Loud And There's Music Playing: Enough with Malaysian Borneo and the monkeys and the nutbunches; it was off to Seoul for a little R&R, where the first R was for "Rrrreally Cold" and the second R was for "Rrrrreally Painful And/Or Disgusting." Along the way, there were brushes with barriers of both the barbed wire and language varieties, and a couple of teams learned that it is a very good idea to make sure you really do turn left before the bridge, in case it turns out to be a Bridge To Weaponry. Over in the color commentary, a frigid underwater Roadblock left several of the boys turning blue, a moveable feast turned the Chipsters green, and an introduction to martial arts left Kelly's knuckles way past in the pink. Flubbed navigation and switching between Detour options left Team Who stumbling and bumbling into last place, but the predictable appearance of a non-elimination leg kept them in the game. "Who will be eliminated..." My ironing board is elected governor of California. "?"

Credits. This Week's Fun Fact You Can Learn By Zaprudering The Credits With The Assistance Of TiVo: The passengers on The Amazing Opening Plane must have finished all the crosswords in the in-flight magazine by now, because there are absolutely no windows through which they can view the pretend clouds.

Commercials. I've always enjoyed the Old Navy aesthetic, and I've hung on for dear life to the hip train just as long as I could. But they bucked me right off when Fran Drescher and Mr. Anonymous moved into the neighborhood with Li'l Tiger Woods. Somehow, I "got" George and Weezy ski-jumping and the oddly self-deprecating purr of Morgan Fairchild, so I shudder to think what's become of me in only a few short years.

We are in Seoul, Korea, where the time-lapse gods would like you to know that the sun also rises. There is some typical drunken careening around the city, and then we return to the palace where the teams last stopped. Unfortunately, we also return to Phil's strange fur-trimmed jacket and black nubby sweater combination, accented with a pair of black gloves that look like they came from a different, and far superior, outfit. I swear that's Phil's mother's coat. There are probably wadded-up tissues in the pockets with lipstick blots on them. Anyway, rather than seeing the teams experience eat/sleep/mingle, this week we see them work their way through scheme/vow/intimidate, as they all take time on the mat to share their thoughts on the importance of making it to the final three. Reichen is feeling confident, because it's not like he would ever do something so galactically dumb that it would go down in history as one of the most galactically dumb things that's ever been done on this show. That will definitely not happen. ClownJon will do whatever it takes, even if he has to wear really big pants and ride a unicycle. At least, that's what I'm hoping for. David's approach is more thoughtful. "What would you do for a million dollars?" he ponders aloud. Well, I would learn map-reading, for one thing, pumpkin. Kelly astutely observes that she and BuffJon now have a "one in four chance" of winning the million dollars. Kelly loves how the math gets easier as the numbers decline. She's down to using the fingers of one hand now. Phil swears that tonight, there will be an elimination, and then the last three teams will dash for the finish line. He wonders whether the hand injury that Kelly sustained during her fateful encounter with The Balsa Wood Of Doom will crop up again (eh, "Come on, you girl!"), and whether that might prompt her and BuffJon to pursue the last Fast Forward available in the race. He also wonders whether the hapless Whos, coming off a scattershot leg full of botched Detour strategy and just plain crap-ass racing, will be able to bounce back.

3:46 AM. Kelly and BuffJon. He rips the clue, and it tells them to get to Hangang Park, where the locals go to fly traditional kites. Phil introduces the destination by showing us some signs and lights and other flashy stuff, because that's the kind of exciting, dynamic guy Phil is. He explains that when the teams get to the park, there will be flagged pedestals with thin wires tethered to them, and when a team pulls a wire, it will bring a clue envelope fluttering gracefully down from the kite to which it's attached. It's a little like when they celebrated the Constitution by bringing that giant piece of scenery within an inch or so of crushing Sandra Day O'Connor, only it's on purpose. The kites they're working with, incidentally, seem to be closer to fixed installations of a sort, rather than kites in quite the Charlie Brown sense of the word. BuffJon and Kelly leave the mat and work on grabbing a cab, but BuffJon wants to show some patience and find a driver who speaks a little English. The first guy they flag down speaks none at all, and the second guy doesn't either, leading Kelly to wonder how long they can wait, given the fact that the Chipsters are close behind.

3:55 AM. Speaking of the Chipsters, it's time for them to take their turn at the rip-and-read. Reichen counts an unquantified wad of cash while Chip reads the clue. As they walk off the mat, Reichen tells us that this is "the time [they] really perform to get into the top three." Yeah, yeah, yeah...show, don't tell, pretty boy. Out at the curb, as they search for a driver who knows the way, the boys run into BuffJon and Kelly, who have apparently blown their small opening lead waiting for English-speaking cabbies. Kelly makes the call that it's time to cut their losses, so she and Jon ask an available driver to take them to a hotel (a request that the cabbie can apparently understand), where she's hoping for a little more help. She voices over that she's "really starting to feel the pressure of being the only girl." Interestingly, Margarita, still my female role model racer, said almost exactly the same thing at a similar point during her season, so there's got to be something to the girl pressure theory. Not that I want to hear about it every five minutes like she's Marcia Brady joining the Frontier Scouts or anything. In the cab, Kelly studies the map while she voices over that the last couple of tasks they had to do pushed her physical limits to the point where she got hurt, but she's doing her best to hang in. Once she and BuffJon have driven off, we return to the curb and watch the Chipsters climb into that first cab that Kelly and Jon rejected. It might be useful to note for future reference that there isn't any footage of the Chipsters asking the guy whether he speaks English, and they're not even sure he knows where he's going when they climb in, because Reichen says, "Do you think he knows?" "Yeah," Chip says, and Reichen answers, "It doesn't get better than that." So I think they've clearly got misgivings from the beginning. I wonder if they'll prove to be well-founded. Let's watch!

In their cab, Kelly asks BuffJon whether he thinks Chip and Reichen know what they're doing. "No," Jon says flatly. "And their guy doesn't speak a lick of English." In the Chipster cab, the boys repeat the name of their destination, and the cab driver says, "Okay." "You know?" Chip asks. "Okay," the cabbie replies. Reichen warns Chip that the guy clearly doesn't understand anything they're saying. He then voices over that Chip is more intense in the race than at home, as we watch Chip make a very appropriate, very tortured, and very comedic constipated/competitive face. "When we're really, really intense and we forget to have fun at all, that's a little bit crippling to our team," Reichen adds. I think it's crippling to Chip's jaw muscles, too, considering that it looks like he's about to chew his own chin off.

4:04 AM. Almost as if it were planned this way, we cut directly from Reichen complaining that he never gets to have any fun to ClownJon tearing the crap out of the clue on the mat, yelling, "Go, baby!" Whee! When the clowns are off the mat and make it to the curb, they luck into a driver who speaks what Al calls "perfect English," so they gratefully throw their packs in the trunk. I always expect something really unusual to fly out of their packs at any moment. Feathers, maybe, or a rubber chicken. Maybe a set of chattering teeth with feet. During the ride, ClownJon puzzles over the place names in the clue ("Hangangang..."), and they both laugh. Al explains that they both still want to have a good time on the race, even though "it's definitely do-or-die time." We get a good enough shot of the dashboard, incidentally, to verify that Tweety statues are not standard issue for Korean cab drivers. Go figure.

The Bassoon Of Uh-Oh utters a few disagreeable honks as the Chipsters try to get their non-English-speaking cabbie to go faster. Chip gestures furiously while chanting something that he claims means "please," but it doesn't seem to especially affect their driver's performance. I think if Chip wants to entice the driver, what he needs is the phrase for "We'll pay extra, and also I promise to stop doing this annoying thing with my hand that looks like the international hand signal for furious dog-paddling."

Elsewhere, in the BuffJon/Kelly cab, BuffJon practices the bit where you find yourself speaking to the cab driver in a funny accent, in the hopes that it will make everything clear. In an interview, he says, "We were speaking in English instead of Korean, so that kind of confuses him a little bit." Kelly laughs. It seems modestly noteworthy that instead of structuring that remark to lay the blame on the fact that the driver didn't speak English, BuffJon more accurately chalks it up to the fact that he and Kelly were in Korea and were unable to speak Korean. Hoping for a little international hospitality, they head into a big hotel, and at the concierge desk, a guy leans over and makes some marks on a map so that they know where they're going. When they're back outside at the curb, Kelly asks the guy who looks like the doorman whether, when they get a fresh taxi, he would be willing to help her explain to the cabbie where they need to go. During this conversation, a couple of guys are shoving each other around on the curb right near where Kelly is standing. Nervous that the drunks are going to bonk into Kelly and knock her over, BuffJon grabs her arm, which makes her jump. He explains that he's trying to keep some drunk guys from knocking her into the street, and she snips that she can move herself, thanks. Heh. You don't think they're a little tense, do you? They pile into what seems to be a new taxi, and they leave.

The clown cab has found its way to the kites first, thanks to the communicative driver. The Chipsters' driver has also basically gotten them to the right place, but he misses the turn for exactly where they need to go. Because the guy misses the turn, Chip suddenly starts pounding on the edge of the rolled-down window, ordering the guy to turn the car around immediately, and vowing, "I'm not paying you!" Take note -- the guy got them to the right place, he just missed the turn. You don't scream nastily at your cab driver for missing a single turn when you weren't able to direct him until he had just about passed it. Chip's anger here seems to me to result entirely from Chip's tension, not from the cab driver being particularly inept. I mean...as I said, they're in the right place, after all. "Hurry!" he yells at the cabbie. Dude. Chill out. You don't want to go to bad tourist hell, now do you? It's very hot, and there are no little bottles of shampoo in the rooms, either.

The clowns get to the park and run up to the flags first. They locate and grasp the wire that will bring down the clue.

"Just let me out," Reichen says disgustedly to the driver who has successfully brought them to the beach. "This is awful," Chip says coldly to the driver. "You speak no English; I shouldn't give you any money." Good grief. I understand that Chip may have asked the guy if he spoke English, and the guy may have said "okay" or something. We never saw that, but it might have happened. But it is not that difficult to discern that someone knows absolutely nothing of the language you're speaking. Take ten seconds to find out, and you're going to know. Ask him to describe the route he's going to take. If he can't explain it to you, he's probably not hiding the ball. It means he doesn't speak English. So if you fail to figure that out before you get in the cab, I don't feel that sorry for you. Besides, Reichen knew while they were driving that the guy obviously didn't speak any English, and BuffJon realized it instantly. At any rate, you know Chip isn't behaving rationally, because why would you angrily lecture someone ("I shouldn't give you any money") in a language you know he doesn't speak? Unfortunately, the worst is actually yet to come. "Speak English!" Reichen growls disgustedly as he grabs his pack and walks off. Wow. They completely sucked in that sequence right there. You do not need to take out your Killer Fatigue on the locals, however stinky and hungry you may be at this point.

The clowns' clue falls down from the sky. Oh, would that clues would fall from the sky upon the racers more often...what a lovely, lovely world that would be. They rip the envelope open, and Al excitedly reveals that it tells them to make their way to Brisbane, Australia. "Wooo!" they yell. Phil explains that it's almost 7000 miles to Brisbane, and when they get there, they'll have to find a hotel, go to the concierge, and be escorted to a penthouse. I think I heard about a bachelor party once with invitations that had almost that same opening. But unless the task is going to involve a stripper that moves a wedding band back and forth between her nipples, it's not going to have the same ending. "Man, we're going to freakin' Australia!" Al yells happily. He doesn't need strippers, he's going to Australia!

The Chipsters bring down their clue . I'm surprised Chip doesn't shriek at the envelope to come down faster. Or, actually, that Reichen doesn't bark, "Be written in English!" at it. Nearby, Kelly and BuffJon are approaching. Reichen reads the clue, and Chip offers a small "yeah," though I can't really enjoy his excitement, because I'm still pondering the sentence he should receive for the shitty way he treated the driver. "Let's go to the airport," Reichen says, suggesting quite the brilliant piece of strategy. I wish the entire Korean taxi industry would band together and make the Chipsters walk the whole way to the airport, and would drive along beside them yelling, "Faster, faster!" the entire time. Speaking of the airport, the clowns are grabbing a taxi there, too. The Chipsters appear to saddle up with the same beleaguered dude they were so nasty to last time, and they yell once again, "Quick! Quick, quick, quick!" You know, sometimes it's hard to say anything except...my goodness, the absolute nerve.

Kelly and BuffJon arrive at the kites. "Thank you very much," she says to the driver, not so determined as Chip is to grind her transportation karma into a fine powder. As Kelly explains in a voice-over, BuffJon has a little trouble understanding the clue, and he pulls the actual kite string itself instead of the wire attached to the clue. They point out that the locals started making alarmed noises when he did this. That, in and of itself, is funny, but they could probably have stood to point it out without the stereotypical Hong Kong Phooey voices. It's not up there with threatening to withhold payment to members of the service industry, but this certainly is an evening for handing out more than a few cultural demerits. Anyway, BuffJon continues yanking until the string snaps and a line of kites flutters aimlessly. Kelly and Jon stand there, baffled as to what to do . "Uhhh...that sucks," Kelly says, showing a rare flair for understatement.

5:15 AM. David and Jeff. "We're just lucky to be here," David says in the cab. You bet you are, bud. "And we're happy to be here," Jeff says. It was at this moment that I realized that although this is not, admittedly, the most scintillating team that has ever run the race, I have come to have an appreciation for people who act calmly, and whom you can usually count on not to abruptly turn into assholes just because they don't get their own way. They have a normalcy that, while it's not necessarily great television, has a lot of appeal to me. Jeff voices over that they sat down after the last (crummy) leg and decided that they'd just get up and try to have a better leg this time. They've apparently decided to start by refining the facial hair, because there was some scruffiness going on last week, and now everyone is perfectly landscaped again. I'm telling you, Edward Scissorhands did no more elaborate work.

Kelly and BuffJon figure out that he was pulling the wrong string, and when they eventually locate the right wire, they successfully get the clue. She gets a little (and by "a little," I mean "enormous") amusement out of his having bungled the pull the first time, considering his irritating tendency to be right a lot, but they both seem happy to read the news of Australia. They return to the cab and get in to head for the airport.

At Inchon airport, the first team to show is Al and ClownJon. They ask a lady inside whether the counters are open, and she says in her most pleasant voice that they're not, but they will be at 6:00 AM.

At the kites, David and Jeff get their clue, and we get a foreshadowing moment when Jeff hands David the Fast Forward. They leave for the airport.

The Jon and Kelly taxi is on its way to the airport, but a new and very menacing character has entered the scene in the form of Heavy Fog, which has descended during the drive. As BuffJon points out, it's so thick that it looks more like flying through a cloud than anything else. He describes it in a voice-over as having been so sudden that it was like "Zeus with a lightning bolt." Except, of course, that it would be a fog bolt, presumably. So Zeus isn't, like, mad at you, he's just trying to make you think. Kelly rests on his shoulder as they drive.

At the airport, ClownJon and Al are working on their travel arrangements. Al explains that ClownJon is on the phone calling a twenty-four-hour travel place, trying to find out about flights. We hear ClownJon verify with a big liar named "Chris" on the phone that the only possible option is a Korean Air flight from Inchon to Singapore, and then a flight from Singapore to Brisbane. A perhaps too-dramatic slo-mo shot of ClownJon hanging up the phone follows, accompanied by an equally stirring musical flourish. I think you can guess at this point that that was not great advice. They get in line at Korean Air to purchase their tickets.

The Chipsters get out of their taxi, probably stiffing their driver. They're lucky they ended up at the airport at all. I would have driven them to the dog pound and dropped them off. Inside, they look at the Arr/Dep board, and Reichen explains that they determined that there were in fact two possible flights to Singapore -- one on Korean Air, and one on Singapore Air. Kelly and BuffJon arrive and wind up at the counter at the same time as the Chipsters. It turns out that Korean Air and Singapore Air are actually ticketed at the same counter, and when she's asked, the nice lady tells Reichen that the Singapore Air flight actually gets you in earlier. Reichen says that logically enough, they took the Singapore Air flight, for the simple reason that it left earlier.

BuffJon comes up on the Chipsters as they're finishing their booking. He sidles up to them and says to the ticket agent, "Can I have exactly what they have?" Kelly laughs. As he lingers to them, BuffJon says, "Such a nice pheromone smell to you...just makes me want to stay close to you." Reichen is seen attempting not to be amused by this and being amused anyway, and then he interviews with a grin that Jon tries to make them out to be as stereotypically gay as possible, because he's threatened by the fact that they're bigger studs than he is. Heh. Jon and Reichen are both laughing at the counter during this exchange, so I really didn't take it as particularly nasty. It struck me as rather run-of-the-mill boy-to-boy dick-measuring bullshit, for the most part. At the counter, both teams are wondering where the clowns are.

Where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns! Don't bother, they're at the gate, waiting for the Korean Air flight. Al returns to the theme of how nerve-wracking it can be to be the only team in a particular place, because it makes you wonder...whether perhaps you screwed up. "Did they find something better?" ClownJon makes a similar nervous face. See, I don't get how they could have not checked more at this point, especially when the other teams didn't arrive. Never put all your eggs in the basket of one guy on the phone, is what I always say.

Slam-cut to the Singapore Airlines sign. Nice. David and Jeff are snagging this flight, too, learning that it will get them into Brisbane at 6:30 in the morning.

The music tersely indicates inclement weather, and looking outside, we see that it is once again quite foggy. Inside, Kelly and BuffJon are learning that their flight on Singapore Air is delayed on account of the fog. "How much delay is it?" Kelly asks. "I don't know," the lady says. The Chipsters are getting the same news, learning that the flight is delayed at least forty minutes. BuffJon points out as they wait at the gate that if the flight to Singapore is delayed too long, they'll miss the connection to Brisbane. David says that three of the teams are scheduled for this same flight, but they don't know where the clowns ended up.

The clowns, meanwhile, go over to check on whether their flight is delayed, and they're told by the gate agent that the flight isn't likely to be delayed. Al interviews that they were told the flight was going to start loading any time now. I swear, airline gate agents have a more flexible definition of "any time now" than anyone, except possibly the cable company when they're explaining when service will be restored.

The Singapore Air flight starts to board. Over at Korean Air, ClownJon looks out the window and assesses the situation, and he realizes that the Korean Air flights look to be badly backed up, so even though the fog is lifting, it's going to take a while for them to get in the air. I'm not entirely sure the gate agent misled them on purpose -- I think the gate agent may not have realized exactly how things were going to shake out. ClownJon voices over that they only have a two-hour layover in Singapore, so they can't withstand too much of a delay. Just then, a guy walks by, and ClownJon asks him whether the flight is delayed. The guy says yes -- about two hours. "That's a problem," ClownJon says gravely. They decide to explore other options, a decision that unfortunately is coming a little late in the process. They spot the Singapore Air flight on the Arr/Dep board, and the fact that it's in the process of boarding. As the other teams pile onto the flight, the clowns run through the airport, heading for the gate to try to make it. Al explains that it was while they were running to the flight that it occurred to him that the other teams were probably on that flight, so it was important for them to haul ass and get on it. They arrive at the terminal and beg for tickets, and are told that the agent will ticket them and try to get the tickets out to the gate on time, but it's pretty clear that nobody is promising anything. ClownJon puts his head on the counter. Sigh.

The Singapore airlines flight, she is boarding.

The clowns make it out to the gate while the plane is still sitting right there at the end of the jetway. They ask if it's sold out. "The flight is available," the lady tells them, "but due to security reasons, we cannot accept passengers in the last minute." They beg with as much dignity as they can, but while an agent may be able to fudge availability of seats or even holding a plane for five minutes, she's not going to be able to do much on the security business unless she wants to lose her job. She excuses herself and walks away. The plane takes off. Al rubs his eyes. "It's done," he voices over. Legions of fans rub the bellies of their little Van Munster dolls, hoping that the excruciating fourth-place finish is not to be repeated. NOT.

Commercials. I maintain that the commercial with the "Mom In Spinning Class" hieroglyphic is not funny at all. It's the kind of thing that someone decides will seem funny in a commercial, even though he doesn't even think it's funny himself, and then the thing you know, they're shooting the commercial and everybody wants to know who it was who thought this was funny, and no one remembers.

The Chipsters dash out of the airport, calling for a taxi, and are closely followed by a lagging Kelly and Jon. Kelly and Jon are told, however, that it's quicker to get a train than to get a cab, so they head for the train, which is just pulling up as they approach. There looks to be some more stock Australia footage here, which makes it look like sundown, which it isn't. Boooo, again.

We check in quickly with Team Who in their cab, where Jeff is dramatically stating that they're "choosing the Fast Forward and [they're] not turning back." Unless, of course, they miss the exit, because...in that case, they'd probably have to turn back.

Chipster cab. We actually have to listen to Reichen explain that they can't take the FF because they've already taken theirs, which seems like sort of a silly bit to drop in at this late date. Elsewhere, Jon and Kelly are on the train, where BuffJon is studying the map and figuring out where they'll need to hop off. It's a race between these two teams at the moment, so they're doing a good job testing out the taxi-versus-train theory for this particular stretch. On the train, Kelly and BuffJon salivate at the thought of landing in the top three, while in their cab, the Chipsters say dramatic things like, "This is it."

David, meanwhile, asks their driver whether he can go any faster, or whether the cab is somehow mechanically deficient.

On the train, BuffJon looks out the window at the stopped-up traffic that the train is passing. Kelly pretends to see the Chipsters sitting in their little cab. Hee. "That's what we like to see," says BuffJon, happy with their choice. He points out downtown out the train window, and then we get some jumpy careening footage of downtown Brisbane as the teams approach. Jon and Kelly hop off the train. The Chipsters drive up in their taxi and hop out at the transit station that's reported on the clue to be right by the hotel. As the driver explains to the Chipsters that the hotel and transit center are "all one complex," Reichen chuckles at what a relief it is to have English-speaking taxi drivers again. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the taxi industry of Asia isn't currently writing love poems about you, either, knucklehead.

Kelly is asking for directions to the hotel, and when she gets them, she and BuffJon take off running out the door of what looks kind of like a big indoor mall. The Chipsters, meanwhile, cab it straight to the hotel entrance and run inside, just edging out Kelly and Jon. "All these little precious seconds," Chip mutters, really beginning to work my nerves a little at this point. They are first to be directed to the elevators to go up to the penthouse. When Kelly and Jon check in with the hotel concierge, they're disappointed to hear that one team is indeed ahead of them. Upstairs, that team of Chipsters is clambering off the elevator on the penthouse floor. We suddenly jump to a shot staring directly at the ground from high above, and then we return to the Chipsters, plucking a clue from a box that's essentially on the penthouse balcony. The clue offers a classic Reckless/Chicken Detour. In this case, the options are labeled Face First and Foot First. In Face First, you do a face-down rappel off the balcony down the side of the hotel. Oy. In Foot First, however, you run on foot all the way down to street level, run over to a different hotel, and climb thirty flights of stairs to the clue. So you can chicken out of the rappel if you want to, but you're going to lose huge amounts of time if you do. This is one of those "suck it up or die, punk" Detours, because they've got it heavily weighted. Unsurprisingly, the Chipsters choose face-first rappelling just as Kelly and Jon are screeching into the suite. Kelly is the first to slap the clue and just say they're doing the rappel, so clearly, she's willing to try it. As they put her into her safety gear, however, Kelly starts to worry about her hand, which she injured breaking boards last week. "Babe, you'll be fine," BuffJon says. She worries that she can't grab the rope as well as she should. "I'm a little worried about my hand, because I can't make a fist, but...you gotta do what you gotta do." BuffJon is going first for their team, and he thinks it looks like it's going to be big fun. Meanwhile, Chip is going first for his team. In an interesting side note, Jon was clearly hoping that he could go down at the same time as Kelly, because he's unhappy that they have to go down one at a time.

Brisbane airport. The clowns arrive. They run into the airport and look for ground transportation.

David and Jeff are still en route to the FF. Dave explains that the Fast Forward is "do or die," because if they were to get all the way out to it and not finish it for some reason, they'd wind up having to go all the way back into town to return to the route.

Building rappel. Chip and Jon sit on the edge of the balcony, all helmeted and carabiner-ed up, waiting to take the plunge and Spider-Man it down the side of the building face-first. As she checks out how high they actually are, Kelly admits that she's "a little scared." The music swells, and then Chip and Jon tip over the edge of the balcony and start their descent. Basically, it's not terrifically hard to do skill-wise, and it seems like it's actually easier the faster you go. When you're a good part of the way down, however, you run into a break in the wall where you can't walk down, but have to lower yourself for a bit just dangling from the rope. Chip finishes just slightly ahead of Jon, primarily as a result of doing a better job navigating that oddball spot along the wall. Chip walks over toward Jon with his arms raised in victory. "He was watching the gay man, and he learned from the gay man!" Hee. He then interviews that he thinks it just killed Jon to lose to him because he's gay. I think it did kill Jon, but more because Jon cannot abide losing to anyone than because Chip is gay. My impression is that the main reason why BuffJon cares a whit about them being gay is that they're very easily riled about it, as evidenced by Reichen's introductory comment so long ago about how he was doing the race to get revenge on all the people who didn't like him because he was gay, how they worried so much about whether David and Jeff wouldn't like them anymore when they found out, blah dee blah. Whatever else there is to say about him, BuffJon is a reasonably smart guy who unfortunately uses his intelligence in part to be a skilled button-pusher, and I think that constitutes pretty much his sole interest in the Chipsters' sexuality. Not nice at all, obviously, but different than it would look to me without any context.

Kelly and Reichen prepare to go . "I'm a little nervous," she says at the top.

Now we cut to the beach, where David and Jeff are getting out of their cab at last and preparing to start the Fast Forward. Running along the beach, they seem to take a wrong turn (heh), but then they get pointed toward the flag and eventually get to it. The guy running the task points out a swimmer floundering in the water (don't get me started -- I did this once with my mother, and "floundering" and "foundering" are both allowed) and tells them that they have to paddle out, rescue her, slap her onto a board, and paddle her back in. They each have a board, and they grab them and run into the surf. They start to paddle, and to no one's surprise, they start in with, "Where? Where?" It would have been awesome if they had rescued the wrong person. Some poor guy out in the water, going, "Get the hell off of me, you crazy bastards!" And they'd be trying to slap him on the board, muttering, "This guy is very good at his role!" Ah, sometimes it's the road not taken that makes you sigh in regret.

Anyway, they paddle and paddle, braving some significant waves along the way. Jeff voices over that just dealing with the waves was no picnic. David then explains, "I got out there, jumped off the board, put my arm around her chest, basically, and then was like, 'All right...now what?'" He gives this quite an endearing little chuckle. He laughs and explains that he tried to just kind of shove her onto the board, but it didn't work, as we see. He manages to overturn his board instead. Jeff paddles up at this point, seated astraddle his board, yelling the entire time for David not to let go of the girl. Which is fine, but...that's not really the problem. She's not going to swim off anywhere. Besides, Jeff is yelling at the top of his lungs like he's screaming across the Grand Canyon, but David and the girl are basically right there. It's all very dramatic. Jeff rather pointlessly explains in a voice-over that not only were they trying to finish the task, but they were trying to do it as quickly as possible. I certainly understand how he would find that little wrinkle highly newsworthy, considering that you have to read fully three words into the show's title to figure out that aspect of the competition. Just as they almost have the girl up on Jeff's board, they manage to swamp the whole arrangement and dump Jeff and the poor drowning victim into the drink again. Sigh. I think she's going to be dead several times by the time this is over.

Back at the hotel rappel, it's time for Kelly and Reichen to face the music. Kelly's first challenge comes in the form of a friendly guy who welcomes her to Australia, having no idea that he just shook the hand she crushed the other day. We see her comically shake it and wince in slo-mo. Hee. Kelly is having a very I Love Lucy kind of leg all of a sudden. She goes for a little camaraderie with Reichen: "Are you scared, Reichen?" He's having none of it. "Not really," he says. Ooooh, burn! Kelly, for her part, is scared. She eases over the balcony. "Come on, Kelly!" BuffJon calls encouragingly. Kelly and Reichen get a countdown, and then ease themselves over the edge. She quickly falls behind as Reichen tears down the side of the building. "There you go Reichen atta way!" Chip screams frantically. Ugh. I am not enjoying Chip dialed up to level 13. Kelly, meanwhile, worries that she's not heavy enough to do it. Right. And her legs aren't short enough to run fast. Kelly's grasp of physics is more than a little bit limited. "Come on, Kelly," BuffJon yells up to her, changing tactics, "you're letting that gay guy beat you!" "Jon, you're an asshole," Reichen calls down. Well, hon, you can direct your frustration directly at Chip, who completely brought that on you by taunting Jon. I mean...either they're both serious and they're both idiots, or (in the explanation I choose) they're both screwing around and...well, they're still both idiots, but a different kind of idiot. "Catch his gay ass!" Jon calls up. "You are such a dick," Reichen says, entirely correct and yet still a little bit amused, I think. He approaches the ground without difficulty.

Kelly, on the other hand, suffers her first real freeze-up of the race. She gets turned around so she doesn't have her feet against the wall, and when she can't walk down with her feet planted, she feels like she doesn't know how to get down. "I'm stuck," she panics. Her breathing gets quick. "You're all right, you're all right, you're all right," Jon calls up to her reassuringly. She lets out a scared holler.

Commercials. Face it -- there is no further interest to be squeezed from the grilled chicken sandwich concept. It is time to move on.

Kelly continues to have trouble breathing. "Step out from the wall," Jon advises her. "Oh, my God," she continues to wheeze. "Good, good, let the rope go," he says. Reichen, right beside them, is finishing the descent. "Awesome!" says the overwound Chip. They take off as Kelly continues to struggle, not actually very far from the ground. "Step on the wall," he tells her, and Kelly does, and this begins to get her reoriented. BuffJon voices over that this was the first time on the race that he felt like Kelly ran into something that did hang her up a bit. "You could see a little bit of fear on her face," he understates as we see her holler, "I hate this! I hate this!" She voices over that she was "frantic...scared to death." She explains that she panicked, which made her clutch the rope so tightly that she couldn't let herself down. Jon reminds her to let the rope go, and she does, and she starts to come down again. "Perfect," he says to her. "Catch me, catch me, Jon," she says. He reaches up toward her. "I gotcha," he says, and she lands in his arms. Aw. I thought that was kinda sweet. My feelings about him are decidedly mixed, but I thought he handled that really well from a partner perspective. He's smiling at her as he sets her on her feet, and then he voices over that Kelly does whatever it takes to get done. "I didn't like that," she says unhappily as she gets undone. See, I don't have any objection to people being scared. I object when you seem to be manufacturing your fear for effect, or when you want to quit before you even try things, or when you start screaming at your partner about how much you hate him because you're scared. But the scared part is very human to me, and I didn't fault her for that alone. She kept going, which is what's most important, and she didn't seem to collapse into begging for someone to rescue her, unlike some past winners I could name.

The Chipsters check out the clue, and Phil explains that it tells them to hop in one of the marked cars and drive forty miles to Mooloolaba and a place called Underwater World. (Which Chip pronounces "Mooloolaboo," incidentally.) I swear, half the place names in Australia sound like names of Muppets. But in any event, it looks like Underwater World is a kind of aquarium/theme park dealie, and Phil says that once they arrive, the teams will follow a path to a route marker that looks to be inside one of the exhibits. Oh, and...look out, shark! Heh, just kidding.

The Chipsters take to their car, with Jon and Kelly right behind them. Both teams are checking their maps and routes to get pointed in the right direction.

A wonderful dose of what my brain immediately labels "lazy hula music" brings us to the beach, where David and Jeff are still working at the Fast Forward task. It's a lovely touch, the way they're playing this leisurely, mellow music while these guys are frantically trying to haul this poor girl up onto a board. David explains that the surf rescue was none too easy. He says that sometimes they couldn't get the girl on the board at all, and then they'd get her on facing the wrong direction, and then they'd tip the whole kit over...no cup of tea. "She was a solid girl," he comments in an interview, looking like he's not sure what to say . Fearing that no self-respecting woman who's read The Beauty Myth will ever sleep with him again, ever, he adds, "She was not fat, but...it was hard getting her on that thing." Ah, yes. An actual girl made of girl, rather than a girl made of hair mousse. It always seems to come as a surprise to certain guys. We finally see them get her up on the board. They start to paddle, and because of the way that Jeff is behind the girl on the board, lying half on top of her to paddle, he has his nose pretty much directly in her crotch in a way that is so conspicuous I'm surprised the censors allowed it. They make their way back to shore, battling continuing wave issues. Jeff makes the understandable observation that the surf was higher than he was used to, followed by the rather dodgy observation that he had trouble because the water was too warm. Hmmm. At any rate, he drags the drowning victim off the board and up the beach. The instructor hands them their clue, which instructs them to drive to the pit stop, located at the Mooloolaba Yacht Club. They leave, happily calling out to the girl, "You were a good victim!" Heh. They pile into their car.

ClownJon and Al are just arriving at the Detour clue box. They seem aware that they have to do the face-first rappel if they want to have any chance of catching up. ClownJon goes down first, and it looks like it bothers him very little. Of course, he does get shot out of an explosive device on a regular basis. Al, on the other hand, hesitates at the top. There seem to have been some indications along the way that he's not so great with heights, and there's probably never been a fear-of-heights-challenging task quite like this in race history. "You can do it!" ClownJon hollers up to him. Al rests his forehead on the railing. Aw.

Elsewhere, the Chipsters are running into navigation problems on the way to Underwater World. "What were we thinking, not getting a map?" Reichen complains. What, indeed? They ask a guy for directions, and he gives them a lead, while Kelly and BuffJon seem to be finding their way there a little more easily. In the Chipster car, Reichen complains that they "can't afford to, like, waste time." Like, I hear you. So, like, move it.

"Come on, Al!" ClownJon yells at the bottom of the rappel. Up on the balcony, Al tries to psych himself up. He goes over the edge and starts down. "Woooo!" screams ClownJon, doing all he can for the team effort. My favorite part is how Al talks to himself constantly in this very calm voice the entire time he's pattering down. "That's all I'm doin' is goin' down a hill...that's aaaaaall I'm doin'." Yeah. I find it's the hills that are at ninety degree angles to the ground that are the hardest to go down, don't you? He hangs up at the complex part of the descent where others have struggled, but he manages to get himself turned the right way and get going again. He hits the ground nicely. ClownJon gives him the big, loud, aggressive, mind-bending "Woo!"/"Yeah!" combo meal. Al says that he was very nervous and didn't think he could do it. Aw, yay! They read the clue, and I try not to pay attention to the little words at the bottom of the screen that say, "Currently in Last Place." I am just pretending they say "Tomorrow Is Friday." They do the ClownRun to the car.

Kelly and BuffJon are just ahead of the Chipsters as they approach Underwater World. Both teams park and run inside. As they do, Reichen hilariously voices over, "It's like, we do everything faster than Jon and Kelly, but then they always go by us at the event." Yeah. You know, running to the event counts as something they do faster than you, and actually, if they're able to pass you in the hallway, it's not like you had built up much of a lead. In this case, it seemed like the Chipsters picked up some time at the Detour and then lost it navigating to the route marker, so what's Reichen's point? Inside, the teams wind up in a single little clump as they run. Kelly asks Jon to please not push her (heh), and then they all make it to the clue box as a group. They pull the clue, and it's the Roadblock. The hint says, "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water." They're surrounded by a shark tank, so if you know your Spielberg movies, you probably know where this is headed. BuffJon immediately points to himself and says he'll do it, but Kelly hesitates. "I think I should do it," she says. Phil, with a shark's face right over his shoulder, explains that in this Roadblock, the chosen person will have to put on scuba gear and walk through the shark tank, dodging a collection of sea creatures as well as oodles of sharks, over to collect a clue from a "treasure chest" on the bottom of the tank. Phil calls the animals a "rogues' gallery of sea creatures." So, you know, somebody is at least trying to write good copy for Phil, which I appreciate.

Reichen takes the task for the Chipsters, and while he knows Kelly wants to do it, BuffJon says, "We've gotta beat these guys," and winds up doing it himself. Considering that she's coming off a pretty unnerving experience at the rappel, I don't entirely blame him for not trusting her nerves entirely at this point, but still, he would ideally have let her have a shot, since it's more than her turn. BuffJon and Reichen both get suited up, with BuffJon winding up in a fuchsia and black scuba suit, while Reichen's is peach and black. So...you know, they're both looking about equally studly.

As he's let into the tank, BuffJon is told by the instructor guy not to stand on the sharks on the bottom, because that's a sure way to get them to bite you. The guy also tells him to clasp his hands in front of him and keep them that way while he walks, presumably because you don't want to dangle anything as tasty-looking and potentially attention-getting as an arm in front of a shark. "You can't trust the animals' behavior," the guy tells him. BuffJon nods through his mask. For some reason, a guy nodding with a giant breathing device on his face is reliably funny. Guy in scuba mask nodding? Funny. Guy with industrial respirator nodding? Funny. Darth Vader nodding? Funny. Anyway, he plunges in. Non-copyright-infringing but somehow Jaws-recalling music dum-dum-dum-dums in the background as BuffJon makes his way across the tank, with sharks swimming by and around him. Reichen, meanwhile, is getting ready to get in the tank. He turns and tells the camera that he asked whether the sharks bite, and the response was, "Let's just go." It's a pretty dumb question, really -- obviously, they wouldn't put you in there if biting was likely, but nobody can swear to you that an animal that has teeth won't bite you if you go into a tank with it. Anyway, he plunges into the tank as well.

Kelly and Chip are watching from the normal visitor's side of the glass while BuffJon approaches inside the tank. "Is that Reichen?" Chip asks. "It's Jon," Kelly says, watching him with a smile. "Hi, babe!" she says, waving happily at him with both hands. "Look at the stingray," she says to Chip, "it's goin' right over his head!" She voices over that Jon was so focused on getting across to the treasure chest that he didn't even notice or look up at the stingray that passed just over his head. BuffJon makes it to the little treasure chest and removes the clue. This takes place right in front of where Kelly is watching, so when she waves again, he gives her a tiny little wave of his hand before he puts his hands back together. As he heads back to exit the tank, he passes Reichen, who is slowly making his way across as well. Reichen voices over that trying to walk in the tank was challenging; what with all the fish and the little guys scuttling around on the ground, it's very hard to balance with your hands together in front of you the way they were told to do it. "I just went really slowly," he says as we see him...well, going really slowly. Kelly notices a shark going right by Jon, and alerts Chip that Jon actually had to stop and let the shark pass, like traffic. Come to think of it, people aren't even that accommodating to me when I am traffic. Maybe I need bigger teeth. Jon voices over that as he passed Reichen on the way out, he noticed that Reichen's eyes looked like the eyes of a cat hanging onto the ceiling with its claws. Hey, I know that look. I've seen it on my dog when he thinks he's being taken to get a shot. Kelly notes to Chip that Reichen looks very scared. In a voice-over, Reichen confirms that indeed, he was scared out of his wits. "I was absolutely petrified," he confirms. For some reason, when the fish start to make him nervous, he starts waving his hand through the water, doing the opposite of what he was told. It's not clear whether this is a balance problem, or whether he's trying to wave something off, or what. "Reichen!" Kelly gasps. "Put your hands together, buddy," she says, though he can't hear her. Chip calls out Reichen's name as a shark approaches him.

Commercials. How can there be a commercial comparing Ultra Downy to Suavizante when I've never even heard of Suavizante? Are they still inventing ground-breaking fabric softeners? I sort of thought fabric softener development had maxed out.

We return to the shark tank, where Reichen is moronically waving his hands around. He recovers his senses, though, and with a well-placed cymbal crash, he clasps them back together. Whew, that was close. I figured he might get his arm bitten off. Reichen voices over that it was indeed a pretty nerve-wracking experience, and that the sharks definitely wanted him to understand that the tank was "their territory." "So I wanted to respect that," he says. Because Reichen is all about respect for the feelings of sharks, unlike Korean taxi drivers. Driver should've bitten him. Kelly sees that BuffJon is emerging from the tank, so she heads off to meet him, giving a merry "Bye, guys!" to Chip. Over in the de-scubifying area, BuffJon reports on his journey. "That was awesome," he says with a smile. "There were some big sharks in there."

Back in the tank, Reichen retrieves the clue.

Kelly gives Jon a smooch as he finishes getting dressed. She reads the clue: "Make your way on foot to the pit stop, the Mooloolaba Yacht Club." Phil repeats that they have to race to the mat on foot, so nobody had better pull a Heave and screw it up. "The last team to check in here will be eliminated," Phil says simply.

Kelly and BuffJon take off, with her re-emphasizing the "on foot" portion of the clue. They run outside and up to a guy to ask him where the club is, but he doesn't know.

Team Who, however, is just arriving at the pit stop in their car. They pull in and stop, then get out and run toward the mat. A chick in what looks to be a bathing suit (though it's hard to tell) welcomes them. You can just see them going, "Best! Greeter! Ever!" inside their heads. Perhaps she is their unattainable Sara of Italy. Phil tells them that they're team number one. And they've won yet another trip, this time a vacation to "exotic Mexico." "No way," David says. "Awesome, dude." I swear, I never thought you'd see a team say "dude" more than Esquire, but I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Reichen emerges from the shark tank. Chip reads the clue out loud, including "Make your way on foot." "Let's go, let's go, last team will be eliminated," he says. I think what happened there is mostly that Chip was thinking "elimination," and he skipped right over the body of the clue looking for the location and the telltale elimination phrase. Elsewhere, Kelly and BuffJon are still trying to track down the location of the yacht club. They find a guy who actually does know where it is, and gets them going in the right direction.

As Reichen gets dressed, Chip says, "We're runnin'." "Why don't we drive, you wanna drive?" Reichen says. It sounds like Chip has gotten some directions, because he tells Reichen that it's a kilometer down the road. Because they saw Kelly and BuffJon take off running, apparently, the Chipsters think maybe they should run, too, but they appear to have absolutely no knowledge that the clue says that. Kelly and Jon continue running. The Chipsters, meanwhile, are in the parking lot, returning to their car. They're arguing walk versus drive, but I think they're arguing about whether driving is even faster for that short distance, not what to do about the clue. Chip is expressing reservations about all the getting in and getting out that driving entails, but when Reichen asks him whether he wants to run instead, Chip just says, "We made a decision, let's go." So they get in the car. And drive. It's Heather and Eve all over again, literally. Well, hopefully without the crew-blaming part. Reichen says he hopes they'll pass Kelly and Jon on foot. Sigh.

Al and ClownJon are just arriving at Underwater World. They pull the clue and Al takes the sharks. "Never give up...keep movin'," ClownJon calls to him as Al runs off to get geared up. Once in the tank, Al is extremely unnerved by a very big shark swimming right in front of his face. ClownJon can't believe he's going to stand there and just wait for the shark to go by. What kind of New York driving is that? Heh. ClownJon wants him to duck under the shark limbo-style, but Al is having none of it.

Kelly and BuffJon are walking toward the pit stop, and the Chipsters are, of course, driving there. As they drive, the boys see Jon and Kelly running and are happy to go past them. Jon and Kelly are almost as happy to be passed, as Kelly calls out, "Chip and Reichen! They didn't walk!" Chip and Reichen pull into the lot and hop out of the car. They run happily up and land on the mat. Yay! Welcome, Chipsters, you are the second team to arrive! They happily hug and slap each other's backs. "However," says Phil, as they turn to him with a sudden conspicuous wilt, "you chose to drive to the pit stop, and the clue clearly states that you need to walk." They stare, dumbfounded. Phil says that they'll be penalized five minutes for the time they saved by driving, and an additional thirty minutes for the blunder. He says that they'll have to wait and see whether the other teams arrive soon enough to make the penalty big enough to knock them out. Bummer.

Kelly and Jon run toward the pit stop. They land on the mat. Phil explains that they're the third team to arrive, but due to the Chipsters' penalty (which doesn't surprise them in the slightest), they're team number two. They smooch and congratulate each other.

At the shark tank, Al retrieves the clue. Back at the pit stop, Chip explains that they don't know what the clowns' situation is, but they hope to make the finals and will just have to see what happens. The clowns read the final clue and manage to execute it correctly, running off toward the pit stop. As we see the clowns run, Reichen says, "I like Jon and Al, but our work's gotta pay off sometime, and I just hope today brings us down to the top three." I'm sorry, "our work's gotta pay off sometime"? Like you're the victims of some kind of horrible karmic injustice that's been standing in your way until now? Like there's a hand interfering in your fate here other than your own big meaty paw? Please.

ClownJon and Al run through the entrance and to the mat. They step up. Phil tells them that they're the last team to arrive, and they look down miserably. "You do need to know," he says, causing their heads to snap up, "that another team made a mistake and received a penalty," but then he goes on to explain that the penalty isn't enough to put the other team behind them. "You've both been eliminated from the race." They hug. Phil asks Al whether he's proud of his partner, and Al talks about how ClownJon rocks, and is the bomb, and everything else we've learned about him in the last ten weeks or so. "He's definitely a role model," Al says. Aw. ClownJon says that they went in with a positive attitude, and while it didn't work out, they gave it their best. "I hope I set a good example for my kids," he says, "to never give up on your dream, to push one hundred percent and believe in yourself, and you can achieve anything in life." It is a rare, rare person who can be on TV for almost three months and then pull off a speech like that without looking like a complete ninny, but BuffClownJon is definitely the exception. As they head off and meet up with the other teams at the pit stop, the clowns receive a round of applause and hugs all around. "It's just a phenomenal experience," Al says as they head off into the sunset.

But enough with relentlessly classy people -- let's get back to the finalists, whee! Reichen says that the competition is severe. Jeff says that everybody who doesn't win gets nothing. Kelly says her eagle eye is watching out for the Chipsters. Chip promises "pushing and shoving," while Reichen offers "clawing and ripping at each other." Chicka-bamp. "You haven't seen anything yet," says David.

Executive Producer? Jerry Bruckheimer.

week: Kangaroos. Arguing. Spaghetti straps (Kelly only). Threatened punching. Horses. Helmets. Chip running over Reichen's foot with the car. Bad navigation. A buggy overturned. It's almost over now, folks, so if you haven't made your plans for the finals, it's time to make them now.