Here Comes The Bedouin!

Previously on Caesar? I Hardly Even Know 'Er!: Rome to Athens proved a difficult leg for Lake and Michelle, who argued and griped as other teams worked their way through Olympic events and luck-based Fast Forwards. BJ and Tyler went a long distance in the wrong direction in an arena other than comedy stylings, and they probably would have been eliminated but for the extraordinarily bad navigation from Lake and Michelle. In the end, the dentist and his assistant were Philiminated, dadgummit, and we were left with five teams. Who will fairly obviously not be eliminated...tonight?

Credits. Ain't no monkey prettier than Phil. [BOMP.]

We are careening around the Peloponnese, "a region on the southern tip of Greece." Phil is strolling around the beautiful ruins as he explains that this is the Fortress Of Rion, the seventh pit stop on the race. He reminds us how the teams arrived and so forth, both with frog hats and without. I will tell you that I recently had the pleasure of hanging out with a glorious two-year-old wearing (1) a Madonna T-shirt; (2) rainbow-striped leg warmers; and (3) Cookie Monster bedroom slippers, and she is far, far too cool to wear a frog hat. I'm just saying. Phil wonders whether Eric and Jeremy are going to just continue coming in first all the time, and whether BJ and Tyler can pull it together after barely avoiding the boot.

11:54 PM. Eric and Jeremy, going first (as usual, as their girlfriends will tell you). Their clue tells them to fly to Muscat, Oman. Phil says that this 2300-mile jaunt will take them to an "oil-rich nation" that's almost 5000 years old. Interestingly, the show puts up a map -- of a type they usually don't use -- showing just where Oman is in relation to, say, Iran and Iraq. The answer is, "As the crow flies, not far." Particularly from Iran. I'm really glad the show still tries to do legs like this, all things considered -- I'm sure their lives would be less complicated if they just tooled around the Holiday Inns of Western Europe. Once the teams get to Muscat, they need to find a huge incense burner, where there will be a clue box. I'm thinking hunting for an incense burner is going to favor BJ and Tyler, who were undoubtedly the guys in college who would set off the smoke detector at 2:00 AM on a Wednesday in January, forcing everybody else to get out of bed and go stand outside in the bitter cold of Northern Ohio STOMPING their FEET on the SIDEWALK across from the CONSERVATORY until the FIRE DEPARTMENT let us GO BACK INSIDE. Um, or something.

We return to Eric and Jeremy, who are noting that their clue first tells them to cross a nearby bridge on foot. ("YES! FOOT! YES!") When they get across the bridge, they'll find a visitor center and sign up for one of two charter buses to the airport. The guys discuss how the other teams are tired of being behind them all the time. Probably true. Jeremy insists that this is because they're just better and faster and more awesome than everyone else. It's seriously the thinnest pool of talent ever when this claim can plausibly be made by a couple of guys who couldn't solve a word search in Weekly Reader without a dictionary, two spotters, and somebody to make sure they didn't hold the pen upside-down. They get to the visitor center, and while it's not open, the sign-up sheet is there, and they sign up for the first bus, leaving at 9:00 AM. Or, as they would know it, "one finger less than all of them."

4:31 AM. MoJo. In an interview, Joseph says that being unlucky when other teams are busy being lucky just makes them crazy. Monica thinks that maybe it means they're supposed to make their own destiny. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't read too much destiny-based information into who can find the Fast Forward most quickly.

4:41 AM. Ray and Yolanda. Sounds like they're getting $53 for the leg. As they walk to the bridge, they do a little back-and-forth about asking for directions and such. She explains in an interview that one of the things about their relationship is that they tease each other a lot, and she thinks one of the challenges is that it's easy to make a mistake and not realize that the other person is suddenly being serious. That is one of the more perceptive and realistic explanations of a relationship problem I've ever seen on a show like this, I will say, because I can certainly think off the top of my head of many relationships I've observed that have that exact problem. We see it in Ray and Yolanda almost immediately, of course, when Ray says "damn bridge" one too many times for Yolanda's liking, and she says, "Stop cursing at me." When he doesn't pay attention, she turns to him as they walk, she says his name to get his attention, and then she says, "Ray. You need to stop." "Stop what?" he asks. "You're cussing at me," she repeats. He says "okay," but she's pretty sure he doesn't understand she's serious, because she clarifies that she is. This degenerates into grumbling until, behind Yolanda's back, Ray gives her the finger. She seems to have eyes in the back of her head, given how she immediately asks, "You shot me a bird?" They continue arguing as they walk across the bridge. "Just remember, I'm a grown man," he finally says to her. "I can't tell," she retorts. Yeah, on the one hand, they're fighting, but on the other hand, if this is your version of "fighting," you're doing pretty well.

Joseph and Monica sign up for the 9:00 AM bus. Ray and Yolanda do, too.

6:20 AM. Fran and Barry. He is under the impression that they are flying to "Omen." Fran says that their goal is to get from fourth place to third. There certainly are a lot of not-very-ambitious people on this race, I have to say. They're all going to be fighting for second-to-last place if they're not careful. They walk across the bridge and they, too, sign up for the 9:00 AM bus.

8:51 AM. BJ and Tyler. Tyler's reaction to the city of Muscat? "Hip-ya!" They walk across the bridge as Tyler voices over that they believed during the last leg that they were out of it (considering they apparently did lose, like, four hours from the time they were with Ray and Yolanda at the Roadblock). So now, they feel like they've gotten a second chance. Tyler calls out, "Let the joy of the race fill you with adrenaline!" He would be great at writing holiday cards for businesses to send out. "Let the happiness of the season embrace your family in its fluffy grasp. Sincerely, Sanford Tire & Auto."

BJ and Tyler are at a Swissport counter, where they learn about a Qatar Air flight that will arrive at 11:45 PM -- just about an hour behind the lead pack. They get ticketed on that flight.

The first flight, with everyone but BJ and Tyler aboard, leaves. Then the second flight. Phil and the Amazing World Map explain that everybody is going to Oman -- the first four teams through Bahrain, and BJ and Tyler through Doha.

Now, we find ourselves in Muscat. The first flight arrives just about as anticipated, at 10:50 PM. The teams hustle out and look for the parking lot where their cars are waiting. They jump into their assigned white vehicles and take off for the park where, presumably, they're going to find the big incense burner. (Which still makes me want to say: "Duuude.") As Eric and Jeremy drive, they admire the cleanliness of Muscat and note that this is "the prettiest place [they've] been." Among other things, they note the prettiest McDonald's they've ever seen. It is indeed very attractive. I'm betting the fries are all very straight and uniform in length. In Joseph and Monica's car, meanwhile, she's shocked by some of the ornate structures that are around. "American people think that they're rich...these people who are rich here are crazy rich. Billionaires." I don't think she's saying the entire country is rich; I think she's saying she doesn't see structures this ornate on the way home from the airport where she lives. Still...goodness, she's very nave. It's not like there aren't billionaires in America. They don't decorate the McDonald's quite so fancy, but still.

Ray: "I don't know what language they speak over here, but...I can't even look at all these signs and figure out what it says. They're all squiggly." It's a little painful that he can't identify Arabic, but I always like it when people break down to the point where they can use a word like "squiggly" out of genuine anguish.

Fran admires the beauty of Muscat.

And now, BJ and Tyler's flight lands. Tyler explains to the camera that they have gotten themselves a Fern on the flight, and Fern is going to take them directly to the park. Indeed, the guy leads them and they go.

Eric and Jeremy arrive at the park. They see the giant incense burner, but when they find the sign, they learn that the gates don't open until 6:00 AM. "Son of a bitch," one of them mutters. MoJo arrives . Then Ray and Yolanda, then Fran and Barry. And then BJ and Tyler, certainly not seeming to be all that far behind. So everybody is all caught up again.

As all the teams snooze, Yolanda brings up the fight she and Ray had earlier. "So you think it's cool to cuss me out and shoot birds at me?" "You think it's cool to talk to me how you talked to me?" he wonders. "I didn't talk to you any way, I was teasing you," she says. "Like you tease me about anything else, tease me about three thousand things, about how we teased each other yesterday. I was teasing you, and you just flipped the script. Just don't talk to me for the rest of the time." Because if there's anything that will soothe a fight and end the hurt feelings, it's a prolonged period of stony silence. Ray reminds us in an interview that he and Yolanda have never spent more than four days together at a stretch, so they're seeing some different sides of each other. Yolanda agrees that they haven't communicated well at all lately. She refers to it as "something [they] have to work on." I hope so, because although this fight currently has a fairly laid-back, lazy vibe to it, ugliness can crop up awfully quickly.

After a commercial, we find ourselves back in Oman. At straight-up 6:00 AM, the gates open, and the teams all run inside. They make it to the clue box and tear the clue open. It tells them to drive about 135 miles to Sur, where they'll find a ferry crossing and get another clue. Everybody bolts. There is lots of chaos as the teams chatter to each other and climb into their cars. This kind of scene always makes it feel like they're all fleeing the police after a rumble.

What follows is a very funny sequence in which the teams all try not to be in front, but to let other teams pass them so that they can follow. Ultimately, it is MoJo that winds up ahead, with BJ and Tyler their closest pursuers. In fact, when MoJo stops to get directions, BJ and Tyler can read the pointing, and manage to get ahead of MoJo in implementing MoJo's own directions. That hurts, and Monica takes note. Fran and Barry are navigating on their own, which is, of course, what they do best. Eric and Jeremy, however, suddenly realize that they don't know which way they're going or whether they're going the right way. They stop to ask for some directions, but even though the guy knows where they're going, they seem to have some difficulty interpreting what he's saying. To their obvious surprise, as they try to regroup, they find themselves passed by Fran and Barry. "Damn," says a fratty voice.

Ray and Yolanda are stopping to ask for directions, which is highly typical of them, but they're still very tense and bickery in the way they discuss it, which is not highly typical of them. The first guy they stop unfortunately does not speak English, and he tells them so. "We're in trouble," Yolanda says. In another part of Oman, BJ and Tyler, with MoJo behind them, are on a dirt road. Joseph wonders whether this can possibly be where they're supposed to be, and Monica chuckles that she has absolutely no clue. But indeed, it is the right place, because they arrive at the edge of a lot of water and are told to put their vehicles into four-wheel drive. Then, a very small man leads them out onto a very large bed of stones, where he runs ahead of them to show them where they need to go. The guy wades right into the water and leads them as they all go in up over their tires. He points helpfully, probably making sure they don't hang themselves up on any underground vines or run over anybody's lobster pot or science experiment. As they emerge from the water, BJ and Tyler thank him in what I presume is Arabic, which is a very nice touch. You can never go wrong with me by teaching yourself to thank the locals, even though it can also be a bit of a self-aggrandizing gesture. Joseph and Monica thank him, but in English. "I just want to pick him up and take him home in my pocket," Monica observes with a grin. I guess the guy really is small, but it's often considered patronizing to think of the locals as actual souvenirs.

Fran and Barry follow, out into the water. And then, Eric and Jeremy.

Ray and Yolanda, on the other hand, are still lost. They're getting another set of directions, but Ray is still having trouble reading the signs. I have to agree that I could probably guess at a certain number of signs in Italy or Norway, but I'm not going to guess anything in Arabic except my own level of inexperience with world languages, which isn't even a guess, really, so much as a depressing realization.

BJ and Tyler, in the lead for the moment, come across another short section of road where they're going to have to drive through water. They stop and have a discussion with MoJo in which both teams try to convince each other to go first. Because there's nothing like being so wussy that you won't drive through water unless somebody shows you how. Then Fran and Barry come up behind those two and sit and wait, and then Eric and Jeremy come up. Far less concerned about this than the other teams, Eric and Jeremy just drive right into the water, happy for the shot at an advantage -- which is why they're winning, if you think about it. All the teams ultimately venture into the water and find that it is not, in fact, too deep to drive through. Though I do keep expecting water to come in through the air vents. The strangest moment, by a large margin, is when Tyler, driving through the brown water, notes, "Is this the most awesome chocolate surprise you've ever had?" That is just the weirdest combination of porn overtones and some kind of Willy Wonka mythology that I have ever heard. Fran, on the other hand, is extremely nervous, because she's afraid of water, and mud, and driving.

Once they're through, Monica talks in their car about how Eric and Jeremy have this thing about being first, so they jump the line. Which is bullshit in this case, because everybody else was sitting there, not wanting to go. That's not jumping the line; it's just declining to jump into the vat of chickens. BJ bitches about the same thing, and seriously, dude, shut up. When you're parked like you're waiting for the drive-in movie to start, you can't blame anyone but yourself when it doesn't go the way you want. Tyler vows that Eric and Jeremy will get their comeuppance sooner or later. That would be their comeuppance for...making forward progress, I guess.

Ray and Yolanda follow the Very Small Guide across the riverbed. They enjoy the water driving and so forth, but it's all kind of routine now. It's like being your parents' third child. Everybody's like, "Sure, that's fine, whatever, we've seen walking before."

Now, we are in Sur. Men play drums. Eric and Jeremy are in the lead and looking for the ferry crossing. Everyone is hunting, and everyone is still very close together, clearly. MoJo, BJ and Tyler, and Fran and Barry all find the thing very close together and rip their clues almost in unison. And the clue they come up with is this week's Detour. The choice are Camel and Watchtower. In Camel, you use a sort of pulley system to lift a camel in a harness into a pickup truck, and then drive the camel to a location to be dropped off. The map that shows the location, incidentally, looks like a treasure map on the back of a box of Cap'n Crunch, if the treasure at the end were a giant live camel. When they find the marked Bedouin camp, they'll trade the camel for a clue. In Watchtower, you do not have to hand out religious literature, as many of us were expecting. Instead, you search three towers for a "message box" that you then deliver one mile to a silver shop. All three of the lead teams are inclined to do the Watchtower option. Monica knows that camels are stubborn and she wants nothing to do with them. Heh.

Eric and Jeremy finally find the ferry crossing and pull the Detour clue. They choose the camel. They hop on the same little boat as the Watchtower teams, and when everyone is let off, Eric and Jeremy run one direction to do Camel, and the other three teams all run up to the nearby Watchtower. Watchtower hunting ensues.

Eric and Jeremy get to the place where the camels are found. They bring over a pickup truck as their camel makes very, very unhappy noises. As we all know from past experience, camels love to make timely commentary on the proceedings. Eric begins to hoist the camel. I suspect the camel is the only one who really feels me, in terms of how over Eric's attempts to be amusing I am.

Monica and Joseph come to a watchtower without a message box in it, while BJ and Tyler find one that does have a message box. They take one and leave, and as they go, they pass a frustrated Joseph and Monica. Fran and Barry find their message box, too. They manage to get back in time to get on the same boat back as BJ and Tyler. Meanwhile, Joseph and Monica become discouraged and decide to do the Camel option instead. It seems, from what we saw, like if they had gone into one more, they'd have found one, right? Because BJ and Tyler and Fran and Barry each found a tower with another box available in it? That's what it looked like to me.

Eric hoists and hoists. The camel slowly rises into the air. This is humiliating for a camel, I'm sure. A couple of locals lend Eric a hand, and they move the camel on over and lay it into the bed of the pickup truck. I just don't feel like being transported in the back of a pickup truck comes naturally to a camel the way it would to, say, a golden retriever. Along with a guy who seems to be a guide for safety but not directional purposes, Eric and Jeremy take off to follow the cartoon map to the camel depository.

BJ and Tyler and Fran and Barry get off the boat, and there is approximately the four billionth "T-Tow!" of this episode. Even if it were funny, that wouldn't be funny anymore. They ultimately find some locals to lead them to the silver shop. In the car, BJ shows the camera the drawing he made of a camel. It has no particular relevance, except that I think BJ is doing what he's always doing, which is saying, "Look at what I can do if you will only watch me!" But his point is that camels are uncooperative, and with that, I cannot disagree. Not that I don't kind of love the camel anyway. "Camels...bad," he says.

We cut directly to an indignant camel hollering for BJ to shut it: "I may be bad, hippie, but at least I'm not boring." It turns out that this is MoJo's camel, currently being hoisted for delivery into their pickup truck. Monica soothes the camel as Joseph does most of the lifting. The lifting does seem to be a one-person operation, so it makes sense that someone has to be the Camel Whisperer.

Eric and Jeremy are, they hope, driving toward the camel drop-off. But they're beginning to have doubts. "I don't see anything," one observes. Eric is still riding in the back of the truck with the camel and the guide, and he's not having a great time, I don't think. I mean Eric, not the camel. Though, not the camel, either. Americans are so boring.

Fran and Barry find the silver shop, as do BJ and Tyler. Both teams head inside and retrieve their clues. The clue that Fran and Barry are actually the first to receive tells them to go to the town of Al Hawiyah and find something Phil calls nothing more than "this place." I hope the teams got more information than that, or they're going to be doing a lot of guessing: "Hi. I'm looking for...this place. Have you ever heard of this place?" Fran and Barry wait for BJ and Tyler to reemerge before they leave.

MoJo. Camel-loading. I don't think they're having a great experience with camel-loading, not that it seems like anybody really does. They get it done, and while Monica has the map to begin with, Joseph takes a look and seems to think he understands where they're driving.

Eric and Jeremy are beginning to realize that they are legitimately lost. They come across a tiny sign of a town, but while Jeremy idly hopes they can drop the camel there, Eric is sure this isn't right, and he sends Jeremy back out to the road. Eric is kind of the brains of the operation, I've noticed. You can see why they're in trouble.

Monica is busy freaking out about her hope that they've already found the camel drop-off, but Joseph basically tells her to chill out and stop being the girl screaming in the back of every pickup truck. He knows where he's going, and he soon finds the left that he's sure is the one he wants. Indeed, they have found what they need. They deliver their camel, and they receive the clue for Al Hawiyah. As they get a ride back to the ferry, they lament that they ever tried the Watchtower option at all, muttering about how it's their bad luck once again. It's true that they had bad luck there, but they also seemed flummoxed by something that perhaps didn't seem like an inherently flummoxing thing.

Eric and Jeremy. Lost in the desert. Can I get an amen? "I think we're going to drive until we are dehydrated and die," Eric observes. Spoiler?

Joseph and Monica get back to their car, and as they do, they see Eric and Jeremy driving around with their camel. Joseph observes that given the fact that the guys were ahead of them loading the camels, they must have gotten significantly lost. And indeed, Eric and Jeremy are still lost. "This is the worst experience I've had," Eric observes as they continue to drive in the dusty heat. Not going too well for them. As with BJ and Tyler, they don't seem to find things in general to be nearly as funny as they did when they were in the lead.

BJ is still digging. Tyler tells us how hard it is to watch BJ suffer in the heat, half-dead. It's even getting hard for me, to be honest, and you know how heartless I generally am. You'd think I'd enjoy it...more. "We could be here forever," Tyler says with concern.

When we come back, Tyler says quietly that they've been here for about an hour and fifteen minutes, and it's about 90 degrees -- so it's not Africa hot -- and BJ is really struggling. To his credit, Tyler is awesome in the camera-talk, saying that while the other teams are gone, there's nothing they can do, and BJ has obviously done his best. And I think Tyler means it, which most tooth-grinding partners in this situation emphatically do not. Finally, BJ comes up with the bag. Tyler hollers approval. "We are not far behind," he promises. Tyler insists on a hug, which I'm betting is not what BJ is in the mood for. They open the clue and leave for the pit stop. BJ looks like hell. Hell -- Now With Extra Dust.

MoJo on the road to Jabreen Castle. Wary of the approaching Fran and Barry, Eric and Jeremy have decided to take a shortcut in hopes of improving their standing, because they're dying to be first and show off how awesome they are and win another free trip in the Travelocity Gnome-mobile. Ray and Yolanda are on the road, but they are -- you guessed it -- fighting over the map and the directions.

In the BJ and Tyler car, Tyler has taken the job of telling the camera guy that they've done their best and will be fine. "The Philiminator will not eliminate us," he says, stating the obvious. Seriously, this is the problem with the structure of the show at this point -- everybody knew this was non-elimination. After briefly experimenting, they almost always do the eliminations at very similar times, so it's hard to care.

In Nizwa, MoJo and Fran and Barry are both closing in on the pit stop, with Fran vowing to go "as fast as [her] legs will take [her]." (Fran's legs: "Eh.") Tension builds, and it builds, and then you see MoJo have to pull over and ask directions. They get the help they need, but when they're back in the car, they know that they've probably given up first place.

Mat. Phil. Fran and Barry. When he sees them, Phil gives the most delightful "You have got to be shitting me" look of all time. He was not ready for them to win a leg. It's a novelty to him, like an egg with two yolks or a potato chip shaped like Nebraska (which I totally saw this weekend). Welcome, Fran and Barry -- you are team number one. And you win a trip to Rome, which is almost as old as you are. Just kidding! How does it feel to be number one? "It feels so good!" Fran says.

It gets dark, so apparently Joseph and Monica got pretty lost. But here they are. Welcome, you are team number two. They are the unhappiest people ever to hear that news.

Eric and Jeremy are not making that shortcut work out so well. In fact, they're lost. But Eric thinks everybody else is probably lost, too. You wish, punk!

Not lost: Ray and Yolanda, currently arriving at the pit stop. Welcome, Ray and Yolanda, you are team number three, even after all that really bad navigating. They look very pleased, but they admit to Phil that they've had a rough couple of days together. I hope that doesn't keep up. She interviews that the fun has been drained out of racing for her just lately, but that they'll have to work through it. As for Ray, he's glad they haven't lost their position in the race.

Eric and Jeremy, lost and lamenting their decision to leave the highway. BJ and Tyler, hoping everyone else got lost. Phil. The mat. Phil. The mat. BJ, saying that they might be in last place. Eric, saying that they assume they're in last. And now, arriving at the mat...Eric and Jeremy. Welcome, you are team number four. They look surprised and thrilled, which isn't surprising. Or thrilling. Phil asks if this is "humbling." Jeremy allows that you "can't win them all," there, Big Philly Style. I don't really think they find anything genuinely humbling. I think there has to be more fertile ground to begin with.

Here are BJ and Tyler, but the music just isn't sad enough for me. It's like I know, and they know I know, and I know they know I know. They come up to the mat, and they are last, but they are not eliminated. They are, however, going to have to give Phil all their money, and they'll have to start the leg with none. They'll also have to turn over all their possessions except for what they're wearing and their passports. This means that they are going to wear those fucking "T-TOW" shirts for the rest of the race. Tyler explains that they don't really think possessions are important anyway. They're going to be "complete BJ and Tyler and nothing else." They vow to remain goofy at all times. Well, that's a fuckin' relief.

Executive Producer? Jerry Bruckheimer.

week: Australia! Rowing! MoJo fighting! Bicycles! And maybe somebody actually going home.