Episode Report Card Miss Alli: A | 417 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT Again with the racing
By Miss Alli | Season 4 | Episode 1 | Aired on 2003.05.29
Oh -- do you know what a Fast Forward is? Well, it's a special clue that all the teams get, and if they choose to follow it and they're the first to complete it, then they can jump right to the end of the leg. However, they can only use it once during the entire race, so, as Phil always says, they have to decide "when it's most advantageous to go for it." In this leg's Fast Forward, you find a snowfield, don snowshoes, and hike up to the top of a hill. I would also point out that this Fast Forward is inherently, structurally bad, in that they're not receiving it until fairly close to the end of the leg. The best Fast Forwards are ones that they give out at the beginning, and that let you skip a lot of tasks and preferably some traveling. This one? Basically won't save them anything except the actual time for the Detour, minus whatever the snowshoe hike requires. It's actually very similar to the crap-ass Fast Forward Esquire took that came near the end of the first leg ever. In short, taking this option is a transparently bad decision, especially if you're comfortably in the middle of the pack. It hasn't historically been an especially important thing to play your FF wisely, but this is playing it badly, for sure.
Monica and Sheree call a taxi, as do Russell and Cindy, Jon and Al, and Kelly and Jon. Hmm -- no buses this time, as there were with the first four teams. I wonder if they missed the buses, or if the other people could have gotten taxis instead. It's interesting. Monica and Sheree's taxi takes at least a bit of time to arrive, and by the time it gets there, they've talked themselves into the Fast Forward. Nooooooo! Sigh.
Chris and Amanda are making their way up the mountain on the hike. She's lagging behind. He stops and turns to look at her. "Come on, Flo," he says. Oooh, burn. And also, heeeee hee. "I'm really tired," Amanda says, and stops for a break. She can tell this is going to set him off. "I'm coming," she says. "You're stopped. You're not coming," he insists. "Dude, if you yell at me again, I'm going to fucking die," she says. "All right, whatever. Like that's going to help a lot." And he keeps walking. "Like your yelling is helping me, fucking jerk," she says. As Sars pointed out, I think that if he had left her alone, she would have caught her breath and kept going, so I think he totally overreacted. Incidentally, according to the CBS site footage, there was more to this fight, including Amanda expanding the Flo callback by suggesting that Chris "throw [his] helmet like a baby." She voices over that she's oversensitive and he's overcritical -- I'd actually say they're both just very volatile and need to learn to give it a minute before they get into one of those bicker sessions, because the rest of the time, they seem to do all right. Chris explains in an interview that he was mostly disappointed by the fact that he and Amanda had been in first place, and then Chuck and Millie passed them like they were standing still. Amanda explains that this was because she was standing still. "Amanda, move your ass, please," he says to her, back on the mountain. She starts walking again.