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The racers converge on the Los Angeles River. We've got married couple Brian and Ericka (one of whom, and I'm not saying which, was Miss America 2004); gym rats Lance and Keri; poker players Maria and Tiffany; friends Zev and Justin (one of whom we are told has Asperger's Syndrome, which should save viewers a lot of time diagnosing him); new couple Mika and Canaan, musicians and Christians; literal Harlem Globetrotters Flight Time and Big Easy; gay brothers Sam and Dan; father and son Gary and Matt; married yoga teachers Eric and Lisa; on-and-off couple Garrett and Jessica; Marcy and Ron, the token older couple, who met on the internet; and young blond couple Meghan and Cheyne. No, you're not counting wrong; that's 12 teams. But one of them won't even make it out of the block. Before driving to the airport, everyone has to do a needle/haystack challenge with a thousand Japanese license plates. Eric and Lisa are the ones left in the dust at the starting line, which is okay because I disliked them on sight. But not as much as I hate the runner-up for last, Lance and Keri. Well, you can't have everything.
So the usual eleven teams jet off to Tokyo, where they take part in a fake Japanese game show that requires them to eat wasabi bombs the size of a cannoli. Then they have to lead large groups of spectators through the crowded, confusing streets to the Pit Stop. Maria and Brian choke (almost literally) on the first try, but come through on the second try. Meghan and Cheyne make it to the Pit Stop first, while Lance and Keri's Philimination is sadly deferred. The last two teams-- Mika|Canaan and Tiffany|Maria -- have group cohesion problems, and ultimately the card sharps show up with a few people missing. But all it costs them is a two-hour penalty at a non-elimination leg; they're still in it.
We go right into the second leg, which takes them to rural Vietnam via Ho Chi Minh City. But first, Maria and Tiffany piss everyone off at Narita airport, first by getting on the same flight as everyone else despite their penalty, and then by being recognized as celebrity poker players despite having claimed to be non-profit homeless children counselors. After an operating-hours bunch, everyone takes a sampan ride to a fruit farm. Except Maria and Tiffany, who finish their soup-serving Speed Bump a lot more quickly than the mud-packing task seems to go for everyone else. Then it's a timed duck-herding Road Block before a footrace to the Pit Stop. That's a race that Gary and Matt win. Meanwhile, Maria and Tiffany survive their setback, and Ericka and Jessica are left sucking wind in a race for last place. That's a race that Garret and Jessica lose. They're out of the race, but it's inconclusive as to whether they're out of the relationship. Lucky for us, we don't need to care any more. Or at least we won't after the full recap, which, since this was two hours of racing, I hope you'll be patient with me.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what the Race would have been like 60 years ago in No Prior Knowledge. And check back soon(ish) for that recap!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"It's early morning in downtown Los Angeles," Phil narrates over aerial footage of, coincidentally enough, downtown Los Angeles. "And the temperature is rising fast in the movie capital of the world." From there, we zero in onto the Los Angeles River, which of course is a mostly dry concrete trough with a narrow trickle of water running through it. In case you don't recognize it on sight, Phil explains, "This is the Los Angeles River," as cop cars and a helicopter do some stunt-driving along the dry bed, "an iconic setting that's been used as a location for stunts in movies such as Grease and Terminator 2." Not to mention one of the first episodes of 24 I ever recapped. Finally we get an eyeful of Phil himself, walking toward the camera and explaining, "And from this legendary Hollywood setting, twelve teams will begin a race around the world for one...milliondollars.
Cut to a big tour bus with The Amazing Race painted on the roof and the destination sign, heading down a clear freeway. Exactly how early is it? Because the sun is up, but based on the traffic I'm thinking it must be about 3:30 AM. Phil says the teams are on their way. Time to meet them, but don't get too attached to a couple of them. Unfortunately, there are more than a couple of teams you'll find it easy to get attached to anyway.
Brian and Ericka enter the river through a tunnel first, dressed in yellow. Phil says they are "Married two years from Nashville." The first thing the show thinks we need to know about them comes in the form of some archive footage showing Ericka being crowned Miss America in 2004. In their pre-race interview, she says it has prepared her for who she is today. Brian says that as an interracial couple (he is white, and she is black) they look forward to showing America what being in love is all about regardless of skin tone. You sure you want to put that kind of pressure on your relationship right before we all see how the two of you react under pressure? Well, okay, then.
In maroon are Lance and Keri, who, as Phil tells us, are "engaged, from Salem, Massachusetts." Phil tells us. Over footage of them working out in the gym, Lance boasts, "We bring too much mentally and physically into this game not to win." Oh good, that means I don't have to watch them, right? No? Keri claims that Lance is "smaht," and he confirms that he's a trial lawyer, which I think is the one thing he could have said to make America like him even less. It's just a crying shame that the world of jurisprudence robbed us of someone who could have been the greatest Joey Buttafuoco impersonator of all time.
They're all still searching post-ads, and both teams seem to discover the characters in the clue at the same time before getting back to their new, more focused search. "We've been through so much," Lisa pants. I assume she's referring to what they've been through in their lives in general, because so far The Amazing Race, which leads people on adventure-filled chases around the globe, has taken them about a hundred yards. Phil stands patiently on the mat, and ultimately it's Keri who finds the last winning plate. They carry it over to Phil, and Lance waves it in his face, going, "That's right, that's right, come on, baby, you know it's it!" Whoa, that is a hell of a breach of protocol. "That is correct," Phil says sadly, already dreading encountering this tool again, and off they go. Eric and Lisa hug before walking over to take their Philimination like adults. We do get to enjoy the subtitle reading "Eric & Lisa -- Last Place" as they hug again on the mat. Lisa says she was looking forward to this, but "now it's on to the adventure." Specifically, fleeing the Amazing Men In Black who want to sequester them after less then ten minutes in The Amazing Race. I bet now they wish they were more Zen, right? Eric interviews, "To be the first team eliminated, now the shame, the pain..." Oh, I like where this is going. "...Is gone for everybody else. We took a beating for everybody." Wait, what? "We set them free," Lisa adds. Oh, so they fucked up on purpose? How very generous of them. They sure fooled me, though, running and searching frantically along with everyone else so none of the other teams would ever suspect that Eric and Lisa were giving them a gift. Now pardon me while I get started not missing them. So long, Numero frickin' doce.
Back with the people who are still in the race, Lance says he can't believe they came so close to elimination. "But you're the one who was supposed to read the clue," he points out, laughing to show he's not just being a jerk. I'm not buying it. And to her credit, Keri doesn't seem to be either.
As we arrive at LAX, Phil says the first six teams will be on an AA flight leaving at 12:45. The other five teams will leave on United at 1:15. With the acquisition of the tickets out of the way, the teams can start getting to know each other, as is customary at the first airport of the season. Zev tells Big Easy -- the bigger of the two Globetrotters, so that's easy to remember -- that his job is playing basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters. What a coincidence. Big Easy laughs and says he's an MIT grad. Marcy tells Gary|Matt and Meghan|Cheyne that the opening challenge was more intense than childbirth. Watching at home, her presumably adult offspring must be looking forward to not having that held over their heads any more. Big Easy asks Maria and Tiffany about their jobs, and Tiffany claims, "We work with an organization that deals with homeless kids in Los Angeles." What? In an interview, Tiffany says this is a "bluff that we're running...We don't want them to know that we make a lot of money playing poker because we feel like it's going to make them not want to help us so much." Whereas I'm sure they'll be all over trying to help your lying asses when they inevitably find out the truth.
Now the teams are on the planes, and in case you don't feel like scrolling back to see who's on which flight, the first one has Maria|Tiffany (or Team Inside Straight, as I'm going to be calling them for reasons that will become increasingly apparent), Marcy|Ron, Meghan|Cheyne, Gary|Matt, Flight Time|Big Easy, and Zev|Justin. The flight will carry Sam|Dan, Mika|Canaan, Garrett|Jessica, Brian|Ericka, and Lance|Keri. Both planes are soon in the air, with their flight paths being traced by Amazing Red and Green Lines to Tokyo. "Once there," Phil says, "They must travel by taxi and find a television studio at the base of the Tokyo Tower." The Tokyo Tower is very 20th-Century Japanese, in the sense that it looks exactly like a smaller red Eiffel Tower.
The first flight lands at 3:55 and the six lead teams scamper through the airport. Most of them make the first shuttle train, but Maria and Tiffany, with the kind of rolling suitcases that worked out so well for the Flight Attendants last season, get lost in the terminal and just miss it. Maria gets way too upset about it, even when Tiffany says it's okay. "No it's not," Maria says, "because I feel like we're making all these mistakes that we don't need to be making." How many mistakes have they made to date? Because I count two: missing the shuttle train and lying to the other teams about who they are, and I'm not sure they're even counting that second one. Maria just gets more irritated the more Tiffany tries to remain upbeat, like they're the first team in history who ever failed to hold onto a lead. Well, they certainly seem like a well-oiled competitive machine, don't they? But then I guess it's not like poker is a team sport.
Zev and Justin seem to get their cab first, followed by the Globetrotters, who do a bit of Speedy Gonzales for their driver. "Different language, different language," Big Easy says. I didn't learn as much Japanese in college as I hoped to and I remember even less, but I think the phrase they're looking for is "Motto hayakitte kudasai." Which means either "faster, please" or "louder, please," either one of which would probably work for their purposes.
The second flight lands at 4:03, a scant eight minutes after the first. Looks like someone caught a tailwind. The brothers, Sam and Dan, are the first of the five trailing teams to get their cab. Maria and Tiffany are in their cab by now, still bemoaning the lead they've lost. Sam and Dan catch up to Marcy and Ron's cab and wave at them through the window, to the latter team's surprise. They catch up to Team Inside Straight, who say they are "The team we call 'The Hot Guys.'" Come up with that yourselves, did you? If you don't mind, ladies, I'm just going to leave that right where you put it. Sam and Dan figure that the girls are trying to flirt with them, and in an interview, they talk about how they plan to let any would-be flirts go ahead and think they're throwing them off their game when in fact as gay men, they will be entirely immune from Maria and Tiffany's feminine charms. Someone should tell them that you don't have to be gay for that to be the case.
Tiffany and Maria lead their team through what looks like a demonstration against NHK, which is basically the BBC for Japan. The protesters are standing motionless and silent, which is no way to get on TV, unless of course they're counting on a couple of lost American reality show participants to wander by. Team Inside Straight gets a map from a hotel lobby, and get back on their way.
Back at the studio, Gary finishes his wasabi bomb, and as he and Matt get loaded up to go with their purple team, Ericka gets more and more shrill with Brian as he tries to choke it down before time runs out. Brian? Fails.
Out on the streets, it's getting confusing, not just for the teams, but for those of us trying to keep track of it all at home. Marcy and Ron get across the Scramble at roughly the same time as the Globetrotters and Lance|Keri. Lance screamily leads his team in another direction, getting them there in third place. You won't believe this, but his form of celebration involves screaming.
There are only two teams left in the studio as the wheel spins again, and Dan gets his wasabi bomb at last. He says he eats sushi at home, "even in Missouri," like the Show Me state is still a primitive backwater where the only seafood you can get is what young Samuel Clemens dredged up from the deck of his riverboat. But Sam's as good as his word, with over a minute left on the clock when he finishes. Off they go in tenth place, leaving what Brian describes in an interview as only him and Ericka, the remaining twenty fans, and the host, "and that's it." Don't' forget the Sailor Moon girls. As they spin the wheel again, and Brian psychs himself up for another try, Ericka says, I should have done this challenge." Brian looks like she just kicked his dog in the nuts. And that, America, is what being in love is all about.
After a commercials the host is still spinning the wheel. Uh, why? With only one player left, isn't it safe to assume that it's his turn? Whatever the case, as a wasabi bomb stops in front of Brian and he gets started on it, Sam and Dan and their light-green team run into Team Inside Straight, and get the girls to help them with directions. The forty-four of them (forty -eight, with crew) take off together. In an interview, Sam says of the girls, "For their job, they work for a non-profit that helps homeless youth, which is fantastic," just as the regular team subtitle reminds us that they are in fact "Maria & Tiffany, Professional Poker Players." So it's a non-profit now? Are they going to be adding more compassionate buzzwords to their job title as the race goes on, until they eventually arrive back in the Western Hemisphere as green suicide/cutting counselors for homeless orphan abused lactose-intolerant lepers with cancer and also for dolphins? These two caring givers seem to have their group kind of straggling behind them, and they hope they still have everyone. Not a solid strategy.