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After hobbling to victory two legs in a row, Dave is summoned home for emergency surgery on his injured ankle, forcing him and Connor to report to the mat in Hanoi at their earliest opportunity and offer themselves up for Philimination. Phil regretfully obliges.
That leaves seven teams still running the race, and it turns out that John isn't done screwing things up for other people. His and Jessica's former allies, Joey & Meghan and Mona & Beth, are targeted by a suddenly cohesive alliance of the other five remaining teams. And with a U-Turn coming up this leg, it couldn't come at a worse time. Things get started when a Roadblock requires racers to watch a musical performance extolling the virtues of Vietnamese socialism and then locate a key phrase amid hundreds of political posters. Pam aces the task and gets out of there first, and she and Winnie never look back. Well, that's not actually true, but more on that in a minute.
After a brief diversion to a bamboo-dancing task where longtime spouses Chuck & Wynona seem unable to grasp the key concept of holding hands, the Detour seems like an obvious choice between arranging human pieces on a life-sized Chinese chess board, or undertaking a terrifying combination of schlepping, shopping for ingredients in precise amounts, weighing them, and using them to make a bowl of pho, or Vietnamese soup. A surprising number of teams opt for the latter option, however. Pam & Winnie go for Chinese chess, and after a brief hiccup, they're still in the lead by the time they reach the U-Turn. Which turns out to be both double and blind. Per their agreement with their alliance, they U-Turn Joey & Meghan, and then proceed to win their first leg. As they themselves more or less admit, it helps to not having an injured old dude out ahead of them.
Joey & Meghan reach the U-Turn sign in second place, but too late; the damage is done. They U-Turn Chuck & Wynona out of self-preservation, unaware that Team Mullet is having problems of its own, most of them stemming from Chuck's refusal to listen to his wife. By the time Joey & Meghan get to the pho task, Chuck & Wynona are still there. As Max & Katie come in second, the derby moms third, the hockey brothers fourth, and the country singers fifth (despite Caroline and Jennifer experiencing some bad taxi luck and a total misunderstanding of the chess detour), Joey & Meghan pass Chuck & Wynona and beat them to the U-Turn sign again, coming in sixth and vowing to now be out for blood. Which they probably expect to be pink. As for Chuck & Wynona, it's no shock when they come in last, but Phil has news for them: this leg's elimination has already occurred, and it was Dave & Connor. Which means Team Mullet is still in it. So in the end I'm not really clear on what the point of all the running around in Hanoi was, other than to give Pam & Winnie a nice ski trip.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"The lush island of Bali is known as the last paradise on Earth," Phil announces from the third or fourth paradise shown on this season of The Amazing Race alone. "Today, these cliffs on the edge of the southern peninsula are the start of the fifth leg in a race around the world." Dave and Connor, who won the leg, are starting off this one well before sunrise, at 5:01 AM. And yes, Dave is still on crutches, for the third leg in a row. He's also wearing a Livestrong T-shirt, which he might now be wishing is something that could have been corrected in post-production. The clue tells them they're going to Hanoi, Vietnam, which Phil's narration helpfully informs us is more than 2,000 miles away. He always says that as if they're traveling by stagecoach or something. After landing, they'll have to go to the center of town (which looks very busy, in the famous tradition of exotic metropoli) to Rap Cong Nhan Theater, locate Gallery 42 inside and find their clue. Dave says they need to get to a travel agency as they hop into a taxi. In a pre-leg interview, he credits Connor's strength with getting them out of here in first place. Don't forget his sneakiness, Dave. He also adds that his orthopedic surgeon back home says he needs surgery within seven days, so Hanoi's going to be the end of the race for them no matter what. Well, thanks for defusing the suspense, Dave. They reach Abbey Travel Agency in Denpasar at 5:18 in the morning, and find it open and staffed with alert agents in sunny yellow polo shirts. They announce their need to get to Hanoi as fast as possible. How lucky for them that Balinese travel agencies are open 24 hours. And how lucky that travel agencies still, you know, exist.
Pam & Winnie start the leg in second place, at 5:21 AM, from a totally different spot from where the last one ended. That was on a wooden deck clinging to a cliff, but this looks more like a beach or marina resort. Winnie reads from the clue, "Caution, U-Turn ahead." Nice -- that's always good for some idiocy. In the taxi to the travel agency, Winnie interviews that their goal for this leg is to break up the three-way alliance of Jessica & John, Joey & Meghan and Beth & Mona, unaware that Jessica & John already did that in the prior leg. And it was spectacular.
Max & Katie begin at 5:25, and you know they're the kind of team to get all excited about the U-Turn even before Max says he's looking forward to going after Jessica & John. He says it would be like "smoking out the Express Pass," unaware that Jessica & John already did that as well in the prior leg. And it was also spectacular.
The teams are walking through the busy morning streets to the gallery, all of them apparently taking different routes. Caroline and Jennifer are the first team waiting on the steps at 7:30, ninety minutes before the place opens, with their backpacks leaned up against the doors like grade school kids waiting for the bus, if the bus were going to be inside the building. Pam & Winnie show up, and Caroline says they just have to beat the derby moms and Team YouTube to the U-Turn. She interviews that they don't want to U-Turn anyone, but they want to keep their friends safe. That means Pam & Winnie, Bates & Anthony, Max & Katie and Wynona & Chuck. All the other remaining teams not dumb enough to have allied with Jessica & John, in other words. Remember, we started this leg with eight teams, but we're already down to seven. And yes, I know this means my prediction of Bates & Anthony coming in eighth has already been proven wrong. Which is why I try not to make predictions and when I do, I try not to publish them on the Internet. When the other teams not previously allied with Team JJ show up, they all agree to take out Mona & Beth and Joey & Meghan should the opportunity arise. "They made their bed, now they're going to have to lie in it," Max says, clearly all torn up inside about it. When those two teams are the last to show up at the steps of the gallery, awkward silence descends and the targeted teams read the room pretty accurately. And thus they decide to get to the U-Turn first. I guess nobody is mentioning how Pam & Winnie and Chuck & Wynona were in the Tahiti-born Express Pass alliance with Jessica & John during the first leg? If they even remember.
We come back from ads at 8:59 and a moment later, the doors open and the teams, with Caroline & Jennifer in the lead, hurry inside to grab the totally unmissable clues. They're stacked in front of an impressionistic painting of three women in kimonos on an easel in the center of the spacious room. It's a Roadblock and Caroline reads, "Who's ready to take in the sights and sounds of the Social Republic of Vietnam?" Oh, that's right: Communism, yay! Phil narrates that someone from each team will have to watch a song-and-dance group perform an upbeat, patriotic number, complete with literal flag-waving. At the end of the performance, the dancers will display giant fabric flowers that have been painted with a famous Vietnamese phrase that translates to "Glory to our young generation." The racers will have to memorize the phrase -- in Vietnamese, mind you -- and then go into another room where hundreds of political flyers hang on display racks, in hopes of find a poster with a phrase that matches the one they just saw. And they'll have to do it in five minutes, before the performance begins or else they'll have to try again. This Roadblock is being done by Jennifer, Meghan, Pam, Anthony, Beth, Katie and, of course, Chuck, because Wynona is "afraid to run." Oh, dear. If she's not going to this Roadblock, she's not going to do any of them.
Pam & Winnie get out of their cab outside a large, gated park facility and head inside, looking around. After the third performance, Meghan runs and comes back with a correct poster almost right away, with Beth just behind her this time. The last couple of legs, the roller moms seem to be benefiting from this alliance more than Team YouTube. Anthony finishes in seventh and last place. And nobody had to make more than three tries, even. The challenge producers must not have gotten picky about the diacritical marks either.
Pam & Winnie eventually find the part of the park where the bamboo dance is going on, at an expansive paved plaza. The way it works is that long lines of people sit on the ground facing each other, each holding one end of a long bamboo pole in one hand. The dancers need to hop over the poles as the holders alternately close and spread their hands in rhythm, opening new gaps between the poles even as the ones close. It's like hopscotch, but more likely to permanently cripple you. As Pam & Winnie follow a pair of hand-holding locals down the line, Winnie interviews how the best part of the race is getting to have different cultural experiences in all the countries. "It kind of feels like the country gives us, like, a little hug," Pam agrees. Fortunately the bamboo dance does not hug them by the ankles and send them crashing to the pavement, so they get their clue, which is for a Detour: "Make Your Move" or "Make a Meal."
Phil shows up at a courtyard filled with colorfully-costumed locals behind him and a couple of guys bent over a game board in front of him as he continues with the parallel structure, saying this is a choice between "a favorite Vietnamese game or a favorite Vietnamese food." For "Make Your Move," the teams will set up part of a Chinese chess game, using the human players who are hanging around in the park. They'll have to look at the game board, pick four of the chess pieces on it and place those pieces' human counterparts that have matching symbols on their costumes in the correct places on the life-sized board, along with giant staffs. And color counts. If they get it right, the chess master -- who is looking ready for a day at the races in her fancy dress and hat -- will hand them the clue. Then we cut to Phil at a sidewalk café with a bowl of soup as he explains that for "Make a Meal," they'll have to make Vietnam's national dish, pho. If this task seems pho-miliar, it's probably because Maria & Tiffany had to make pho in a Speed Bump back in TAR15. But for once, this task is harder than Phil makes it sound. They'll have to start by picking up four baskets -- two empty, two containing live chickens -- at Sook Song Temple, then hit a busy open-air marketplace nearby to pick up all the other ingredients outlined on a provided shopping list, all in the correct amounts. Then they'll have to deliver them to the restaurant Phil's at, where workers at plastic tables will weigh all their ingredients for them to make sure they got the right amount. And then they have to make the pho-cking soup! Winnie says they're going with "Make Your Move," since they already know how to play Chinese chess. I think I would rather invent Chinese chess than get involved in that pho task.
"He doesn't listen to anything," Wynona carps as she waits for Chuck, who is still inside getting directions. "Mr. Know-It-All." After confirming that their driver knows where to go, they get back in their rickshaw and take off. They still have no chickens, I feel the need to point out.
Pam & Winnie make it to the Pit Stop and are happy to finally be team number one, making them the winners of a ski trip to Whistler. Phil asks them if they're feeling super-confident and Winnie says you never want to feel that, because then you let your guard down. "You can ask John," she quips. Ha!
Joey & Meghan are the second team to arrive at the U-Turn sign and before the commercials, they provide us with a helpful side-by-side comparison of their mock-sad faces to their real sad faces. They're really not all that similar.
After the ads, they decide to U-Turn Chuck & Wynona, claiming to feel guilty about it but acting out of pure survival. Now they have to go back to do the pho task, and in the cab, Meghan has tears on her face as she rants about how everyone thinks they're all going to go to the end with Bates & Anthony, but the hockey brothers "will destroy them." So clearly Meghan is also a Big Brother fan.
Caroline and Jennifer are proving to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the chess task, to the point where they think they're actually playing a chess game, making their moves on the life-sized board against the players at the table. Which I'm sure the players would much prefer to sitting for hours staring at an unchanging board, even if the country singers don't know how to play Chinese chess either. But then I bet after the Detour was over they finished the rest of the game in under a minute. Meanwhile, the derby moms have figured out that they're supposed to be matching humans to the locations of pieces that are already in position on the board. Jennifer actually gets desperate enough to ask one of the human pieces to lead her where he's supposed to go, like that would ever work. And thus the derby moms complete the task in fourth place. Off they go to the memorial of the bomber plane, while the country singers continue to bomb.
Bates & Anthony are the third team to reach the U-Turn sign, but seeing it all full up, Bates is like, "Let's go," and they're officially in second place. "I can't believe we're not U-Turned," Anthony says in the cab. "Our pact comes through." That and another team's self-preservation.
Chuck & Wynona finish making their pho and get their clue sending them to the B-52 memorial. Where Joey & Meghan have already gotten their Pit Stop clue warning them that the last team to check in blah blah blah. They're gone by the time Chuck & Wynona show up and Wynona says, "Joey &Meghan U-turned us?" Which they did, but the sign doesn't tell them that; it just says Joey &Meghan were U-Turned first. "We gotta go do the chess," Wynona says resignedly. In the cab on the way there, Chuck says, "My feelings have been crushed. And we're probably gonna pay the price. It just sucks." One day I'd like to see a team happy to be U-Turned. Like, if they really wanted to do both Detours and had a hard time deciding. What? It could happen.
When Team YouTube shows up at the mat, Phil says he's sorry to tell them that they're at the back of the pack. "However, you are still in the race and you are team number six." They hug, and Joey marvels that they escaped a U-Turn. Well, and they also inflicted one -- not that it would have made a difference in their ranking if they hadn't. "No more Mr. and Mrs. Nice Guy, though," Meghan vows. She interviews that she's now a "huge ball of fiery righteousness," and revenge is coming. They make revenge-faces for Phil on the mat, which are more amusing than their mock-sad faces were, but no less contrary to the intended effect.
Chuck & Wynona are at work on the chess task, amid the usual perfunctory but dissolve-style editing of This Is All So Futile. They do get a hug from the chess master as she gives them their clue, and when they finally make it to the mat, Phil tells them that they're the last team to arrive. But he doesn't Philiminate them right away, which means they're probably fine. Instead, he asks Wynona if she's feeling pressure from Chuck to stay in the race. Wynona cops to being the weakest player on all the teams. Chuck says he loves her and is proud of her, and they're both fighting tears as Phil tells them that because Dave & Connor had to withdraw, Team Mullet is still in it, as team number seven. So Winnie's claim that there was another team behind everyone else kind of turned out to be true after all, in a way. Also, tonight's elimination took place awfully early in the episode, which makes almost everything that happened today seem kind of moot. More interestingly, Team Mullet is the last team to the mat for the second time in a row, and also for the second time in a row, they are suffering no consequences beyond a later start time for the leg. Wynona, who had almost bent double at the news, straightens up to thank Phil, who seems surprised to hear her say it; "I feel like I've sent you to some terrible, torturous..." Wynona doesn't argue that, but says they still want to do it. Chuck promises to start fresh on the leg and listen to Wynona more, which would be nice.