The last shall be first

The Amazing Race, Episodes 11 and 12, Season 21

France/New York City -- It was a win for goat farmers and underdogs everywhere. A reminder that the Amazing Race really can be amazing.

Frozen out of an alliance, mocked by the Twinnys, constantly finishing near the end of the line until the last episode, the Fabulous Beekman Boys, Brent and Josh, pulled off an upset for the ages winning Season 21 and walking away with $1 million.

Now they can pay off the mortgage on their upstate New York farm. Now they can be together all the time. Now Brent can stop nagging Josh.

“Don’t make errors and expect me not to point them out,” Brent kvetched after Josh got a pizza order wrong in the last episode. (Really, who hasn’t botched a pizza order? Go easy, Brent).

Whatever. The first episode of last night’s two-hour, two-episode finale, took place mostly in France and ended in the elimination of the Twins, Nadiya and Natalie, who got lost on their way to the finish. So many castles, so little time.

The remaining three teams, Josh and Brent; the Chippendales, Jaymes and James; and the Texans, Lexi and Trey, flew to New York City for the final episode.

For a while, it looked like Lexi and Trey were going to pull off a win, but Lexi got frazzled by the last challenge, a variation on the memory lane test that Race producers like to throw at the remaining finalists.

Josh and Brent

It was a doozy. Having arrived at the United Nations, one person from each team had to sort through 18 phrases or words matching up the correct “hellos” and “goodbyes” they heard at the finish lines in nine different countries. (Bonjour, au revoir, etc.)

Josh solved the puzzle by turning it from a language challenge to a math challenge, running the permutations and combinations until he got the correct hits.

Thus, he and Brent were able to hop in a cab and get to the finish first, followed by the Chips and those dating Texans.

The winners rejoiced; the losers were good sports.

As always, Lexi used her swan song to strongly hint that it was about time for Trey to “take the next step” and propose. He held off, as he had throughout the season.  Storm clouds or wedding bells on the horizon? Who knows?

As always, the Chips remained cheerful even though they didn’t win the million.

And they were happy, at least, that they had finished first in the episode that sent them on to the finals. For their effort, each Chip won a new Ford Escape.

Look, Ma, no hands

James’ car will go to his mom, who, we learned, has no car of her own and has to walk to her job. “She’s spent her whole life taking care of special needs children,” James explained. “It’s time to take care of her.”

And speaking of Ford Escapes. Did you know that you can open the back gate of this wonder car with your foot? Really. Your foot.

In a bit of product placement that outdid any previous Amazing Race product placements, the racers put foot to door of their Escapes again and again and again.

They were in the Loire Valley, they were visiting centuries old castles, but what will they remember? Yes, opening a car door with their feet.

What will the rest of us remember?

Oh sure, I’ll recall the mushroom hunting and dog-food preparing challenges. (Good grief, those hounds seemed hungry.)

Harry Houdini at work

But I know I’ll be haunted for years by the Detour at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in which a racer was tied up in a straitjacket and raised upside down over water by a crane. Then he had to escape the jacket, upon which he was dropped 15 stories, his life saved by a bungee cord.

And I’ll remember the Twinnys (or is it the Twinnies?). Those Jersey girls from Sri Lanka were their oh-my-Godding selves right up until the end.

However, they may have spent too much time trashing talking the Beekmans in the episode that sent them home.  “The evil gays, they’re going down,” Natalie or Nadiya said at one point.

Though in the end, the Twins gave grudging praise to the surprise winners and pretty much blamed themselves for their own failures. “Whatever, but we suck,” Natalie explained. And, to their credit, as much as any Race team, the Twinnys exited laughing.

And Race historians take note, even though they didn’t win, the Twins were game-changers, though not always in the ways they intended.

Cafeteria food

In an earlier episode, they had engineered that Double U-Turn deal that sent race favorites Ryan and Abbie home. And they formed an alliance with the Chips and the Texans that worked for a while, though it may have backfired because it excluded the Beekmans.

Made to feel like the odd guys out in the high-school cafeteria, the Beeks seemed to take on new resolve.

Don’t forget, they survived an earlier episode because it was a non-elimination episode. They got a four-hour penalty in another episode because they couldn’t finish two challenges (cue the synchronized swimming) only to stay alive because James and Abba couldn’t find their passports.

But the Beeks got better and so, I think, did Season 21. By the end, it was fun. Which means a lot.

Overheard:

Lexi: Please lord; get me out of this fricking cave.

Brent: I usually try to be very Zen.

Nadiya: I’m telling you, the Beekmans have tricks up their sleeve.

Jaymes: Someone is going to end up with some stinky Chippendale clothes.

Trey: There’s no sharing on that last leg.

Lexi: I hope I don’t have to eat pizza.

Jaymes: Maybe the world will have a different view of Chippendales now, for better or for worse.

Order of Finish

Episode 11

Jaymes and James

Trey and Lexi

Josh and Brent

Natalie and Nadiya

Episode 12

Josh and Brent

Jaymes and James

Trey and Lexi

Pool results

Josh and Brent’s win means the $50 first-place award goes to the team of Louise and Will Wadsworth and Julia Walker. The second place award of $30 was won by Cindy Schmitt and Jim Memmott, who backed the Chips. Bob Wilcox picked Trey and Lexi and won $20.

That’s it,

Jim

On to the finale

The Amazing Race, Episode Ten, Season 21

Lexi hurt her finger. The Chips were chipper. The Beeks got better. The Twins got worse.

Local color

A headless (but talkative) man greeted everyone at the finish line.

And it didn’t really matter, as tonight’s leg of Season 21 was, drat, a non-elimination episode.

Yes, four teams started, and four teams will move on to next week’s two-hour finale.

The Twins, Natalie and Nadiya, last on this episode, will have to do an extra challenge, but they’re still in the game.

The episode started with the teams flying from Amsterdam to Barcelona and then taking a ferry to Mallorca (a city whose name no one could pronounce).

Gratuitous pix of Lionel Messi,
Barcelona FC star

Along the way, there was some gloating about the double-dealing double U-turn that eliminated Abbie and Ryan on the previous episode.

Pride thus came before a fall, as the lead gloaters, Natalie and Nadiya, went on to lose valuable time because Nadiya had only taken one stick-shift driving class to prepare for the race.

Having to “self-drive” a product-placed Ford, she clutched with the clutch and thus the Sri Lankan Jersey girls were behind almost from the beginning. In the end, the Twins, who got off a record number of OMGs, rightly blamed their performances upon themselves.

Man at Lamaze class

Josh and Brent, as always, were bringing up the rear at the beginning, even missing a bonding swim with the other racers, but they managed to leapfrog ahead of the Twins and finish third out of four.

Why? Well, Josh took Brent’s advice and employed Lamaze deep-breathing techniques. Really, Brent, a physician/farmer did recommend that Josh imagine himself in childbirth. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, I guess.

Actually, the Beeks survived because  b) Josh played through pain (a bum ankle) on the tennis challenge and b) the repair-a-windmill challenge was child’s play for them, just like fixing a tractor on their goat farm.

The windmilling was also easy for the Chips, Jaymes and James, who finished second on the episode, because a) they wear tool belts during a Chippendales' routine and b) Jaymes liked to take things apart and put them together as a youth.

Gratuitous cartoon

Nothing was all that hard for Lexi and Trey, Team Texas, though Lexi did seem to overreact to the cut fingernail she suffered while playing the front end of a bull in the Bull It challenge.

They then switched places, Trey going to the head of the bull, and then went on to beat out the Chips to finish first. This means they’ve won three of the last five episodes. It’s official, Trey and Lexi are no longer under-the-radar; they are no longer long shots.

All in all, it was a place-holding leg, a way to kill an hour and keep everyone in the race.

Trey and Lexi

Given this, Phil could have explained the presence of the headless man beside him at the finish. (A quick Google check indicates that headless men are regular performance art figures at Parc Guell in Barcelona.)

Overheard:

Brent: We’ve had good luck; we’ve had bad luck; we’ve had dumb luck.

Nadiya: Am I right handed or left handed?

Josh: This is really tiring. Hot sun, sprained ankle, 43 years, this is not easy.

Brent: Aim the racket so you hit the ball in bounds.

Jaymes: This is awesome, you all. This is like nature right here. It looks like something out of a theme park.

Natalie or Nadiya: We took Spanish at Fordham; it obviously did us zero good.

Phil (to the Beeks): I have seen you limp, collapse, fall down, and you’re still here.

Order of Finish:

Trey and Lexi

Jaymes and James

Josh and Brent

Natalie and Nadiya

That’s it,

Jim

No more mister nice guys

The Amazing Race, Episode Nine, Season 21

Amsterdam -- It had to happen.

A season of the Amazing Race that had featured general harmony between and within the teams turned nasty. Betrayal. Greed. Evil triumphant. You gotta love it.

Abbie and Ryan

Money talks, and when push came to shove, the Chippendales, Jaymes and James, chose a chance at $1 million over their desire to be friends with the dating divorcees, Abbie and Ryan.

Jaymes rationalized the decision to U-turn Abbie and Ryan, forcing them to do an extra challenge, by saying that he and James needed the money more than their competitors. Chippendales aren't in the chips? Who knew?

Whatever, Abbie and Ryan (backed by Dennis Doell in the pool) were the fifth of five teams to finish and host Phil Koeghan, joined at the finish line by Pippi Longstocking, sent them home.

The loss was especially difficult for the dating divorcees as an overall victory on the season would have doubled their $1 winner’s purse because they won the first leg of the race.

“I don’t know what to say,” Ryan said. “ … The Chippendales cost us $2 million.”

He’s got a point, but there were other factors at play.

First of all, the twins, Natalie and Nadiya, masterminded the double U-turn strategy that guided the Chips to deep six Abbie and Ryan and protect all the other players.

It’s too complicated to explain here, but essentially it was a space-time continuum gambit worthy of chess grandmaster Magnus Larsson. And not to be mean, it’s hard to imagine that the cheerful Chips would have come up with the ploy on their own

Natalie and Nadiya

Keep in mind that these are the same sisters who earlier stole money belonging to other contestants.

“We’re badass,” Nadiya boasted. She’s right.

The evil twins do deserve credit for taking a risk that paid off. While in Moscow, they jawboned a booking agent to route them to Amsterdam via Rome, where they had a very short layover time.

They made their connection, got to Amsterdam before the other teams and were able to do a Fast Forward (disgusting herring eating) that got them to the finish line first without breaking a sweat.

Finally, it just may not have been Ryan and Abbie’s day, as they found themselves stalled on the tarmac at the Frankfort airport on their way to Amsterdam, their airplane experiencing mechanical problems. “Quite frankly, we got franked,” Abbie explained.

The episode’s challenges were familiar and fun.

2007 ditch vaulting

In one, contestants begged for money, as they are often asked to do. Jaymes and James spiced things up this time by taking off their shirts and slapping on their Chippendales custom collars and cuffs. The euros poured in.

And then there was ditch vaulting, what Phil described as, “a classic Amazing Race road block.” Yes, in Season 12 (November 2007), also in the Netherlands, racers had to plant a pole in the water and vault across a muddy ditch. That time, more splashy failures occurred. This time, only the dispirited Ryan took a plunge or two.

Almost as surprising as Ryan and Abbie’s departure was Josh and Brent’s survival. The Beekman Boys, never a strong team, came in a reluctant fourth, as they had to go forward while Ryan and Abbie, their friends in frustration, went back to do that extra challenge.

The Boys may be emerging as the only kind-hearted team left, but kind hearts may not be enough, given those badass Twins and their devious ways.

Overheard

Lexi (eyeing the Dutch flag): Oh my gosh, we’re going to Paris.

Nadiya (or Natalie): I got like the whole fish caught in my whole throat.

Jaymes (on removing his shirt):  It was time to take evasive action.

Jaymes (on Abbie and Ryan): They’re going to hate us.

Josh (on Abbie and Ryan): We’re not competitive with each other; we both know we’re going to lose.

Ryan: I’m speechless.

Order of Finish

Natalie and Nadiya

Jaymes and James

Trey and Lexi

Josh and Brent

Abbie and Ryan

That’s it,

Jim

Robbed in Russia

The Amazing Race, Episode Eight, Season 21

Someone, I think it was Nate Silver, had written that there was a 97 percent chance that the Rockers, James and Abba, would not find the passport lost (or stolen) in last week’s uncompleted leg in time to avoid elimination from the Amazing Race.

Turns out that someone was right. 

In an episode full of good deeds this Sunday, no one stepped forward to hand Abba the passport he had left behind in a Moscow cab.

Consequently, he and his partner eventually threw in the towel and Phil, sadly, told them they were eliminated. (As was their sponsor, NPR's Mark Memmott.)

Thus, five teams remain, perhaps most surprisingly the Beekman boys, Josh and Brent. They incurred a four-hour penalty because they didn’t complete the synchronized swimming contest held over from last week. Still, they survived. Go figure.

Jaymes and James

Jaymes and James, the Chippendale dancers, finished first. Trey and Lexi came in second.  Along the way, each team helped the other. Lexi figured out the time-zone challenge, sharing the solution with Jaymes. Then the Chips made sure that Lexi and Trey got a cab.

Ryan and Abbie earned points by waiting for the Beekmans when they didn’t have to. Then the Beeks returned that favor and showed Abbie how to do the key and lock challenge.

So, there you have it Race watchers. Go forward and be nice. Good things will then happen.

But remember, pride comes before a fall.

Case in point:

“Nailed, I’ve got it nailed,” Ryan gloated before the time-zone challenge. By his 24^th attempt, he was a broken man.  Finally, the light bulb went on and he realized his error. Life lesson learned. Don’t brag.

Then again, maybe pride doesn’t come before a fall.

Lenin

Brent declared that he had “always been a good student,” and he was, cracking the time-zone code in about five seconds. Later, he and Josh were right at home working a cocktail party filled with famous Russians. Hello Stalin, hello Pushkin, have you met Catherine the Great?

And speaking of falls that didn’t occur, James of the Chippendales, successfully played through pain on the Russian dance challenge, ignoring his bum ankle as best he could. Good going James.

Lost in the shuffle were the twins, Nadiya and Natalie, who played it safe on the night, using their express pass to dodge the time-zone challenge. Good move? Who knows? They seemed happy to finish third.

Overheard:

Phil:  I’m telling you that your race is not over ‘til its over.

Russian judge:  I’m really sorry, but you win.

Cabbie: I taxi 37 years.

Ryan: The taste of victory is getting closer and in our mouth.

Abbie (of Ryan): I feel like he’s overthinking it.

Ryan: Oh, I’m so stupid.

Josh:  We’re very good at cocktail parties

James (rock star): We was robbed. Literally.

Order of Finish

Jaymes and James

Trey and Lexi

Natalie and Nadiya

Abbie and Ryan

Josh and Brent

James and Abba

That’s it,

Jim

P.S. Sent on by Mark, here's Abba and James' elimination interview.