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