Oh My Cod! The Beards Rule

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 23, Episode 4

Lisbon, Portugal–Svolvaer, Norway —Veteran race watchers could see it coming a mile away.

Brandon and Adam

The episode was filled with challenges and character revelation and the clock was ticking,

Only one team had arrived at the pit stop with just a few minutes to go.

“You’re still racing,” host Phil Koeghan told hippies Brandon and Adam, the first arrivals, sending them on their way to finish the episode.

But he also gave them $5,000, a well-earned prize for their good showing throughout their time in northern Norway, a gorgeous land where the sun never sets.

Steven Van Zandt

And a fairly cheerful land, as well, which may come as a surprise to fans of Jo Nesbo, the gloomy Norwegian crime novelist, and to devotees of Lilyhammer, the Steven Van Zandt Netflix series featuring an American monster hiding out in the cold and snowy  former Winter Olympics local.

Whatever, it turns out that life above the Arctic Circle was made for the bearded guys from Northern California, so much so that the episode was titled, “Beards in the Wind.”

“They (Brandon and Adam) eat gross stuff, and they do gross stuff all the time,” explained Marie, the more acid-tongued of the team of fighting exes, Marie and Tim.

There was no dining on gross stuff (why not?), but the first smelly detour offered the choice of skewing, transporting and hanging 60 cod heads or fetching some dried cod and hammering it into cod jerky, a Norwegian delicacy.

Liquid cod jerky

The bearded boys had no trouble spiking fish heads. They were once Boy Scouts, they explained, adding, somewhat ambiguously, that they are now “man scouts.”

The next challenge, which involved bungee jumping off an 80-foot high bridge and then dropping into ice-cold water, proved to be child’s play for Brandon.

“This was made for him; he can swim like a seal, like a shark,” Adam said.

After the ice bath they were off to a bit of product placement, as the guys had to chain a boulder to a Ford Ranger pickup, tow the rock a few feet and then find the next clue and a bag of coins buried in the spot where the rock once was.

“It’s just second nature hooking up trailers, working with chains,” Adam said before they made quick work of the challenge.

Product placement

So that’s where we left them, bouncy, cheerful, not all that full of themselves, well ahead of the other competitors.

Or maybe not that far ahead, you never know what the Race editors have done to build suspense.

We do know that Marie and Tim are driving around without a clue, having overlooked it as they finished up the rock pull.

And Nicole, of the ER doctors team of Nicole and Travis, has offered to help Marie and Tim in exchange for one of the express passes they won on the first episode.

Nice guys: Tim and Danny

We’ll find out next week what the ever-sneaky Marie decides. (I say hand over the pass and stop over-thinking things. That’s what I say.)

Marie is mean; the Okies, Tim and Danny, are nice, even willing to help the LA Ice Crew’s Ally and Ashley find reverse on their Ranger. (But really, shouldn’t all competitors practice on a standard transmission before the Race begins?)

In other news, the dating couple, Jason and Amy, are getting along just fine – she even goes out her way to praise him.

The Afghanimals, Leo and Jamal, had a rough outing, stymied, in part, by a bad wheelbarrow.

And Kim and Nicky, the baseball wives, stand eighth of eight teams at this moment, having had trouble with the cod-pounding Detour. (To their credit, they haven’t turned on each other.)

Earlier Double U

Of course, this episode is only half over. And everything could be scrambled after next week’s dreaded Double U-Turn. Skoal.

Overheard:

Travis: I’ve had the pleasant surprise of seeing that Nicole is even tougher than I thought of her after all of these years.

Ally: We’ve never been somewhere were the sun never sunk. (Pause.) Set. The sun never set.

Adam: Who doesn’t want a mustache?

Adam: Marie is a little manipulative to begin with.

Marie: Are you done? Did you puke? Did you faint?

Brandon: Let’s get some beards in the wind.

Marie: Nobody is in charge of this operation.

Where they stood:

1) Brandon and Adam (only team to finish first let)
2) Jason and Amy

3) Nicole and Travis

4) Leo and Jamal

5) Tim and Marie

6) Tim and Danny

7) Ally and Ashley

8) Nicky and Kim