By Jim Memmott
Amazing Race, Season 23,
Episode 5
Svolvaer, Norway/Gdansk,
Poland – Partying hardy in Manhattan after a day of high living in
Brooklyn, this reporter thinks he watched the Amazing Race, but can’t be sure.
It seemed – and this couldn’t have happened could it? – that
the hippies, Brandon and Adam, got the boot, sent home by Phil Koeghan, who
waited and waited for them in Gdansk, at the end of the longest wooden pier in
Europe, if not the free world.
 |
| Brandon and Adam |
How could that be, you (and I) ask? The hipsters were in a
solid first place at the end of last week’s To Be Continued episode. And they
started tonight’s second half full of vim and vigor.
“We’re here to race,” Brandon said. “We’re not here to sit
around and sleep.”
Well, yes. But it may have been that they didn’t race all
that well. That they had some cab trouble. That they were challenged by the
polka challenge. That they got U-turned by the Afghanimals, who themselves were
U-Turned.
What’s a U-Turn, you ask, having wandered in from The Good Wife blog?
Well, a U-Turn is essentially a bit of gamesmanship in which
one team forces another team to do an extra challenge.
In this case, the hippies had to pose as Neptune statues and
beg for coins. They had already tried to do this and given up.
With good reason. They just couldn’t beg.
So now they’re back in the woods of Northern California,
growing medicinal marijuana or tending the land in some other way.
Still can’t believe that B and A are gone, and with them the
hopes of the Wilcoxes, their supporters in the pool?
Well, get this. The episode also seemed to feature some
cross-dressing, Polish style. And let me tell you, Danny, the oil rigging Okie,
would have taken a return of the Dust Bowl over what he called the “female
costume” he had to wear while polkaing with Tim.
“I don’t want to look good in a dress,” he told Tim, just in
case his dance partner got any ideas. (Bingo Queens, where are you when we need you?)
And it all happened too fast for me, but I believe that Tim
and Marie, the feuding exes, finally played the Express Pass she’s been yakking
about since they won it in the first episode.
That meant they got to skip a challenge, thereby propelling
themselves to a first place finish on the episode.
 |
| Hawaiian volcano |
For their effort, they won a trip to Hawaii that ends in a moonlight trek to a volcano. What are the odds on one of them pushing
the other into that pit of molten lava?
And what else may or may not have happened?
The baseball wives, Nicky and Kim, played well, what’s with
that?
There was a challenge that may have been a product placement
for
 |
| Paczki |
There was also some bewildering competition and cooperation
between the teams. At one moment, Travis of the ER Docs was trying to delay Kim,
slowing her elevator ride down to a crawl.
The next moment, he was helping Marie and Amy, she of the
team of Jason and Amy. And, at the end of the day, the Docs still have the
Express pass they got from Tim and Marie.
So if any of this is what actually happened, there’s a moral
lurking somewhere:
Pride comes before a fall? The first shall be last? Don’t
count your donuts before they’re glazed?
Whatever. Seven teams remain. I think.
Overheard:
Marie: Do you
speak English? … Nobody speaks English
Tim: He was rocking
that dress.
Brandon: I would
just be wearing a seashell around my crotch; I wouldn’t be wearing a black onesie.
Kim: Travis,
you’re supposed to be a gentleman.
Danny: I never really
ran in a dress before.
Tim: It’s going
to be a footrace to Phil.
Order of Finish:
1) Tim and Marie
2) Jason and Amy
3) Nicole and Travis
4) Nicky and Kim
5) Tim and Daniel
6) Leo and Jamal
7) Ally and Ashley
