Science rules, or at least keeps on racing

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 25, Episode 9

Malta/Singapore – Four teams and three episodes remain. The question everyone is asking going into tonight’s leg is: “Why are the Sweet Scientists,

Amy and Maya, still in competition?”

Alli and Kym make waves

Backtrack: Last week, in a shocker, the brassy and high-perfoming bicyclists, Kym and Alli, were eliminated.

All their previously good showings were for naught, as they lost a ton of time trying to do a Fast Forward.

It required them to surf two minutes on a water slide from hell. It sent them spilling often, streaking Alli’s mascara. Eventually, they abandoned the effort, but were unable to catch up, dooming themselves and their Pool sponsors, Jim and Cindy.

The surfers, Adam and Bethany, mastered the Fast Forward, a challenge that if conquered allows the contestants to skip ahead to the finish line, which they did, winning the episode. Hello. They’re professional surfers. What did you

Bethany and Adam drink up

expect?

So, a bad choice by the cyclists let the Sweet Scientists survive, as Amy and Maya finished fourth in a five-team race? Once again they squeaked through, once again I’m baffled.

But wait a minute. Maybe the Scientists are actually good. Sure Amy screamed her way all through the torture challenge, a combination of deep tissue massage and fire-cup therapy.

Massaging Amy

Pardon the interruption : Was that really a test of anything other than endurance? I mean, I would much rather see Racers have to eat some local worms or grovel with something grotesque than get a, good grief, massage.

Then again, the Racers, at least some of them had to do hire-wire walk 600 feet in the air. I could barely watch, especially when the dentist, Dr. Jim, slipped and hung horizontal for a while.

Pardon that last digression; I was making a point about the Sweet Scients. Which is: Amy is, well, unpredictable, with her bum ankle and her low tolerance for pain. But Maya is all energy and all bravery. So, who knows, maybe they’ve earned their spot.

If so, look for Brooke, a professional wrestler and Robbie’s partner, to be baffled, as she was when contemplating the aerial challenge.

Brooke about to go high wire

“If I fall and (Maya) doesn’t, I’m going to be embarrassed,” Brooke mused. “She makes ice cream for a living. And I hit girls in the face for a living.”

I know, logic and compassion aren't her strengths, but I think Brooke is great. Yes, she irritates about half of the free world, but she’s a zinger machine.

It would be totally weird if she and the Robster were to win, but I do want them to last until the end for the sake of ratings alone.

Ratings? Don't ask. The move from Sunday to Friday hasn’t helped the Race. It’s averaging 5.87 million viewers, down 35 percent from last season. But it seems to be doing OK in its timeslot, losing out to Dateline, but not by that much.

Dixie dudes

I do worry about the show’s future, but Christine Memmott of the pool’s Team Boston answering a casting call for a future Race with a friend, so it looks like another season is in the works.

Good luck to Christine, who recently ran into a guy in the Boston suburbs who used the phrase “take a Dixie,” the regionalism famously offered up by Boston firefighter and Race contest Scott Strazzullo in episode three. See, he wasn't so strange. 

Overheard:

Robbie: We always look good.

Maya: I have no fear of heights, (but I’ve) never been 600 feet up in the air.

Bethany (on doing the Fast Forward): We could be committing race suicide.

Brooke: I could just not be beat out by a scientist. How could a  scientist beat out a wrestler?

Adam: Kawabunga.

Amy: I don’t want to be here any more.

Brooke: You’re taking my tan off.

Robbie: What are they going to do, throw ice cream at us?

Order of finish:

1) Adam and Bethany

2) Brooke and Robbie

3) Jim and Misti

4) Amy and Maya

5) Alli and Kym