Friendship, not love, is in the air

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 26, episode 11 preview

Amsterdam/Peru – Four teams left, two episodes to go, here’s a theory:

This season’s Amazing Race focused on love with five previously dating couples joining six blind-dating couples in the quest for the $1 million prize.

Hayley and Blair cooperate

At the end of each episode host and matchmaker Phil Keoghan has peppered the blind-daters with quasi-creepy questions about the state of their relationships.

The couples, with one now-gone exception (Jackie and Jeffrey), have always insisted that love is not in the air, that they are, well, just friends.

“They’re BFFs,” Phil said of the always bickering Blair and Hayley, who, despite or because of their dysfunction, won Episode 10.

Rochelle and Mike, still racing

And, indeed, they may be best friends forever, and like best friends they quarrel and tease and, in the end, make up.

Early on in the episode blind-dater Laura, said, “If I was here with a boyfriend, it would be a little bit harder.”

She has a point. Only one previously dating couple remains, the entirely likeable truckstop lovers, Mike and Rochelle.

Ashley and Matt, who also had been dating before the Race, went out in Episode 10, taking poolsters Drew and Emily with them.

Matt’s hyperactivity and inability to focus were again a problem. 

He seemed like a great guy, but

Ashley and Matt typing

he was also just a big kid, one who could not sit still, one who panicked at the first sign of danger, even if that danger involved operating a typewriter.

(Attention educators: Cursive writing is making a comeback, could typewriting be far behind.)

But, to their credit, Ashley and Matt didn’t quarrel. After a goof-up they kissed. Love does count for something.

Episode 10 had lots of scenery once they got to Peru, where, of course, the racers had to do local labor (sugar-cane cutting) and Fitbit synching.

Yes, in a bit of product placement excessive even by Amazing Race standards, the couples used their Fitbits to  calculate the calories they needed to compensate for a local sugar brew. I have no idea what it was all about as it involved math, but I think the point is that a Fitbit helps you drink, or something.

Product placement, Fitbit

Presumably one of the four couples will be given the boot tonight.

Odds are it will be Mike and Rochelle – really, how have they survived this long? – but you never know.

The crafty constructors of the Amazing Race story line may be setting us up for a surprise ending, one in which the last becomes first.

Then again, that’s what happened last season, when Amy and Maya, the sweet scientists, took the prize.

Personally, I don’t want any of the couples to lose. I’ve watched them so long now that they've become my friends, which, come to think of it, may be the point.

Overheard:

Blair: I just peed myself.

Matt: We do great with our backs up against the wall.

Hayley: This is what I frigging (told) you to do.

Blair: After you, teammate.

Jenny: I’m also quite clumsy; so I don’t think I should be operating a machete.

Hayley: I’m never a person that yells ever. It takes me a lot to make me mad.

Blair: Sometimes I wish she (Hayley) would just shut up.

Hayley: Sometimes I wish he would pay attention or listen.

Phil (to Jelani and Jenny): Are you disappointed that there wasn't more than a friendship?

Tyler: It wouldn’t be fun if Laura and Tyler kept winning every leg.

Ashley: We really do work better together.

Order of finish, Episode 10

1) Hayley and Blair

2) Jelani and Jenny

3) Mike and Rochelle

4) Laura and Tyler

5) Matt and Ashley