Amazing Race, Season 30,
Episodes 7 and 8
Harare, Zimbabwe –
It’s been a season filled with firsts. There have been never-before-seen
head-to-head competitions. You remember the furious French fry races, the brutal
lawn bowling.
And now, in the first hour of this two-hour, two-episode
show, there was – children cover your ears – some partner swapping.
It was kind of Shakespearean – you saw that coming, right –
when the lovers go off into the forests and/or a Zimbabwean game preserve and
fall in love with someone they weren’t in love with before.
Brittany forsakes Lucas, her freshly minted fiancée for
Alex, the dashing race-car driver. Evan doesn’t even debate dumping Henry for
firefighting Daniel. And Cody, forgetting he’s in love with Jessica, finds
himself doing some extreme skiing with Jen.
No way host Phil Keoghan was going to let all of that
happen. The kids played with their new friends, road some horses, drove some
Land Rovers, saw some wild animals, and then the Philster told them to get back to the one the ones they came with for the second half of the two-hour show. Jerry
Springer, he ain’t. Non-elimination it was.
But for history’s sake, here’s the mixed-up teams and how
they finished:
1) Cody/Jen
2) Brittany/Alex
3) Conor/Lucas
4) Daniel/Evan
5) Eric/Henry
6) Jess/Kristi
During the second hour – let’s call it Episode 8 – teams
were quickly faced with a Double U-Turn.
 |
| Phil and sign |
For those of you new to the Race, Double U-Turns bring drama
and sometimes debate to any episode. Here’s how they work:
One duo comes upon a sign that says Double U-Turn. They scratch
their heads, they confer, and then they say – “We chose to U-turn nobody.”
Or, as did Alex and Conor of #TeamIndyCar in this episode, they pin
up a
picture of #TeamYale, and this means that Evan and Henry will have to do two,
rather than just one, detour down the road.
 |
| Alex and his Indy car |
A Double U-Turn is even more dramatic because it’s well,
double. In the case of this episode, #TeamOceanRescue came along and U-turned
#TeamBigBrother. No surprise there as the Ocean pair of Brittany and Lucas really doesn’t like Cody and Jessica. They have history.
Not to sound grumpy, but the U-turning didn’t matter either.
Despite having to roll some tires through a crowded marketplace and also
having to deliver a whole lot of packages into a towering maze of a mall, both
U-turned teams survived.
 |
| Shopping mall, Harare |
Not so, #TheFirefighters, who lost a ton of time in a
singing contest and were told by Phil that they had to go home. (And thus their backers, Team Wilcox, are out
of the pool.)
I’m going to miss the twins, Daniel and Eric, as they seemed
like nice guys, though I was just beginning to tell them apart. (My notes say that Eric was the one with the backwards hat.)
With their departure, five teams remain.
Analytics would
argue that #TeamExtreme, Jen and Kristi, remains the favorite duo. Not counting the
traded-partners episode, the skiers have never finished below third, and they have two
first-place and two second-place results. The next strongest team, at least on
paper, is the Indy Cars, and they are far behind the Extremes.
The numbers say that the next team to go would be Lucas and Brittany, but they are trending upward after a rocky first few
episodes.
Another two-hour show looms. And it looks like a
least one passport is going to be lost or mislaid. That means trouble, big
trouble. It always has.
Overheard:
Cody: We can beat
Ocean Spray.
Conor: It’s the
story of my life. I’m always stuck in a mud pit.
Alex: I’ll miss
Brittany a bit.
Brittany: Oh,
I’ll be right there in your heart
Jessica: I don’t
like her (Brittany); so the feeling is mutual.
Alex: My biggest
concern about this entire trip around the world was always music.
Evan: We’re a strong
team that other teams want to get out of the race.
Daniel: We didn’t
have rhythm, so now we’ve got the blues.
Order of finish:
1) Lucas and Brittany #TeamOceanRescue
2) Kristi and Jen #TeamExtreme
3) Alex and Conor #TeamIndyCar
4) Evan and Henry #TeamYale
5) Cody and Jessica #TeamBigBrother
