Amazing Race, Season 32, Episode 11
By Jim Memmott
Manilla, Philippines – It was three teams against one team on the penultimate (I love that word) leg of the Amazing Race, making for some strange drama and some serious, dare I say Presidential, pouting by footballer DeAngelo Williams, who, with his taller partner, Gary Barnidge, was eliminated.
The gloves are now off; there will be no alliances in the Wednesday finale. Cooperation can only go so far.
Cooperation did count in Episode 11, a speedy version of the Race, as there were no road blocks, no detours.
The challenges were fairly easy – feeding horses, that sort of thing –until the last one, a mind-bender that asked teams to line up some songs in the order they heard them on the Race.
The NFLers were then undone by the other teams, their former Alliance mates.
Will and James (left), Maddison and Riley, and Chee and Hung, traded info and shut the footballers out. It was a playground moment for the ages.
The outcasts took a two-hour penalty and were racers no more. (Their loss was Cindy's and mine. We are out of the pool.)
In a rare Race moment, DeAngelo went way off script at the finish line, neglecting to let host Phil Keoghan (below, right) know he had a good time, that he bonded with his partner, that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
"The race sucked. The bad outweighed the good," DeAngelo said. "I'll never come back on the show again. The money wasn't life-changing for me. ... I could have paid for it myself and not raced around the world."
Awkward! Gary tried to soften his teammate's criticism, but DeAngelo never came through with the platitudes. Nor does he back down in an extended video of the chat posted on YouTube.
Was he right to be bitter? To take his ball and go home. Yes and no.
It’s a race and alliances are allowable, but I had hoped the teams would be all on their own this far into the race. I can see why DeAngelo was irked.
But he and Gary had been saved by the Alliance before without really helping the other teams. For sure the other duos,
including the mild-mannered Volleyballers, Maddison and Riley, (left), who won the leg, were impatient with the NFLers. And DeAngleo and Gary might have stayed alive in Episode 11 had they remembered to read the clue in the music-matching challenge.
(Of course, the other teams also didn’t read all of the clue for what seemed like hours, but they realized their error before Gary and DeAngelo did.)
And the odds were against the NFLers before the episode began. If you add up all their previous finishes, they were a distant fourth. Steve Kornacki would have given them a zero-percent chance of survival.
All in all, the lineup for the finale makes sense.
Who will win? The Volleyballers, Riley and Maddison. They’ve taken the last three episodes and never finished lower than fourth.
Who should win? Chee and Hung. They have been the best sports throughout, with Hung (right below) saving many teams because she couldn’t stop being nice.
Who shouldn’t win? James and Will, if only because they seemed to get so much pleasure eliminating the weaker teams.
I hope this isn’t the final Race finale, but it could be a while before the show returns, given travel restrictions. So, have fun and stay safe.
Overheard:
DeAngelo: It’s about to be the Thrilla in Manilla, part II.
Phil Keoghan: If I can give you any advice, think very carefully about helping another team, because this is all or nothing.
James: Think like a horse.
Will: Everything we tried was wrong.
DeAngelo: I don’t even remember hearing these songs.
Maddison: Our favorite games are playing (against) our best friends, and that’s what this is.
Chee: The alliance is no more and we’re OK with that.
Order of Finish: Episode 11
Riley and Maddison
Will and James
Chee and Hung
DeAngelo and Gary
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