It ain't over til...Episode 3 on Amazing Race 35

The Amazing Race

 

Season 35, Episode 3

 

By Jim Memmott

Vietnam – It’s happened before on The Amazing Race, and it’s always a little frustrating.

 

The episode proceeds. Lots of drama. Lots of suspense. Lots of scenery, the best, this time, at a floating market in the Mekong Delta.

Then the winning team, in this case the father/daughter duo of Steve Cargile and Anna Leigh Wilson (below), arrives at the pit stop.

Phil Keoghan smiles, gives them a clue, tells them to keep racing, to go on to the next challenge without stopping. No one wins, no one loses.

 

Thus, the last-place team, the brother duo of Liam and Yeremi Hykel, is given a reprieve, allowed to continue.

 

In effect, it’s a non-elimination episode even though Phil has told us there would be no non-elimination episodes.

 

Still, there was lots of movement:

 

In the first two outings, Anna Leigh and Steve had finished in the middle of the pack. Here the Texans were number one, thanks, in part to Anna Leigh snagging them an earlier departure time for the floating market challenge by shuffling through all the tickets.

And talk about reversal of fortune. Married couple Jocelyn Chao and Victor Limary (left) seemed invincible after winning the two previous episodes. This time, they stumbled to 10th place, next to last, totally undone by a detour that asked them to cook 12 edible rice-paper sheets, a product available in their store back home.

 

“We sell it. We eat it. But we’ve never actually made it,” Carolyn explained.

 

And get a load of the cheerful, laidback duo of BFFs Joel

Strasser and Garrett Smith (on the left, settling in on the bus). Ninth in the last episode, they sky-rocketed to second this time. No one called that.

 

Given the flip-flopping, it would seem to be anyone’s Race, though the smart money might go with Rob and Corey McArthur, the father-and-son team that finished third this time, following two second-place finishes. They're good.

 

Worth noting:

 

To get out of the episode’s first challenge, Sisters Morgan and Lena Franklin used the Express Pass they had won by eating bugs in Episode 1. It didn’t help them much, as they ended up finishing sixth and wouldn’t have been eliminated even if they had finished last. The pass might have proved handy in Episode 4. We’ll see.

 

Racers had to book their own air travel, as the charter flights of pandemic times are no more. Lots of cajoling travel agents. Lots of joy as flights took off. Lots of sorrow if they didn’t.

 

Bits of biography always leak out on the Race. As he was tossing fruit on the river, Todd Martin allowed that “way back in the day” he played professional basketball in France and Germany. I checked. He did, though not for that long. Before heading to Europe, the California native put in time at several colleges, with a first year at SUNY Albany.

 

You think cooking a rice cake is hard. Try pasting a vinyl strip on a motorcycle fender. That challenge slowed several of the racers. Best leave it to the professionals, just as you let the person at the Verizon store smooth on a screen protector. No fuss. No bubbles.

 

Overheard:

 

Joel Strasser: I might poop my pants with joy.

 

Robbin Tomich: I feel like I’m kind of the outcast.

 

Joel Strasser: In the Army my nickname was Pierre.

 

Rob McArthur: It’s the most beautiful rice paper ever made. It’s got wrinkles, but who doesn’t have wrinkles?

 

Victor Limary: It’s not over til Phil says you're out.

 

Order of finish:

 

Steve Cargile and Anna Leigh Wilson, father and daughter

Joel Strasser and Garrett Smith, best friends

Corey and Rob McArthur, son and father

Todd and Ashlie Martin, married, high school sweethearts

Robbin Tomich and Chelsea Day, childhood best friends

Morgan and Lena Franklin, sisters

Joe Moskowitz and Ian Todd, engaged

Gregg and John Franklin, brothers

Andrea Simpson and Malaina Hatcher, college friends

Victor Limary and Jocelyn Chao, married entrepreneurs

Liam and Yeremi Hykel, brothers