The Amazing Race finds the fun factor

  

The Amazing Race

 

Season 35, Episode 7

 

By Jim Memmott

 

Frankfort, Germany – The Amazing Race has always been fun for its fans, but not that much fun for the contestants who deal with exhaustion, language barriers, acrophobia and, most terrifying of all, stick shifts. It’s all quite serious, because, after all, $1 million is at stake.

 

What isn’t featured is fun, good-old fashioned fun for the racers.

 

And yet in this episode, which took place in Germany, there was a throwaway sequence that was goofy and unnecessary and absolutely joyous.

The racers (Greg Franklin, right) rode horsicles – bikes with a large front wheel and a horse’s head. Their partners followed, throwing roses to a carnival-enthused crowd. There was music and gymnastics, and I don’t think the sequence was necessary at all. Still, it was terrific.

 

“The carnival was my favorite part of the race so far,” said Greg, who, with his brother John, went on to win the leg.

 

What about the rest of the episode?

 

Well, it wasn’t a walk in the park for Malaina Hatcher (far left) and Andrea Simpson. I don’t remember when a duo had such a hard time.

 

The best friends took the wrong ferry across the Rhine. They got the wrong coins and couldn’t buy entrance to a challenge. They just were jinxed, so much so that emcee Phil Keoghan had to leave the pit stop and track them down, only to tell them that they were eliminated. They’ve history and, alas, Allison Chanler is out of the pool.

 

Back-seat drivers

Anna Leigh Wilson drove; her dad, Steve Cargile navigated. A failure in communication rose. He barked at her; she at him. It was vintage Amazing Race dysfunction.

 

Sisters Morgan and Lena Franklin had a similar road-trip from

hell, in part because of an ongoing dispute over what was right and what was left. At one point they switched drivers, something that doesn’t happen a lot on the Race; in fact, I didn’t think it was legal.  

 

School shout out

Morgan regained some street cred by acing a currency conversion challenge that’s too hard to explain here. She said the math was easy because she went to the “No. 1 MBA in the world.”

 

I checked. She graduated from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. I’m not sure about the world, but Booth is No. 1 in U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of business schools.

 

Locked in

The Amazing Race producers love a needle-in-the-haystack challenge. Thus, one racer from each team had to find the right lock among thousands clamped onto a bridge railing. It was a lot like the tile-matching search in an earlier episode. Yawn.

 

Bullseye?

For the Detour, the Racers could choose between Just for Kicks or a Matter of Taste.

 

Kicks, at least to me, looked to be impossible. Racers had to kick soccer balls toward a large dart board and score exactly 66 points. The team of Ashlie and Todd Martin (left) tried the challenge, mostly because Todd insisted they try it. Not a good idea. They quickly bailed.

 

The ever-cheerful father-and-son duo of Rob and Corey McArthur kept on playing soccer-darts, and, miraculously, they got the 66 points.  

Cut the mustard

 

Matter of Taste involved remembering how nine different local mustards tasted. The Franklin brothers, who are from Chicago, where mustard rules, had no trouble matching the mustards. Hence, their win.

 

Less is more

 

Let's face it, the real drama in the Race usually is not about who wins. No, it's about who loses in a battle for survival. In this episode, there was never much doubt that Malaina and Andrea were going home. Goodbye suspense.

Or not. The producers ginned up some drama by focusing on a team whose members believed they were dead last and sure to be eliminated.

Zen to the end, best friends Joel Strasser (near left) and Garrett Smith, decided to slow down and smell the roses, and/or the mustard, enjoying their last minutes in the competition.

 

Free of worry the lads did just fine, though they thought Phil was joking when he told them they had survived to race another leg. (Phil would never do that, right?)

 

Overheard

 

Chelsea to Robbin: I’m just trying to have you not snap at me now.

 

Todd: The math was kind of difficult.

 

Lena: I’m not sure what rappelling is supposed to look like, but she’s doing it.

 

Steve to Anna Leigh: You’re going to set your ass back here and ride a little bit.

 

Todd: I did not think of my wife. You know, husband fail.

 

Joel: Knowing we were eliminated, knowing we were last team out there, we just started having fun.

 

Malaina: Bucket list checked off.

 

Order of finish

 

Greg and John Franklin, brothers

Robbin Tomich and Chelsea Day, childhood best friends

Todd and Ashlie Martin, married, high school sweethearts

Corey and Rob McArthur, son and father

Steve Cargile and Anna Leigh Wilson, father and daughter

Morgan and Lena Franklin, sisters

Joel Strasser and Garrett Smith, best friends

 

Eliminated

 

Andrea Simpson and Malaina Hatcher, college friends