Weaving Their Magic ... Faith <-- ??

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...


If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 12 of The Amazing Race Series 8 - Family Edition (TAR 8), do not read any further!


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The last TAR 8 episode we saw here in Australia ended with the Godlewski family being the last team to reach the pit stop and the seventh team to be eliminated from the Family Edition of the show. The pit stop was located at Larry Arnold’s Green Meadow Ranch in Absarokee, Montana, USA.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the race:


1. The Bransen Family
2. The Linz Family
3. The Weaver Family


Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I'll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the pit stop at the end of the episode (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').



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1. The Linz Family


There was much that was wrong with this episode for both the Linz and the Bransen families. The rush to the airport counter between Alex Linz and Rolly Weaver was a farce. First of all, Alex Linz fell over of his own accord; his backpack slid off his shoulder and made him lose his balance because he was running – not because Rolly did anything (as Alex later claimed). The only scuffle between the two was when Rolly (who nearly fell over the sprawling Alex, which means Rolly was technically the one who had a reason to complain) was trying to maintain his position in front of Alex at the counter. Yet another example of the Linz siblings re-inventing history to suit their own whinging purposes – did they not realise we’d be watching it all on tape?? Megan’s statement that it’s getting personal (“It wasn’t before but it is now”) made me throw cushions at my TV, yelling incredulously, “It wasn’t before?!?! Are you serious?!” What a load. They wouldn’t know ‘personal’ if it jumped up and bit them on their privates. While the Weavers grabbed a taxi and took off into the sunset, the Linz family looked like a pack of morons, wasting so much time waiting for a taxi. I found my love of the Weaver family in this episode. It was strange that both the Weavers and the Linzes were taken to the same wrong McGill Arena by their respective taxi drivers before working out where they had to go. I wonder if the producers realised there were two similarly-named arenas, and if they knew the correct one was the more obscure. I suppose they did, because that’d explain the specific “also known as” in the description the teams received. Tommy Linz again displayed his ignorance by telling a French-Canadian taxi driver to “On delay!”, which his siblings pointed out was Spanish, not French. When Megan suggested they ask old people about the 1967 American Pavilion because they were alive back then, Alex replied (seriously) that it made sense. (In whose imaginary world, numb-nut?!) One amusing moment was when Alex was making bad jokes to the trapeze chicks (“He’s just hanging out”), but it was amusing because it was so lame. Finally, Megan asking about the ‘Stade’ but continually calling it a ‘Stande’ was infuriating.





2. The Bransen Family


This is the week we saw the most of the Bransens. When they discovered they were flying to Canada, Lauren or Lindsay Bransen (it’s impossible to tell which one) didn’t realise Canadians speak French. What do Americans teach their kids in the schooling system over there? I am perpetually amazed at their level of international ignorance. (To any offended Americans reading this, I’m a proud Austrian. We speak Mexican here, which is similar to Portuguese, only a lot more Jewish.) Running a distant third throughout most of this leg (thanks to their initially-clever decision to book an earlier flightl, which eventually turned out to be a case of unfortunate timing when the other teams were able to book a much earlier flight from one of their stop-overs – and then the Bransen family’s flight was delayed and additional 25 minutes), they caught up to the Linz family at the trapeze roadblock. Both families then caught up to the Weavers right at the end of the leg, eventually overtaking them and leaving them depressed and alone again.




3. The Weaver Family: SAFE!


It was exciting to see the Weavers soar ahead so much in this episode, even though so much about them has been so revolting over recent weeks. We were witnessing the Weavers of old, once more. Rolly was the particular stand-out as usual, and showed how true the statement his mother Linda said about him really was; that the kid’s really been forced to grow into a man over the past year-and-a-half since his father’s death. Rolly’s take-charge attitude is probably the main thing that got the Weavers so far through this race. That, and their mother’s courage. (I’m not really sure what the two daughters brought to the group.) Upon landing in Canada and leaving the mystified Linz family in their wake, the Weavers tried to befriend their taxi driver, Ted, but he was initially crabby and told them he wouldn’t be risking his life to get them to their destination in a hurry. Not to be perturbed, the Weavers soon won him over, and he was giving them advice on how to curl, driving them to the closest possible spot to the outside staircase on the American Pavilion, and just generally helping them at every turn. When he told them he was a Christian, they had a friend for life. With Ted’s help, the Weavers really raced ahead in this leg; in fact, they managed to invert the order that the three teams had started out in. While the Linz and Bransen families were completely falling apart, the Weavers and Ted were laughing all the way to the church. Superstar Rolly’s first shot at curling landed directly in the centre of the target (so does that make it a bullseye?), which was better than anyone else’s shot from his own or the Linz family. At the trapeze roadblock, when his sisters asked him if he was okay to complete the task, put-upon (but good-natured) Rolly replied, “You won’t do it; I guess I’ll do it”. All I can say is it was a good thing the producers didn’t restrict the number of roadblocks each family member could attempt during this season (which is what TAR normally does), because the Weavers would have been in trouble! Although they reached the stadium first, they took a long time finding the entrance in (we don’t know how it compared to the time the other two teams spent looking), and when the Linzes and then the Bransens found a departure time in the stands (after initially getting grumpy with each other), the Weavers had all but given up. In fact, technically, they didn’t complete this leg of the race (by finding a departure time on the backs of the stadium seats) until the beginning of the next episode …




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Last week's tips:

First Team: The Linz family. Correct!
Last Team: The Weaver family. Correct!
Yield? No. Correct!
Fast Forward? No. Correct!
Elimination Week? No. Correct!
Biggest Argument: The Linz family. (Wrong – I’d say it was the Bransens or the Weavers, right at the end at the stadium.)
Smartest Team: The Bransen family. (Wrong – it was the Weavers for sure.)


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Next week's tips:

My tips (as provided last week) for the episode that immediately followed this one were as follows ... (read tomorrow’s post for the relevant episode recap)


First Team: The Linz family.
Last Team: The Weaver family.
Yield? No.
Fast Forward? No.
Elimination Week? Yes - obviously!
Biggest Argument: The Bransen family.
Smartest Team: The Linz family.


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