Airport Shmairport

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


If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 10 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!


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The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Uchenna & Joyce being the last team to reach the Pit Stop and the sixth team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located inside the grounds of Carcosa Seri Negara, a luxury hotel located near Perdana Lake Gardens in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In the second and final Fast Forward on this Race, teams had to travel five miles to a film set located at the former Kai Tak Airport where a high-speed stunt was being filmed for an action movie. When they arrived, they had to get in a car with a professional stunt driver and complete a stunt course, which involved sharp turns and ended with the car flipping over.

This leg's Detour was ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ or ‘Lost in Translation’. In ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, teams had to travel five miles to Tonkin Street and find a nearby building (the former Cheung Sha Wan Police Quarters). Once there, they had to climb up an 11-story bamboo scaffold while avoiding an ongoing battle between stunt kung fu experts to reach the top and retrieve their next clue. In ‘Lost in Translation’, teams needed to make their way four miles to Kowloon City and find Nga Tsin Wai Road. Once there, they had to search among hundreds of similar-looking Chinese signs for the specific sign shown in a photo in their clue. When they matched the photo with the correct store sign, the owner would hand them their next clue.

In the Roadblock, one teammate had to kick down stunt doors in an abandoned building and search through the rooms for their clue.

Teams also had to pull a model boat carrying a Travelocity gnome from one end of a pond to the other without having the gnome fall into the water.

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. Dustin & Kandice
2. Charla & Mirna
3. Eric & Danielle
4. Oswald & Danny
5. Uchenna & Joyce


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 (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').



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1. Oswald & Danny


Last week: 4
This week: Up three places

These guys got lucky (in a sense) but also played a smart leg by hunting down the Malaysia Air office and getting a priority stand-by ticket number (BC-4). They managed to get the first flight (by a long shot), which in turn enabled them to go for the Fast Forward once they landed in China and stay well ahead of the other teams. One thing that confused me was how they were able to pay for their second taxi if they’d spent all their money on their first. I’d say they weren’t being honest about having no more money when they made that claim to their first taxi driver. What an amazing car stunt that was! Interesting that the producers didn’t tell them what the stunt was going to be beforehand – showing their fear would have made it more exciting (and perhaps made them pull out of it), but I guess no one might have completed the Fast Forward if they were told they were going to drive the car up a ramp and crash it on its side. It wasn’t too surprising that these guys again went from worst to first. The challenge now will be for them to hold on to their position for another three episodes.




2. Dustin & Kandice


Last week: 1
This week: Down one place

After Yielded Eric & Danielle in the previous leg, it was amusing to see Dustin & Kandice board an elevator at the airport with Eric & Danielle … and then travel on the thing in deathly silence. What a frosty elevator ride that was! I can only imagine how uncomfortable that would have been. It was terribly obvious (as it was a few episodes ago, when Eric & Danielle were pulled off a flight after the airline staff had overbooked it) that the airline employee serving Dustin & Kandice at the information desk had her voice dubbed over later by an American actress! Both all-girl teams were involved in a fair amount of airport nastiness in this episode. When all four girls were arguing over the order of their names at the China Air counter, it got a bit annoying. They were all trying to out-bully and –intimidate each other in how they treated the airline’s employees. Yelling at the clerks and telling them that their names were ahead of someone else’s won’t make it so – the employee’s the one who can tell you what the order of names is. How do they know who’s names are on the list first? Just shut up and let the people behind the desk tell you what’s what! (I understand their frustration and attempts to get on the flight ahead of the other teams, but being so stupid about it isn’t going to help.) I’m not sure exactly what Dustin & Kandice were proposing when they said they could “make a beauty queen sandwich” out of Mirna, but it certainly sounds interesting and I’d like to know where you get tickets to the show, please.




3. Charla & Mirna


Last week: 2
This week: Down one place

I seem to alternate between laughing at these two and getting annoyed at their hypocrisy. We started out this leg listening to how Mirna claimed they were going to run this Race without resorting to ‘dirty tricks’ (her way of describing how Dustin & Kandice had Yielded Eric & Danielle in the previous leg), but just a few hours later she and Charla were employing their own nasty tactics at the airport to get ahead of the beauty queens. When Mirna told the ticket salesman in a near sing-song voice, “Desmond, kick some people off” with her eyes widely fixed on him and a pleasantness that belied its treachery, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Desmond went home early and hid under the bed. But then the girls flip-flopped again and became happy jokesters. Mirna pushed Charla through the airport on a luggage trolley (why they don’t always use this idea in airports, I don’t know), and then later began to pull Charla along, the wheels in the diminutive one’s sneakers enabling her to literally glide through the crowd. I wondered for a moment if these two were going to finish in last place, but that moment was quite fleeting because it was obvious all along how much further behind Eric & Danielle were. Even though Charla & Mirna were driven to their destination port (rather than their departure port) and originally caught the ferry that took them in the opposite direction, it was pretty clear that this didn’t really put them far enough behind to be overtaken by Eric & Danielle.




4. Eric & Danielle - SAFE!


Last week: 4
This week: Down one place

Eric & Danielle were keeping up with the two all-girl teams at the airport until they made the inexplicable decision to go and exchange their money instead of securing standby tickets on the next available flight. This decision pushed them off the China Air flight and way back into the mists of time. Although they seemed to rocket through the tasks once they reached China, it was probably favourable editing to keep the show moving rather than an accurate reflection of how much more quickly they were completing all the challenges, compared to the teams who’d gone before them. When Eric’s stubbornness raised its ugly head again and he refused to listen to Danielle when she suggested they ask a taxi driver for directions to the Pit Stop, I knew he’d pay for his irrational behaviour. Sure enough, although not eliminated, their interviews afterwards were done separately – and you’ve gotta wonder if there’s trouble in plastic paradise.




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Last week's tips:

First Team: Dustin & Kandice. (Wrong)
Last Team: Charla & Mirna. (Wrong)
Yield? No. Correct!
Fast Forward? No. (Wrong)
Elimination Week? No. Correct!
Biggest Argument: Charla & Mirna. (Wrong) – teams didn’t really argue between them very much, but Charla & Mirna and Dustin & Kandice had the biggest run-in with each other.
Smartest Team: Eric & Danielle. (Wrong) – Going to the money exchange at the airport resulted in them falling into last place.


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Next week's tips:

First Team: Oswald & Danny.
Last Team: Eric & Danielle.
Yield? Yes.
Fast Forward? No.
Elimination Week? Yes.
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle.
Smartest Team: Dustin & Kandice.



If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that Javatari posted on his blog.


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