Naval Gazing

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


If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 12 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 Eric & Danielle being the last team to reach the Pit Stop but the third team to be saved from elimination on the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located at Trilho da Taipa Pequena 2000 Park in Taipa, Macau, China.

In the Detour for this leg of the Race, teams had to choose between ‘Care Package’ or ‘Engine Care’. In ‘Care Package’, teams had to fill a 500-pound package with various humanitarian aid items for a neighbouring island. Once that was completed, the teams then had to board a transport plane and participate in an ‘air drop’ training exercise. Though the easier of the two Detour tasks, the mission took at least half an hour to complete. In ‘Engine Care’, teams had to clean an engine pod and associated flap section on the wing of a B-52 bomber until one of the base's sergeants felt the portion of the plane was clean enough.

In the Roadblock, teams had to perform a search-and-rescue mission. Using a GPS receiver, team members had to locate a pilot in the Guam forest, receive new GPS coordinates from him, locate the landing zone, and signal for a helicopter to pick them up and take them back to the naval base.

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


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. Dustin & Kandice


Last week: 1
This week: No change

The ‘beauty queens’ (I put the term in inverted commas because I think there are very few teams with uglier and more deceptive personalities on this Race) started off the leg by giving Eric an ego boost as a way (I can only presume) of clearing the air in case he’d learnt the truth about Oswald & Danny’s Yield from the previous episode: “You look very buff today, Eric … in your white shirt”. Unfortunately, Eric seemed a bit startled by this praise, and Danielle found it amusing (she even wanted to have a look), so the girls’ ploy seemed to have paid off. Later, we heard Eric remark on how much they now hated Oswald & Danny, indicating that they mustn’t have learned the truth about the story behind the Yield until they saw the episode on television back home months later. When using the GPS receiver to search for the naval pilot, Dustin likened it to looking for your ‘Easter basket’, which either highlights her stupidity, or casts aspersions on the kind of surprises her parents use to hide at the bottom of the garden in lieu of chocolate bunnies. There wasn’t much these girls did wrong on this leg (once again), so they took out the first place honours with relative ease (once again). Smart money has them for taking out the entire Race next week. Smart, emotionless money, that is.




2. Eric & Danielle


Last week: 3
This week: Up one place

You gotta hand it to ‘em; just when you think these guys are out, they manage to keep climbing back to the near-top of the pack. Eric may have looked buff today in his white shirt, but Danielle had taken her regular dose of dumb pills in the morning, resulting in her getting lost on the Roadblock at the naval base. She didn’t know how to use a compass, but apparently Eric had already used up his entire Roadblock allotment for the Race (this was the first official indication that each team member had only a certain number of Roadblocks they could perform for the duration of the Race … and means Danielle has to do whatever they’re faced with in the big season finale next week!). I don’t know what it is about these two, but they’re my sentimental favourites to win. I don’t think they’re the most deserving team (that’d be the robotic ‘beauty queens’), nor the viewer favourites (that’d be the recently-departed Oswald & Danny), nor are they the comic relief (that’d DEFINITELY be Charla & Mirna), but they’re the team my heart was rushing for the most when I feared they could come reach host Phil Keoghan on the mat in fourth place last night. I’m not sure what Danielle was doing, continually crying in the bush, but if my GPS receiver kept saying, “GPS ERROR”, I’d probably show the pilot who was tailing me and ask if it was working properly. She waited too long before discovering she’d bumped a button she shouldn’t have. But she managed to complete the Roadblock before either Charla or Oswald, so (to be honest) she did very well with the challenge.




3. Charla & Mirna


Last week: 2
This week: Down one place

I scoffed aloud when Charla said she and Mirna chose to complete the humanitarian Detour task “… because I like to help people that are in need”. Sure, darlin’ – that’d be why you’re selflessly trying to win $1 million, right?! Truth be told, they fell behind on this one when they picked the wrong Detour task – although Charla probably wouldn’t have been able to scrub or wash the plane very effectively, either. So maybe they chose wisely after all. After the pilot of the plane from which they were conducting the care package drop performed the aerial stunt, Mirna’s comment, “I was like flying” seemed incredibly dumb. But her insistence that she tell the personnel on the plane with her that they had to hurry up and land the thing because they’re on a race was the icing on the cake. They know full-well what’s going on, you silly woman – and there’s no use trying to hurry them up! However, the most ridiculous thing from these girls on this leg of the Race, was when Charla just WOULD NOT STOP TOUCHING THE FRICKIN’ GPS SCREEN! I hope they don’t win next week. As much as they’re amusing to watch (particularly when they fall down), I don’t really want them to win the money.




4. Oswald & Danny: ELIMINATED!


Last week: 4
This week: No change

Oh boy – another less-than-perfect leg for these two. Karma still had it in for them this week, and they certainly didn’t help their own cause by continually falling behind and getting lost on the road (although, to be fair, every team seemed to have to turn around at least once in this episode). Oswald & Danny first flirted with fate when they missed the first flight out of China and risked everything to make a 45-minute connection in Tokyo to board the same flight as the other teams heading in to Guam. Thankfully for them, they made it (just), and they were studiously ignored by Eric & Danielle. When they were washing the plane, Oswald made me laugh by muttering, “I know you’re gonna yell at me,” in reference to the no-nonsense sergeant overseeing their work. The amount of water being wasted during this task made me want to cry. It could have kept Melbourne wet for three winters! But after arriving at the roadblock task dead last, and then Oswald not looking up from his GPS to find the pilot standing five metres away from him, there was no way they were gonna catch up to the other teams (much less beat them by more than half an hour because they were ‘marked for elimination’). The most perplexing thing about these guys was that they said they’d prefer Charla & Mirna to win the Race because they’re “a class act”. Huh??!!? Maybe if it’s a Special Ed class! I don’t get that observation at all. Of course, each team only knows what they see and hear, so nobody has the whole picture except for us, the viewers. It was a return to the amusing twosome when they were being reflective with Phil on the mat (after being eliminated), when Danny told Phil he had “no regrets, darling”, and then later said that Oswald would be wheeling him into the gay old people’s home he plans to open, and Oswald added that hopefully by then Danny wouldn’t be interrupting him all the time. They were funny guys, but there’s no use complaining over spilt Cubans. (Oh, and Oswald's "Teletubbies go to war" line was very funny, too.)



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Last week's tips:

First Team: Dustin & Kandice. Correct!
Last Team: Eric & Danielle. (Wrong)
Yield? No. Correct!
Fast Forward? No. Correct!
Elimination Week? Yes. Correct!
Biggest Argument: Oswald & Danny. (Wrong) – the ‘biggest argument’ was Danielle telling herself she was “so stupid” and making herself cry.
Smartest Team: Dustin & Kandice. Correct!


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Next week's tips:

First Team: Dustin & Kandice.
Last Team: Charla & Mirna.
Yield? No.
Fast Forward? No.
Elimination Week? No – one team will win, and the other two will not. (Big prediction, I know!)
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 (once it’s up).


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