Trust me on this, there is nothing better than southern cheerleaders to boost ratings.

Oh, the jury is out until the season's resident lunatic makes his or her presence known. I of course will complain weekly but will remain completly engrossed in the show. It has taken on a bit more of a gloss for me than say survivor.

Well, I for one am glad the first pair got the boot.

SPOILER WROTE:

Anyway, it totally sucked that I had to decide between Amazing Race and FamilyGuy/WarAtHome tonight. I love all of those shows and too often the commercial breaks lined up with one another. Nice to see our fair city on Amazing Race though. Sea-town was looking nice from the fly-bys.

The best line of the night came when Kimberly and loser-boy got into a cab in Beijing, and she said to the cabbie, "Take us to the Great Wall. The Great Wall of China."

I'm amazed your eyes were able to track away from Big Head Guy long enough to notice him.

The Gay Guys: They seem okay, though Big Head Guy's "Machiavelli Lite" attitude lost him some sympathy.

The Asian Dudes: Seemed rock-solid until they pulled water guns in an airport. Paleo, get on the Si-Fan telegraph system and tell them fellers to smarten up.

1Up and Arti: She's got the shifty look of a Soviet gymnast looking for the right place to defect. She wants out of that marriage.

Kimberly and Asshole: At least they're not married yet.

Crackers: As "ninjas" are to the UFC, so they are to Amazing Race.

"Duke" and daughter: His telling the world of his "slight disappointment" in his daughter made me call Dad and thank him for being an uncommunicative father.

Balil & Sayeed: At least the first pit stop wasn't Israel. Or Alabama. And how did you find the Qibla in Sea-Tac? I can't find the damned Starbucks.

Bionic Girl: I'm thinking Cheri Oteri to play her in the movie.

Pretty Chicks: wtfever.

** SPOILERS ** - If you haven't watched it by now, then you porbably won't mind a few here or there.

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Ok, some thoughts on this weeks show;

• 1.5 Hour episode is a heck of a lot better than the traditional 2 hour episode the AR folks usually run. I prefer the shorter format.
• The new twist: Meh. The Brothers from Cleveland were a little too preachy and just a tad anti-social. Way too big a chip on their combined shoulders. Still, to get blind sided by an elimination at a check in point was still pretty freakin' brutal.
• They went the wrong way! Most of the past several seasons went either East or South (usually South). They all headed west this time to China (Beijing).
• Cheer Leader Girls - How can you not love them and all their peppie-ness. The Brothers from Cleveland just plain disrespected them by not shaking their hand. Pissed off the CLG's and anyone else who was watching. BfC were done at that point and they hadn't even left Seattle.
• Team Kentucky: Whoa. I was not expecting that. I must admit they bring a touch of the Average Joe to the contest. I am slowly warming to their brand of communication and ability and hope they survive the next leg.
• Brothers Meat Head: For guys that have the educational pedigree that they have, I expected a lot more from them. I have a feeling their performance in the race will be disappointing.
• Jaime Sommers and her Gay Boyfriend: It's sad that she is so blinded by her missing leg that she failed to notice her boyfriend has yet to be outted. Maybe it'll happen on the show. Tough break about the leaky hydraulic line. Time to McGyver it.
• The Indian Couple: Tough break on getting lost on the motorcycle. Not real sure how or when that happened. I need to go back and re-watch that sequence to see if they shot off from the pack or dawdled and just go lost. Still, they dropped the ball on the brick/pavers detour. Haven't they ever been to Home Depot? That performance was unacceptable.
• The Pit Stop: Scale the Great Wall and stay in the race. These physical obstacles will thin the pack nicely if they keep it up.

Be that as it may, they were in a game were pissing people off vs. cooperating with them is a huge aspect of it (the Race). Alienating any team prior to that first flight out is a big mistake. Not shaking her hand is a no-no, especially after he did the hand shake thing with two other people.

Side Note: Good luck being untollerant in a tollerant society. Doesn't work that way. And, if you choose to be intollerant, like the BfCs, then don't flippin' volunteer to be on the Race.

The muslim protesters will be hammering on AR10 soon enough.

** SPOILERS FROM THE OCT. 2nd Episode **

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Well, here it goes;

• This leg started off by bunching the teams up, again, in Mongolia, and getting them all on a single flight to Vietnam. The teams were pretty bunched up to begin with but this seemed to be more of a logistics thing. I can't imagine that there are too many folks in Mongolia who wnt tofly to Vietnam via China.
• Still no yield and not even a sense of a non-elimination leg.
• When did the Coal Miners Wife bust up her ankle? I seem to have missed that. Not like she needed another reason to slow down.
• Man, a lot of folks are bonding like crazy. The Coal Miners are teamed up with the single moms and the gay couple. Kind of a nice option for them in that as long as they can keep pace, the other teams will help them out.
• The road block was outstanding. The AR Folks have done this one a lot. I seem to remember a selling road block in each of the two member team races since AR5. This one was to take a bike overloaded with flowers sell 15.00 USD worth in a Hanoi market. It was pretty fun to watch and some teams excelled and other floundered. (Link).
• All of the team visited the Hanoi Hilton and more importantly went and viewed Sen. McCain's old flight suit. Of the teams still in the race, only one took the time to pay their respects. Kudo's to the Brothers for paying their respects at that moment.
• The Detour was pretty simple; make a bunch of coal bricks or build a birds nest. The challenge was in finding each of the detour challenges in a maze of houses and shops. Some of the teams found it no problem and some struggled in navigating their way around.
• The Pit Stop was in a Veitnam rice patty. How cliche is that?
• The eliminated team is the same team that hired a navigator that had themn taking her home first and then releasing them to meet up with the other teams at the prison and also go hopelessly lost finding the detour challenges. They were a pretty competitive team but in the end, you can't just wander around lost all day long.
• The gay couple had a pretty bad scare. Apparently they were not suppose to ride motorcycles in Vietnam and got penalized for doing so. 30 minutes pushed them from second .... to last. The teams are all still pretty close together.
• Tivo cut off the scenes from next week so I pushed the record time out but am pretty bummed about missing that.

This was a good episode. I'm glad they're out of the mud and rain that was Mongolia.
C.

Mongolia DID look cool. A buddy of mine married a Mongolian lady, so it was kind of fun to see where she was born.

Also noticed the Cyrillic writing...does anyone know if the Mongolians generally speak Russian as well as Mongolian?

Vietnam was kind of cool, although I was more thinking that the race to find McCain's flight suit was a little...odd. In the past, when they'd had tasks to visit some sort of historically significant prison, there really wasn't a TASK per se there...it was to go there, pay your respects, maybe do something like drop off a rose, or walk to a particular cell (which was already laid out in location), and then head off to the next actual task. Having the teams run around in the prison just seemed oddly disrespectful to me.

Can Bionic Woman and Super Freaky Boyfriend go away soon, please? They're really getting on my nerves. As are the Dating Couple Who Doesn't Know If They Should Be Dating, So They Took Their Relationship In Front Of Millions Of People To Determine If They're Right For Each Other When Everyone Can See They Should Be Shot At Short Range With Rubber Bullets. Team.

The gay couple needs to go, too. First, the Joker's gay son's face is STILL creeping me out, even worse now that it's moving around. Second, I hate teams that screw up something basic. Heather and Eve: "Go by foot? TAXI!" Chip and Reichen: "Run? TAXI!" And now Tom & Scary: "Don't take a motorcycle? Oooh, motorcycle, hop on!" Oy.

I'm digging the coal miner and his wife, although they're not long for the race...I just find it cool that their friends on the race are the Asian brothers, the African-American ladies, and the gay couple. I don't doubt that they're not familiar in their neck of the woods with much diversity, so it's really cool that they're just embracing the hell out of it.

I'm enjoying the show but I'm having a hard time rooting for any of the teams. The teams that I'm inclined to root for are the coal miners and the Beauty Queens, the latter only because they have actually acted fairly tough despite my assumptions about them (case in point, when one of them got dragged 50 feet behind a galloping horse).

Most of the other teams get on my nerves. I just wanna smack the bionic woman and Ned Flanders. The father and daughter were OK (well, the daughter was OK). The brothers kind of annoy me, ever since the water-gun-in-the-airport incident. And I've pretty much had it with the African American women comparing everything to childbirth: "It's drizzling. The only thing tougher than this is childbirth!" "I stubbed my toe. At least it didn't hurt as much as childbirth!"

Finally, a non-elimination leg. The coal miner and his wife got screwed on flights into India and they missed a prime opportunity to catch up by ignoring the croc pens.

New twist: The team that did not get eliminated on the last leg of the race gets to keep their stuiff and cash; however, they have to come in first on the next leg or suffer a 30 minute penalty. That could be brutal if the teams stay close on the next leg.

I'm watching, I think the new time is just kinda of throwing off discussion.

I was also pleased with the last place team, as they were telling Phil how their relationship was over, I kept waiting for her to say "oh, and he is gay".

Just one annoying couple left, and with her looking for a mask instead of a mosque I don't know how long they will last.

This, to me, is the fundamental flaw in the show. It happens WAY too much. I would be pissed if I was the team that got to get up and start at 4:30AM before all the other teams, only to get to some ticket office and find out it doesn't open for another 4 hours. That doesn't sound like a head start to me, just less sleep!

The last couple of seasons have had the super leg episode that bridges two shows. Usually right in the middle of the season and used to strech it out into sweeps.

Regardless of motivations, the episode is pretty brutal on the teams.

They did, but many of us here believe that he is gay (not that there is anything wrong with that), it would not be the first time a repressed/closeted gay man dated a woman.