Reality Hit List, June 17: Fiacres and Fiascos

Kelly tells us she's tired of feeling like two percent of their team; unfortunately, her first time completely in command she screwed up royally. They needed to find one of several houses Beethoven lived in - one of the most obscure, no less - to drop off some sheet music. Jon seemed to grasp that Beethoven might have lived in more than one place, but Kelly snapped, "Jon's just doubting everything!," "You're wasting time!." and, most hilariously, "Are you retarded? How many Beethovens in the world do you think there are?!?" Jon finally got through to her on the train when he asked a local for help and pointed out, "She said which house, Kel." "Oh," replied a chastened Kelly. BWAH! After further comedy of errors, they wound up finishing eighth, but these two are definitely growing on me - Jon in particular is proving to be have much more personality than I initially thought. Kelly, by the way, is probably ready to kill me for comparing the two of them to Flo & Zach, considering that on their exclusive video footage on CBS.com she emphatically stated that her golden rule for the Race was "No [acting like] Flo! No Flo!" Ah, Flo. Six months after winning the Race, perfect strangers are still holding her up as an example of what not to do.

Another fun Fast Forward - at least from the perspective of watching it. I know enough from my (brief for a reason!) days of waiting to know that Steve & Josh weren't carrying the trays properly - you have to hold them from underneath with one hand - but as they were so full and they weren't actually serving drinks off of them, I don't know that it would have made that much of a difference. There was just something so... surreal about Demolition Waltzing.

The bungee jump would have been great... for my teammate if I were on the race. (I'm deathly afraid of heights.) Most of the teams got through it with little fuss or muss and the requisite "Woo!"-ing, but why did Millie make a big production out of wishing she had her asthma inhaler when she was the one who insisted on doing the Roadblock? Chuck said he'd be fine with doing it and she snotted, "But I get to do it!" Plummeting off a tower hundreds of feet high wouldn't seem to be the wisest idea if I'd just had an asthma attack (and I did have them when I was younger) - or really, doing any Roadblock for that matter. Next week, Chuck has a panic attack from claustrophobia. This team has some issues. Wouldn't it be funny if all this turned out to be psychosomatic expressions of their fear of commitment?

Questions from the beginning of the episode that are absolutely hysterical in retrospect: "Will Steve & Dave be able to maintain their lead despite lingering pain from the knee injury Dave suffered on the first leg? Will Cindy feel more a part of her team with Russell as they work to get to the front of the pack?" The correct answers, in hindsight: "Are you kidding me?" and "Sure, when pigs fly."

Steve & Dave had an absolutely wretched leg that had very little to do with Dave's bad knee. First, on the advice of a local who didn't seem all that sure, they sail off on a train to Padua without bothering to check if Padua had any trains to Vienna. Sure enough, it didn't, and they had to go all the way back to Venice and start over. Not that this hurt them - they were saved by the aforementioned megabunching at the Vienna sewers. Sometimes this sort of bunching can add to the excitement of the Race; other times, like this instance, it's frustrating because teams can make huge mistakes like this and it doesn't matter, which almost kind of unfairly rewards them. (Still, though, teams can't count on bunching, so it's not like they get to coast.) They ended up in last place again, and followed bad advice to the wrong train station again - although at least this time they were still in the same town. It was sheer luck that another team screwed up and finished behind them. These two just aren't racing well at all.

Speaking of that other team, here's Cindy: "For three years I was thinking [Russell & I] were the best partners; now, after four or five days, I'm going, 'Wow, I'm not so sure!'" I'm not so sure why she even spent five minutes with the arrogant prick. Seriously - this guy made Wil look positively respectful of Tara. When he wasn't calling her a dumbass or dismissing her out of hand, he was rolling his eyes or doing other covert displays to signify to us that he thought she was an idiot. That display of grimacing he pulled at the Vienna West train station when Cindy was trying to straighten things out with the ticket agent alone deserved a good swift kick in the ass - especially because it turned out Cindy gained them some time by doing so! I'm only sorry they were eliminated in the sense that I liked Cindy, but I'm almost relieved for her that she won't have to spend any more time being treated like a particularly slow two-year-old.

Next week: Teams accuse Reichen & Chip of pulling the wings off butterflies, and it's all Jaree's fault! See you then!

Brian James is an actor/writer/singer in New York City. An avid reality show, Passions, early Ryan's Hope, retro music, and Internet discussion board junkie, he can be found holding up "Will Snark For Food" signs in subway stations as he continues to search for that elusive "day job." Brian would like to stress that his writings are based solely on what he sees in each episode, and realizes that there may sometimes be more to the story and that people may behave quite differently under normal circumstances. Comments and cybertomatoes accepted at brianjamesrno@earthlink.net.

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