The Amazing Race 8, Episode 10 First and Cargo Class Awards: Regressing

I know I wasn’t alone in hoping against hope this week that the Weavers really would run out of gas before they reached the pit stop. Alas, those pesky editors were toying with us, and the Weavers survived to race another leg. In this week’s finale, I’ll basically be rooting for not the Weavers. I like the Bransens and the Linzes both, but more than anything, I really hope the Weavers don’t win.

The surprising thing is that this week, the Weavers were not the team that irritated me the most. That dubious honor is reserved for the Godlewski sisters. They started out this episode fighting (over whether or not to call for directions) and kept it up the entire time. It made my head hurt. They rushed to Phil at the beginning of the episode, thinking they were going to be eliminated, and pretty much giving up hope completely. What have we learned from the race all these seasons, people? It’s that you never give up. Even when Phil told them that they were still in it, the Godlewskis didn’t have a positive attitude. They just sighed and said Phil was torturing them.

The sisters proceeded to torture us by get more arguing. They decided to build the teepee, and Christine, always the target of her sisters’ scorn, thought precision was important. She went to an already assembled teepee and measured with her foot how far apart all of the poles were supposed to go. Okay, now I will admit that if I were one of her teammates, this would have annoyed me. The Godlewskis can be guilty of a little too much precision, as illustrated by their painting a work of art on that wheel challenge a while back instead of slopping on the paint and calling it a day. That said, I would have let Christine just do her little foot measuring thing just to appease her and keep the peace. Her being away from the rest of the group for the minute it took to do the measurements wouldn’t make or break the task. But the sisters, instead, yelled and bickered at each other some more.

Probably the worst display of sibling quarreling came when Sharon and Michelle had their fight in the golf cart. They actually got to the point where they had a “did not” “did, too” argument just like they undoubtedly did when they were kids. The capper, though, was Sharon actually getting out of the cart and refusing to ride with her sister. Was I the only one who suddenly got a very clear picture of four little girls riding in the back of a station wagon on family vacations, drawing a line down the center of the seat to mark their territory?

The Godlewskis totally regressed this week to all of the little fights and bickering they had as kids. The thing is that they seemed to realize it. After they were eliminated, all of them basically said that they realize that this is the way they act when they’re in stressful situations like this together, and that although they love each other very much, they don’t always get along. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I bet the sisters have found that now that they’re adults and don’t live together, they get along a lot better than they did when they were kids… or when they’re running a race together. For that reason, even though the Godlewskis seriously worked my nerves this week, I’m not putting them in Cargo Class. They’re in Coach, to be sure, and the flight was delayed and they had to sit on the tarmac for an hour next to a crazy lady who even Christine thought talked too much. But they are not in Cargo Class.

That honor, once again, goes to the Weavers. The Weaver family continued their trends of treating other people with total disrespect and making dumb decisions themselves. When they arrived at the ranch, instead of socializing, like the other teams did, they holed up in the camper and whined about how nobody likes them. As one of the Linz boys said, it’s all about perception. And the Weavers, I think, have created a self-fulfilling prophesy. They think nobody likes them, so they’re impolite to everyone, hide out alone, and so forth. Because they’re impolite and hiding out, nobody likes them. I know I sure wouldn’t knock myself out going up to their camper, trying to get them to hang out with everybody else. I’d be too busy having a contest of how many cheetos can I fit in my mouth with Tommy Linz or something fun and silly like that.

Perception came into play again during one of the challenges. The Linzes went flying past the Weavers in their wagon, and Linda said that Megan waved at her “all snotty,” so she just smiled back at her. First of all, I’ve been watching Megan Linz for ten episodes now, and there is not a single thing about that girl that’s snotty. Second, shouldn’t Linda, not only as a Christian, but also as a parent and supposed example to her children, try to be the bigger person? Shouldn’t she just ignore rude behavior, rather than contributing to it?

The Weavers didn’t limit their disrespect of other people to their competitors. I was disgusted by the way they treated the chief who judged their challenge. Rolly called him “Chief-O,” which seems awfully darned familiar when you’re addressing an adult who is an authority figure. Linda, naturally, did not bother to correct him. They also told him that he was “cute.” Why? He’s not Justin Timberlake, that’s for sure. Is he simply “cute” because he was wearing traditional clothing? To call him cute seems dismissive, condescending, and – you guessed it – disrespectful.