The Amazing Race 8: The Finish Line, Episode 7

Before I get to the recap, I want to thank the readers who wrote to help me solve the CBS Video Player problem. It’s working much better this week and my laptop is no longer in danger of experiencing the miracle of flight.

Sarah, wearing a very interesting necklace, welcomes us to the show. Her usual co-host Jon Weiss is off doing clown stuff this week, so joining Sarah is the host of CBS’s The Early Show, Harry Smith. Harry says he has a picture of himself with the clown team of Jon and Al in a prominent place in his office. But it turns out that Harry is not just a fan of The Amazing Race - he and his Early Show co-host/weatherman Dave Price actually followed the racers on the first leg of AR 6.

We see a short clip of Harry and Dave in Iceland (is anyone else hearing Avi and Joe singing “New York Jews in Iceland” in their head? No? Then neither am I…), which includes Harry pulling on his long underwear. He says it was so much fun and he was happy to be able to experience it. The producers wanted them to stay behind the actual racers but they kept catching up, so they had to stop along their leg.

Sarah reminds us that they will be taking viewer calls, and introduces the Paolo family. Marion, Tony, Brian, and D.J. are smiling as Sarah says they finished in first one week and the next week they were eliminated. Tony says that’s how the race goes - you can’t count on anything. One week you’re at the front of the pack and the next week you’re out. That’s why the racers always have to keep going, because you never know.

Sarah asks what the key moment was that led to the Paolos losing. D.J. says the key moment was not listening to their mother on their way to the Grand Canyon. They had a plan but it backfired because they hit some traffic on their way. Marion says she thought she would be the downfall of their team because she is not as strong as the men, but she had a plan and she always tried to think things out in advance. She knew there was more than one entrance to the Grand Canyon and she was trying to tell everyone to wait and see exactly where they needed to go.

Harry asks Marion about the detour where they were bailing water out of the boat. She kept saying they should flip the boat but the rest of the team said they couldn’t do it. However all of the other teams did flip their boats. D.J. says she said it 20 times, and Tony says they had tried but weren’t able to flip the boat. Marion says the reason she had to say it 20 times was because they never listened to her. Brian says if they could have made the boat levitate to the shore, they would have. (Even if they DID try before, wouldn’t it have made sense to try again after more water had been bailed out?)

Sarah introduces a clip of The Paolo Family Elimination Montage. We see Tony being rescued by the rescue swimmers and hear his son helpfully yell at him not to drown. Clips of challenges, bickering, and criticism. And, of course, D.J. threatening to drown his mom as they were bailing water out of the boat. The clip ends with their Philimination.

Back live, Tony says they had a great time on the race and they are so glad to have done it. They have no regrets. It was an unbelievable experience and they had a ball. Sarah asks about some of the split-second decisions they had to make, such as which detour to do and who would do the roadblock. She asks if it was still smart strategy for them to do all the heavy lifting of the sugar cane, and they all seem to say no. Marion says they had a plan going in - they were going to rely on themselves and do tasks that they could control. They weren’t going to rely on gambling or animals, or looking for something in the woods somewhere. They wanted to take control so they choose their tasks accordingly.

Harry asks Tony about the swimming task - what happened to keep him from getting back? Tony says he went out too fast; he was out of breath and his body just shut down. It was right after breakfast, so it was just too much for him. D.J. says the problem was that Tony still thinks he’s 25 and he was watching all these young people do the task, so he thought it was easy. Sarah points out that they did beat those younger teams at times. Brian says Wally Bransen was “like Mark Spitz.” Marion says Wally was swimming very well but he was going the wrong way, so they were trying to tell him to keep going. His girls finally got him to swim the right way. Brian says it was fun and it had no bearing on the race, so they can just look back and laugh about it now. Tony says even though he was drowning he was having fun.

Our first caller is Tammy from Pennsylvania. Tammy says that D.J. said he yielded the Weavers because they were the last team and she wants to know if this is true. If not, what is the real reason they yielded them? And why does everybody despise the Weavers so much? D.J. says there were two reasons they yielded them. The first was because they were last - if they yielded a team that was right behind them then they would eventually be able to catch up, but if they yielded the last place team, they thought it would ensure an elimination. The other reason they yielded the Weavers was, predictably, because of their actions on the race. D.J. says after watching the last few episodes, words cannot describe his feelings for the Weavers. D.J. says that if people have been watching the show, then they understand why everyone hates the Weavers. It developed from the very beginning. (Okay, but we want specifics!)