The Amazing Race 9: The Finish Line, Episode 10

Jon's back this week and he seems excited. Peggy asks viewers to call in and comment on the teams and how they're doing in the race. Jon and Peggy have Jessica Shaw on again from Entertainment Weekly. She's raring to go! Jessica says she is absolutely LIVID about how Mojo are playing this game. She thinks Monica is “such a brat!” and she hates their relationship. Jessica points out that when Monica got to the mat she was completely hypocritical, saying she wouldn't play the game like the Hippies. Jessica just says “give me a break.” She knows that Mojo would have yielded BJ & Tyler if they had gotten the chance. Jessica's completely right – both about Monica being a bratty hypocrite and that Monica & Joseph would have yielded the Hippies if they had the chance (and rightfully so).

Jessica finishes by shaking her head in disgust. Peggy tells Jessica she doesn't have to softpedal, she can tell us how she really feels. Heh. Jon says that Monica & Joseph are just arguing too much. They even spent longer at the yield than they had to because they were berating each other. Jessica points out Monica was crying too. Again. All three think that Mojo handled being yielded poorly. Peggy does say she understands Monica getting upset at being yielded. She'd be upset too. Jon says that, yes, it's understandable, but at this point of the race you have to be on your game. You can't just fall apart. It could have been an elimination round.

Jessica notes that Monica seems to have a mental breakdown any time there's something slightly challenging. Peggy agrees and asks callers what they think about Monica and if she's cranked the drama levels too high.

Jeremy from Chicago calls in again. He asks Jon if he thinks it's really stupid to put a yield on a non-elimination leg. He also wants to know if there have been feuds on previous races – or behavior like Eric & Jeremy canceling Ray & Yolanda's and the Hippies' cabs. Jon says yes, there have been feuds. He doesn't agree with canceling someone's cab like Eric & Jeremy did, but it wasn't illegal in the race. Jessica says she thinks actively sabotaging a team like Eric & Jeremy did is going too far and should be penalized on the race. She asks what's to stop someone in another season from canceling someone's flight. Jessica would have liked to see Eric & Jeremy penalized ten minutes for doing that.

Jon says he thought it would have been nice if they had been penalized. He would have loved to see the looks on Eric & Jeremy's face if that had happened. Also, he thinks penalizing them would have kept other teams from such sleazy behavior in the future. I think The Amazing Race producers couldn't actually penalize Eric & Jeremy unless the rules indicated this behavior wasn't allowed on the race. That said, I'm not sure that actively canceling other people's taxis/cabs/reservations should be legal on the race.

Peggy says that it's a competition and so people will do what they can. Jon says you don't want to change your character for the race, even though it's a strategic move. She then takes us to a clip of the detour. We see the Hippies and the Frat Boys going down the river and the other teams doing the didgeridoo challenge. I actually assumed the river would be faster, because the physical challenge usually is the faster option. I also have heard that playing a didgeridoo is very difficult, but apparently getting enough sound to satisfy the Aboriginal judges wasn't too hard.

As the clip ends, Peggy ponders why Monica is asking Joseph for help with her didgeridoo playing. Good question. Jessica thinks that task was too easy. The teams should have had to play a little tune or something. Peggy agrees that the didgeridoo was the easy task here. Jon says he talked to Al in the morning and says they would have taken the didgeridoo task. All the river swimming and hiking would take too long. He notes that the detour was definitely the deciding factor this episode.

Jessica asks if anyone else noticed just how lopsided the two detour tasks were this episode. She notes that, often, the tasks are fairly comparable in time, but the water task seemed so much harder than the land task this time. She says the river looked like it took four times as long. Hmmm... I'm not sure I agree with her on this. There have been numerous detour choices that involved a clearly inferior – longer – task. Usually, though, it's because the harder or scarier task is quicker. In this case, the harder/scarier task actually took longer, and that may be what's making Jessica think it's so odd this time.

Peggy points out that the river detour not only took longer, but there were a lot of huge spiders along the way. She says they may not have looked so big on TV, but if you've been to Australia you know they're huge!

Moving on, Jon and Peggy both think that Ray & Yolanda came into their own last night. Jon was happy to see them finish first on a leg, but he thinks they still need to work better together. Jessica agrees that they need to hustle more, but they had a good map they picked up at the airport and it really helped them. She also liked seeing how much fun Yolanda was having during the detour this week. Peggy agrees that these two have been stressed out and trailing in the pack and that they seem to relax some this week.

Al Rios, Jon's Amazing Race partner, is now on the line. He's also glad that Ray & Yolanda came in first this leg – but that they still need to hustle more. He talks about the physical detour vs. the “luck” detour. Usually, the physical detour is the fastest if you can accomplish it, while the “luck” one can take a lot longer. This episode the producers flipped the formula. He asks what the others think of this. Jon says that when you read the clue you only get a second to decide what you're doing with little information. So, it's hard to tell.