The Amazing Race 9: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Episode 11: When Barbie Fails

Yes, yes, I’m very happy. Not just because Mojo is gone, although that is a large part of it. I’m happy because again, I will be happy with any of the three teams winning, with various degrees of joy, of course. That doesn’t happen often in reality TV, so I like to savor the moment when it does.

The Good:

Was It Over When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?: And MAN, was it tough to just pick out ONE quote for this. Anyone who emails me telling me that the Germans didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor, I’m gonna dig up John Belushi’s corpse and mail it to them.

Anyway, the Frats have become my new favorite, mostly through process of elimination. More on that later. The reason I like the Frats is that they’ve been consistent. They’ve never really been in trouble, they’ve run a good race, kept their sense of humor, and not lost sight of the fact that, even though they’re competing for a million dollars, it’s still a game. They could have refused to give BJ their old flip flops and forced them to find new shoes, claiming “well, it’s competition!” It was the right thing to do. They probably also figured on an equalizer anyway.

Learning About Cuba, and Having Some Food: That quote is a little more obscure, but nonetheless required viewing.

Once the Hippies had to give up their possessions in the first non-elimination leg, things got really ugly. It brought out their competitiveness, and not in a good way. Had they just gotten serious and not helped anyone else, that would be one thing. But they actively threatened to yield Mojo if Mojo didn’t give them money. Now, Mojo abuse is a fine and decent activity and I encourage it. But the problem is, it was a dumb, useless move that only got them animosity from the other teams.

They tried to steal Mojo’s cab, and Tyler (I think) actively harassed BJ for actually getting out of the cab when confronted, when the cab driver had already told him it was Joseph’s cab. Tyler refused to give BJ his shoes to run to the pit stop, which could have been a deadly mistake had the leg been an elimination leg, not to mention the potential danger of running all-out in bare feet. And in general, they’ve been whiny these past few weeks.

I’m sure them’s good people and it’s just the stress of the race messing with them, but that’s only a partial excuse. Either way, I won’t be upset if they win, no, not at all.

Never Let Nobody or Nothing Turn You Into No Cripple: Even more obscure. Ray & Yolanda are a great team who had their problems, but I don’t think they dominated the race like the other two have. I also have a problem seeing the money go to a team with that many relationship problems (see: Flo & Zack, a billion times less). I mean, when Ray saw he’d won a cruise, he looked about as thrilled as a man telling his wife that, no, really, dinner was great. Unless he’s afraid of boats (and one would think we’d have seen that with all the ferries they’ve been on), I read it as an indication that he wasn’t excited about taking a vacation with Yolanda or, worse, arguing about splitting that prize up.

That all said, they’re a great team, well worth winning. As a side note, has any other show had as many African-American winners as Amazing Race? I certainly can’t think of any.

The Bad:

This Team Brought to You by the Letter Zzzzzzzzzzzz: Make sure to read the Mojo interview. One of the most boring interviews I’ve ever read, and that’s NOT the fault of Jenn, the interviewer. I don’t think that it’s that they’re particularly bad, or mean, or hateful people. It’s just that they occupy space better used for parking meters or something. Aside from the schadenfreude resulting from watching them lose (and by choosing certain pictures for my articles), I feel like the entire span of the show that I spent watching them was a waste of time.

Monica IS a Barbie doll. She has no other existence, no point in life past being pretty. Oh, and spinning. Can’t forget spinning. I received dozens of emails that all pretty much ran the same way. “You’ve probably gotten tons of emails about this already, but spinning is a workout routine done in a class like aerobics, but using stationary bikes.”

So let me get this straight. Monica chose to wear a shirt on national TV declaring her love for a type of workout? Seriously? There exist in this world people who are that vapid and bland? Isn’t that equivalent to, say, putting a bumper sticker on my car that says “I love my DVD player”? I know people have t-shirts about shopping, or camping, or fishing, or whatever. Exercising? Makes no sense to me.

As for gameplay, they really fell apart in the end. They took the yield personally, which as I have said before, is just plain idiotic. Monica fell apart the moment things became too hard (and she’s added a litany of events to the “worst things she’s ever done” list, which no doubt is several volumes by now) and Joseph was no help, seeing fit to scream at her instead of help. I will give him credit, he tried to reassure her on the pottery detour, but I think that was partially because he figured they were toast anyway, and partially because he didn’t want her to remember that it was his idea not to do Altar it.

To sum up Mojo – we didn’t see them for half the race, and the other half, we wish we hadn’t. Not exactly all-star material.

I wanted to put a quote in from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me as the title, but there weren’t any good “mojo” quotes better than what I have there. And if you think you know of one, well, shut up, it’s a good title and it deserves love too! Why do you hate my title?!

Um…sorry. Let’s move on.

Monkeys: Although watching the Frats get attacked by them this episode was classic, I’ve simply never been able to figure out the whole “monkeys = comedy” equation that other people seem to take as gospel. Who’s with me?

The Ugly:

Hmm, I Have To Come Up With an Ugly Entry: One of these teams has to lose? Monica looks really ugly when she cries? Have you ever noticed that? The better looking the woman (and Monica is hot, I’ll give her that, but has the personality of dried apricots), the worse they look when they cry?

Mike DeGeorge is an Accountant from St. Louis and is also Associate Editor for RealityNewsOnline. You can reach Mike at rno.mike@gmail.com.

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