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Subscribe via RSSEpisode 11.8 - Close Connection Ruins Everything
And so The Amazing Race teaches us once again how quickly your fate can change from one decision. The race left Poland headed for Malaysia with all of the teams trying to find flights to get them there as soon as possible. But for Uchenna & Joyce, one risky choice was the difference between being in the race and getting a ticket for home.
This episode opened with the teams racing alternately to the airport, the internet, the travel agent, or the concierge to get tickets from Warsaw to Kuala Lumpur. Danny & Oswald and Uchenna & Joyce were the first off the mat and to start looking. Danny & Oswald hit up the concierge at the hotel while Uchenna & Joyce tried their luck with the travel agent. Both were presented with the connection through Frankfurt and both were informed of the 1 hour layover between the flights. Uchenna and Joyce decided to risk it for a 30 minute lead while Danny & Oswald decided to play it safe and make up the time on the ground in Malaysia.Which made the right decision? Looking at the outcome, it was clearly Danny & Oswald. But, when you’re in a race like this, minutes count. And Uchenna & Joyce were trying to pick up a few extra minutes. But given how this race has been going with finding and making flights, it was a huge gamble. And they lost. But don’t condemn them, because anyone else might have done the same.With that out of the way, we move forward to the rest of the race in Malaysia and the Beauty Queens yielding of Eric & Danielle. The rationalization for yielding them seemed sound to me, and clearly wasn’t out of spite. So, Eric & Danielle’s response to the yield was completely childish. “Boo hoo. I’ve been yielded. You guys are yucky!” Ultimately, it didn’t put them that far behind as they caught up with Danny & Oswald and Charla & Mirna. It did give the Beauty Queens a small lead, but we all know that won’t hold up past the start of the next leg.
Upon hearing about the two Detours, it was obvious to me that the dyeing task was the one to take. 600 boxes of cookies is a lot of food to have to make your way through. But 3 out of the 4 teams started with that task, which seemed very odd to me. Clearly Danny didn’t understand the task as he kept insisting that he only needed to taste one cookie from each box. The tension that this caused between the two of them was not pretty, but they managed to make up with each other before landing on the mat, so that is good.
The Roadblock was quite intriguing and provided an interesting insight into the local society. Maybe if people were willing to actually pay us for our recyclables, American’s would be more apt to do it. What do American’s love more than money, after all?
It seemed clear during the Roadblock that Mirna has a lot of fans in Malaysia. What they see in here I’m not sure. But they were certainly happy to unload all their junk on here. Maybe they saw this as an opportunity to dump her, so to speak.
The ending was very sad. As soon as Uchenna & Joyce heard that the next available flight was in the morning, I knew they were toast and would be getting the dreaded “Go directly to the Pit Stop. Do not collect $1 million dollars.” clue. As soon as he saw it, you could tell Uchenna knew it as well.
Good bye, Uchenna & Joyce. Hope you enjoyed yourself. See you at the finish line.
