An Amazing Play on the Amazing Race

I think I just saw one of the dirtiest, craftiest, most brilliant plays ever on The Amazing Race. And I think I liked it.

After bunching up at the first clue box of the leg, the teams were all pretty smart – they called for taxis to be waiting for them after they finally got in to get their clues. Pretty good use of your time as you’re sitting and waiting for the site to open. But Eric & Jeremy took it one step further. They actually called the cab company and cancelled the cabs for the hippies and Ray & Yolanda. As I was watching it, I couldn’t tell if I thought it was the dirtiest play ever, or the smartest. What’s to stop a team from doing that? (clearly nothing!) And if it had worked (I’m telling you, karma always comes back to get you in the end…) or caused a team to miss that flight, it would have been brilliant. I know, it was really mean. But there have been so many teams before that do little things to hold up their competitors…I guess I kind of liked it.

Ray and Yolanda might be my new favorites. I loved hearing them talk about the fact that a black person would never just jump into a pit of crocs. And the fact that they have been keeping to themselves really worked out for them this leg. They surged ahead (and they picked the clearly easier detour) and beat out the three bickering teams. Good for them.

Speaking of bickering, what is the deal with the hippies? I though that everyone loved them. Perhaps something happened that we didn’t get to see (at a pit stop maybe?), but I don’t think so (it’s not like CBS to show us something like that!). If MoJo should be mad at anyone, it’s the frat boys (nice work, by the way, pinning the cab fiasco on MoJo and hitting on Monica…nice…). And Monica – stop being so dramatic. We get it. You’re upset you got yielded.

The finish was probably the best finish ever. Three of the four teams hitting the mat at virtually the same time. I always wonder if the “non-elimination” rounds really are determined ahead of time, since they always seem to fall when teams are really close or have faced something that was out of their control. How much would that have sucked to be eliminated by a fraction of a second? And will they let the hippies (or BJ at least) get their shoes? That would seem like something that they would just have to let them go get. Either way, this may be the best final four on the show ever.