TV: Amazing Race 9 - Ep 10

This was the most intense non-elimination leg ... ever. (Minus the first season of this show, which I completely missed) I don't recall so many teams finishing so close together in such a late leg. Wow! I'll never complain about "bunching" again if it results in these types of endings more frequently. It was fun to watch the tensions mount as the teams begin to feel they've got a chance for the million-dollar prize. I found it hard to even blink (even though I could always hit rewind on my DVR) because even some tiny details were having major implications in the race, though I can't recall many of them anymore.

- What was a random guy doing just hanging out around the Pitstop at midnight? I wonder how long the racers would have had to stand around for a taxi otherwise.

- I guess $70 gets you around quite a bit in Australia. Granted, I guess they only had to spend money on a couple of taxi rides, maps / guides, and maybe a random meal here and there.

- I guess that part of the country is fairly sparse population-wise. The Frat boys did not seem to have any locals to hit on, so they had to resort to the remaining females in the race. So Eric flirted with Monica (while hoping Joseph would become a crocodile's dinner), and Jeremy complimented Yolanda (perhaps while hoping Ray's parachute would fail).

- Did Jeremy just pull the name Doug Brubaker out of thin air? The movie "Brubaker" seems before his time. It was a classic Romber move to cancel the other team's taxis and frame Mojo in the process, but even they felt they got hit by bad karma as a result (or the Amazing race editors caught that theme in my last couple of blog entries..)

- What was up with the airline ticket guy's expression when Monica offered a kiss in exchange for him withholding info from the other teams? I guess it was sort of a, "Sorry, you're kind of cute, but you're definitely not 'worth losing my job over' cute." Meanwhile Yolanda (under the impression that Mojo had canceled the taxis) dissed Monica by calling her a plastic Barbie doll that the crocodiles would choke on if they tried to eat her. Ouch.

- Hippie jokes, "Goodbye wallets, er.., crocodiles" and the stuff about the termites and the peg leg kind of fell flat for me, but maybe the pressure and exhaustion is ruining their sense of humor.

- Once again Mojo comes in second place. This time while racing to the Yield against the Hippies (they'd finally get revenge later). My advice to Joseph -- learn how to empathize! Of course, this is coming from someone's whose total knowledge of relationships came from reading "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"

- Fortunately, Mojo overcame the Yield by correctly assessing which Detour could be done faster. The Frat Boys and Hippies strangely thought they could hike / wade a mile down a stream faster than a car could drive six miles. The also seemed less intimidated with confronting poisonous spiders and plants [seems like just about everything in Australia can be fatal] than learning to play an instrument. Mojo was also wise to ask for directions and grab a map at a local info center.

- Yolanda has a pleasant laugh. And this is coming from a guy who has a whole repertoire of annoying laughs and giggles.

- I was surprised the Frats didn't try to give the Hippies wrong directions to the Pitstop, but may be they decided it wasn't worth risking more bad karma, and they probably would have had the Hippies tailgating them anyway.

- Great camera and multi-angle slo-mo replay work at the Pitstop. BJ reminded me of a recent Tour de France bike rider that inexplicably went off the road and down a mountain side (fortunately neither were hurt). Maybe the adrenaline rush during the sky dive was still clouding his judgment. So he finally got to do a fun Roadblock, but I wonder how he'll get around now that I imagine his shoes have been taken away.