TV: Amazing Race 12: Ep 8

After last week's episode, this week seemed a bit more tense. Maybe because the teams visited the busiest city in the world. Maybe because the Goths had a penalty to serve and it was guaranteed to be an elimination leg. I did not even note who came in first. The whole show was basically a race between the Goths and Nate/Jen for second to last place. In the end, Jen got a friendly bit of help while Kynt misread directions completely and lost.

The leg began with all the teams trying to book flights from Florence, Italy to Mumbai, India. Fortunately not too much time was spent on airport drama as it turned out all the teams would get bunched together waiting for a news stand to open in Mumbai.

I spent a day in that city a few years ago, and it is true that the first thing that hits you is the smell from the pollution and the crowds and various other things -- especially around the International airport. Some of the teams wore masks while waiting for the stand to open.

Jen / Nate were the last to find a clue hidden as an ad within a newspaper. It was not the hardest task in the world, but they never figured out how to divide and conquer the search. Fortunately for them the Goths had a pretty bad taxi driver and immediately had to perform the Speed Bump penalty. They were sent off to a different part of the city to perform Yoga exercises. Maybe it was a good penalty for them since they had gotten so tense in Italy.

The next challenge was a detour involving putting up a movie poster or stringing a flower necklace together. This is one of the few times in this race where the teams divided almost equally between the two tasks. The grandfather / grandson team finished the poster first since the grandfather had some experience with billboards. TK and Rachel finished the flowers first working well together as a team. Ron and his daughter took longer with the poster with Ron acting mean again. Finally Nate / Jen struggled with the flowers almost as bad as they did with the newspaper with the Goths making up a bunch of time.

The roadblock challenge was very similar to several others in this race. Deliver items to certain addresses in a part of town where the streets might be hard to navigate and pick up proof of delivery. This was one of the few times where physical strength was needed with TK being able to carry a bunch of propane tanks at once and finishing in first ahead of the grandson.

Ron risked aggravating his hernia but still finished before the last two teams would fight it out to avoid elimination. Somehow the Goths arrived at the final challenge moments before Nate / Jen but then committed a huge tactical error by choosing to enforce the U-turn -- but on the wrong team. Had they chose Nate / Jen, they would still be racing. But trying to take out the Grandfather / Grandson team was a mistake since they were already ahead, and at that point they incurred the wrath of the karma gods. Both Kynt and Jen misread the directions. Kynt was exchanging the order with the receipt when he should have kept both, while Jen forgot to pick up the receipt from the door completely. The two even crossed paths insind one building where Kynt picked up additional bad karma by keeping an elevator stuck on the second floor to temporarily prevent Jen from making a delivery to the 5th floor. Eventually one of the customers reminded her to pick up the receipt. At that point she realized she had to go back to the first customer and pick up that receipt as well. Kynt did not realize his mistake until he thought he had completed the task. By then it was all over, though they could have gotten lucky with the taxi ride to the Pit Stop. But it was not meant to be.

In the next episode, it appears TK and Rachel choose a road less traveled. But will it pay off? I cannot wait to watch it but I will be on the road myself.