Teams get dyed in congested India

Last week, I was without television while having my own Amazing Race experiences and learning the definition of “uncomfortably hot,” so I didn’t watch the episode until this weekend. Luckily, it was the season’s first non-elimination, and also kind of dull, so it worked well back-to-back with this week’s high-energy elimination episode.

• At the start of last week’s episode, we learned that Dallas and Starr are into each other, which is awkward for Dallas because, as he said, “my mom is the worst wing man ever.” Little did he know that the definition of awkward would soon change, nor did he seem to be aware that Starr is somewhat ambivalent. “There is an attraction there. At least, I think,” she said.
• Best taxi driver line of the night: Terence and Sarah’s driver shut them up by saying, “I know everything.”
• “I think the budding romance between Dallas and Starr is kind of cute because it’s my baby sister,” Nick said, and I’m just going to back away from that one slowly and pretend I didn’t hear it.
• Dan said, “Andrew’s a DaVinci, Michelangelo, David all rolled into one.” While it makes no sense to compare an artist’s work to an artist, having actually seen David in person, I’m pretty confident that Andrew is not David, unless David turned out to be one of those little sponges that expands when you put it in water.
• “Whatever I’m doing right now, only support me,” Sarah told Terence. He agreed, and thankfully she was just painting a vehicle rather than kicking puppies.
• “Our taxi driver did a great job of waitin’ for us,” Ken said, and that’s all that driver was good at. Still, Ken and Tina apparently developed amnesia about how bad their driver was and eagerly climbed back into the car.
• Dan called Kelly and Christy “semi-attached,” and Andrew said, “Semi-attractive. That was good.” Yes, if “good” means “so ironic it just made most viewers spit up whatever they were drinking.”
• “You might’ve just cost me $1 million, you know that?” Ken asked his non-English speaking cab driver after paying the driver $200 for a ride to nowhere. That’s all it cost to get rid of Ken and Tina? I would have easily paid $250 to dump them last week.
• I lost track of how many times Phil described the streets of Delhi as either “congested” and “confusing.” We get it.
• I’m so grateful Terence and Sarah, and Ken and Tina, my two least-favorite teams, decided to do the Detour task that involved navigating through a crowd of partying people at a dance hall, as those people were happy to slam their bodies into the Americans.
• “We’ve never been last,” Tina pointed out as they headed toward the pit stop. No shit? You’ve never been last in a race that pretty much always eliminates the people who come in last? Of course, they were saved by the first non-elimination leg, because Phil Keoghan hates us.
• At the start of episode two, Nick said that he and Starr love telling “little white lies” and “have no shame.” However, they are literally the worst villains ever, considering that their one act of duplicity this episode involved lying to another team for about four seconds, before they decided to just work together. Evil!
• Kelly and Christy talked–actually, joked–about making out with Dan and Andrew, because apparently being on the race has made them desperate. The editors had great fun with this, as Christy said of Dan, “He’d get up from the kiss and start pacing.” Cut to a shot of Dan pacing back and forth, having no idea that this would one day be used to humiliate him.
• As I wrote earlier today, the Roadblock may have been The Amazing Race‘s most awesome challenge ever. While it wasn’t exactly challenging (except for Kelly), it was both a cultural experience and incredible television. Phil explained that teams had to search for a clue during a celebration of India’s Holi Festival, during which revelers were “pelting each other and the racers with powdered die.” The racers ended up with varying amounts of dye on them–except for Kelly, whose clothing and skin turned black because she was so covered in dye.
• Perhaps the best moment of the whole Roadblock came after Starr finished it, and Nick was cleaning her off: “Just be careful; I don’t want to smear my makeup too much,” she said. At that very minute, a man came up and threw a handful of florescent pink die in Nick’s face, covering him with more dye than Starr got actually running the challenge.
• Dan compared the experience to a rave without women, which constitutes, he said, a “sausage fest.” Since he’s in a fraternity, we can take his word on that.
• Kelly and Christy, desperate for a taxi, screamed, “It’s an emergency.” Yes, a dumb American emergency.
• The barely tolerable cheesy Phil Keoghan line of the night came when he was describing the Detour task, which involved power lines. He said teams “could find the speed of their success…shocking.” Sigh.
• “It was holy water, by the way,” Tina told Ken during their Speedbump task. “I didn’t know that,” he said, which was obvious since he was hawking it like a Pepsi on a street corner full of diabetic hookers.
• Still covered in dye, Kelly was eliminated along with Christy, who said shortly before her elimination, “I don’t know how anyone lives here. It’s quite miserable.” Hey, so are you!