Roger Catlin | TV Eye

Hippies Win Again

It's not exactly slow and steady that wins "The Amazing Race." But there is something to be said for keeping mellow throughout the breakneck global tasks.

TK Erwin and Rachel Rosales, who had previously ended up last and were saved in a non-elimination stop (only to come in first the following week), took the final leg and the $1 million prized in the finale Sunday, when Rachel kept a cool head in trying to solve a puzzle about the other stops on the race.

Racing in Alaska, the couple had an edge over the other two teams in the race, who had the added ballast of age and family complications -- though it was the younger half of the teams that made crucial errors. Ronald and Christina Hsu had long since stopped their father-daughter bickering they had displayed earlier in the season, but both had trouble traversing a glacier and Christina became frazzled at the puzzle. In the other remaining team, Nicolas Fulks forgot to bring some of their needed equipment to a challenge and had to go back, causing his grandfather Donald Jeroused to chew him out a bit.

Luck and taxi drivers played roles in the finale, as they usually do. Though it seemed like a bum cab ride or two would sink TK and Rachel, they lucked out in finding out a color-coded crab just after they decided they'd give up and try the other task in the detour. Likewise, Christina and Ron lucked out in finding a clue in the first fish they filleted.

In the end, everybody was especially happy and thankful. If you believe them, even without the money, the related teams were happy to spend so much time with one another and see the world, etc. etc.

The hippie couple (like an earlier pair of hippie "Race" winners, BJ & Tyler) were both from California and happy the way they played the game.

Actual adversaries or potential villains had all been eliminated weeks earlier, but with them went a bit of the drama, too.

Battlin' Couple Out

Nathan and Jennifer, who battled their way through most of the season of "The Amazing Race" were eliminated Sunday, on the verge of the $1 million finale.

"I think we killed our relationship on the way. We weren't strong enough to heal it and finish the race," she said after they got the boot.

"I know Jen," he replied.

That leaves an unexpected three teams in next week's finale: the father and daughter Ronald and Christina, who came in first Sunday; the laid back TK and Rachel, who pulled themselves out of a non-elimination, and the grandfather and grandson team of Don and Nicholas. 

Lost in Transit

When scrambling for the first flights out, the cardinal rule for “The Amazing Race” is: Don’t get the first flight to leave; get the first one to arrive.

TK and Rachel had the advantage Sunday having won last week in India, but went to a sketchy travel agent who sold them a two-stop trip through China on the way to Japan.

The other three teams took a more direct route to Hong Kong and finished their challenges before Rachel and TK even got there.

The mellow couple were cool with leaving after their inevitable last place finish. But stretching out the final four by making it a non-elimination stop.

There’s a reason that there is no non-elimination stops in basketball’s Final Four or any other big competition for that matter. It only makes watching the episode a time waster as we await the next elimination. That apparently happens next week as the mellow couple will again face the other three teams, two of which have elder members – Nick and his grandpa, Don and Christina and her dad Ronald. The other is battling couple Nate and Jen, who led for most the episode, but still couldn’t notch a first place finish.

Goths Really Go

Kynt and Vyxsin valiantly tried to stay alive after running last in a non-elimination stop last week. But paperwork in India stopped them up Sunday and they were really eliminated when they came in last (though they seemed pretty happy when Phil declared them "most fashionable team ever" upon their dismissal).

What was the paperwork problem?

First, given the chance to put a U-Turn on somebody, they chose a team that was way ahead of them -- grandson and granddaddy Nicolas and Donald who finished first last week and second this week -- instead of the bickering couple that was their ultimate competition, Nate and Jen.

Then, when the goths (also known as the Pinkies) were pulling ahead of that very team on the leg's final competition  -- having had to fit in an extra Speed Bump task because of their last place finish last week -- Kynt didn't get the correct receipts for the tanks he had to deliver and had to go back.

How can forever imploding Nate and Jen still be in this thing? They're so dim, they couldn't read the paper to find the clue, as everyone else did quite quickly, putting them behind the entire leg.

Christina's dad Ronald is starting to act up again, though she's gaining the upper hand in insisting finally to do the challenges herself. And KT and Rachel are so far ahead and blissful, they may just sail into the finale just the way they've sailed into the top four. 

Asaria's Wrong Move

Sunday’s episode of "The Amazing Race" showed how one mistake can sink a team – even one that has been consistently ahead for most of the season.

Because of an airport mishap that ended up with their getting business class instead of the required economy seats, normally brainy brother and sister team Asaria and Hendeeka fell way back and never caught up, even though grandpa and grandson were in their sights at the very end.

The stop in Croatia from Lithuania was the most spread out for the teams yet, with some getting on an early flight delayed, those on a second flight getting in first and planes carrying the final two teams coming in as others were about to reach the pit stop.

After the blondies demonstrated that their working against eachother may have cost them the race last week, Christina and her dad Ronald showed that working together got them to the pit stop first.

Nathaniel and Jennifer, who always got mad at coming in second to Asaria and Hendekea (couldn’t they just let them win one? they seemed to be saying) were now at war with eachother. Jennifer kept saying how much she hated Nate and he kept saying good. It may have been the biggest couple meltdown since Jonathan and Victoria. (they could only manage to shake hands at the pit stop)

In the next episode Dec. 23, it looks like the other couple working so well, dating Goths Vyxsin and Kynt will begin to crack.

Blondies Implode

Karma came around for Shana and Jennifer on "The Amazing Race" Sunday. It came a week later, but it still came.

After being first to use the new "U-Turn" aganist a team that probably would have finished last anyway, the blondies turned on one another. It was Shana, the smaller of the two, who was the worst – she’s the one who wanted to do the U-Turn and then she turned on Jennifer, refusing to stop for directions or taunting her partner when she was counting fenceposts in a nightmarish Lithuanian festival. They were doomed and eventually eliminated.

The lead changed significantly in the face from Africa to Eastern Europe – for a time it seemed like grandpa and grandson would go, and not for anything that the old man did. It was sonny boy who couldn’t find his way to a hair salon on one task.

Doing a stilt challenge probably wasn’t the smartest thing for Christina’s dad to try. It was all he could do to hold on to his hernia. Nathan and the other Jennifer began their awful arguing – neither are the brightest bulb on the show (he couldn’t quite pronounce Lithuania and couldn’t quantify fenceposts without counting aloud. Next week, apparently, it gets worse between them and maybe their karma will implode as well.

Not so Faso

It's a little early in the new season of "The Amazing Race" for everything to be so rote already.

Still stuck in Burina Faso (so many villages, so little time -- the whole show was kicked back an hour by NFL overrrun), brother and sister Azaria & Hendekea came in first for the third time in four weeks (though Nathan & Jen were right on their heels), and Lorena & Jason, who were already last, were given a U-Turn by dim blondies Shana & Jennifer (though the latter puts the idea solely on Shana), who may have thought they were instead putting the U-Turn on TK & Rachel (bearded guy, brunette girl -- they all look the same).

The further back Jason got, the mellower and happier he became. To come in last the guy almost attained a nirvana of bliss, though Lorena, such a basket case last week, loved him for it.

Of the others, the Goths are holding their own and the elder/younger teams of Ron & Christina and Nicholas & grandpa Don seem to be at about the same middling pace. Will they ever get out of Africa? Is the cost of air fuel putting a stop on the weekly airport runs?

One thing hinted in the previews for next week is that the blondies start to turn on one another, indicating maybe the karma may be hitting them. That and what looks to be a city bus.

Tears in your Camel Milk

It looked so much like Lorena and Jason would be kicked off of "The Amazing Race" Sunday. In a West African roadblock, she freaked at her task at milking a camel, crying and falling and getting bumped by the camel and spilling what little she got in her bowl.

The camels don’t like loud noises but all she did was scream and yell for Jason. It didn’t go so well. And the rest of the teams bypassed them. Except for the sisters Marianna and Julia, who had read the parts about silence around camels and were taking it easy, even when it came to walking them to the next clue (in the second time out of three weeks  involving dromedary animals being involuntarily pulled).

In the end they made it look like a footrace, and it was the sisters who lost. Lorena may have been refreshed by her hard-won camel milk.

It was a footrace too for the 2nd through 5th place finishers, who all got on the pit stop about the same time.

"I can’t believe after thousands of miles all you guys all turn up on the mat at the same time," host Phil Koegan said, apparently forgetting that the field is leveled every time all the teams travel on the same plane or train, as they did this week.

Azaria and Hendeke, brother and sister engineers of Eithiopian descent, figured they had the African thing all figured out (which usually spells their downfall). But they were smart to both find a local to lead them to the school, which apparently wasn’t as easy as it seemed, and got through the 10 words they had to learn in the local Burkina Faso dialect.

The worst travelers were blondies Shana and Jennifer, who practically called their taxi driver a thief, feared they’d be sold into white slavery, held their nose at the smell and waved away the flies.

They apparently get worse next week, when previews suggest they put a yield on Jason and Lorena, when she’ll really go crazy.

They Were Right: God Didn't Care

Pat and Kate, the "married ministers" who were both the oldest team on this year's "The Amazing Race" and the show's first lesbian couple, made some comments about whether they had God on their side during the competition.

"We have no allusions God cares whether we win 'The Amazing Race,'" was the quote.

So they came in last in Holland and were eliminated Sunday, in the show's second week, determined to keep a smile on their face the whole way. They had gotten way behind in the competition, so far that Bus No. 30 they were supposed to catch had stopped running (a minivan came instead). And even the bickering Asian father and daughter Ronald and Christina did better than them when looking for their bikes because Kate "kept losing focus."

By the time they came to the longpole jump across a muddy ditch, they were by far the last ones there. Of the others, I don't know why grandson let granddad try to do it in the first place. And it was unexpectedly funny to see one of the blondes fall in the black mud. Slapstick I guess.

Each week there's a new annoying team to watch and this week it was poor Christina and her overbearing father, who even took time to yell at other teams' members in addition to his own daughter. Can't she can him and go on the rest of the race herself? (probably not.).

The other quote from Kate and Pat was: "We may not be the fastest team, but we'll be the smartest." Well, given the choice, slowest will get you eliminated every time.

Eric and Danielle Win

Thirty-year-old cousins Charla Baklayan Faddoul and Mirna Hindoyan took a bit of a jump in the last leg of “The Amazing Race: All-Stars” finale Sunday, but in the usual battle of flights and taxis, it was dating and occasionally arguing couple Eric Sanchez and Danielle Turner who won the $1 million prize.

They were the only team of the original 11 who didn’t race together on a previous season; instead they had met on their race in season nine as competitiors; Eric had gotten as close as runners up to the hippies, who won that year.

This time, it looked like Eric and Danielle were just hanging on during several points, ending up last in a non-elimination pitstop, but making up a lot of time when the Beauty Queens Dustin Seltzer and Kandice Pelletier had yielded them almost randomly on a leg.

They were mortal enemies back then, but all the teams seemed to be getting along as the race was ending.

Charla and Mirna took a jump when the third place team caught a different connecting flight to Hawaii, but they squandered it running up the beach to a challenge – the roller sneakers wouldn’t help Charla in the sand.

That’s where Eric and Danielle caught up and took first, keeping their place as the most steady of the kayakers going out to a buoy near a shipwreck to get a clue.

All three got on the same flight to San Francisco, so they were essentially dead even until they got to their challenge at the Old Mint.

There teams had to agree on answers to a quiz about fellow contestants in order to open a vault containing the final clue.

Some team names just kept coming up in the quiz: Rob and Amber were judged most untrustworthy and most overrated the most times; Uchenna and Joyce most often named as best sense of humor and team you’d want to stay in touch with.

There were no right answers; teammates only had to agree. Danielle’s methodical approach when she didn’t get the answer right off the bat led her to be the only one to open the vault. The other teams couldn’t but were given their clues anyway after 10 minutes. There were only two minutes between the cabs to the final pit stop at the Botanical Gardens (or so the Blondies said), but there was never a question that Eric and Danielle wouldn’t make it there first.

And now that they won their $1 million, they face their greatest challenge yet: whether to continue their relationship.