I’m so excited! I can’t believe it! I’m jumping up and down in glee!
No, not about the Hippies winning. I didn’t fall down and hit my head any time in the last week. I’m talking about how happy I am that this generally underwhelming season is finally over and Survivor is starting next week.
As for the Hippies winning, well, I’m sure there are more than enough people that are overjoyed for them to make up for my complete lack of caring.
The Hippies started off the leg on good footing, after they grabbed first place by swan race last episode. The clue told them to fly to Anchorage, Alaska. Before they left for the airport, the dippy Hippies left some cash for destitute YoRay. I think leaving your rivals money is fairly pointless and counterproductive in any other leg but helping them out during the final leg is just stupid. No mercy, I say!
Ray and Yolanda gratefully accepted the cash and declared themselves the best team in the race. Eric and Jeremy would like a word with you about stealing their title. Let’s keep Ray’s comment in mind as we see just how well this alleged best team in the race does the rest of the leg, OK?
"Scaramouche, scaramouche / Will you do the fandango"At the hotel where they had to catch a shuttle to the airport, the Hippies engaged in some skullduggery (but I thought they ran a cleeeaaannn race!) by telling the man at the counter to pretend there were no Internet facilities if Eric and Jeremy asked. He did and turned out to be almost as bad a liar as Tyler. The Frats appeared to fall for it though because they are, as you may have observed, not the deepest fishing holes in the ice.
It was all for naught as the Frats and the Hippies managed to catch the same connecting flight to Alaska. YoRay got a little bit lost and had to stop in a restaurant to ask for directions where Yolanda was told she looked like Janet Jackson. That’s Miss Jackson if you’re nasty. Yolanda takes boob-flashing a little less seriously than cussing fortunately and took the comparison in good humour. I guess the effects of the rollercoaster must’ve stuck with her.
This little detour almost sank them completely. By the time they arrived at the airport, the connecting flight that would get them to Alaska as the same time as the other teams was closed. They begged and pleaded and luckily for them, by the grace of God (and the producers), they managed to finagle their way onto the flight.
All teams were level. This could turn out to be a contest yet.
The Hippies ooh-ed and ah-ed about being back in the States, naturally. They probably ooh and ah when they go to the bathroom. Tyler made some crack about being at the North Pole which was my first clue that perhaps these two citizens of the world weren’t quite as clued up on geography as they pretended to be.
Three straight episodes of BJ wearing nothing but open sandals. This is the result.Guess who got lost on the way to the Detour? Yes, the self-proclaimed best team on the race. The choices were drilling fishing holes in the ice and dragging a shack onto them or navigating a plane to a first aid station in the wilderness. Except there wasn’t a choice at all because bad weather meant the plane couldn’t take off. Great Detour planning, producers.
Guess it would be ice-fishing for all. The Frats and the Hippies arrived at the “Detour” at more-or-less the same time but Frat muscle power soon ensured they finished first. YoRay finally got to the “Detour” just as the Hippies were leaving and got to work on the tough drilling. Yolanda wished she could use her legs instead of her arms because of those killer thighs of hers. Am I the only one who’s reminded of that Bond villainess who crushes people between her legs whenever someone talks about Yolanda’s thighs of steel?
"Hold the port-a-potty, I need to goooo!"The next clue could only be found by donning snow-shoes and following a trail through the snow to the cluebox. Already in the lead, the Frats quickly found it and gained an even bigger lead when the clueless Hippies caught a case of that rare malady Frannus Barrytitus and kept walking past the snow-shoes.
Somewhere Fran and Barry are cackling at how they're not the only blind people on this race. Or possibly having sex.Next up, the teams had to fly to Detroit and make their way to a small town in the mountains of Colorado.
No, not
that one, silly. A place called Golden, Colorado. In the spirit of the show itself (Buy a T-Mobile Sidekick! Watch the Da Vinci Code!) I feel it’s only right casually mention TVSA Gold over here.
Hey, don’t look at me like that. At least I didn’t start raving about the wonders of Duracell batteries for three paragraphs. Though I am perfectly willing to do it for a nominal fee. Call me, Duracell!
Anyway, everyone ended up catching the same flight to Golden. I should also mention that the Frats made a couple of statements proclaiming their superiority over the other teams just so that one of the other teams could come up from behind and beat their overconfident asses. Foreshadowing ahoy.
Ray and Yolanda, best team on the race, fell behind once again. From this point onwards, they pretty much stopped mattering until the last three minutes of the show. Ciao, YoRay. Catch up with you two in a bit. Try not to get lost in the mountains and re-enact Deliverance or anything.
The race to the finish line was between the Frats and the Hippies. The final mat was in the same place they’d started the race, at the Red Rock Amphitheatre, the red rocks now covered in snow. But before either team could claim their million, they had to complete one last Roadblock.
Each team had to find the flags of all the countries to which they’d travelled and arrange them in the order they visited. Yes, that’s right. The last challenge was a brains challenge. This is where Eric and Jeremy’s chance at winning the race grew wings, flew away and was shot by hunters.
They’d managed to make it to the RB first but the thinking part was too much to overcome. Eric, deemed the “brains of the group”, was chosen for this impossible task. “Start thinking with your head,” Jeremy helpfully offered in case Eric was planning on thinking with his liver or pancreas. Hey, he did say Eric was the brains of the group for a reason.
The fatal mistake came when the Frats incorrectly remembered going from Germany to Russia instead of the other way round. Ruh-roh. And here came the Hippies, speakers of Japanese and self-acknowledged cultural ambassadors. Defeat seemed inevitable.
But wait! Just when you thought the Hippies would breeze through this one, they fucked it up themselves! Those seasoned travellers, those humble pilgrims couldn’t remember what the Russian flag looked like and assumed it wasn’t there.
Oh lawdy, you don’t know how amused this makes me. It wasn’t even one of the lesser-known flags like Oman. It was freakin’ Russia. Except you know those fool Hippies were probably thinking of the Soviet flag and looking for a hammer and sickle somewhere.
If there was one benefit to not really caring who won, it was that I was able to laugh equally at each teams’ utter incompetence. Eric finished first and was told by the cute female judge that it was incorrect. Eric frantically turned back to the flags and tried to figure out where he’d gone wrong. You knew it was serious by how he didn’t even waste one second flirting with the judge.
Instead of figuring out he’d swapped Germany and Russia around, Eric thought he might have gotten the Thai flag wrong and screwed his order up even more. BJ by contrast realised that he was missing one flag and grasped what his mistake was. So as BJ struggled to get the Russian flag in place and move every other flag one space up, Eric tried various permutations of his flags but just couldn’t get it.
So close...
And yet so far. Stay in school, kids.
By the time Eric managed to figure out that the Russian and German flags were swapped round, BJ had completed the task and was sprinting over the finish line with Tyler. It was all over. The Hippies had won the day.
Follow the Yellow Brick RoadPhil proclaimed them millionaires and cheers rang out from the Amphitheatre. Disappointingly, after scanning the MoJo’s faces carefully every time they were shown, I couldn’t even get a good shot of them looking bitch-faced and unhappy to make me laugh. You let me down, MoJo. You let me down.
This is the best I could do, I'm afraid. You can sort of see barely concealed contempt in their faces if you squint a little, right?Phil asked if they would continue to look the same now that they had a million. Of course they would. They were fake hippies before, so it’s not like a little more cash would somehow make them authentic in any way. There were tears and beards and self-congratulatory waffle about what awesome cultural representatives they were and there wasn’t even a single eyeroll from any of the other teams to make it a little more bearable.
"Kiss me you fool!"
"Er...OK. Could this maybe wait?"BJ and Tyler claimed the race was good couples therapy. Tell that to MoJo. Or Lake and Michelle. Or any of the thousand bickering dating teams that have appeared on this show.
Speaking of couples, a disappointed-looking Eric and Jeremy finally landed on the mat. I have to say, I kinda felt for them. They quickly recovered their suspect humour however and clarified that the Frats nickname was wrong because they were college dropouts. So in memory of the fake Frats and their dire geography skills, get edumacated so you’ll ace any reality show brains tasks in which you ever have to take part.
YoRay (remember them?) popped up an undetermined amount of time later and smilingly accepted their third place. They showed some love towards each other and it was sweet. Awwww, I happen to think they’re cute together and that Ray does like her. He’s just stoic, dammit. So yay for YoRay snuggles!
See? They're kissing and being affectionate. So there. Ray does love her.And so the season ends. I for one am pleased as punch I never have to hear the Hippies talk about how awesome and real they are ever again. Congrats, Hippies! And goodbye…forever!