For all lovers of comical mispronunciations, this week’s destination – the Madagascan capital of Antananarivo seemed like it would provide plenty of entertainment. Sadly, Americans apparently find it more difficult to pronounce Mauritius than they do Antanananarivo and we were denied opportunities to point and laugh. Spelling Antnananabananarivo however is a bitch so please take my mangled misspellings as a consolation prize.
The secret word for the episode was “alliances”. The Six-pack praised their alliance of colossal idiocy and the Zoolanders revealed they had their own slightly less lame alliance with Rob and Kimberly. The BQs on the other hand were perfectly happy not to be in any alliance. Damn, guess that means they’re not invited to the Six-pack’s kumbayah-singing session.
Just to prove they were truly devoid of warm and fuzzy feelings for their fellow racers, the BQs traded their fender-bender car for a bender-free one. The bender-free one turned out to be Rob and Kimberly’s, who subsequently took the Lyns’ car. Lyn Theft Auto! I like it!
No airport drama this week. Every team got on the same flight to Madagascar easily although not all of them knew exactly where they were going to. “The only Madagascar I know is the movie,” Mary informed us. I was going to make a joke about how the Six-pack should fit right in because they’re a bunch of lemmings before I remembered that lemurs are not in fact the same as lemmings. Looks like the TAR racers aren’t the only ones who should have paid more attention in school.
On landing in Madagascar, the teams had to find a statue known as the Black Angel. The catch? The angel has recently been painted white. Why? Does Madagascar practise statue Apartheid? Tyler and James were especially happy to be visiting the “Dark Angel”. You can just imagine how the poor boys felt when they got there and Jessica Alba was nowhere to be found.
David and Mary managed to get out of the airport quickly and were hopeful that they’d be able to keep up the lead throughout the leg. Hey, I’m hopeful that I’m going to find a winning lotto ticket and buy my own island. Doesn’t mean there’s a shot in hell of it happening. Needless to say, David and Mary promptly fell behind once more.
In the Lyn car, Karlyn couldn’t resist this crack: “I don’t know why we’re looking for the Black Angel when she’s right here”. Well, you certainly have taken on the role as the heaven-sent arbiter of all that is moral and good on the race but I wouldn’t call you an angel yet. Sour-faced twatbunny maybe but not quite an angel.
Meanwhile, Ren and Stimpy admired the people of Madagascar in much the same way they had admired the people of India and the people of Vietnam. Bleeding heart Kimberly expressed her concern for the locals, much as she had expressed her concern for the homeless cows of India, and it was left to Rob to explain the socio-economic conditions of the Madagascan population; they
taste so good because they eat so good die a lot sooner than strapping yanks because they don’t eat enough protein. Protein is necessary for the brain’s development and because the locals don’t eat enough protein, their brains don’t develop. You can expect Dr Rob’s thesis on the very subject to be published in the very next issue of the Modern Scientific Lunkhead journal.
At the
Black Dark White Angel, a Detour involving either mattress-delivery or paper-making, a Fast Forward, and a new kind of route marker awaited the teams. The new route marker was an Intersection and forced the racers to team up with another couple and do the next task together. I think I’d like this twist better if their legs were tied together. The Zoolanders and Rob/Kimberly were the first to get to the Intersection and unsurprisingly teamed up. They decided to go for the Fast Forward.
The kitchen at Antananarivo McDonald'sOne of the producers must have been watching Fear Factor because the Fast Forward task was to eat a serving of scrumptious cow lips. The Zoolanders and Rob/Kimberly were horrified to see the filled plate of lippy bovine tastiness sitting in front of them. “It still has hair on,” Kimberly lamented. Oh, just eat the damn thing. Lord knows you and Rob need all the brain-developing protein you can get.
Back at the Intersection, the BQs were fretting over having to work with people who hated their guts. I got excited at the thought of a Lyn/BQ odd coupling but my hopes were dashed when the Lyns teamed up with Kentucky and the BQs were stuck with the Wins. Nice guys that they were, the Wins did not crumple to the ground and scream “WHY, GOD, WHY??!!” at the heavens but instead accepted their new allies graciously. “If you make it up on the mattresses, all is forgotten,” Godwin told them. Kink-ay.
Here’s where the Lyns’ BQ-hatred came back to bite them in the ass because as aggressive as they might be, the BQs are much stronger racers than David and Mary. Heck, anaemic, three-legged sloths are stronger racers than David and Mary. So the two not-very-physical teams of the Lyns and Kentucky were stuck trying to move mattresses and mostly stuffing it up while the much more physical BQs and Wins whooshed through the Detour much, much quicker.
I hope no-one his their porn stash under the mattressAlso still struggling were the FF teams. The racers could barely get the cow lips down and Kimberly was copiously vomiting every few minutes. James was the only one who could bear to eat them and he happily and creepily swallowed them one-by-one, looking rather like a cow-eating version of Charles Manson.
Now Kimberly knows how I feel watching her and Rob scream at each otherWith the FF teams taking so long, it looked like the other four teams might actually have a chance. Indeed, both the BQs and the Wins managed to get to the Roadblock before the FF teams were close to finishing. By this time, they were no longer bound by the Intersection so the Wins could finally stop emo-ing about having to work with the Blonde Machine against their beloved Back-Pack.
Dustin and Godwin set off to find rubber stamps while Kandice and Erwin were allowed to go ahead to the Pit Stop and wait there. At the Pit Stop, a terrifying sight greeted us; dancing Phil, doing what looked like a hula. I want a dancing hula Phil-doll for my car. It would at least scare off hijackers. At the sight of Phil bustin’ a move, Kandice herself showed some very dodgy dance moves. I hope that’s not her talent in pageants.
Dustin managed to complete the Roadblock at about the same time that the FF racers choked down the last of their nyummy Cow Lip McNuggets. I would have laughed my ass off if, despite the Intersection, only one of the teams could have won the FF and the other one would have eaten a whole plate of cow lips for no reason. Sadly this was not to be and both teams were told to head to the Pit Stop.
Guy, I'm pretty sure the next clue is not hidden in Kimberly's assJames and Tyler took the lead but before they could reach the Pit Stop, Dustin joined Kandice at the mat and they were declared first. First on a Fast Forward leg without having won it themselves – how badass and awesome is that? They really are the most impressive all-female team the race has ever seen.
The Zoolanders checked in a mere second. Hilarious! All those cow lips for nothing! They would so have had a better shot at first had they just stuck to the regular tasks. Rob and Kimberly checked in third, followed by the Wins.
This left Kentucky struggling at the back alongside the Lyns. Kentucky, as you’ll recall, were Marked For Elimination, which sounds like the title of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. The thirty minute penalty hanging ominously over her, Mary took on the rubber stamp hunt. She did manage to beat Lyn at the Roadblock but alas, she did not reach the Pit Stop in time to overcome the penalty.
Predictably, the Lyns stepped on the mat well before Kentucky’s time was up and my favourite coalminers were eliminated once and for all. Guess they couldn’t fumble their way through the race forever. They left us with some sweet words about how happy they were to have seen the world and how it made them realise how much they wanted their kids to experience different places and peoples like they had. Awww. I’ll miss those crazy kooks. Besides their entertainment value, there was something very endearing about them and it was very intriguing to experience the race through truly un-jaded eyes.
Next week: The producers pull some more on the audience’s collective heartstrings with
terribly obvious product placement messages from home. If you’re a cynical bastard who hates that kind of sentimentality, there are also people getting trapped in the mud.