Watching last night’s episode of The Amazing Race, I realized that I’ve just about had it with Riley and Ann-Marie.
Everything about them just strikes me as being fake. Yes, they’re big fans of teams working together and, every episode, we get at least one self-righteous monologue about running the race the right way and not being mean. But I can’t help but notice that, for the most part, when Riley and Ann-Marie say, “Let’s work together,” what they really mean is “Help us.” As well, the whole “Boss Lady Alliance” thing would be a lot more impressive if they weren’t constantly finishing at the back of the pack. When you look at how well Ann-Marie and Riley work together and also at how athletic the two soccer players are, you have to really wonder if maybe they’d be doing better if they concentrated on running their own race instead of worrying about an alliance that Ann-Marie and Riley decided to start because they had some time to kill in an airport. (To me, the best part of last night’s episode was Ann-Marie and Riley insisting that the back six teams should all work together at the intersection and then leading everyone to the wrong location.) It seems that every episode will feature at least one clip of Riley bragging about being a Marine, one clip of Ann-Marie bragging about how nice they are, and one clip of them briefly getting frustrated because they think they deserve more help than they’ve been given. I don’t care how much they chant “BLA,” this is a race. No one is watching this show to see people work together. We’re watching to see them compete.
On the other hand, Matt and Michelle are regularly presented as being this season’s villains, just because they’ve rejected the whole “Let’s help each other!” thing. But Matt and Michelle are consistently finishing in first place and they’re working well together, so really, it seems like they’ve found what works for them. When Matt said that he wasn’t good at working in a group, I wanted to cheer. Some people just aren’t group people. Erin and I have often joked about going on The Amazing Race. If we did, we wouldn’t help anyone.
Actually, we probably would help Doug and Dylan. They’re nice and I felt bad for them at the Intersection, when the teams actually were required to work together and no one wanted to work with Doug or Dylan. (The fact that Dylan and Erin ended up finishing the task relatively quickly was very satisfying.) Doug and Dylan were the last to arrive at the pit stop but, fortunately, this was the first non-elimination leg of the race. Yay!
Here’s how everyone finished tonight:
Matt and Michelle came in first and Daisha and Dalton came in second. They did it by running their own race and not following someone to the wrong location. Matt and Michelle also used their express pass. (For some reason, it didn’t register with me that they were lying when they earlier told Anuar and Andrea that they had already used it. So, I was genuinely surprised.)
Conner and Garrett, my favorite team, used their express pass and came in third. Conner and Garrett are a good example of how to be nice without being obnoxiously self-righteous about it.
Anuar and Andrea came in fourth. They’re proving to be a much stronger team than I expected.
Erin and Javi managed to come from behind and come in fifth. They’ve struggled with consistency but they do work well together.
Ann-Marie and Riley came in sixth and Ali and Joanna came in seventh. Again, for all the talk about being boss ladies, it’s been a while since either team has had a really strong finish.
And finally, Doug and Dylan came in last but yay! Non-elimination!
At the end of this episode, the teams flew to Sri Lanka and met Phil on a beach, where he announced that it was time for the teams to vote for who would get hit with the dreaded Double U-Turn! We ended on a cliffhanger but I would be surprised if Matt and Michelle don’t get U-turned. Hopefully, they’ll survive.
