Amazing Race 12, episode 8 recap


Hot on the heels of last week’s heart-pounding adventures in Florence, Italy, the teams are on their way to Mumbai, India! I’m currently reading a book about Bombay so I was quite excited to see some of the sights, at least vicariously.

Anyway, all the teams head to the airport super early, only to find that it’s closed. All the teams except Nick and Don, that is, and they enjoy a good night’s sleep after making a phone reservation for the first flight out. Once the doors open to the airport, it’s a war of the line-ups again, like it is in every episode. What I can’t figure out is, if there’s two line-ups within plain sight of one another, why doesn’t one team member go to one, and the other to another and just signal each other if one finds a good flight first ?!

Anyway, the first three teams find a flight that gets them into Bombay at 10:35pm. Despite being told that the next flight didn’t get in until 1am, Kynt and Vyxsin managed to find a flight that got them in at 10:50pm, and made a big production of pretending that they were really stressed out and disappointed to make TK and Rachel think they hadn’t found a flight. And since TK and Rachel are my favourite team, I was pretty annoyed by this whole thing.

BUT when the teams got to Mumbai, their first stop is a newstand that doesn’t open until 6am. So in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter when the teams arrived — they all had an equal chance. Wicked.

So once the newstand opened, they had to go through the daily paper and find a teeny tiny ad telling them where to head. Teams with good concentration and focus got ahead. Meanwhile, Jen and Nate, who started off the show by saying that they were embarrassed by how much they’ve been fighting, spent precious time–you guessed it–yapping at one another. Henceforth, they were the last ones to get to the detour.

The detour was a choice between posting a huge, multi-piece Bollywood poster on the wall of an underpass, or stringing 108 flowers for a wedding garnish. TK and Rachel used this as their chance to get ahead–Rachel is a florist in real life, so the flower task was a snap for her. Ronald and Christina had yet another nasty fight over this task, and it was pretty painful to watch.

And as for Kynt and Vyxsin and their speedbump? Their task was to do some yoga, which they did with ease, and it made them all the more calm and focused for the flower-threading task they did next. By the time they finished, they were neck-in-neck with Nate and Jen, speed bump be darned. I guess I don’t even need to tell you that Nate and Jen were bashing each other during this task too — Nate told Jen she should be better at stringing flowers because she’s a girl, and she snapped back that he should know how to row a boat, then. Meow!

The next clue had a bright, shiny U-Turn beside it — everyone avoided it, except for Kynt and Vyxsin. At the time, the only people behind them were Nate and Jen, and when I saw them stopping at the U-Turn, I did a small squee of joy because I was sure they would U-Turn the bickering couple. No such luck though — they chose to U-Turn Nick and Don, who were well ahead of them, because ‘they’re usually one of the slower teams.’ Huh? Nick and Don have kicked ass in this game if you ask me.

The next task was a roadblock (meaning only one person can complete it) and it was a physically demanding one — teams had to deliver heavy metal propane cans door-to-door and wheel them around on a bike. Which left me wondering why Ronald took on the task with his hernia and all — I think it’s probably something Christina could have handled. Anyway, Jen earned rare points in my books by insisting on doing the task instead of Nate — I like women who are willing to take on the heavy lifting. My loudest laugh-out-loud moment was during this task–Kynt had some trouble with his bike and rammed the cart into a cement wall — luckily, some villagers stopped to show him how to use the brake.

This episode was tense, with the Goth Couple and the Bickering Couple neck-in-neck for most of the duration, but in the end, a careless mistake–not getting the proper receipts on his gas can deliveries–cost Kynt and Vyxsin the game. They came in last only by a hair, and I’m sad to see them go.

As for first place? I’m happy to say it was TK and Rachel who took the top stop, and they won themselves a fancy trip to St. Maarten.

Only four teams left — we’re down to the wire now! Stay tuned.