The Amazing Race: "My Nose Is On Fire" - Episode 1307

I guess Barack Obama paid attention to the little conversation we had last week before I gave him my vote, because once again, my beloved Starr found it necessary to strip to nearly nothing before taking on a task in this week's Leg of the Amazing Race. Thanks, Barry! Enjoy the fruit basket I sent ahead to the White House, too. If the previous tenants have gotten into it before you get there, feel free to go ahead and repeal that ridiculous Prop 8 ruling, as well. That'll show 'em. More Amazing Race after the jump...

 

Nick & Starr won their second Leg in a row last week, so they're the first off the block in New Delhi, India this time around. Their clue tells them to take a cab to Deshbandhu Apartments, and once they arrive, they find a very colorful Roadblock waiting for them. They'll have to take part in the Holi Festival, a traditional Indian ceremony that pretty much amounts to a moshpit with paint and religious undertones. Revelers in the ceremony are dancing around in the courtyard of the apartment building, throwing powdered paint and water at one another and making a bigger mess than I ever thought possible. Needless to say, it looks like a blast. One member of each team will have to make their way through the courtyard chaos, climb one of three ladders, and search through hundreds of empty Race clue envelopes in order to find one of six actual Clues that will lead them to their next destination. Needle in a haystack, you have officially met your match.

 

Starr decides to take this one on, and it's here that I get my second continuous week of gratuitous flesh as she strips down to shorts and a tank top and dives into the paint-soaked melee. She gets off fairly easy compared to some of the other Racers and grabs her team a Clue in record time, but when Nick attempts to wipe some paint off her face so they can press on, a random reveler blasts him full in the face with a big handful of pink powdered paint. HA! Boy, Nick, if you don't look sufficiently gay enough for the majority of the Legs of the Race, you've certainly accomplished that now. Starr shows her girly side while Nick's trying to clean her up by telling him to be careful and not smudge her makeup as he's wiping her off. Uh, sweetheart, you're covered in paint. I doubt anyone's going to notice.

 

Kelly/Christy, Toni/Dallas, Terence/Sarah, and Andrew/Dan are fairly close behind Nick & Starr by this time (in that respective order), and even Ken/Tina start to make up a little bit of ground, as well. Nick/Starr are off to the Charity Birds Hospital to search for their next clue, and Toni/Dallas pull up to the Holi Festival right as they're leaving. Dallas takes on the paint pit and races to find himself a Clue atop one of the three ladders, but the revelers aren't quite as kind to him as they were to Starr. Dallas finds the clue fairly quickly, but when he comes out of the courtyard, he looks like a big pink Incredible Hulk.

 

Kelly/Christy finally stop bitching about how bad everything smells on their cab ride over to the Apartments, and when they arrive, Kelly makes a mad dash for the ladders and the Clues. However, this girl has obviously never played a good game of Tag in her life, because all she does is run away from all the paint-throwers. To put it plainly, she barely makes it anywhere near the ladders at all. When she finally drags her ass up one of them and grabs an envelope, it's not one of the six real Clues hidden amongst the hundreds of phonies, so she has to wade back into the fray and try it again. And again. And yet again. Did she even know that she was supposed to find an envelope that wasn't marked 'TRY AGAIN'? Kelly is getting POUNDED by all the paint-throwing psychopaths in the crowd, and it is HILARIOUS. I feel for her a bit when she takes a fairly bad fall, but her incessant whining and bitching about all of it erases that sentiment in me completely. Christy doesn't help when she insists that the idea of anyone taking part in a celebration like this every year is just 'dreadful', either. Yeah, well, eating chocolate eggs to celebrate Zombie Jesus' birthday is a little weird too, princess. Try and follow along if you can.

 

Terence & Sarah show up next (Terence to Sarah: "Who's my girl?" Sarah: "You are!"), and they make Kelly look like even more of a loser by grabbing a clue within minutes. He made a big ugly American of himself by shoving at least five people out of the way to do it, and then bitched about it in the car to Sarah for twenty minutes after the two grabbed a cab, but hey - at least he knew enough to not pull the one marked 'TRY AGAIN'. Kelly continues to pull down one fake Clue after another, and it's not until Dan & Andrew show up and blow right by her with a Clue in their hand that she finally gets her shit together and gets one herself. The crowd isn't letting Christy get off easy, either, as they pound her with paint and water on the sidelines as she cheers on her frazzled teammate. Naturally, she freaks out and starts looking around for somewhere to check her hair. Sissy. Christy looks like a float in a Gay Pride parade by the time Kelly shows up with a real Clue, but bad luck grabs them both by the ponytail again when they can't find a cabdriver who wants their filthy asses messing up their nice clean cabs. Hilarious.

 

Ken & Tina show up last, and miraculously, they manage to get in the courtyard, up a ladder, out with a clue, and into a cab before Kelly & Christy finally find someone to drive them to their next destination. Ken & Tina are now in 5th place to the Trophy Wives' sixth, and now all teams are headed to the Charity Birds Hospital, which is pretty much what you'd think it is - a charity hospital for birds. Sick birds from all over the country are here at the hospital, and it's up to the teams to hunt through the rows and rows of cages for their next Clue. The hospital is located inside of a religious temple of some sort, so teams will have to take their shoes and socks off before they go inside. I'd be a little terrified of catching some brand of bird flu if it were me strutting amongst all those birds with nothing protecting my precious little tootsies, but because this little detail allowed me to view two more unclothed body parts of Starr's, I'll keep my complaining to a minimum. Nick and his sister were the first to arrive at the hospital, and they find their Clue hidden in a cage way in the back. It's a Detour, and the two options available to them are as such.

 

Bleary-Eyed - Teams must make their way down a downtown street, keeping their eyes peeled for a randomly-placed collection of tiny white numbered tags hidden amongst the spaghetti-like chaos of powerlines, street signs, and bric-a-brac strung up all over the damn place. Once they've found them all, they must locate the man with the sewing machine at the end of the street so he can check their work and provide them with directions to a shop across the street. There is a light-up musical statue of the Indian god Ganesh waiting to be plugged in at the shop, and once that's accomplished, they'll receive their next clue. 

 

In their other option, Teary-Eyed, teams will haul two forty-pound bags of chili peppers to a shop 1/4 of a mile away. They'll have to pound a large portion of these peppers into powder to receive their next clue, a task that's a lot more formidable than it may sound like. Ever cut up a lot of chili peppers all at one time? The fumes that emit from them are incredible, and I'm proud to say that I once forced an entire household of Christmas party attendees to run outside with tears in their eyes while making a tray of my signature jalapeno poppers. Good times. Nothing like the holidays to bring people together.

 

Terence bitches a bit more about the paint challenge in the cab ride to the bird hospital, and then he forces Sarah to make a complete ass of herself while searching the bird cages for the Clue. She actually gets down on all fours in one of the larger cages to search under a food bin, and it's all she can do to keep herself from slapping him when the Clue turns up in an empty cage down the hall. They choose Teary-Eyed, and they're off. Dan & Andrew are next, and they're right behind Nick & Starr on the Bleary-Eyed task. Speaking of Nick & Starr, they once again make the damn thing look easy. After making a temporary alliance with Toni & Dallas, the two teams find the numbered tags within a matter of minutes. The two teams receive their clue and grab a pair of cabs and to the next Pit Stop in a dead heat to the end of the Leg.

 

We'll catch up with our leaders in a few minutes, though, as it's time to watch Ken & Tina take on their Speed Bump, a required Loser Task they received after escaping elimination last week. To complete it, they'll need to hand out glasses of Holy Water to worshippers at a nearby Sikh temple. Tina got dyed a lovely shade of green at the Holi Festival, so she's quite the sight to see as she hands out of cups of the blessed drink to hundreds upon hundreds of people. She makes me shiver a little bit as she utters the words "God Bless You" with every cup she hands out, but given the fact not a lot of people understand what she's saying in the first place, I'll give her a break. Whatever you do, Tina, please don't offer their God a peanut. Ken & Tina rub elbows with the locals rather well despite their blasphemy, and it's not long before they finish their Speed Bump and move along to the Detour. They choose Bleary-Eyed, and because of the multitude of colors they're going to be washing out of their hair for the next week or so, it's rather fitting.

 

Kelly/Christy and Dan/Andrew get their clues at the bird hospital next, and they both choose Bleary-Eyed as well. Kelly & Christy try to find the numbered tags from the luxurious comfort of the back a motorized rickshaw (their driver's attempts at showing them the sights and landmarks along the way had me in hysterics), and Dan/Andrew get right back to their usual amount of blundering. Ken/Tina get stuck in traffic, so they get out of the cab and start physically clearing traffic so they can get through. They're actually pushing abandoned carts and rickshaws out of the way with their bare hands, and man, I thought L.A. at rush hour was rough. 

 

Let's get first and second place out of the way here. After getting their clues at the shop with the musical Ganesh statues, Nick/Starr & Toni/Dallas found themselves in a short taxicab race to the Pit Stop, a 16th century collection of royal mausoleums called Hayuman's Tomb. The first team to find Phil and grab a Travelocity trip to Kauai for two is... Nick & Starr! HURRAY! That's three in a row for the brother & sister, and I'm pretty sure that this is the first season of the Race where two threepeats have occurred in this fashion. The brother & sister team are a force to be reckoned with, and unless something disastrous happens, they should be able to make the final three in the finale a few weeks from now without any problem. Toni & Dallas arrive soon after, and yet again, I have to hand it to them. They're playing well, finishing high in the rankings week after week, and actually starting to show some personality, to boot. Dallas' running along with the helpful children assisting them in their search for the start to the Bleary-Eyed challenge was very inspiring. Let's hope they make it to the final three, as well.

 

Terence & Sarah were the only team to take on the Teary-Eyed option on the Detour, and the sweat & tears pouring out of every hole in their bodies as they chop up pound after pound of red-hot chili peppers tells me they might be regretting it. After what seemed like hours, the pair finally pound enough chilis into powder and receive their Clue to the Pit Stop, at which they arrive at in third place. If I had a choice to round out that final three, I would choose Terence & Sarah. Sarah's hilarious and all kinds of fun to look at, and Terence... Oh, Terence. If you'd stop whining for five seconds and realize how well you're doing on this Race with such an awesome woman at your side, you'd probably enjoy it a little more.

 

Back to Dan & Andrew's blundering. The Douchenozzles start picking numbers from entirely the wrong places along the crowded street, and as a result, Sewing Machine Man turns them away again and again. They run into Kelly & Christy after a while, and when they ask the Trophy Wives if they want to start working together to knock this damn thing out, they get turned down flat. "I don't think so," a uniformly bitchy Christy responds. Fortunately for Team Douche, though, Ken & Tina stumble their way into the thick of things and actually do help the frat boys with picking the right numbers to submit to Sewing Machine Man in exchange for a Clue. Kelly & Christy get what's coming to them when both Dan/Andrew and Ken/Tina start tearing through the task, but it comes down to a grueling haul through deadlocked traffic for all three teams after they all receive their clue. Kelly & Christy try to bring the bitchy one more time by hiding their answers from Ken/Tina, so I was elated when Team Hatchetface (Ken & Tina) somehow maneuvered their cab ahead of the Trophy Wives and arrived at the Pit Stop in fourth place.

 

So who will it be? The Douchebags or the Trophy Wives? It's pretty much of a tossup as the two teams battled their way through the nightmarish Indian traffic. Here we are at the Mat with Phil and some guy who keeps stopping to water the plants when he isn't greeting the arriving Racers, and fifth place goes to... Dan & Andrew! That means Kelly & Christy are out, and with how much bitching, whining, and queening out we got when things got rough for them this time around, I can't say I'm too broken up about it. Especially since their arch-rivals Nick & Starr got first place in the very same Leg. Heh. I guess knocking that sports bra off the ledge a few weeks back paid off after all. Thanks for helping out, gust of wind!

 

 

Performed Road Block: TERENCE, STARR, KEN, DALLAS, DAN, KELLY

 

Bleary Eyed: KEN/TINA, TONI/DALLAS, NICK/STARR, ANDREW/DAN, KELLY/CHRISTY

Teary Eyed: TERENCE/SARAH

 

1. Nick & Starr (Third straight first-place finish, Travelocity trip to Kauai, 2008 Honorary Recipient of the Quentin Tarantino Foot Fetish Award For Excellence)

2. Toni & Dallas

3. Terence & Sarah

4. Ken & Tina

5. Andrew & Dan

6. Kelly & Christy (Eliminated, will be blaming it on that bitch Starr until the day they die)

 

Next week's ep looks like it might contain a first-time event - all of the teams departing at the same time in the middle of the Race while battling for a Fast-Forward. Interesting. I'll continue my hope for more sports bra-related action. Seems to be helping me out just fine so far.

 

-littlebigmouth.