I can understand how they did have some trouble: there didn’t seem to be two divers available to demo the task (that seems a bit unfair), and Tammy and Victor’s highly different weights (well, not HIGHLY different, Victor’s skinny as a rake), but at the same time they seem to have edited out the scene where they honestly knew what synchronized diving was. I understand that you might have trouble figuring out which of you is too early or late, but it’s a fairly simple concept in terms of the basic idea: you jump at the same time, at the same height, and hit the water at the same time. What I found fascinating about this episode was that neither of the two teams who tried the Synchronized Diving task seemed to actually know what synchronized diving was, or at least not as far as I could see. I loved Tammy’s observation last week that, most of the time, all their language skills give them is the ability to know that what their cab driver is saying is that they have no idea where they’re going – other than that certainty, they’re no better off than any other team. Perhaps this is why the two tasks here were either a test of one’s pain threshold (the excrutiating foot massage roadblock) or a task that was American as Apple Pie (at least in the Michael Phelphs-inspired half of the challenge) other than being certain they would get to the proper gate of the sport complex, they were once again kept from using the skills for a definitive advantage. In casting a team who understood Chinese and who had even traveled extensively in the country, they knew they would gain an upper hand if pivotal legs in the race were held in the country. I almost feel as if this leg was designed so as to keep Tammy and Victor from gaining too much of a language advantage. While last week’s episode may have been about personal exhaustion creating drama, I have slightly more of an issue when the producers are outright creating these kinds of reaction. Unfortunately, or fortunately for the racers’ sanity, there is no such event this week, as the teams travel to Beijing for a mostly uninteresting leg that seems almost mean in its efforts to accelerate the teams’ killer fatigue to the point of outright exhaustion. This is a highly competitive race wherein emotions are high, and the best course of action in conflict is to chalk it up to a misunderstanding: lobbing accusations never gets anyone anywhere, except for the Amazing Race editors who got material to make an unsuspenseful episode extremely engaging. Killer fatigue playing the role that it does, emotions were high, but I tend to be on the side that Margie crossed a line when she attempted to claim it was deaf-bashing, an argument that felt like a defensive action she had in her pocket the entire race almost searching for an excuse to pull it out. However, I should have been doubly aware of this when queuing up last week’s episode of The Amazing Race, which I had no idea featured a spectacular meltdown of epic proportions as Jen and Luke got into TWO consecutive footraces resulting in TWO highly physical confrontations where a combination of aggressiveness and Luke’s sensitivity to physical contact (as he would be unable to hear them coming) created a whole overblown scenario. Now, admittedly, I shouldn’t watch TV in public as a general rule: I tend to be fairly reactive (aren’t we all?), and while an airport creates a cramped space that gives you some pause before overreacting an airport lobby feels open and results in some rather embarassing outbursts of laughter or shock. One of my favourite travel stories from my trip to California was that, when I was waiting for a late flight from Toronto to Halifax, I sat down in the departures area to watch the previous night’s episode of The Amazing Race. “Having a Baby’s Got to Be Easier Than This”
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