The Amazing Race 33: Legs 8 to 11
Mar. 12th, 2022 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsAfter a long pandemic-induced break, time to finally finish the race...
Episode 8:
- The final three weeks begins on a beach near Thessaloniki, Greece (very close to the airport, interestingly enough), with self-drive on stick (much to Raquel/Cayla's delight, and Arun/Natalia's despair) to a clue pick up on top of an olive tree in an olive orchard... Ladders have been provided, but Ryan/Dusty and Kim/Penn just jump and grab it, while Raquel/Cayla grab it with a piggyback LOL. (Lulu/Lala and Arun/Nat do spot and use them, though) Next stop is a small vineyard for a Roadblock: "Who wants to wrap?" Phil Keoghan shows up to reveal that here they're growing grapes not to make wine, but to stuff the grape leaves with a rice mixture, and contestants are to make 60 of these stuffed leaves... Kim compares it to swaddling babies, while Dusty calls it a "leaf burrito" before citing his "extracurricular activities" LOL! (Our local broadcaster managed to leave it in, given how oblique that reference is ;-)) Meanwhile, Arun takes this task because he used to be a restaurateur (as revealed during the first Corsica cheese challenge, and again here) The real challenge is putting the correct side of the leaf out (Kim spots that the veins have to be on the inside, and Raquel/Cayla fall to last quickly) and plating it in 3 rows of 20 (Kim doesn't spot this before first check but quickly recovers) Dusty screams so loud at passing the task he suspects half of Greece heard him LOL. (There's also a bizarre picture-in-picture confessional over the footage of R/D running out of the vineyard :-\)
- Next stop is a food truck, and it's time for a different team to have nav issues instead of Arun/Nat, as LLLL have a hard time finding the truck, while the others have two challenges: spell out the special of the day: "Souvlaki" (Arun/Nat end up having to ask a passerby after spelling it "Schulaki" first go, previous teams get it right) and realize that the next stop is written on the wrapper... Given how long it's been since they've done clues like this, it's probably not surprising that all the teams are dumbfounded that they're not given their clue after finishing their souvlaki... Seems like Penn may have noticed the crew subtly panning towards the trash can he put the wrapper in after eating, and grabs the wrapper clue from there, while Raquel/Cayla are still doubtful even after noticing the writing on the wrapper, but decide to head off anyway...
- Next stop is St George Church, Heraklea (quick Google suggests this is Nea Iraklia), and Penn quips on the way, "I'm going to let Jesus take the wheel... and by Jesus, I mean Kim" :-) It's a second Roadblock: "Who's ready to become iconic?" It requires listening to a 16-minute lecture from a priest on 10 different saints, and then identifying five of those saints in a quiz from a vendor... In a confessional, Penn reveals (once again after the pre-Covid London leg) that he has ADHD and hyperfocuses on the task at hand, and he ends up managing it first go (!)
- Pit stop is at a pier in the nearby town of Nea Kallikratia... but LLLL manage to spot it before the food truck, and immediately recognize they're still a few tasks short, but they still get shown being told off by Phil anyway :-\ (quick look on Google Maps shows they're like 6km out of the way) Meanwhile, R/D are next to arrive at the church, and Ryan bails to the vendor after listening to five of the saints, and naturally doesn't have all the info he needs and has to go back... and be joined by the other teams (well, two of them) Ryan manages to hear "Next one" as he's leaving after 5 saints again, and the priest adds "Why are you in such a hurry?" LOL. (Ryan also quips "Welcome to hell" as Arun/Nat show up :-))
- LLLL's misfortunes aren't done after getting to the food truck: First they have to ask around like Arun/Nat after spelling the special dish as "Shovlikie", then they find themselves going through two souvlakis (and one of them has never had onion before, I might add) to figure out the wrapper clue (hilarious reaction from the proprietor when LLLL finally figure it out and pick up their clue in the trash), while the others are all listening to the priest lecture at the church... Meanwhile, Kim/Penn get $7.5k each at the pitstop, and although LLLL eventually manage to finish the church task (even complimenting the priest's eyes, LOL), and already know where the pitstop is, Arun/Nat manage to beat "the pink ladies" (tm Phil's greeter) But LLLL manage to exit with a splash (a literal one, as in jumping off the pier; insert flash-cut to skip over their strip-down), which Phil calls "the most dramatic exit we've had in a while" LOL!
Episode 9:
- Still in Thessaloniki, the contestants head to an amphitheater for a Roadblock, "Who will leave no stone unturned?" But first, Raquel/Cayla note that a) the city has been around for thousands of years, b) there's minimal road signage, and c) the road signs are not in English letters... but despite nav issues (not just for Arun/Nat anymore!) they manage to make it to the Roadblock "as if we had never screwed up" :-) Back to the Roadblock: This is one of those "needle in a haystack" tasks, involving turning rocks over until the contestant finds one with an embedded coin underneath (Kim calls it "the worst spa ever", in light of the music being played)... It's tedious, and all the remaining teams catch up and are doing it at the same time... The most notable part of the task is Kim randomly talking about the fail gong sound editing stuff, and of course the editors oblige her by showing her passing over one of the four coined rocks on several occasions :-\ There's an oracle cosplayer, with musicians, whose only job is to tell them to "leave no stone unturned", and hand over the clue once they're done :-) Eventually, Raquel/Cayla, Kim/Penn, and Arun/Nat get their stones in that order, while R/D get frustrated that they end up in last place after searching for like 2 1/2 hours (!) and would rather they were still doing cheese (...the same task that is why they haven't been leading the race in a while)
- Next stop is Triognion Tower, to visit a Socrates cosplayer (Kim: "Big fan of your work") who gives them a mini-sermon: "There is only one good... Knowledge. And one evil... Ignorance." Which ends up having nothing to do with the rest of the leg, as he just hands over a Detour clue between Bring 'em and Break 'em... and we mean plates :-) Both involve heading to the same cafe, and Bring 'em is a repeat of the stairs task in Lugano by delivering plates up a hill, while everyone decides to take out their aggression on the plates instead, by smashing them one at a time (only while a band is playing) until they find a tiny-sized clue (yes, another "needle in a haystack", but it's a much smaller one) Meanwhile, Nat is giving directions, and it's full of Greek placenames, and of course Arun doesn't understand (he quips "Are you speaking Greek?" then fake-laughs at himself :-))
- Pit stop is a place called the White Tower with a Diogenes the Cynic cosplayer as greeter... and he greets teams with another mini-sermon: "We have two ears and one tongue, so that we would listen more, and speak less" Raquel/Cayla get themselves a trip to Kauai, and they confidently declare that they will be TAR's 4th all-girl winner :-) Back at the amphitheater, Dusty is still searching for the coin, and Ryan has him take a break and take in the view from the top of the bleachers before resuming work... And after about 3 hours (!) Dusty finds his coin and finally moves on :-)
- The last 10 minutes are spent on Arun/Nat v Ryan/Dusty racing to the Trigonian Tower, then to the cafe, smashing plates and then racing to the White Tower, and the only notable part of this segment that's out of the normal is a dog briefly accompanying R/D on their search for the pit stop... Anyways, despite having a good share of bickering this week, Arun/Nat get the 3rd place finish (equaling their best finish waaaay back in leg 2), while R/D luck out with the last non-elimination... And the episode ends normally, instead of the usual final leg tease that normally ends the penultimate week, but that's because it's a two-hour/two-leg finale (gulp!)
Episode 10:
- After a ride in a charter plane (this one marked with the TAR word mark even!) the penultimate leg (and Phil Keoghan uses the exact word) opens in Lisbon, Portugal at a replica of Christ the redeemer... with a self-drive to a castle in Setubal, where contestants are to gaze from the castle to find a red and yellow flag at a nearby pier... And BTW, this leg will have two Roadblocks, the first of which is coming up :-)
- Roadblock: Who wants to explore? Look among a bunch of rowboats for one marked with the name of a Portuguese explorer, then row it over to the judge... There's one marked with Cristiano Ronaldo, thankfully Raquel/Cayla know off the bat that he's a soccer player (in other news, nice to see Americans starting to become familiar with England's Premier League soccer :-)) Kim/Penn and Raquel/Cayla bring in Fernao de Magalhaes (Magellan to most of us) and Bartholomeu Dias respectively... Meanwhile, Nat hands this one over to Arun, in case the other Roadblock is singing and dancing... turns out rowing is another thing he's incapable of :-\ R/D manage to catch up, make one wrong guess (poet Fernando Pessoa), and then row back and grab a correct boat (that Arun had his eye on: Vasco da Gama), all while Arun is still floundering in his first boat :-\
- Meanwhile, Kim/Penn are working on the next task: Painting a door matching the same pattern as an old-fashioned sardine can, because Portugal has been proud of their sardine exports for centuries (remembers that time I ate sardines at a Portguese restaurant in the Netherlands :-)) The address is on the can they've picked, and the background's already been filled in, so it's more a matter of filling in the stencil, though the judge (the mayor of Setubal, apparently) is stringent on things like filling in the black in holes in letters... Back at the rowing, after finally getting the hang of rowing and then missing with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Arun brings in Pedro Alvarez Cabral to get the clue...
- Last stop is Cabo Espichel in Sesimbra, for the 2nd Roadblock, officially titled on screen as "Who's down for the count?" but Penn just cuts the crap and calls it "Who has to do this Roadblock?" LOL! Meanwhile, Raquel/Cayla have somehow misplaced their map (suddenly that random shot of a map saying "Costa de Lisboa" makes sense now) and have to buy a new one at a gas station, while over at the painting, R/D find themselves repeatedly getting their inspection rejected 8 times, and it turns out they have to also paint over the doorknob in the middle of their picture (!)
- Back to the 2nd Roadblock, and it involves counting columns of a local church... all while standing in a relatively small area marked with stones at one end of the church grounds (!) And Penn's sight isn't what it used to be (and it seems like he wasn't allowed to wear his nerd glasses for this task :-\) and he finds himself having to run back at count again and again, while Raquel/Cayla manage to get the answer 1st go (106... just one off from 107 LOL ;-)) After running to a nearby lighthouse pointed at by the local priest, Raquel/Cayla get themselves a trip to St Lucia, while Kim/Penn manage to at least secure 2nd place after mentally marking off each 20 columns like Raquel/Cayla did... and it's not even remotely a race for 3rd, as R/D manage to knock out the task before Arun/Nat even show up, but this time around Arun/Nat aren't as sad to be eliminated again...
Episode 11:
- Final stop is LA, and once again, it's a ride via TAR charter, with Phil Keoghan performing the flight safety briefing for the remaining teams :-) He even quips "In case of emergency, read the clue... You'll find it in the seat pocket" Which it isn't, but anyways, all teams start at the same time, and the first stop is the Westin to spot the combination for a lock on the clue box, and the clue only mentions numbers going up and down, which Kim/Penn and Raquel/Cayla quickly figure out to be painted on the elevators... while R/D actually board the elevators and look for the clues inside there (to quote a Phil comment from a previous season: "Oy vey")
- Next stop is El Pueblo de Los Angeles: One person puts on a wrestling mask/blindfold, and the other aurally leads the blindfolded person to hit three designated pinatas and retrieve clue envelopes, which put together form the address of the next stop... One of the clues is in a tiny donkey pinata, and Penn spends a good chunk of time smashing all the donkeys until Kim spots it (Penn takes off his mask and sees the donkey carnage and is like "Was this my doing?" :-D) while Raquel/Cayla just do the smashing first and then pick up the clues afterward... R/D finally figure out the up-down numbers clue, but a la the Afghanimals a few seasons ago, we're not going to spend much time with them...
- While R/D are still in last at the pinatas (hilariously, their tiny donkey pinata craps its envelope after one hit, despite not being obliterated LOL), next up is a sound recording studio to foley TAR's greatest moments, like "My ox is broken" from season 5, Lena and Kristy's hayroll from season 6, Brooke and Claire's melon smash from season 17 (my mom reacted in mild shock to the clip :-D)... and "Running with the Ballz" from season 24 and a pie fight at a beer party in Germany (from season 5, I'm guessing? Not exactly memorable moments, those last two :-\ but lots of noise to foley) Plenty of pesky restrictions, but they boil down to two things: Make the sound in sync with the clip, and don't talk while you're foleying (Kim and Penn :-)) Maybe also don't accidentally break the props (Penn :-))
- The first to get the next clue are Raquel/Cayla, pointing them to a tennis court near the LA Galaxy's stadium, but Kim/Penn (for whom sound work is right up their alley since they're "Internet personalities" :-)) aren't too far behind (and even get directions from the same recording studio employee that Raquel/Cayla did), as they do the obligatory memory task, in which teams have to hang rackets with pictures of stuff they've seen on the race (none of the pre-Covid stuff, thankfully) over textual descriptions (for example: "You found this under a rock"... which they have to match with the specific coin they found in Thessaloniki; there's also the Diogenes mini-sermon as one of the answers) It appears that notes were allowed this time around, since Kim mentions in a confessional she made notes on the unique objects she saw on the race...
- After a buttload of rapid-fire switching between different coins, pinata candy, rowboats, Napoleon cosplayers and mini-jeeps, plus lots of yelling of "fault" by the judges (because of course they need to use tennis terms)... Kim/Penn are first to get "Game, Set, Match" and head to the LA Galaxy field to win the $1M prize, which they credit to "studying" (LOL!) before then saying they should acknowledge the camera crew working hard to make the race, well, race-able under Covid: "If there's ever time to show the people who are photographers on this show, I would do it right now." Sure enough, they include a nice shot of the production crew :-) They're the oldest couple to win the show (45 and 47, respectively) Raquel/Cayla brag about finishing in the top 2 for the last 5 legs... and well, so did Kim/Penn and that's arguably more remarkable... Meanwhile, R/D finish 3rd, and Phil quips that they'll probably never want to see/use/hear elevators again :-) R/D have a nice speech about Dusty being supportive and Ryan feeling like they've made up for the 10 years he was in jail... Kim/Penn give the final confessional with Penn crediting Kim with the win, and Penn closes out by saying "Cut, end credits", though they actually finish with a bit of finish line activity and a shot of the TAR sign at the field :-)
Episode 8:
- The final three weeks begins on a beach near Thessaloniki, Greece (very close to the airport, interestingly enough), with self-drive on stick (much to Raquel/Cayla's delight, and Arun/Natalia's despair) to a clue pick up on top of an olive tree in an olive orchard... Ladders have been provided, but Ryan/Dusty and Kim/Penn just jump and grab it, while Raquel/Cayla grab it with a piggyback LOL. (Lulu/Lala and Arun/Nat do spot and use them, though) Next stop is a small vineyard for a Roadblock: "Who wants to wrap?" Phil Keoghan shows up to reveal that here they're growing grapes not to make wine, but to stuff the grape leaves with a rice mixture, and contestants are to make 60 of these stuffed leaves... Kim compares it to swaddling babies, while Dusty calls it a "leaf burrito" before citing his "extracurricular activities" LOL! (Our local broadcaster managed to leave it in, given how oblique that reference is ;-)) Meanwhile, Arun takes this task because he used to be a restaurateur (as revealed during the first Corsica cheese challenge, and again here) The real challenge is putting the correct side of the leaf out (Kim spots that the veins have to be on the inside, and Raquel/Cayla fall to last quickly) and plating it in 3 rows of 20 (Kim doesn't spot this before first check but quickly recovers) Dusty screams so loud at passing the task he suspects half of Greece heard him LOL. (There's also a bizarre picture-in-picture confessional over the footage of R/D running out of the vineyard :-\)
- Next stop is a food truck, and it's time for a different team to have nav issues instead of Arun/Nat, as LLLL have a hard time finding the truck, while the others have two challenges: spell out the special of the day: "Souvlaki" (Arun/Nat end up having to ask a passerby after spelling it "Schulaki" first go, previous teams get it right) and realize that the next stop is written on the wrapper... Given how long it's been since they've done clues like this, it's probably not surprising that all the teams are dumbfounded that they're not given their clue after finishing their souvlaki... Seems like Penn may have noticed the crew subtly panning towards the trash can he put the wrapper in after eating, and grabs the wrapper clue from there, while Raquel/Cayla are still doubtful even after noticing the writing on the wrapper, but decide to head off anyway...
- Next stop is St George Church, Heraklea (quick Google suggests this is Nea Iraklia), and Penn quips on the way, "I'm going to let Jesus take the wheel... and by Jesus, I mean Kim" :-) It's a second Roadblock: "Who's ready to become iconic?" It requires listening to a 16-minute lecture from a priest on 10 different saints, and then identifying five of those saints in a quiz from a vendor... In a confessional, Penn reveals (once again after the pre-Covid London leg) that he has ADHD and hyperfocuses on the task at hand, and he ends up managing it first go (!)
- Pit stop is at a pier in the nearby town of Nea Kallikratia... but LLLL manage to spot it before the food truck, and immediately recognize they're still a few tasks short, but they still get shown being told off by Phil anyway :-\ (quick look on Google Maps shows they're like 6km out of the way) Meanwhile, R/D are next to arrive at the church, and Ryan bails to the vendor after listening to five of the saints, and naturally doesn't have all the info he needs and has to go back... and be joined by the other teams (well, two of them) Ryan manages to hear "Next one" as he's leaving after 5 saints again, and the priest adds "Why are you in such a hurry?" LOL. (Ryan also quips "Welcome to hell" as Arun/Nat show up :-))
- LLLL's misfortunes aren't done after getting to the food truck: First they have to ask around like Arun/Nat after spelling the special dish as "Shovlikie", then they find themselves going through two souvlakis (and one of them has never had onion before, I might add) to figure out the wrapper clue (hilarious reaction from the proprietor when LLLL finally figure it out and pick up their clue in the trash), while the others are all listening to the priest lecture at the church... Meanwhile, Kim/Penn get $7.5k each at the pitstop, and although LLLL eventually manage to finish the church task (even complimenting the priest's eyes, LOL), and already know where the pitstop is, Arun/Nat manage to beat "the pink ladies" (tm Phil's greeter) But LLLL manage to exit with a splash (a literal one, as in jumping off the pier; insert flash-cut to skip over their strip-down), which Phil calls "the most dramatic exit we've had in a while" LOL!
Episode 9:
- Still in Thessaloniki, the contestants head to an amphitheater for a Roadblock, "Who will leave no stone unturned?" But first, Raquel/Cayla note that a) the city has been around for thousands of years, b) there's minimal road signage, and c) the road signs are not in English letters... but despite nav issues (not just for Arun/Nat anymore!) they manage to make it to the Roadblock "as if we had never screwed up" :-) Back to the Roadblock: This is one of those "needle in a haystack" tasks, involving turning rocks over until the contestant finds one with an embedded coin underneath (Kim calls it "the worst spa ever", in light of the music being played)... It's tedious, and all the remaining teams catch up and are doing it at the same time... The most notable part of the task is Kim randomly talking about the fail gong sound editing stuff, and of course the editors oblige her by showing her passing over one of the four coined rocks on several occasions :-\ There's an oracle cosplayer, with musicians, whose only job is to tell them to "leave no stone unturned", and hand over the clue once they're done :-) Eventually, Raquel/Cayla, Kim/Penn, and Arun/Nat get their stones in that order, while R/D get frustrated that they end up in last place after searching for like 2 1/2 hours (!) and would rather they were still doing cheese (...the same task that is why they haven't been leading the race in a while)
- Next stop is Triognion Tower, to visit a Socrates cosplayer (Kim: "Big fan of your work") who gives them a mini-sermon: "There is only one good... Knowledge. And one evil... Ignorance." Which ends up having nothing to do with the rest of the leg, as he just hands over a Detour clue between Bring 'em and Break 'em... and we mean plates :-) Both involve heading to the same cafe, and Bring 'em is a repeat of the stairs task in Lugano by delivering plates up a hill, while everyone decides to take out their aggression on the plates instead, by smashing them one at a time (only while a band is playing) until they find a tiny-sized clue (yes, another "needle in a haystack", but it's a much smaller one) Meanwhile, Nat is giving directions, and it's full of Greek placenames, and of course Arun doesn't understand (he quips "Are you speaking Greek?" then fake-laughs at himself :-))
- Pit stop is a place called the White Tower with a Diogenes the Cynic cosplayer as greeter... and he greets teams with another mini-sermon: "We have two ears and one tongue, so that we would listen more, and speak less" Raquel/Cayla get themselves a trip to Kauai, and they confidently declare that they will be TAR's 4th all-girl winner :-) Back at the amphitheater, Dusty is still searching for the coin, and Ryan has him take a break and take in the view from the top of the bleachers before resuming work... And after about 3 hours (!) Dusty finds his coin and finally moves on :-)
- The last 10 minutes are spent on Arun/Nat v Ryan/Dusty racing to the Trigonian Tower, then to the cafe, smashing plates and then racing to the White Tower, and the only notable part of this segment that's out of the normal is a dog briefly accompanying R/D on their search for the pit stop... Anyways, despite having a good share of bickering this week, Arun/Nat get the 3rd place finish (equaling their best finish waaaay back in leg 2), while R/D luck out with the last non-elimination... And the episode ends normally, instead of the usual final leg tease that normally ends the penultimate week, but that's because it's a two-hour/two-leg finale (gulp!)
Episode 10:
- After a ride in a charter plane (this one marked with the TAR word mark even!) the penultimate leg (and Phil Keoghan uses the exact word) opens in Lisbon, Portugal at a replica of Christ the redeemer... with a self-drive to a castle in Setubal, where contestants are to gaze from the castle to find a red and yellow flag at a nearby pier... And BTW, this leg will have two Roadblocks, the first of which is coming up :-)
- Roadblock: Who wants to explore? Look among a bunch of rowboats for one marked with the name of a Portuguese explorer, then row it over to the judge... There's one marked with Cristiano Ronaldo, thankfully Raquel/Cayla know off the bat that he's a soccer player (in other news, nice to see Americans starting to become familiar with England's Premier League soccer :-)) Kim/Penn and Raquel/Cayla bring in Fernao de Magalhaes (Magellan to most of us) and Bartholomeu Dias respectively... Meanwhile, Nat hands this one over to Arun, in case the other Roadblock is singing and dancing... turns out rowing is another thing he's incapable of :-\ R/D manage to catch up, make one wrong guess (poet Fernando Pessoa), and then row back and grab a correct boat (that Arun had his eye on: Vasco da Gama), all while Arun is still floundering in his first boat :-\
- Meanwhile, Kim/Penn are working on the next task: Painting a door matching the same pattern as an old-fashioned sardine can, because Portugal has been proud of their sardine exports for centuries (remembers that time I ate sardines at a Portguese restaurant in the Netherlands :-)) The address is on the can they've picked, and the background's already been filled in, so it's more a matter of filling in the stencil, though the judge (the mayor of Setubal, apparently) is stringent on things like filling in the black in holes in letters... Back at the rowing, after finally getting the hang of rowing and then missing with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Arun brings in Pedro Alvarez Cabral to get the clue...
- Last stop is Cabo Espichel in Sesimbra, for the 2nd Roadblock, officially titled on screen as "Who's down for the count?" but Penn just cuts the crap and calls it "Who has to do this Roadblock?" LOL! Meanwhile, Raquel/Cayla have somehow misplaced their map (suddenly that random shot of a map saying "Costa de Lisboa" makes sense now) and have to buy a new one at a gas station, while over at the painting, R/D find themselves repeatedly getting their inspection rejected 8 times, and it turns out they have to also paint over the doorknob in the middle of their picture (!)
- Back to the 2nd Roadblock, and it involves counting columns of a local church... all while standing in a relatively small area marked with stones at one end of the church grounds (!) And Penn's sight isn't what it used to be (and it seems like he wasn't allowed to wear his nerd glasses for this task :-\) and he finds himself having to run back at count again and again, while Raquel/Cayla manage to get the answer 1st go (106... just one off from 107 LOL ;-)) After running to a nearby lighthouse pointed at by the local priest, Raquel/Cayla get themselves a trip to St Lucia, while Kim/Penn manage to at least secure 2nd place after mentally marking off each 20 columns like Raquel/Cayla did... and it's not even remotely a race for 3rd, as R/D manage to knock out the task before Arun/Nat even show up, but this time around Arun/Nat aren't as sad to be eliminated again...
Episode 11:
- Final stop is LA, and once again, it's a ride via TAR charter, with Phil Keoghan performing the flight safety briefing for the remaining teams :-) He even quips "In case of emergency, read the clue... You'll find it in the seat pocket" Which it isn't, but anyways, all teams start at the same time, and the first stop is the Westin to spot the combination for a lock on the clue box, and the clue only mentions numbers going up and down, which Kim/Penn and Raquel/Cayla quickly figure out to be painted on the elevators... while R/D actually board the elevators and look for the clues inside there (to quote a Phil comment from a previous season: "Oy vey")
- Next stop is El Pueblo de Los Angeles: One person puts on a wrestling mask/blindfold, and the other aurally leads the blindfolded person to hit three designated pinatas and retrieve clue envelopes, which put together form the address of the next stop... One of the clues is in a tiny donkey pinata, and Penn spends a good chunk of time smashing all the donkeys until Kim spots it (Penn takes off his mask and sees the donkey carnage and is like "Was this my doing?" :-D) while Raquel/Cayla just do the smashing first and then pick up the clues afterward... R/D finally figure out the up-down numbers clue, but a la the Afghanimals a few seasons ago, we're not going to spend much time with them...
- While R/D are still in last at the pinatas (hilariously, their tiny donkey pinata craps its envelope after one hit, despite not being obliterated LOL), next up is a sound recording studio to foley TAR's greatest moments, like "My ox is broken" from season 5, Lena and Kristy's hayroll from season 6, Brooke and Claire's melon smash from season 17 (my mom reacted in mild shock to the clip :-D)... and "Running with the Ballz" from season 24 and a pie fight at a beer party in Germany (from season 5, I'm guessing? Not exactly memorable moments, those last two :-\ but lots of noise to foley) Plenty of pesky restrictions, but they boil down to two things: Make the sound in sync with the clip, and don't talk while you're foleying (Kim and Penn :-)) Maybe also don't accidentally break the props (Penn :-))
- The first to get the next clue are Raquel/Cayla, pointing them to a tennis court near the LA Galaxy's stadium, but Kim/Penn (for whom sound work is right up their alley since they're "Internet personalities" :-)) aren't too far behind (and even get directions from the same recording studio employee that Raquel/Cayla did), as they do the obligatory memory task, in which teams have to hang rackets with pictures of stuff they've seen on the race (none of the pre-Covid stuff, thankfully) over textual descriptions (for example: "You found this under a rock"... which they have to match with the specific coin they found in Thessaloniki; there's also the Diogenes mini-sermon as one of the answers) It appears that notes were allowed this time around, since Kim mentions in a confessional she made notes on the unique objects she saw on the race...
- After a buttload of rapid-fire switching between different coins, pinata candy, rowboats, Napoleon cosplayers and mini-jeeps, plus lots of yelling of "fault" by the judges (because of course they need to use tennis terms)... Kim/Penn are first to get "Game, Set, Match" and head to the LA Galaxy field to win the $1M prize, which they credit to "studying" (LOL!) before then saying they should acknowledge the camera crew working hard to make the race, well, race-able under Covid: "If there's ever time to show the people who are photographers on this show, I would do it right now." Sure enough, they include a nice shot of the production crew :-) They're the oldest couple to win the show (45 and 47, respectively) Raquel/Cayla brag about finishing in the top 2 for the last 5 legs... and well, so did Kim/Penn and that's arguably more remarkable... Meanwhile, R/D finish 3rd, and Phil quips that they'll probably never want to see/use/hear elevators again :-) R/D have a nice speech about Dusty being supportive and Ryan feeling like they've made up for the 10 years he was in jail... Kim/Penn give the final confessional with Penn crediting Kim with the win, and Penn closes out by saying "Cut, end credits", though they actually finish with a bit of finish line activity and a shot of the TAR sign at the field :-)
