Amazing Race Review

Spoilers ahead!

One of the things that the FP Gal and I do is pay close attention to the starting time of each of the teams. We're not quite certain that the editing crew plays fair with chronology and the start of the show is pretty much the only place that they give us a concrete time for each of them. This week started with only a half hour spread from first to last.
First up was a flight from Sydney to Tokyo. There was a choice between a direct flight that would arrive at 615a and a connection through Hong Kong with a 6a arrival. Normally I'd always choose the nonstop, especially since the advantage was only 15 minutes. But . . . the connection time in HKG was a full three hours, plenty of time. I hemmed and hawed and told the FP Gal that I'd risk the connection. Of course that flight had a delay and ended up an hour and half late.
All of the teams had to drive themselves in Tokyo traffic. Which was nightmarish. The Cheerleaders clipped someone's mirror and ran into a serious delay. The Japanese man that they hit called the police. Imagine being in a race, near the bottom of the pack and trying to figure out a small traffic accident with someone who didn't speak English. Very deflating.
The teams had to mirror a traditional Japanese dance and shoot an arrow from the back of a false horse. There is an elegance and grace to Shinto culture and especially architecture. This episode did a good job of displaying that. This is one of the things that the Amazing Race does really well.
Then the teams had to choose between two tasks. One of them had them drive up a mountain and, after some brief chanting, stand under a very cold waterfall for a full minute. Very straight forward and the teams went pretty quickly.
The other task was a search for a lucky frog. This involved crawling around in a giant mud pit while other people threw mud at them. These searching tasks are always a crap shoot. If luck goes against you the search can go on forever. And did I mention that it was pretty cold? And that the sun set on the later teams? It was brutal.
One team basically quit. This team had the oldest member and frankly it was too much. They were very nice guys and we wished them well but . . . we weren't sad to miss out on a few more episodes of them suffering.
Beautiful scenery, lots of human drama and a competitive finish. What else can you ask for?