Amazing Race Family Edition Recap IIOkay, I was obviously wincing at my comment from last week about the Rogers family, as Daddy Rogers, the leader of the family, said let's take 30 East instead of 30 West, leading his family in the wrong direction. He seemed set to take the rap as the villain but he admitted his mistake after some typical old man grumbling.
And my favorite team from last week, the Gaghans, promptly demonstrated the problem with a family of runners as they decided to run around one Reflecting Pool without ever, errr, reflecting that there might be two such pools. I probably would have been hosed myself though since the wrong Reflecting Pool is the one in the famous scene in Forrest Gump.
Can I talk about the obvious here? It is clear that this is going to be a US-based Amazing Race. We had the Revolutionary War reenactment last week and today comes the Civil War. The race started in New York, moved across NJ to PA, then MD to DC. It's going to be something of a Patriot-Fest, with exposure to some very different communities and eras in the country's history. I'd be surprised if we see them go outside the country now.
Which makes it interesting to speculate on what they'll do in the next couple episodes. You gotta know we're going to get hit with a slavery episode somehow; hopefully the tasks assigned won't be overbearing--no cotton picking, for example. Perhaps a race across the ice floes?
Still the occasional dose of political correctness won't spoil the backdrop that I anticipate: America the Beautiful. We've already gotten some terrific glimpses of it so far.
Anyway, tonight the teams started out basically even. One of the things I keeps meaning to do but never get around to is recording the initial starting times of each team. It is my recollection that the 2nd through 6th teams started within 12 minutes of each other; certainly closer than what appeared from last week's finish.
First stop: Shoehouse. Cute way of engaging the kids, I'd suspect. Second stop: Reflecting Pool, Washington DC. As noted above, many of the teams assumed that meant the one between the Washington and Lincoln monuments, but in fact it was a much less famous pool in front of the Capitol Building. This put a big whammy on the Gaghan family which reached DC in first place but left it in 7th.
A little bit of secret agentry follows. The families get a briefcase from a limousine, then have to try to exchange it with people walking around the Tidal Basin with the cornball codewords, "The sky is blue" and "the sea is green".
The next and final stop is a detour. Teams have to choose whether to haul wounded soldiers from a Civil War battlefield or do some gawd-awful thing with lamps. Most choose the former and the race really boils down to who can haul the corpses off the field. Surprisingly the middle-aged man who looked in good shape turns out to be weaker than his three daughters, but the Italian immigrant outlasts his apparently strong sons.
The widow and her three daughters win tonight. The Rogers family is eliminated, largely, we are led to assume, by the father's mistake. Even assuming that's true, what is the message that kids are getting from the show? That Dad's wrong, and that teenaged boy is right. Yes, in terms of reading maps sometimes that happens. But I worry about presenting it that way to children.
The Paulo family was clearly chosen for comic relief, but they also provided a little vindication for the older generation. The one boy moaned and groaned while Dad and Mom shouldered the load.
In the Detour, I was really impressed again with the Gaghans. It seemed obvious that they had made a mistake in taking the more physical challenge, but the boy, despite some griping, held up his end of the load and Mom and Dad, who are clearly athletes bombed through a challenge that distressed many more clearly physical teams. Don't get me wrong--kids are a tremendous disadvantage in this game. I suspect that two more adults would have said, hey, let's find out if there's another reflecting pool, like maybe near the Capitol; in effect that's what happened with most of the teams.
Viking Pundit reminds us that the Amazing Race is indeed
like a sport depicted in another Tom Hanks film.
