Yo' Momma!
Amazing Race Season 9 - Episode 8

By jillybob
4/20/2006

Previously on The Amazing Race – hey, did Phil just say "esculated" instead of "escalated?" Ha. Clearly that fancy almost-accent didn't come with a fancy almost-education. Anyway, six teams left Sicily for Athens, Greece, and then some shit happened. I actually missed the last few weeks, but it looks like Lake called Michelle a bitch (well, it sounded like "beach," but I'm assuming he meant "bitch," because she doesn't look particularly sandy to me), and Monica called Greece "The place where thinking began," which is kind of funny, since a lot of the time Monica appears to be the place where thinking ends. But from what I can tell from the clips, Monica seemed to know that Greece came before America and maybe even Jesus, so that puts her ahead of at least half of all typical TAR contestants, and I should probably cut her some slack. Then a bunch of 'em had to take a flying leap off a bridge – sadly, with the help of bungee cords – and Lake and Michelle got their stupid asses eliminated. Yay!

We open with Phil telling us some historical crap about Greece, but I'm still reliving the "esculated" thing and can't take him seriously. Stupid Frat Fucks Eric and Jeremy are the first to depart, and they have to fly to Muscat, Oman. Oman is a 5000-year-old oil-rich Middle Eastern nation to which America has decided to bring TAR instead of democracy. Geez, if we'd tried that with Iraq we could have brought it to its knees in under a week, and we could all be sipping petroleum cocktails in our Hummers right about now. But I digress. Muscat is also the home to the world's biggest incense burner (no, seriously), where teams will find their next clue. Eric and Jeremy yammer on about how fast and superior they are, and then walk 20 feet to a visitors' center where they have to sit around until the 9 am bus to the airport and let all the other teams catch up. Joseph and Monica, Ray and Yolanda, Barry and Fran follow. Gee, the once Perfectly Reasonable Ray and Yolanda are getting mighty damn snippy with each other. The ever-chipper Hippies are the last team to depart and have to take 10 am bus all by themselves.

Obligatory 90 years spent watching everyone run around the airport looking for the best flight. Yeah, the Hippies end up on the flight that arrives an hour later than everyone else, but that's the most "interesting" thing that happens, and I'm really stretching there. The first flight gets in, and everybody heads off in search of the big incense burner. (There's a sentence you don't get to use every day.) In a TAR-typical display of cross-cultural awareness, Ray looks at the Arabic street signs and says, "I don't even know what language they speak over here, but I can't even look at these signs and know what's on them. They're all squiggly." <sigh> You know, sometimes, on TAR, it seems like just when you think the stupidest team has been kicked off, they leave the spirit of their stupidity behind, and infect a remaining contestant, causing them to come over all stupid. It's kind of depressing. Hey, Ray, you dumb fuck, you see that crap on the sign next to the "squiggles" that looks just like English? Frickin' genius. Even Fran can read that shit.

The Frat Fucks arrive at the big incense burner to discover that it doesn't open until 6 am. That's so lame. My hometown has a big incense burner that's open ALL NIGHT LONG. Oh, the parties we used to have. But no, Muscat's all provincial and crap, and now all the teams (including the Hippies) are caught up, just hanging out all night, waiting for the incense to open. Ray and Yolanda use the down time to argue some more. Eventually, morning arrives, and the teams open their clue to discover that they must travel to the sleepy fishing town of Sur and find the ferry crossing to get their next clue. It's not very exciting, if you ask me, but I guess it can't be all bungee jumping and giant incense burners.

Driving and yapping and driving and yapping. Ray and Yolanda get lost and fight some more. Turns out, the dirt road that leads to Sur has been flooded, and some random guy leads the teams one by one across the wash. Then everybody has to drive across a river, which is apparently a new and exciting adventure. Seems to me it's an awful lot like the driving across the flooded part, but without a random guy to help. Everybody charges through the river, but not without a ridiculous amount of action music and carrying on. Criminy, it's not like they have to do it in a Yugo, for God's sake. They've got SUVs, probably fueled by fine Omani oil. Fucking pussies.

It's a Detour! Camel or Watchtower. Hey, that doesn't rhyme. I thought the Detour choices always rhymed, or had some fun play on words. Maybe it rhymes in Arabic. I'll ask Ray. Anyway, Camel vs. Watchtower is not, as you might think, a choice between wearing the crotch of your pants revealingly tight and hosting "Big Brother" or wandering through suburban neighborhoods dispensing religious tracts. In Camel, teams must hoist an actual camel into a pickup truck and take it to some Bedouins. In Watchtower, teams must search one of three watchtowers for a message box and take the box to a guy in a silver shop (it's a silver message box, so it all makes sense). What transpires is something less than thrilling television, and I'm just going to skip it, except to say that the Frat Fucks get good and lost and spent an enjoyable amount of time (for me) driving around the desert with their camel, who looks about as thrilled with their company as I would be. Eric (or Jeremy) says, "We're just gonna drive 'til we're dehydrated and die." But he's only teasing, so don't get your hopes up.

Teams must now proceed to the village of Alhawiyah, home of the latest Road Block. Who is willing to work for food? I know I'm not. Teams must dig through 117 sand mounds until they find one of 6 buried shuwas. (A traditional Omani dish of spiced lamb wrapped in a palm-leaf bag and steamed in an underground oven.) The shuwa is not only the key to the next clue, but also their dinner for the night. So they gots ta get with the digging. Barry and BJ are the first diggers on the scene. It should be noted, at this point, that it appears to be the middle of the day, and they're digging for underground ovens in the middle of the desert. So I'm guessing it's a bit warm there. Monica is the next to start digging, and when she starts to complain, Joseph basically tells her to shut the fuck up, which I find simultaneously satisfying and pretty damn rude. A nearby camel also does not approve of Joseph's tone, and says the camel equivalent of, "Ooh, girl, you gonna let him talk to you like that? You just say the word and I'll kick him for you. And spit on him. Come on, just untie me."

Nobody's made any progress by the time the Frat Fucks get there. Jeremy makes a big show of manfully applying his lip balm, and then Eric starts digging. Whatever. Barry is the first to find a shuwa, and Monica gets one a minute or so later. Barry drops his back down his motherfucking hole, though, so we get a few extra minutes of Fran's supportive caterwauling before they can hit the road. Meanwhile, Ray and Yolanda are still on the way, fighting.

Back at the sand dunes, Tyler continues to shout words of encouragement to the increasingly surly BJ. Eric finds a shuwa, and for a second I think BJ will snap and kill him for it, but no. Fucking Hippies. Ray and Yolanda show up and seem grateful not to be the bickeringest couple on the screen for once. As BJ grumbles, "I had to dig for gnomes, I had to dig for food; you get to bungee jump and swing," and barks back at Tyler's chirpy directions, a digging Yolanda mutters, "You tell him, BJ." Then, Ray encourages Yolanda to "get a pattern going," and Yolanda, bless her heart, says, "Yo' momma got a pattern goin'." It doesn't make any sense, but God rewards her for her sass with a shuwa anyway. But poor BJ just drags his mangled hippie ass pathetically from mound to mound in the relentless desert sun. CBS decides to prolong the suspense with a nail-biting commercial break. I just don't know how I'll survive.

Success! BJ finds a shuwa, thanks a camel, and the Hippies are on their way to the pit stop. It's a race to the finish! Hey, I hope Ray and Yolanda have time to fight some more. Oh, good, they do. But Fran and Barry are harmony personified, and they're the first team to arrive, winning a trip to Rome (described in a spectacularly badly-edited voiceover from Phil). Joseph and Monica are team number two, followed by Ray and Yolanda, who stop fighting long enough to be glad they're still in the damn race. Eric and Jeremy get lost, again, and wander through the night. Meanwhile, BJ and Tyler are making decent time, and a bunch of cuts and edits and yammering from both teams keep us on the edge of our seats (meh) wondering who will get to the pit stop first. However will it end?

And the Frat Fucks are team number four. Yuck. Well, at least they're not first. No awkwardly described trip to Rome for them! Then the Hippies scamper on in, jumping around like spastic bunnies and eliciting a "will you look at these fuckwads?" gesture from Phil. He surprises them (but not us) with the good news that this is not a Philimination round, and all they have to do is give up all their money and crap, which shouldn't be so hard, what with them being hippies and all. Tyler spews some Zen crap about them not needing their possessions but just being the purest versions of themselves. Then they do a little happy dance. And that, my friends, is all she wrote. (my dirty-guy-dipstick is two drips from being bone dry, she's tired and disgusted and just doesn't have any more in her. Damn, these fuckers are dull.)

Next, on The Amazing Race: We get to watch Joseph and Monica fighting instead of Ray and Yolanda fighting. Good times.

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