My thoughts on The Amazing Race

[maveness]

I've never watched TAR until this year, although I have seen the finales of a few of the past ones.

Well, this year has sucked me in.


I don't like the Twins.

I don't have feelings either way for the Bowling Moms.

On some weird level I like Brandon and Nicole. Yes, they're both fairly brainless, but they amuse me because their "fighting" is so innocuous. I could see them living a long, happy, blissful life.

I really like Chip and Kim. While they started off rocky (like when Chip got into it with the twins over the cab), but they've altered their playing style and are by far the most entertaining, least offensive couple. Because they're also fiesty.

Here's my thing...I'm really hoping that if any of the contestants takes a swing at Colin, they won't get kicked off.

I have an absolute loathing for Colin. He's psycho. Well, not psycho in the technical sense, but abusive, despicable, and generally a pitiful excuse for a human being with extreme control and anger management issues? Yeah, that would describe him.

He's an alpha male to the core. I have to say, halfway through last night I was sitting with my mouth open and just staring in shock. He is going to hit Christie at some point. Maybe not on the show, but at some point down the road. He is truly frightening.

And he's delusional on a grand scale. He has Christie so brow-beaten that she actually *believes* that she was harping on him. Hi, Colin, harping isn't harping WHEN SHE'S TRYING TO KEEP YOU FROM BEING ARRESTED IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY! She in NO way was making things worse. He was doing splendidly all by himself with his jackass attitude. Would I have tried to get out of paying the full fare? Yes, because of the guy riding on a doughnut. That in and of itself was the fault of the taxi driver, even if he *did* want to make some money and possibly couldn't have afforded a new tire. But Colin wasn't going to win that argument because of the way he handled it (by screaming and yelling and being belligerent) and because he wanted to only pay half (when he should have gone from $100 to $80, or something far more reasonable).

But then again, Colin is apparently not in touch with reality.

That leads me to Charla and Mirna. I liked Charla. Mirna...definitely not. Mirna was a straight up bitch. But at this point, I think Mirna's bitchiness, combined with Colin's control issues, were a recipe for disaster. She was a very strong-willed female using very female wiles to get ahead of him in a game. Whereas other teams just didn't like Mirna and avoided her, Colin went out of his way to be as in-your-face with her as possible (and thereby making her even bitchier...boy, they sure brought out the "best" in each other).

I have high hopes for next week based on the previews. I can't help but hope that Colin does something so bad that he'll be kicked off, or that Christie will just flat out quit the game.

Comments

[angelsgracie.livejournal.com]

Oh cool!!! Someone else how watches TAR!!!!!

My favorite couple this season is Chip and Kim. They are really taking this experience and enjoying it. When they took that boat across the Nile you could just see it in Chip's face... he was in Heaven.

I'm with you on Brandon and Nicole too! They really are not the most intelligent team, but they are fun to watch. They aren't especially mean to one another. (I really loathe the teams that are just mean and spiteful.)

That, of course, brings me to Colin. That man completely needs to be knocked on his ass. Never, in all five seasons, has a contestant bothered me on the level that Colin has. I'm half afraid of what would happen to Christie if she just sat on her butt and refused to move. More than likely she'd wind up hospitalized. *sigh* He is truly very disturbing.

[jollycynic.livejournal.com]

I almost liked Charla. Until she wanted to fight her way onto a plane, and claimed that she had to get onto this plane because she needed to see 'el doctor'. Lying on a reality TV show is nothing new. Some lies, though, are completely inexcusible. Manipulating someone by faking a life-threatening illness is nothing short of a small-scale version of putting a Red Cross on a weapons depot to keep it from being a war target. So when Charla joined Mirna in making death-giving faces out the door of the ticket agent's office in Egypt, I wasn't exactly shocked.

Mirna, as you said, was a straight up bitch. Her lies were constant, her manipulation pervasive. Though I had no love for the brothers, I burst out laughing when Lance (I think Marshall, Brooke thinks Lance) shouted, "Bitch!" out his window as he drove past her, and Mirna had no idea who'd said it. I hated Mirna so much that I was actually on Colin's side when Mirna described him as keeping weak women around him so that he could control him. She was quite astute on that point, but I didn't want any of it out of her. Did you notice that she did only two of the Road Blocks (chasing the calves and digging for the mysterious scarab), and forced Charla to do the rest, even though Charla generally begged not to be picked?

I like the twins for two reasons. They cute as hell, and dumb as bricks. They're not dumb in the intelligence manner. They just don't think ahead. They almost refuse to. I have yet to see a single episode where they plan ahead more than about forty seconds. They're fun to watch the same way that a Mr. Magoo cartoon is fun to watch. You don't know what disasterous thing they're going to do next.

The Bowling Moms are hysterical. I honestly believe that they're not even in it to win, just to have some fun. I'm completely shocked that they've managed to stay in it as long as they have. Even after the pitstop at the Sphinx, losing every penny, they managed to get to the sand dunes with more money than Chip and Kim. That's impressive to me. And they have so much fun. They didn't bitch and moan and yell at each other when they got stuck in the sand. They laughed. How can you not love that? You KNOW Colin would have been blaming Christie's poor navigation skills.

I really, really like Brandon and Nichole. I think they're both a little insane. But when they fight, it's about the silliest stuff. You can tell that it's nothing more than an outlet for them for the stress they're feeling over being in the thick of the race. I thought Brandon was a bit like Colin at the first of the race, but the whole caviar thing really set the record straight on who actually cared for whom in this race. They were such a cute couple after the caviar task that I started to like them soley for that reason.

I also really, really love the contrast between Chip & Kim, and Colin & Christie. Chip and Colin are both extremely dominant people. Kim and Christie both follow without question. It makes decision making very fast, that there's a clear-cut leader. Both teams have won more than their fair share of legs of the race. On the surface, they would seem to be similar teams. So not.

When Colin & Christie interact with other teams, it's either to fight, get support for a fight, or sometimes a mutually beneficial deal to get ahead. When Chip & Kim interact with other teams, it's sometimes for a mutually beneficial deal to get ahead, to win an argument over a race point, but often to help the other team earnestly. Yeah, Chip had a spat with the twins over a cab. He also pulled their butts out of the fire in Egypt when (once again) the twins didn't have any clue what they were doing. And both of them trying to help Brandon and Nichole when their money argument was interfering with their game. (Also, I think Kim follows Chip because she trusts him. I think Christie follows Colin because she's scared of him.)

[eanja]

Colin reminds me of my ex-husband in bad scary ways. Even if my ex was never dumb enough to get himself almost arrested. I'm really hoping he gets a lot of crap from folks who know him when they see how he treats Christie on TV- it seems like most of the particularly obnoxious stuff he tends to do when there aren't other teams around and he isn't thinking about the cameras watching.

[maveness.livejournal.com]

I have a fear he'll be able to "justify" everything because the producers "didn't show everything". You know, I hadn't thought about he tends to save the truly crazy stuff for when others aren't there. That helps him maintain an image.

[eanja]

Guys like that always have an excuse - reality is different inside their heads.