“Oh My God, the Teletubbies Go To War” spoilers below:

Things that happened

Teams must take the ferry back to Macao and fly to the island of Guam. Once they land, they must drive to the Air Force Base, and select a military security escort to drive them to their next clue. Dustin and Kandice are out of the gate first, and are early enough to catch the 3am ferry. Charla and Mirna are not so lucky and end up on the 4am ferry with Eric and Danielle. Oswald and Danny are so far behind they don’t get on the ferry until 6am.

Along the way, there are awkward attempts by Mirna to be funny and for Mirna to explain her accents but they fall flat. Thank god my time with her is drawing ever so nearer to a close.

At the airport, Dustin and Kandice, Eric and Danielle and Charla and Mirna all get on the same flight, taking off at 9:05am, connecting through Tokyo and landing in Guam at 9:50pm. Danny and Oswald arrive way too late to make it, but they find a flight that lets them make the same Tokyo-Guam connection as the other teams. However, they only have a 45 minute connection window. Drama and editing ensue in Tokyo, but Danny and Oswald do make it in time! Yay! None of the other teams are as excited as I am, but I don’t really blame them.

At the Air Force base, teams must wait until it opens at 7:00am. When it does, they grab their escort, find the control tower and run to the top to get their clue. Dustin remarks that she’s in boot camp. Didn’t you know that boot camp is all about climbing stairs of towers or modeling? At the top of the tower, teams learn it is Detour time. The choices are Engine Care, which involves cleaning a bomber better than even Monica on Friends would demand and Care Package, which involves assembling and delivering a 500 pound military care package as part of a training exercise. While Dustin and Kandice, Eric and Danielle and Oswald and Danny go for the cleaning (because Care Package had a specific time interval) Charla and Mirna choose Care Package because they “like to help people in need.” Uh, didn’t anyone tell them that this was part of a training exercise?!

The cleaning is tough and the sergeant shows no mercy, not even when Dustin and Kandice flashed their pearly whites. I wonder if they would have found better success if they flashed something else. Regardless, they still finish first. In fact, despite Charla and Mirna’s frantic rushing (which resulted in a lecture!) and attempts to convince the helicopter dudes delivering the package to go faster, all the cleaning teams finish before they do.

Once the Detour is complete, teams must drive themselves to the Guam Naval Base, where they need a naval escort to take them to their next clue. Dustin and Kandice learn that girls can still be cute even if they are in the military (which I am sure is not as detached from beauty pageants as one might think) and arrive at the clue first. Well, they arrive first not because they learned this very important lesson, but because Eric and Danielle and Oswald and Danny got lost. Or at least the editing leads me to believe this.

The Roadblock is called Search and Rescue, which involves using GPS to find a “wounded” pilot, then to find the Landing Zone, then you get to radio the rescue helicopter and launch a smoke grenade for your rescue! Your mission is complete when you and your “wounded” pilot are safely returned to your team member. Dustin completes this task effortlessly and she and Kandice glide to the finish spewing remarks about patriotism I’m sure they had memorized for their Miss America 2005 pageant.

The Pit Stop is at Fort Soledad and Dustin and Kandice are team number one. They win their seventeenth (unsponsored) toy to play with.

Danielle has to do the Roadblock because Eric has used the maximum amount of Roadblocks allowed by a single player. Fantastic planning guys. Fantastic. Charla does it because using GPS is something even short people can do, according to Mirna. However after watching Charla, I’m beginning to wonder. She had a really hard time not following the GPS directions, but following the instructions on how to use it. And by instructions I mean, “don’t touch the screen ma’am” repeated fourteen times. The camera cuts from Charla being incompetent to Danielle having a panic attack about her incompetence and back. They both take so long that Danny and Oswald finally show up after getting very lost.

Danielle finally gets the Roadblock done, she is rescued, but she doesn’t get the cool red smoke Dustin got — or the cool nickname — and Eric and Danielle are team number two.

Danny follows the GPS pretty well, but had a hard time finding his pilot. It turns out his pilot had “really good camouflage.” After Charla declares she would be dead if she ever joined the military (which I truly believe) she too finds her pilot and her and Danny have a helicopter race! Charla still lands first – boo – and now we get to watch the wonderful “Who will make it first?” editing to the end.

After it seems like teams get closer than they really are, and more lost than they really are, Charla and Mirna are team number three. Danny and Oswald are eliminated.

It is okay though. They raced terribly for the past couple episodes. Danny reveals his plans to “open” a gay nursing home. Why he put open in quotations I’ll never know.

Next week: Dustin and Kandice fight! And the winner is revealed!

Things that were good

• Even with the 30 minute penalty, Oswald and Danny ran the worst leg out of all the teams, and it was their time to go. While Charla and Mirna and Eric and Danielle really shouldn’t have lasted as long as they did, they beat Ozzy and Danny fair and square this time for the final three.
• All the military exercises were really neat and required patience and skill. Well, except the Care Package one, but that seemed to be an equal choice against the cleaning task, considering how close all the teams were afterwards.
  I also appreciate how the sergeant told Charla and Mirna to treat the care package with love and respect! It is not garbage!
• I love how the army and the navy gave the racers no slack whatsoever!
• Charla being completely incapable of understanding the GPS was hilarious.
• Dustin and Kandice ran a flawless leg (again!) and deserved to come first (again!)! Great work ladies! I can only hope that the previews for next week — where they flip at each other in what boys everywhere is hoping will be a cat fight– are over-blown. And since most of the previews all season have been, I’m counting on it.
• I’m glad Danny and Oswald made their Tokyo connection. Another episode where a team was eliminated due to flight statuses would have killed me.
• It is so obvious Eric and Danielle don’t like each other anymore and their relationship is kaput. They make the final three and there is no kiss, and they talk to Phil with no affection whatsoever. There have been boyfriend/girlfriend teams before that fought worse than these two, but always at those moments of relief was there something to show that in a normal situation they are in fact dating and do like each other. I’m putting this here because their complacency with their situation is hilarious and part of me wants them to win just to deal with the ramifications of post-race media tours with your hated ex-partner.
• Danny and Oswald were gracious in their defeat, which is always nice to see.

Things that were not so good

• In the beginning, I never — never — pegged Eric and Danielle and Charla and Mirna to be in the Final Three and here they are. That’s what you get when you get a season is as poorly designed as this one.
• Yes Danielle, yell at Eric for going the speed limit and that being your downfall when you just had a panic attack in the woods that could have cost you the game.
• Eric is so spiteful and immature. And doesn’t deserve to win, no matter what he thinks.
• I never want to hear the word karma again. Ever!
• Mirna trying to convince the army guys to go faster because they are racing. I mean, obviously the Navy didn’t know that. They take civilians up on expensive and time-consuming training exercises for the hell of it all the time!

Worth watching if…

This leg was really well designed and well executed. I am just finding it hard to care about any of these teams. Danny and Oswald are delightful, but their terrible racing skills override my personal love for them. Charla and Mirna are not the “Class act” Danny and Ozzy said they were (I’m convinced we are watching a different show) and are just shrill, annoying people who are lucky to have made it this far. Same with Eric and Danielle. The Beauty Queens are racing well and having fun with it, but are so pageanted and immune to other racers — at least they learned from their problems with ‘Bama — they are a bit boring to watch other than the fact they are pretty and wear matching clothes. However, all in all, it was a good episode race-wise. I’m excited for the finale, where the preview promises me the teams do everything except go to a different planet!

In Five Words

Better Than Armed and Famous

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