Water Cooler Talk from Two Guys Who Look Alarmingly Similar
Episode 9
As we're sure you know, April 25 through May 1st is National "Turn Off The TV Week," sponsored by the National Association of Exceptionally Boring People (NAEBP).
The idea is that everyone is supposed to shut the television off for the entire week so they're free to do other highly productive things in life, like milking the cows, gathering eggs, whitewashing the fence, choking the chicken, and so forth.
Of course, we felt obliged to abide by this annual ritual, so we churned butter in a room next to where we keep the TV, and had other members of the household shout various highlights of the show to us, at least until we got sick of churning butter during the opening credits.
Turkish Airlines. Motto: "We Have No Idea When Any of Our Planes Leave."
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Tonight's show began with an instruction to fly 4,000 miles to Istanbul, Turkey, where teams had to travel to the island of Kiz Kulesi where they'd find a clue at a tower.
Gretchen, who gets a little confused from time to time, thought she was supposed to ride on a turkey, much like she erroneously rode atop a pretend elephant last week.
Rob and Amber finally freed their hostage, Sanjay, who they had detained since last week and had forced to serve as an interpreter, tour guide, chef and masseuse.
Teams had to book their own flights to Istanbul, and it initially appeared that everyone was going to choose the same flight.
Rob, being Rob, thought it would be fun to mess with Gretchen's already-feeble mind by asking her whether she and Meredith were able to get the "earlier" flight to their next stop, thinking there was no such flight.
Teams had to seek this phallic symbol to find their next clue.
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Normally when Rob decides to toy with someone, it works very well to his advantage... like when he takes people hostage, bribes them, or just merely threatens people with bodily harm.
But this time, fate caught up with him as Gretchen and Meredith along with Uchenna and Joyce decided to see if maybe there was an earlier flight, and they were indeed able to be whisked off to Istanbul a couple hours earlier.
Meanwhile, Ron and Kelly, their voices strained from hours and hours of constant bickering, resumed their constant bickering. We could almost read Ron's mind as he considered opening the door of the plane so he could be sucked out into the jet's engines, but Kelly would probably blame him for taking the easy way out.
Ron quietly prays for divine intervention, preferably in the form of spontaneous human combustion.
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While he was in Iraq being held as a prisoner of war, literally wondering from day to day whether he was living his last hours, Ron probably thought this had to be the worst experience of his life. He obviously hadn't met Kelly yet.
We figure if the whole beauty pageant thing falls through for her, this whole Amazing Race experience can surely pass as audition material for Jerry Springer.
Once teams arrived at the island they had to search for a gnome, and for pure comedic reasons they had to take it with them throughout the rest of the leg of the trip.
The people of Istanbul must have thought that there's some sort of quirk about Americans that makes us carry these stupid little gnomes with us at all times, as if we don't have enough real quirks as it is.
From the island, teams had to find their way to the Galata Kulesi Tower where a Detour awaited.
Gretchen seeks "the man with scales."
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Teams could either choose "Columns or Kilos." In the "Columns" challenge, they could run through an old building and use some sort of secret mathematical formula to do some sort of thing involving a box and a combination lock. Our eyes glazed over as soon as we saw a bunch of numbers, which triggered our Fear of Math.
Three of the teams chose the "Kilos" challenge, which involved one of Turkey's favorite pasttimes: weighing themselves. That's right, apparently Turkish people consider it to be a whole peck of fun to weigh themselves in full view of everyone in a town square.
Gretchen, who really means well, spent a lot of time searching for "the man with scales." You could just tell that instead of looking for a man with a device that would weigh people, she was looking for a half-man half-fish sort of creature in the town square.
Remarkably, Gretchen convinces Saddam Hussein to be weighed.
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Teams had to weigh enough people to amount to 2,500 kilos, which equates to about 5,500 pounds. We enjoyed listening to teams as they tried to persuade fat people (we're sorry... we mean "gravitationally challenged") to waddle over to their scales.
Once all the fat folks stomped away, the teams were told to make their way to the Rumeli Hisari fortress, where one team member would have to climb a wobbly rope ladder to the top of a tower, and then rappel back down to a courtyard to find their next clue.
We hate to keep picking on Gretchen (blatant lie), but it was once again hilarious to watch her struggle her way up the ladder while making every effort not to utter a real swear word. Instead, she'd say things like, "Oooooh... garsh consarn it Meredith!"
Ron and Kelly are forced to shed all of their personal belongings to stay in the race.
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To her credit, she managed to pull her 66-year-old frame through the task. To be honest, we're just hoping that when we're 66 we can still feed ourselves to some degree.
Uchenna and Joyce made it to the Pit Stop first, followed by Gretchen and Meredith, and Rob and Amber. Ron and Kelly slinked onto the mat last, but learned that this was a non-elimination round.
The end of this leg of the race brought about quite a flurry of mixed emotions for Ron and Kelly. For Ron, it meant he was stuck in this race longer with the Spawn of Satan, for one thing.
Phil relieved Ron and Kelly of all their worldly possessions, including beauty queen crowns, pitchforks, horns, etc. However, he did inform the happy couple that they had won $20,000 worth of travel through Travelocity.com, which coincidentally is a sponsor of the show.
We're sure that as soon as the cameras were off, Ron and Kelly both asked Phil in unison, "Do we have to take those trips together???"
Next week, we'll look forward to turning the TV back on, guilt-free!
Previous Insightful Commentaries:
The Amazing Race
Survivor: All-Stars
Survivor: Australia
