As The Amazing Race takes flight (literally), we see a number of things happen…

• A team power walks their way to victory
• One team kinda loses it
• There’s a mystery bus ride
• A promising beginning is completely ruined

All these leave me wondering, where’s my TAR and what has CBS done to it?

After the disappointment of last week’s episode though props to the very cool, Civil War Detour I was hoping for something more exciting, something more interesting, something more. Period.

And for the first part of the episode I got it.

After leaving the manor teams had to make their way to Dulles International Airport to catch a plane to Charleston, South Carolina. There are two flights that arrive 2 minutes apart and a third one arriving a good 20 minutes later.

Guess who gets on that one? The Paolos! Yaaaay Karma shines on them.

The Weavers being one of the first teams to arrive get on the first flight but Mama Weaver wants to make sure she’s doing this right because she’s never been on a plane before. Other teams take her behavior to be “she’s conniving and scheming” which I totally don’t get. It’s not like the Weavers are Rob and Amber - they’re just getting familiar air transportation for goodness sake!

As the teams wait for their flight, Rolly and Hunter pal around since they’re of similar ages but stepmom, Char thinks that Hunter is consorting with the enemy, afraid that he’ll share family tactics with Rolly. Whatever.

Once in Charleston, teams face a Detour: dehead 200 lbs of shrimp on a shrimp boat (who here has visions of Forrest Gump) or doing a mud run in a 4 x 4. The mud run is further away but three teams think they can handle it - The Weavers, The Aiellos and The Gaghans. The other teams decide to shell shrimp.

The mud run proved frustrating for both the Weavers and the Aiellos. After 6 tries, the Weavers decided to cut their losses and go back and do the shrimp shelling task. Could this spell disaster? Read on and see.

The Aiellos have even worse luck, managing to complete the task after 14 tries.

The Gaghans? Daddy Gaghan guns the 4×4 and rallies through the gulley in a single try! Wooot! I love this family. I do think the kids are cool. Carissa’s remark, “Let’s go 120 miles per hour so we can fly over the top of the mud” had me cracking up.

After completing the tasks, teams are told that they have to go to the bus station to get on one of two buses that leave for a mystery destination. Worse, the second bus departs a good 2 hours after the first. The Bransens, Linzes, Godlewskis and The Schroeders make it on bus one.

The Weavers manage to finish the shrimp shelling task in time to get on the second bus with the Gaghans, Aiellos and the Paolos.

Given the two hour head start, you know that the teams in the first bus are safe from elimination unless something drastic happens (oh please let something drastic happen). The mystery destination turns out to be Huntsville, Alabama.

Teams now have to find the US Space and Rocket Center (I’m thinking of the movie Space Camp) and get their clue. This is a doozy of a roadblock - ride in a centrifuge until it hits 3.2G. Whoa my stomach roiled at that one.

Since this is a first come, first serve task, the Bransens are first. They receive a clue that tells them to find another part of the Center and log on to AOL (eep, more product placement!). They manage to get the clue which tells them to head on to the pit stop.

What the heck?! Your last task before the pit stop is a first come, first serve task. How boring is that?! Unless someone gets lost on their way to the pit stop you know who’s going to be out! Aieeeeee! Why?!!

Anyway, everything is pretty predictable after this. The Bransens power walk their way to the pit stop and are ooooh suspense, first. But lucky them! They win a lifetime supply of gasoline from BP - now that’s a good prize - worth as much as the $1,000,000?) . They are soon followed by the Linzes, Schroeders and Godlewskis.

The other four teams are still on their bus and most of the teams are getting pissed off at the noisiness of the Weaver family - who don’t seem to be doing to well at going to a mystery destination, demanding to know where they’re going. You can see one of the Aiellos rolling his eyes. Wow for once the Paolos actually look good!

The second bus arrives in Alabama and the last four teams jockey for the centrifuge task. The Weavers make it fifth to the bath mat, followed by the Paolos.

It turns into a non-race between the Gaghans and the Aiellos (who were last on the Roadblock). Until that point I was so hoping for a non-elimination episode but luck was not on my side. The Aiellos were eliminated.

Episode 3 started so well with the team drama at the airport and the cool detour but then it just dissipated into a total anti-climactic mess. I mean seriously how can you have a first come first serve task just before the pit stop?

What did you guys think of episode 3?

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 at 5:53 pm and is filed under The Amazing Race 8. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.