Silly Little Country

The Amazing Race - S17E07

What a great first choice! Either do the spinning plates trick, which requires some manual dexterity and patience, or learn to play 'Kalinka' on accordions (right hand only it seems) simply by watching someone else do it. (I would have loved to do this, as an accordion player.)
Brook and Claire were stunning with the spinning plates; and they made it clear they had the patience to make it work. "Don't we look like plate-spinners to you?" I love them.
Nate and Kat revealingly attacked the accordion with some organized use of numbers (med school?).
I was impressed by Chad's patience letting Stephanie take the lead. (Of course he lost it later.)
Gary and Mallory were fun to watch; she seemed to control their careful approach.
But both tasks appeared to find the seams in the relationships inside the teams other than those three.
The second task involved some careful instructions about limiting what teams could do and even Brook and Claire blew it, but realized along the way they had to go back. Stress makes comprehension a lot tougher.
The inferential problem in the middle of the second task was fascinating and it was interesting to see how quickly people twigged to the little model of the church in the tower.
Around 18 minutes into the show the saddest moment is when Michael appears to hear someone cite the rule about not using cabs and it seems to go over his head.
I was thrilled to see Nat and Kat win the leg and Brook and Claire ("You can do it Claire!", though Brook had the tricky task this week)) come second; certainly my two favorite teams. The only mixed-sex team I much liked was Dad-Daughter Gary and Mallory.
Sadly, the elimination was of the Asian Father-Son, largely because they did not read the clues, which astonished me. Also astonishing was that Nick and Vicki were third. But they do seem to be learning how to work together.
For all the negative implications of comments above, I have found this one of the most attractive seasons of the last few years as it enters its last few weeks.
And Sunday's episode seemed a set of pretty fair tests, compared to last week's music and film exercises, which just seemed too random to me. The tests this week seemed fair, and that a team I liked was eliminated for not carefully reading the rules seems really fair. After all one team figured out the problem and fixed it partway through.
For a lot of reasons this is the only reality show I really believe in.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 1:46 PM