How long will we be afflicted with the Weaver pox, oh Lord?

Amazing Race | Season 8 Episode 8″ href=”http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/story.cgi?show=76&story=8574&limit=&sort=”>Television Without Pity | The Amazing Race | Recaps and Extras | Season 8 Episode 8

Miss Alli’s mini-recap:

The teams head for Utah, which the Weavers hate immediately. Because, you see, it’s so ugly, especially Monument Valley with the glorious rock formations and other beautiful things. SO ugly. The teams hang around for a while, rappelling and so forth, and then they suffer the indignity of visiting a performing bear before hitting the Yield. At the Yield, the Linzes accidentally stumble on the right move by Yielding the Weavers out of spite, not realizing that the Weavers have fallen into last place after outsmarting themselves and taking the worst possible route. The Weavers react with their typical “we’ll show ’em” brand of hooting and giggling, as if anyone is fooled, and then they return to their regularly scheduled bitching and complaining about how they’re the only decent people left in the race. Ultimately, the combination of their poor driving and the Yield puts them firmly in last place, but of course, at the mat, they are not eliminated. Booo! What’s more, Phil decides to give them a pep talk, which means that Phil and I are no longer speaking to each other, by which I mean that I am no longer speaking to Phil through my TV.

I can’t wait to read what she has to say in her full recap.

I had an email from my sister Timmy in Utah, wondering why I hadn’t posted yet on this episode. I couldn’t really say why, other than I guess my outrage-o-meter was on empty and I needed a few days to build up a charge again.

In spite of my not liking this very domesticated season of The Amazing Race, Tuesday’s episode was everything TAR is supposed to be, except for whenever the Weaver family were on-screen. It started out at the Pit Stop at Lake Powell and as I’d suspected, it headed north into southern Utah’s gorgeous redrocks and canyonlands. Amusingly, they were given spoon-fed transportation, but of a particularly tricky kind: a big SUV hauling a trailer. Oh, Flatlander Comedy will certainly ensue on this episode!

One of the first stops was a Roadblock of sorts – two team members had to take a helicopter ride to the top of Elephant Butte in Monument Valley(predictably pronounced “Butt” by the Weavers) and retrieve a clue. I thought maybe they’d make them do a face-first rappel down the butte but noooo, they hopped back aboard and flew back to where their teammates were waiting. We do get a rare shot of a TAR cameraman, who was on top of the butte shooting the arrivals, clue retrievals, and departures. He was wearing the typical khaki-colored multi-pocketed camera guy vest, and he was NOT behaving in typical Drunken Careening Cameraman fashion, because it’s an 800 foot drop off that particularly short pier.

Then everyone drove off to Moab, Utah. Hey, we’ve been there, we’ve got the photos to prove it! But they went someplace David and I missed, the Gemini Bridges. There, most teams opted to do a little rappelling. Regrettably, the Weavers chose to do a little REpelling, and rode mountain bikes mostly downhill and bitched all the way about how hard it was. At least one of the girls had no idea how the gears worked and kept hopping off and walking. At some point on the road, they complained about how empty and ugly Utah was without some God-given strip malls and fast food joints, and the children gasped theatrically when Mama Weaver told them the Mormons lived in Utah.

Now, anyone reading this blog knows I have a problem saying anything nice about LDS folks after my experience growing up non-LDS in Utah, but as of this episode, I’m officially swearing off snarking on them (at least as individuals, I reserve the right to snarking at what I see as institutionalized hypocrisy). Because I don’t want to do anything Weaverlike, ever, ever, ever.

After everyone in the episode got through the rappelling/repelling Detour, the teams were directed to Green River State Park, where Mom and I stopped for a picnic lunch one time on one of our many road trips to visit Aunt Veda in Grand Junction. So mark me down as weirdly surprised to see such familiar places on my favorite show, and this feeling of weird familiarity continued right through to the Pit Stop at the end. Anyway, each team as they arrived at the state park was welcomed by a very pretty woman ranger who advised them of their order of arrival and gave them a departure time of 7am, 715am, 730am, or 745am. The Weavers, it shall be noted, snagged the 715am departure, in spite of their bad attitudes, constant complaining, and prayers for it to be over all day.

So the next morning, they open their “begin the day” clues which were left for them and discover they’re to drive “22 miles to Heber City.” WTF??? Green River State Park is in Green River, UT. According to Mapquest, that’s 166 miles away, 3 hours drive time, and the best route is up US 6 to US 189 which is a main route over a range of mountains, and up to Heber. They are to find “Bart,” who turns out to be Bart II, a performing bear whose daddy was famouser than him. Anyway, Bart would gallop over with the clue in his mouth and then his trainer would get him to do something really cute while the teams ignored him as they ripped and read the clue. Pity about Bart. They’re told they need to go to the Utah Olympic Park in Park City 20 miles away, which will turn out to be a baby ski jump Roadblock into a swimming pool for one member of each team. Again, at this point the Weavers were first. The Linzes had managed to pass them on the highway and move back into first, knowing there was a Yield ahead. In fact, all viewers were hoping against hope for a Yield, and then an Elimination. Of the Weavers.

Then again, here’s a really confusing thing. They’re in Heber, which is literally just down US-40 from Park City. The Weavers apparently opted to head in the opposite direction from the wide, straight, multilane US-40 and take a Utah state highway back toward I-15, perhaps thinking they’d make up the time on the Interstate looping all the hell the way around through American Fork, Provo, and Salt Lake to Park City. WTF?? Turns out they were taking an extremely narrow, twisting scenic drive through the aspens, with switchbacks and horseshoe turns and absolutely no place to turn their big-ass trailer around.

At first I thought it was the other way around, and they made a bad turn trying to get to Heber City, missing the turnoff from I-15 to US 189, but this was after their Heber City stop, so it makes absolutely no sense at all. Everyone else’s team discusses the route to Park City and agrees “40 North” which in this context is correct, although actually the direction of US 40 is east-west. So the other teams all took US40 westbound in order to head north toward the ski jump.

And so in a sweet little twist, while the Linzes made sure to Yield the poxy Weaver team, the Weavers themselves are responsible for their own fate, because their stupid “long, long, cut” knocked them completely out of contention. While the Linzes waited for Nick (who unfortunately had to do it in a wetsuit, but we get to see him squeezing into it with his shirt off and abs glistening) to complete the ski jump, the Bransens pulled up and celebrated their arrival ahead of the hated, yielded Weavers. Then just as the Linzes completed and were heading out of the park for the Pit Stop, they passed the Gabbleskis (who in reality are the Godlewski sisters and Christine Gabbleski) and happily told them a) they Yielded the Weavers and b) the Weavers still hadn’t arrived. Thus the Gabbleskis knew they were in solid third place, with a trailing team behind them that had an automatic 30 minute delay. Yay!

By the way, we learned in this episode that Christine Gabbleski apparently has a quota of words that she must make every day, and her sisters were hoping she’d hit it so she’d shut up already, very early in the day. Later, two of them pretended to be asleep so she’d shut up, but the one driving didn’t have that option so Christine just kept talking. I like them and get a kick out of their dynamic, by the way.

The Bransens didn’t do much very interesting, but at least Daddy Eeyore did the rappelling earlier in the leg, in spite of his fear of heights.

The Linzes distinguished themselves by a) having Nick shirtless for a moment, showing off his awesome abs and b) by being good-natured and competitive all at the same time and c)doing a Yogi Bear riff when they encountered Bart.

The Weavers…oh, every time they opened their mouths, something hateful, mean, or just plain wrong came out. While they were bitching their way in the wrong direction past Mt Timponogos, Rolly stuck his head out and yelled at some cyclists “You WISH you were Lance Armstrong.” This was because during the cycling Detour, he grumped “not even Lance Armstrong could do this.” No Rolly, actually he could, and he’d leave you in the dust, and so would those cyclists on the Alpine Loop, you snotty little brat.

Okay, getting back to the end of this episode: everyone headed down Parleys Canyon on I-80 to Salt Lake, to the roof of the new Public Library. As they went, I’d look at the background shots for familiar things. I looked for but did not see the exit to Lamb’s Canyon when they were on I-80, but I did spot a familiar canyon wall farther down (I’ve driven that stretch of road with family probably hundreds of times). At one point, somebody went right past Trolley Square because I spotted the water tower – how’s that for nitpicking? Everybody arrived at the Pit Stop in the same order they left Park City: Linzes, Bransens, Godlewskis, and bringing up the rear (ends), Weavers.

About the only thing interesting about the Pit Stop arrivals was: (wait for it) I could not see Mom’s house from there. But if they had pointed the camera slightly farther south over one of the Linz’s shoulders, I would have seen the H-rock. Rah, etc.

I knew going in that it was a non-elimination round, because logistically it had to be – there were still 4 teams remaining, and the finale isn’t for another 2 or 3 weeks… ye GODS, unless there are a couple of pre-emptions coming up, there’s still another non-elimination round!

As one TAR fan put it on TWOP: “there was a great disturbance in the Force” amongst fans all around the world when the Weavers were spared elimination and we were all afflicted with them for at least another week. They’re a pox on this show, I tell you. A pox.

However, it might be satisfactory to see them yielded a third time, non-eliminated again, yielded a fourth time, and then eliminated through nobody’s fault but their own. That I would call poetic justice. So we’ll see how things work out.