No one on Amazing Race 39 knows noone isn’t a word, or that this isn’t Survivor

“I hope you’re all making choices to give yourselves the best possible chance to win this Amazing Race,” Phil Keoghan said to five teams that checked in together at the same time. Five! More than half of the teams!

Was this Phil trying to say that they need to stop working together? Or that they needed to find the right allies? I couldn’t tell. But this episode was all about the social game—and next episode is even more so, with the Intersection showing up. But we already have Survivor on Wednesday nights! We don’t need social game on TAR!

In episode five, The Driver’s Seat appeared at both Roadblocks, giving the first team to reach it the ability to control the other teams’ challenges. That was Michelle and Matt both times, as they stayed in first place the entire leg.

They used the Driver’s Seat to try to flush out the remaining Express Passes, and succeeded once. Matt said “sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield. We hope to keep continuing to be the windshield here.”

Did the other teams splatter into them? Or the barrier they set up? Not really: ultimately, it was navigation that led to sweet sisters Dafina and Saran’s elimination. They finished the challenge ahead of others, but fell so far behind the previous team wasn’t anywhere in sight when they checked in.

All of this took place after an equalized flight to Albania—The Amazing Race’s 99th country!

Roadblock #1 ► The first task was crushing grapes to make Raki—a clear liquor, which surprised me that it came from grapes. Also surprising was Phil doing a shot and then standing up and declaring “mmmm!”

This task was quite the wreck! And it had very little to do with Matt and Michelle assigning the pounds of grapes that each team had to crush—50, 75, or 100. (They gave Ali and Joanna 100 but Connor and Garret 75, even though their goal was to get Connor and Garret to use the Express Pass too—wouldn’t you want the second team to waste time trying to use their Express Pass?)

After Dylan discovered they gave him and his grandpa 100 pounds, he thanked Matt, who turned to the camera and said, “it’s business, not personal” and “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Can I hate your clichés?

On the way to the grapes, Joanna and Ali, Dafina and Saran, and Erin and Javi all got lost.

Once they arrived, Javi fell with a basket full of grapes; Dafina and Saran finished quickly but then got their car stuck in the mud; Anuar started slipping in the mud and didn’t stop until he left.

The really painful part, though, was watching Anuar grinding grapes onto the lid of his barrel. And then, when they became too much, he swept them all onto the ground. Oh no!

Riley told him what he was doing wrong, and that everything was to go into the barrel, and that was so kind. But good game play?

Meanwhile, Dalton arrived back with grapes that he ground into Anuar’s barrel. Daisha yelled “Dalton!” but then, quieter, said, “I can’t say anything.” Ditto for Andrea, who couldn’t say anything to her dad, though she could complain to everyone else about the 100 pounds they were given.

Fun moment: Javi looked at the camera and said, “Do I drink a lot of wine? There’s a right and a wrong answer to that, and the answer is yes. Now, do I drink a lot of good wine? No.” Ha!

Thing I heard at a wine tasting once: The best wine is the one you like to drink. Thankfully, I love Aldi’s $8 sauvignon blanc!

Roadblock 2 ► Another food-related task, but this one was far more detailed: rolling out dough and folding it into triangles to make byrek. Michelle and Matt assigned the number of pastries each person had to make, and their choices were 8 (x1), 12 (x3), or 16 (x5).

Andrea’s whining caused Matt to punish her. “You’re so nasty!” Michelle said to Matt. Andrea said “We were really trying to avoid having a target on us.” Well then stop coming in second! Or being so annoying?

Honestly, I kinda zoned out during this challenge, maybe because it was kind of similar to the charcuterie Detour, with repeated checks and fails.

When Dylan and Doug arrived, Dylan said, “Dude, two drivers’ seats. Are you kidding?” I have to agree, because the nature of the Driver’s Seat means the first team will likely be done first, and thus arrive first at the next one. Maybe they should have put the faux Detour/Mole challenge in the middle?

Route info ► One thing I love about The Amazing Race is learning things about other countries, like the hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers in Albania.

Some are tiny; the one TAR used has five stories! Bunk’Art 1 is a museum you can visit, but it hosted a very The Mole-like challenge: listening to a conversation and using every seventh word to find an answer.

Two things horrified me during this challenge:

1. How many of the teams were unaware that “no one” is two words. Just write it out: noone even looks weird! Is this just Amazing Race brain or are people starting to write that as one word, like how “Web site” became “web site” became “website”?
2. The cassette player being treated as some kind of ancient artifact. “It’s from your era,” Andrea said. “Back to your era, Dad.” Andrea is 25! She was probably born in 2001. I had a cassette player in a new car I bought in 2002! I carry a boom box around on my shoulder while I take walks! C’mon!

I loved this task for its deceptive simplicity. Riley and her Anne Marie—who practiced for The Amazing Race by going to escape rooms!—were convinced the words were “some kind of riddle.”

Other teams figured out to use the first letters from the seventh words, and got DOWNTOWN—but then thought the second word was ONT?!

Daisha and Dalton were one such team. “Is no one one word or two?” they asked Riley, who told them it was one word, and that helped Daisha figure it out. And then Dalton and Daisha left.

“Honestly, before I could even think about helping, I just left,” Daisha said. Dalton said, “That’s honestly on them.” I guess so: should teach them not to help people, especially not teams that will so quickly stab them in the back.

By the way, did you notice that when Doug and Dylan were lost, the editors used a music cue that Big Brother uses constantly? It’s like: da-da, duh-duh, da-da. If I had a cassette player I’d record it and play it back for you, but I don’t have one because I’m not 192 years old.

Pit stop ► Phil met teams at Skandeberg Square. The mosaic of stone tiles is incredible—and should have been a challenge! There are 129,600 tiles! Put a tiny flag on one of them and make the teams find it!

Shortly after Garrett and Dalton landed on the mat, four more teams ran in. “Y’all, if we all stay together, we’re all still in this race. We can do it!” Anne-Marie, I think, said it.

The editing made it look like Erin and Javi, and Saran and Dafina, were arriving at the same time, and Javi might cause them to lose. His shoe came untied; Erin said to put it on a little wall; he said, “I can’t get my leg that high.”

Erin and Javi made it first, ugh, and while Phil told them they were “the second to last team to arrive,” that was just a fake out for us: Saran and Dafina were out. I’ll miss their joy but also I’m glad it was their own navigation—and not the Driver’s Seat—that ended their race.

Earlier, Riley said the teams standing there had “class and integrity, not malicious, helping when you can”, and Anne Marie said “you can play a good clean game.” But why is The Amazing Race a social game judging integrity and maliciousness? This isn’t The Traitors, it’s a race around the world with the stresses of a relationship as the obstacle, not other teams.

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