The Amazing Race 38 episode 9 was a wild ride of ups and downs, ending with a TAR record and an elimination that shocked me.
It took a while to actually start: Everyone flew to Greece on the same flight, and then had cab races to a place where they were equalized yet again.
The best part of the flight equalizer was Joseph and Adam surprising everyone. Because teams really don’t see each other at pit stops, the other teams were shocked to see them at the airport—especially Chelsie and Jack, who thought they were the team in last place. Of course, now no one is.
With the Parthenon in the background, the players learned they got to screw over two other teams with a live Double U-Turn vote. “They used to have votes here, on this hill,” Phil Keoghan said, with his still-raspy voice and dialogue sounding strangely like Jeff Probst unveiling a reward of cold hamburgers and limp fries. “Like, game-changing votes.”
Joseph and Adam’s penalty for the non-elimination leg was receiving one vote—which, honestly, was a gift. If they had an actual penalty task and got U-Turned, it’d be hard to see them overcoming that.
But Joseph was also punished by having to make a decision. “I’m too involved with these people; you have to make that decision,” Joseph told Adam. Was Joseph like this in the Big Brother house, too? Too scared to go after friends or allies?
The first votes went like this:
4 Tucker and Eric: Adam and Joseph, Jag and Jas, Izzy and Paige, Kyland and Taylor
3 Kyland and Taylor: Tucker and Eric, Jack and Chelsie, Jag and Jas
3 Jag and Jas: Tucker and Eric, Jack and Chelsie, Izzy and Paige
1 Jack and Chelsie: Adam and Joseph
1 Izzy and Paige: Kyland and Taylor
1 Joseph and Adam: penalty vote
Taylor cried about getting a vote because she was sad about being one of the few women left—and then she voted for Izzy and Paige and cried about that.
In Paige’s words, Taylor “gave this speech about how frustrating it feels to be a woman in this game dominated by men, while holding a U-Turn board with the only all-female team’s faces on it.” In Izzy’s word: “hypocrisy.” Indeed!
The tie meant a re-vote between Kyland and Taylor and Jag and Jas, and Joseph freaked out even more, as he was now “forced to pick” between “my best friend and my ex.”
The re-vote was also a tie, and that meant three teams were all double U-Turned—kind of a great outcome, honestly, if we must go through with this.
“Best case scenario,” Chelsie called the U-Turns. And then set about blowing it. At least at first.
Once teams started racing, 24 minutes into the episode, they ran to the Parthenon to learn about their two Detour tasks: carry a laterna to a square, play it, and get €10 in tips from people, or—well, and for three teams—identify 10 varieties of olives by taste alone.
The laterna task was relatively quick, and collecting €10 was the easy part: the square was super-busy with foot traffic, and people with camera crews screaming about needing €10 to win $1 million was somehow an easy sell. Very generous of people to give money, which I hope went to the laterna guy.
Chelsie and Jack, with only one Detour to complete, got lost, as always, and Izzy and Paige took forever to get there, too.
That meant Jas and Jag finished the laterna detour and were being tested on the olives before Izzy and Paige even arrived, and Tucker and Eric were there too. Two teams did an entire task faster than two teams took to arrive at the second task.
At this point, I was just prepared and fine with Jack and Chelise, or Izzy and Paige, to be left behind and eliminated and fine, because if they fall behind that easily, they’re just not worthy competition.
However! Izzy and Paige left the olives ahead of only Kyland and Taylor, and Jack and Chelsie, who finally showed up after their leisurely walking tour of Greece. But Jack and Chelsie managed to ID the olives faster than Kyland and Taylor. So one challenge, at least, provided a challenge.
Jas and Jag were super-lucky in that their olive guesses were correct on their first try. Even though I want to claw my eardrums out of my head every time they yell “let’s go,” they are an incredible team, crushing almost every task. They got to the boulder task before Adam and Joseph, who only had one Detour to do!
And they also broke an Amazing Race record: As Phil Keoghan told them on the mat, they were the first team in the show’s history to place first after being U-Turned. That’s 24 seasons of U-Turns, since it was introduced in season 12. I think that speaks to their strength as a team, and perhaps also to how weak some of their competition is.
But then! The Roadblock turned out to be an actual Roadblock. Memorizing 24 lower-case Greek letters—and running back and forth between the cheat sheet and the test—led to all the teams bunching up, and for some real shifts to occur.
Most significantly, Jack and Chelsie bypassed everyone and placed second. I was not expecting that! When they were wandering around, I thought they were done, Double U-Turn or not.
The non-U-Turned teams somehow arrived at the mat almost all at the same time: Jack and Chelsie, followed soon after by Joseph and Adam, and then Izzy and Paige. And Kyland and Taylor were not far behind.
That meant Tucker and Eric were out, because of Tucker’s inability to memorize, insert joke here. For a while, even in this episode, it seemed like it was a two-team race between them and Jag and Jas, but solid challenge and leg design gave them an impassible obstacle.
A few other things:
“What’s his name, Syphilis?” Jas asked about Sisyphus. “He had to do this for eternity, right?” I guess in ancient Greece, syphilis was for eternity.
The laternas were playing some The Amazing Race music, right? Fun!
“I’m trying not to get overly frustrated by things I can’t control,” Izzy said. But she was frustrated they were behind because they got lapped by two teams they should have been far ahead of.
Chelsie and Jack were even bad at navigating with a large fake boulder. “Dad, you’re going to run over a turtle—go left!” Chelsie yelled.
At the Roadblock, Jag suggested working together with Joseph, splitting up the memorization, but Jag got it right and then just bailed.
“Athena, let’s go” NO STOP NOPE
All of reality blurred’s content is independently selected, including links to products or services. However, if you buy something after clicking an affiliate link, we may earn a commission. Learn more.