The four lead teams start off with a colossal blunder in which they learn the lesson that you never know the operating hours until you look at them. Fortunately (because some of them are teams I like), they hit the airport bunch, at which point we’re off to Dakar, where things look a little different than they do in Scandinavia. Kendra adjusts not-so-nicely to her surroundings, while Kris and Jon, predictably, think it’s kind of cool. The Detour offers a choice between catching fish and arranging fish, and for some reason, Gus and Hera and Don and MJ conclude that they’d rather wrangle live fish than dead ones. Throwing up ensues as these teams fall behind. At a physically taxing Roadblock, Lori and Kris kick ass, Adam feels like a weenie, and MJ impresses her sweetie with her grit. When MJ and Don hit the mat last, it looks like their luck has finally run out, but the earliest ever non-elimination round keeps them around to fight another day. Oh, and My Favorite Team comes in first again. Go, nice pretty people, go!
Just saving the recaplet for this week’s episode for posterity. This time I’ll do a run-down of everyone using the handy notes I took, rather than relying on my shockingly bad memory. That’ll be later.
I will say, though, that I adore Kris and Jon. They learned a hard lesson – always verify local information, if possible by finding official route flags, markers, and signs noting Race hours of operation rather than real-life hours of operation. The tower was open early to accomodate production and reduce the risk of bumping into civilians (and cut down on crowding in the very narrow spiral stairway).
I noted a HUGE time gap between the leader teams and the trailing teams. Again, without the notes, I’m relying on (bad) memory. But Hayden and Aaron left at 2:04, meaning they had a HELL of a fast leg previously. Usually, the legs work out so that teams arrive around 5, 6, or 7pm, which puts them on a good footing for possible airport or train departures on the next start after the “mandatory 12 hour rest stop.” In actuallity, some pit stop stays last longer than 12 hours, but this is edited out to keep things less confusing. And the last team to depart were Don and MJ, sometime after 8am, I think. That’s a 6 hour gap in arrival times!
D-MJ are starting out next time with the double handicap of late departure and no money – the ferries will add some guaranteed bunching, but they’ll need cash just to get off the Ile de Goree. They should think about gunning for the two weakest teams ahead of them in the Race, which would be Gus/Hera and… Adam/Rebecca, I’d say. G/H are strong only when the tasks require eye-hand coordination rather than muscle power, endurance, on-the-ground navigating or random luck – their strong finishes in episodes 2 and 3 were due to Gus’ skill with the Viking games and glass-sliding tasks. In the latter case, it set them up with an early arrival at the Roadblock, which Gus was able to complete without losing too much time.
But it is very, very cool that D-MJ have made it this far, because they’ve officially passed Dave/Margaretta of Season 1 as oldest team to survive this far in the Race. I love ’em. Their salty goodness balances their sweet sugar just perfectly.