The Scarab Really Smells Like Poo Poo Poo - 
by B-side
Phil Koegan is not a happy camper. He does not like to leave his comfy perch at the Pitstop, and if any team forces him away from his multicultural sidekick of the day, Phil will be sure to exact revenge. Okay, maybe not revenge, but definitely an icy put down laced with enough passive aggression to silence a small army, assuming that army was very sensitive. Point is that for the first time on The Amazing Race, Phil had to join the commonfolk and venture out onto the "course" to tend to the Pizza Brothers, the bitter, sadsack quitters whose dreams of stardom were as fleeting as Marshall's knee cartiledge. While the hobbled brother sat like an old lady in a random wicker chair, Phil went to great lengths to explain that not only had no team never crossed the finish line (READ: You guys are lame), but no team has never been physically unable to cross the finish line (READ: You guys are pussies) and furthermore, even if the guys had made it to the pitstop, they still would have been eliminated (READ: You guys really suck and I hate you). The best part of all of this though - aside from the most angry team getting the boot - was that Phil delivered his little speech with such steely cold authority that not even the verbally abusive brothers could retort. I always enjoyed Jeff Probst's whiny response to quitters, but Phil Koegan showed us how it's supposed to be done. Lesson learned: never cross a man in a turtleneck.
Granted, Phil wasn't exactly wearing a turtleneck last night, but he sort of has one spiritually. I always get a sense that his little safari shirt could sprout an oversized collar at any moment. He's really a remarkable host. He has the charm of Jeff Probst and the robotic precision of Julie Chen. Better yet, there's a sense that behind Phil's generally stoic face he's silently passing judgment on the contestants, slowly removing them from his Christmas card list. Except, of course, Mirna whose love for him knows no bounds. Correct me if I'm wrong though, but was it me or was there no pre-Phil primping and not even a little hug? The only one who seemed to gussy herself up was... Kim! Might there be a love triangle burdgeoning at the pitstop?
Whatever does go down at those mysterious mandatory rest periods, it clearly doesn't include knee surgery because Marshall was walking, or shuffling really, as if he were the new spokesman for "Oops... I Crapped My Pants!" Watching him creak down the tiny passageway into the pyramid was painful, and later his geriatric pace was actually sort of sad. Oh well, he's a jerk. What goes around comes around. Mwahaha.
Speaking of misfortunes, Colin and Christy predictably lost their entire seven hour lead within moments of the opening credits when they discovered that their next clue was behind a gate that didn't open for, you guessed it, another seven hours. Brighter minds would not have wasted the Fast Forward as they did, but maybe this means these two will get eliminated down the line. Granted, they are doing a great job - as evidenced by their first place win last night - but in general, they're pretty bland, save for Colin's frequent, psychotic, "Sleeping With The Enemy" expressions. I really do fear for Christy's safety sometimes.
And at moments I feared for Mirna and Charla's safety. The two faced the wrath of Colin when they tried to steal his cab, and I must say, our Armenian underdogs were in the wrong this time. A verbal spat ensued, with Mirna ultimately labelling Colin with a Napoleon Complex. That's all well and good, except Napoleon was short and Colin is, you know, not short at all.
Wearing her Dr. Phil cap, Mirna continued her psycho-analysis of her rivals by calling Christy submissive, which isn't entire false. Of course, Christy is not the only submissive girlfriend on the trip. Bible-thumper Nicole proudly assumes the role of wallflower to her boyfriend Brandon's whimsies. Granted, while Colin and Christy have a whole hidden rage thing going on, Brandon and Nicole survive mainly on a constant diet of whining and praying. They are fond of communicating with the word "baby", as in "Baby??" or "Baby!" or "Baby..." Sometimes "baby" is juxtaposed with other sentences for added effect such as "Baby, I'm trying!" or "Baby, where are you going?" but usually we hear Nicole simply sighing "Baaaby" in an utterance of defeat. Watching her and Christy guide their boyfriends around on donkeys was amusingly appropriate.
Of course that donkey Detour challenge was also notable for the crazy Egyptian guy monitoring the water jugs which teams had to fill. This guy was such a spaz that you'd think he'd just witnessed an alien race touching down behind his shack. Brandon and Nicole seemed positively baffled and afraid of the dude whose grasp of English words didn't seem to stretch beyond "Bravo! Bravo!". Maybe if Charla and Mirna were there, we'd have less of a communication gap. After all, these two have honed the fine art of the patronizing accent. For some reason, they still think that dropping grammatical structures ("How we go down?") and adding trills to their voices will somehow unlock the door to some global version of English which everyone understands. Berlitz this was not.
Communicating on a whole other level from the game were the twins, who continue to scamper across the globe without any sense of strategy or calculation. Amazingly, they managed to avoid being the second to last team yet again, but their ever frantic nature did not betray them. Just when I thought they'd make it through a whole episode error free, the girls committed the back to back blunders of first handling a piece of dried feces and then tumbling head first into a dirt pile. This amused the locals, and of course, me.
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