Amazing Race, "I'm Not Wearing That Girls Leotoard!": Is it much further yet, Papa Smurf?

Spoilers for last night's "The Amazing Race" coming up just as soon as I find my fanny pack...

Well, you know the show's on a roll when they can put together an hour this entertaining and relatively tense even when it's clear from the 20-minute mark who's going home.

I tend to zone out during the airport scenes (which this episode had more of than the previous two), so I had to ask "Race" expert Linda Holmes to explain Brad and Victoria's mistake to me: rather than stick with the flight the majority of the teams were on, they took a flight that got in 25 minutes earlier, but with a tight connection. That's dumb, dumb racing. Too much risk for not remotely enough reward, and they got nailed for it, falling so far behind that there was no realistic way of catching up.

The last time I watched an episode like this was in the All-Stars season when Uchenna and Joyce got stuck 12 hours behind everyone else. Where that episode tried to make you forget that Uchenna and Joyce were even still in the competition, so there'd be some tension over who got to the mat, last night's show played fair and kept cutting back to Brad and Victoria as they methodically went through their hopeless quest to avoid elimination. And I think the producers did that because so many entertaining things were happening that the lack of suspense didn't much matter.

The highlight was obviously watching Tammy show the patience of a saint while dealing with Victor's monomaniacal insistence on taking them on the "Race" equivalent of the Bataan Death March, all while following markers that clearly had nothing to do with the show. I can see how the combination of Type-A personality, the older brother/younger sister relationship, and the reversal of plane fortune that saw them go from a big first place lead to middle of the pack all led to Victor's freak-out, but geez, guy -- at the very least, he could've apologized to her when they were on the mat with Phil.

The gymnastics Roadblock was fun, and the Detour was a rare instance of both tasks being physically arduous. (Though I guess the Gypsy one was a bit easier, since the locals were there to help.) And Team Schneebly came in first, thanks to Kris' goof with the fanny pack, so a good time was had by almost all.

What did everybody else think?