LAST EDITED ON 08-25-04 AT 05:54 PM (EST)

Now this? This is pressure. Y’see, up until this point in what I laughably refer to as my summarizing career, I’ve only worked on shows that no one actually watched. I don’t have a resume’, I have a few cut-out bits of pasted newspaper lettering with delusions of grandeur. Celebrity Mole? Outback Jack? And to top it all off, The Casino? I could do absolutely anything I wanted to do within a summary because no one was ever going to see it, as I wound up proving about ten times. And somehow, the luck of the random draw brought me into the Race, a show with something I’ve never seen before. An actual audience. People who honestly care about how things work out and what gets said. More than five of them.

I have no safety margin. I have no empty abyss between myself and the 0.0001 Nielsen rating lurking in the dark. But, more than that, I really have no worries. Because no matter what I write, it’s still a non-elimination leg. No matter how bad things got when I lost the chance to use Charla & Mirna in the last episode, I’ve still got Colin, which is the equivalent of lighting up the Free Game light on every pinball machine in Times Square. And best of all, no matter how long this thing runs, no matter how many pages I wind up consuming – I’m in the same pool as Landru. I can’t write the longest summary of the season.

And besides, most of y’all stopped reading eighteen sentences ago anyway. Roll opening credits.

We rejoin the Racers in Tanzania – which, as Phil confessional-tells us, is ‘a place where the people still live harmoniously with the world’s most majestic and ferocious animals’, something which has already given Colin’s over-inflated ego a couple of extra pumps. (He keeps forgetting that said animals are A. locals. B. actually majestic and C. capable of making their own way across the land. Don’t worry: he’ll get a reminder pretty soon.) This beautiful country, which we’ll mainly be seeing through dark roads and airports, had the great misfortunate to host the seventh pit stop in a race around the world, and will now be spending every penny paid out for the honor to get rid of the mixed scents of flop sweat, Colin-induced panic, and the natural after-effects of eating way too much ostrich egg.

Can Chip & Kim maintain their lead over the younger, more athletic teams? (Translation: will this leg contain absolutely no bunch points or mechanical transports whatsoever, turning human speed into an actual factor?) Can Kami and Karli work together just long enough to pull themselves out of last place? (Translation: can anyone pick up the scent of ice crystals forming on brimstone?) Will anyone actually care, since I figured out this was a non-elimination leg a week before this episode aired? (Echo… echo… echo…) Probably not. Regardless, someone pass Team Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy their envelope so we can get to the first bunch point.

Chip & Kim rip open their envelope at 2:42 a.m. and find $200 US, a set of directions, and a business card from Lex’s favorite internal parasite doctor. The teams will have to take one of the provided taxis over a hundred miles through the African night to the Kilimanjaro airport, which has the beneficial side effect of hiding the landscape and keeping my rhapsodizing at the absolute minimum. There are three charter flights waiting to take them to Nairobi, Kenya, leaving an hour apart starting at 8:30 in the morning. Only two teams can take any given flight, and it’s first-come, first sign-up, first-listen-to-the-endless-complaints-of-whoever-team-number-five-is. Once they’re in Kenya, it’s any flight they can grab to get to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which means Linda & Karen already know the airport layout and Brandon really wishes he’d gotten a chance to steal the free map Charla snagged during the flight delay. (It’s not stealing if you do it during a race for a million dollars and remember to thank God on camera for the map which He generously made someone else pick up for you.) After they get to Dubai, they’ll have to find the Burj Al Arab hotel: their clue is waiting in a box across the street from it. Again. So we’re less than five minutes into the race and the twins are already walking dead.

Chip checks prices with the waiting taxi drivers, quickly working down from $150 to $100, thanks everyone he rejected for their time, then gets in the taxi and proceeds to introduce the driver to himself, his wife, his philosophy of life, and the plans for the self-help book he plans on publishing immediately after the race. Chip’s let a little bit of Wicca creep into his mindset, because he believes that all the good he does in life (and possibly on the Race) will come back to him. Not threefold, because he’s not a demanding man and he doesn’t want the universe to go through that much effort on his behalf, but even-up.

(At this point, the cab’s CB goes off and relays a query from the United States: apparently a woman named Adria wants to know if Carmen Electra is riding in the cab. After a series of exquisitely confused negatives, the ride continues.)

And if whatever you give out does come back to you, then it’s definitely time to check in with Team Future Landfill Site and see just how much toxic waste has been rammed back into Colin’s mouth. They’re leaving at 3:00 a.m, and the delicate perfume of Colin’s anger is still hanging in the air. (It’s all the hotel’s fault for his bad performance on the egg, y’know. If they’d spent money for more expensive skillets that would have conducted the heat better and cooked the egg more thoroughly, he would have checked into the pit stop at 1:55 p.m. the previous week.)

‘Colin and I most want to work on learning to trust each other,’ Christie c-ts us. ‘It’s hard when you have two decision-makers in the same group.’ (The screen flashes three times, and the words ‘This Is An Official Bruckheimer Foreshadowing Moment. Accept No Substitutes’ scroll across the bottom.) Christie, you already made the decision to accompany Herr Headcase on a race around the world, and if you can’t see that it’s the only one you’ll get to make…

With $100 tentatively established as the price that DAW Americans are willing to pay, C&C Stress Factory’s future cab driver opens negotiations at the C-note level. Protests ensue, with Christie offering fifty and Colin upping it to sixty, which is all the money he has in the world after subtracting out his future legal fees, but the cab driver stands firm. It’s a hundred dollars all the way, and Colin gets into the taxi grumbling about how he’d better get a fast ride for such a high price. The screen starts flashing again for no apparent reason.

Linda & Karen leave the pit stop at 3:06 a.m, carefully making their way around the industrial fans blowing the last of Colin’s residue from the air, and pick their hundred-dollar taxi. They feel that the Race isn’t just for the fast youngsters in it: anyone can win, and why couldn’t that be a couple of bowling moms? ‘The editing.’ Next question?

Team We Bought A Reality Show Indulgence Before We Left is next out at 3:10 a.m, also complaining about the $100 price tag (but with no real attempt to negotiate a lower fee). Nicole c-t feels that she and Brandon need to be more aggressive, since the teams with more inherent aggression keep finishing in front of them. Well, maybe if they weren’t putting all their energy into shredding those Commandments, they’d have something left over for the final sprint. (Note: Nicole thinks Chip is aggressive. That’s absolutely right. No one has it in for his food like Chip does. Attack!)

And last out at 3:12 a.m. are Team Two Half-Wits Equal One Quarter-Wit, with either Kami or Karli – no one cares enough to identify the speaker and it doesn’t really matter anyway – giving us this brilliant piece of c-t strategy. ‘We need to slow down.’ Yes, that’s absolutely right. In order to get out of last place, you need to slow down. In fact, if you stay right where you are, there’s a tiny-but-measurable chance that the other teams will come within a hundred feet of lapping you, at which point you can start running again and claim you were ahead of them all along.

And why do the Twins feel they have to slow down? Because ‘We are so spastic right now.’

(Pause. Make sacrifice to the head power in charge of providing lines that need no commentary whatsoever for summary writers. Press Play.)

The Twins feel the teams finishing ahead of them aren’t doing so on speed, but on reading comprehension: they stop, analyze the clue, work out their next move, and then go running off as if someone had just taken an axe to their chicken necks. And since they’re still having trouble with the ‘reading’ part, it’s probably time to slow down and pick up an ABC For Dummies primer. Fortunately, most of the biggest airports have bookstores. Of course, that means finding their way to an airport, and first they have to figure out what this whole ‘take a waiting taxi’ bit means… The producers, anxious to get everyone to the bunch point, provide a Twinglish translation, book the hundred-dollar taxi, bundle them in, and start filing the environmental impact statement on the group’s collective egg elimination escapades.

With everyone on the road, we turn to the inevitable taxi waltz, with the Moms making the first pass de collision. Their driver’s closed the time gap with Team This Is Another Foreshadowing Moment Coming Up, and despite Colin’s threats to not pay the driver if the BM’s pass them, Crisis & Calamity slip into third place – and then fourth, as the Bible Belters make up their ten minutes. ‘You drive slower than my grandma!’, Crisis snarls, not considering that the weight and size of his ego is producing a significant drag on the car. (Anything that big has to go partially out the window: anything sticking out the window wrecks the aerodynamics. Do the math.) Brandon & Nicole then pass the Moms to move into second, which somehow registers on Colin’s extra-egory perception, driving the heat of his anger to previously-unseen degrees.

Too much heat is really bad for rubber. One of the tires on C&C’s taxi blows out.

The Human Torch gets out of the cab before his frustration ignites the gas tank, and we’re unlucky enough to have him step into a rainy night: no explosions on this leg, at least until the sky clears up a little (although the steam rising off his body is playing havoc with the camera). Time to change the tire – wrong: time to forget about changing the tire, because there’s nothing to swap it with. The spare is already on the driver’s side front rim, and the camera moves to show it. Colin & Christie have been taking a journey of over a hundred miles on a donut: that little emergency ring of rubber that you’re supposed to use to stagger to a tire store after your actual wheel goes. The ride of last resort, which, according to my own car’s manual, is not to be used for more than thirty miles at over forty miles per hour unless you like playing Russian Roulette with hubcap rims.

Colin is (for a rare once, justifiably) angry. The taxi driver was entrusting all of their lives to a donut holding up for over triple the rated time at well over the rated speed: not exactly the sign of a good driver. Colin has, in fact, every reason to spend a few of their already-waylaid minutes chewing out the cabbie and use some of his perpetual hostility for an impromptu driving class – but he doesn’t get the chance, because the Twins just caught up, and their cabbie pulls over to see what’s wrong with his fellow employee’s ride. Colin explains the situation to a Twin and tells them they have to solve it by giving him their spare tire. The unspoken ‘or else’ and resulting steam only get a second to fog the camera lens before the Twin agrees and Colin stalks off into the night without bothering to thank them. (After all, he didn’t hear any thanks for sparing their worthless lives, so fair’s fair.) The Twins are understandably peeved at the lack of gratitude and feel that that Colin wouldn’t have pulled over to help them, so they don’t stick around: the spare tire is handed over and they get back on the road.

The Race producers seem to have booked Enron’s former taxi fleet for this leg, because the next thing to happen is the complete loss of oil: the Moms are now running on a dry tank, and their cab pulls onto the shoulder. The Twins catch up to this stranded vehicle as well – but, as their driver starts to slow down for the assist, urge him to keep going. They’re obeyed, and their taxi goes past the Moms, leaving them high and dry in the African night. Bowl them over, Jesus, on the seven-ten split of life.

‘We’re not Triple-A,’ the Twins c-t insist, and add that ‘This is God thanking us for giving our spare tire away.’ Right. So in the Twins’ world, God, in his infinite benevolence, makes cars break down just to improve their lives, because He has nothing better to do than toss around the occasional mechanical monkey wrench. Hunger, wars, disease – it all takes a back seat to two American blondes needing to slip into third place. Apparently Brandon & Nicole’s shredding of the Bible has left some really interesting word scraps floating around the heartland. Remember: when the Good Samaritan passes the Prodigal Son (who is now and forever Jesus) in trouble on the side of the road, grab his shoes, wallet, and corneas. It’s the New TAR Christian thing to do. Sign up for the youngest church on the block today!

And it turns out that, in the greatest shocker of the Race since – well, since Kami & Karli correctly spotted their own names during the opening credits, the Twins are wrong: Colin will stop for somebody, if only because he knows he’s just moved out of last place and has hours left before the first flight leaves. C&C&AAA pull over to check on the Moms and generously allow their cab driver to lend out his phone. ‘That’s what y’all get for driving so fast!’, Colin gloat-fumes – but sticks around long enough for the call to be completed before speeding off. The Moms have help on the way: a replacement cab will arrive in under ten minutes.

Chip & Kim reach the airport, where Chip The Good demonstrates his endless generosity and solidifies his death grip on the Fanatics List pole position (if not the strategy rankings) with a $20 tip to their cabbie. Kim c-t feels that Chip’s kindness is their greatest weakness: there’s nothing wrong with his being nice to everyone, but he’s been spreading around big tips for the entire Race, and eventually, the added drain on their cash supply is going to hurt them. And the screen flashing during her entire speech is really starting to annoy her.

Team It’s Not A Sin If We Don’t Understand It arrives and fills up the first charter before Nicole tries to pay their driver in split funds: thirty dollars Kenyan, seventy US. The exchange rate doesn’t work out, and they finally have to hand over $100 US after deciding to switch their local funds back to dollars at the next currency exchange stand. And the Moms told them that trick would work, too!

Nicole’s angry about the failed ploy, so Reverend Chip takes her aside for a quick counseling session, patiently explaining that $100 US may buy a lot more here than it would in the States, and this cabfare might actually change the driver’s life: they can’t let money lead them to negative emotions. Brandon, who hasn’t shredded that part of his Bible yet, agrees with Pastor Chip and tells Nicole to chill out. Nicole starts to do her best slow-burn Colin imitation, now angry that everyone’s ganging up on her and accusing her of not being a generous person, especially after she’s been giving her morals away all over the planet. Brother Chip repeats his philosophy of giving to the world=receiving from the world, but Nicole didn’t see that in her collection of paper scraps.

Nicole: ‘Don’t you see us getting raked for money?’
Rabbi Chip: ‘We’re not!’
Nicole: ‘How much would they charge us if we weren’t American?’

Here’s a better question, Nicole: how much would they charge you if you were in America? Say, starting from Manhattan, where you would probably spend a lot of time riding around looking for modeling jobs?

Medallion taxi, hundred-mile ride, estimated:

$2.00 to enter, covers the first 1/8th of a mile.
$0.50 for each additional 1/8th of a mile.
$0.50 for each full minute spent sitting in traffic (three to five in the morning, say twenty minutes in traffic jams).

Total: $410 US, plus all applicable tolls, and a possible Chip-Tip.

So that settles it. Nicole’s just cheap.

Nicole openly voices her worries about running out of money, Father Chip c-t feels she has a lot of maturing to do, and the Twins show up. Their cab driver is not struck by lightning as a way of thanking them for giving up their spare tire, so they actually have to pay the man. Apparently God’s interference with other’s lives is only good for one occurrence per major act of blatant ignorance.

Colin & Christie pull in fourth, and Colin takes care of paying the driver. To wit, he tries to pay him fifty dollars: take it or leave it. The driver is understandably curious about the sudden fifty-percent off sale, since he hadn’t heard about a Wal-Mart moving into his area and forcing price matches before now. Colin explains, in his patient, calm, I-haven’t-killed-anyone-yet way, that the cabbie should have never attempted a hundred-mile ride on a donut, it was unsafe, and he’s not paying a C-note for that kind of service. Colin, as much as I hate to admit this – and oh, do I ever hate to admit this – has a point. It’s a point that could be reported to any local Better Business Bureau. It’s even a point that would hold up in small claims court. This just isn’t a good time or place to be making it, especially after the driver refuses the fifty (and demands the hundred) and Colin, with a battle cry of ‘You don’t want it? Fine!’, heads into the airport to book the second charter flight. The cabbie, unimpressed by the radiant heat and feeling secure about the airport’s fire suppression system, follows.

A cycle quickly forms. The cabbie demands his full hundred dollars again. Colin offers fifty again. The cabbie refuses the fifty again. Colin withdraws the fifty again. The cabbie demands his full hundred dollars again, and again, and again… (To completely capture the feel of this moment, reread the prior six sentences until you’re completely sick of it, then do it some more.)

By the time the Moms pull in and sign in as the only passengers on Charter #3, it’s starting to look as if Colin is actually trying for a fight, and he doesn’t seem to be all that far from getting The Rumble In The Jungle II: I’ll Put That Donut Where The Sun Doesn’t Shine! This means it’s time to bring in a referee, so the cabbie summons the first potential Colin extinguisher: one of the local cops.

By this point, everyone in the airport is watching Colin vs. The Clock, with a late-shift employee trying to give him practical advice: pay the hundred and end this, for there is a flight to be caught in a few hours. Colin insists that he’s paying fifty or nothing, with no other options available. The cabbie can call in the rest of the local police force, the president of the nation, the army, the National Guard, and a UN negotiating team: he has proof of a Weapon Of Massive Driving Incompetence, and he stands by his right to leave this developing nation in the financial lurch before he goes to invade his next country.

(Editing note: at this time, the camera moves from shooting Colin in close-up from the chin up to the collar up, carefully noting the cross around his neck whenever he speaks. It is not speed-tarnishing or smoking against his skin at this time.)

The police officer says, in rough paraphrase, ‘Not before you make reparations, you don’t’ and leads Colin (with Christie following) to the police station, which is just outside the airport gates: easy walking distance. Christie complains that Colin is wasting their time, to which he replies ‘Our plane doesn’t leave for three and a half hours. This’ll take five minutes, so please stop making things worse.’ After all, contradicting The Great Colin does tend to rip small holes in the fabric of small-time, and Christie surely doesn’t want to be responsible for the death of humanity.

‘The team that’s going to destroy Colin and Christie,’ Chip c-t notes, ‘is Colin and Christie.’ Or maybe just Colin, who’s still refusing to pay more than fifty dollars and now using ‘Hakuna matata!’ as a defense between increasing bouts of blaming Christie for this whole mess. Possibly she was supposed to be on donut spotting duty. Maybe she should have used her beauty queen tiara as a bribe. It’s possible that she’s responsible for garroting people from behind and missed her chance at the cabbie’s neck. We never find out. All we know is that it’s clearly Christie’s fault, because Colin is blaming her. And Colin is always right. Or else.

Police Chief Sam shows up at 6:20, and Colin explains his revised position: somewhere off camera, in the darkness of the editing room’s garbage can, he told the driver that he’d only pay a hundred dollars if his team arrived in the same position it left in: second. This is followed by the somewhat legitimate donut argument again, the ritual offering of the fifty, and Colin’s final descent into idiocy: he ignores the give-and-take of what are clearly now negotiations being conducted by someone with the power to settle this, declares that he has a plane to catch, and walks out of the station.

Chief Sam follows him down the steps and explains his position, which breaks down to You Do Not Walk Out On The Police Chief, Hakuna Matata Head. Colin, in the chief’s revised opinion, entered into a contract with the cabbie by agreeing to the fare for that ride. Colin cannot prove he didn’t enter a contract, no matter how much he yells in the chief’s face about it. Colin can wait inside. Possibly in the jail cell, because the cabbie now wants to press criminal charges against Colin. Possibly forever, or at least until he starves to death, because Colin will no doubt want the food to exit his body from the same position it entered.

Is Colin being railroaded at this point? Is Colin being a jerk about the whole situation, legitimate point or no? If Colin actually got thrown in jail, would anyone outside of Amnesty International and a few US lawyers looking for a little CNN time care? Does anyone think Colin’s actually going to see the inside of a jail cell before he gets home, snaps, finds a clock tower, and does something completely unoriginal? And, most importantly, is Colin actually stupid enough to risk a shot at one million (triple-brak) dollars on a debate over a hundred?

No. So Colin, managing to get anger and disdain into the same weak toss, throws the full one hundred dollars onto the counter and walks out of the police station at top speed, fuming ‘He took –.’

Which is as far as he gets before Christie cuts him off. ‘No, he did not! Don’t make things up in your head, Colin! Don’t make it up in your head!’ Christie has obviously forgotten that Colin making up the universe in his head is the only thing keeping everyone on the planet alive, and now she’s distracting him. This can’t be good.

Colin, distracted by the sound of sin – no one can disagree with The Mighty Colin! – nearly loses Malaysia, and c-t declares that Christie is frustrating him. Whether he was right or wrong – not that he could ever be wrong, but just for the purposes of a theological argument – he wanted Christie to stand by him. He now wants a different kind of relationship. Something with more control over his partner. Something with electric collars and the ability to bring down lightning on anyone who questions his word. Something which, in fact, really belongs on FOX. But he’s stuck on this show with this partner, and he’ll have to see it through, no matter how much we’re rooting for him to quit and become the star of My Really, Incredibly, Unbelievably Obnoxious Finance.

Of course, there’s still time to explain his fundamental Rightness to the other teams.

Linda: ‘So you didn’t win, Colin. Damn it, I’m disappointed in you.’ (‘And I was ready to start attending services as soon as we got home.’)
Colin: ‘I would have, but Christie was freaking out!’ (‘I nearly lost Malaysia, you hear me? Malaysia! What if we had to go there on the next leg and it didn’t exist any more?’)
Christie: ‘Just get over it.’ (‘Don’t be silly. They went there too recently for a second visit.’)
Colin: ‘God! I’m just telling the story, is that okay with you?’ (‘First, I will remind you of who I am, and then I will remind you of who you are not!’)

Kim c-t feels that Crisis & Calamity have an abusive relationship, with Christie constantly living in stress from Colin’s antics. Kim is an intelligent, observant woman who knows a future edition of the Jerry Springer Show when she sees one, so that notation is hereby declared unbashable. You can continue to go after Colin as much as you like, especially after he gets Christie to apologize for trying to talk common sense into him earlier.

Well, now that we’ve essentially wasted half the episode on the future Exhibit H for the prosecution, let’s get out of KillColinRightNow and back to Kenya. The charter flights cover the distance to Nairobi in seventy minutes, with the first four teams discovering a flight to Dubai leaving at noon to arrive at six p.m. They all sign up for it. Linda and Karen, landing at 11:40 a.m, wind up with twenty minutes to deplane, scramble, book their tickets, and board – which isn’t enough: the ticket clerk won’t book them this close to departure, and the Moms are behind again. Their only other option leaves at 6:00 p.m. to arrive at 12:19 a.m, and it’s not as if they can count on bunch points to save them forever. The Race does have to end sometime.

We shift to Dubai and the inevitable dash through the airport – the Twins win – cut past Shinto Chip’s inspired cabfare negotiation – ‘How much? Free? Twenty? Okay!’ and follow the taxi race to the hotel: a beautifully designed structure sitting on a little island just inside the bay, looking like a giant sail set to the wind. Demonstrating just how afraid the Twins’ camera crew is of them after almost getting lost in the desert for forty years, the clue box is pointed out/spotted and identified – but the cabbie refuses to stop in the middle of the road and proceeds to the hotel, forcing our blondes to remember which path leads back to the marker. This doesn’t make them lose any ground, though, because all of the cabbies refuse to stop at the clue box and drop the teams off at varying distances from the hotel. Interesting traffic laws they’ve got in Dubai. So when do we get around to legislating designated DAW drop points? (Can Colin’s be at the edge of a cliff?)

Everyone races for the clue box, gets there within seconds of each other, and starts reading at top speed: welcome to the world’s largest off-shore hotel – the next clue is up on the heliport pad – hours of operation are 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. only…

It’s 6:15 p.m.

So. This clearly world-class hotel, big and beautiful with a custom-designed heliport at the top, will only accept guests with millions of dollars who like to fly in to their temporary residences between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day. Interesting business practices they’ve got in Dubai. It’s almost as if someone arranged things to create a bunch point or something. And it’s not as if anyone involved with the Race would deliberately force teams to do nothing except let others catch up over the course of several hours, would they? Of course not. So this hotel is just run by a really weird staff. I guess all the human resources money was spent on finding the design crew.

The teams, disgusted at the weird heliport labor laws, wander off to find a place where they can kill nearly fourteen hours on the cheap. A little over six hours later, the Moms land, get their taxi, find the clue, and do a little dance in the street to celebrate the pure genius that is Dubai’s air traffic control board. All five teams are once again dead even, and it’s not as if anyone saw it coming. (The millions watching the Race don’t count.)

Morning comes, with the editing giving no clue as to where the teams spent the night, if they spent any money in the process, or if Colin marched down to the courthouse and demanded to see the air zoning laws for the district, and our Racers are allowed into the hotel at 7:50 a.m, to begin making their way up to the heliport. With ten minutes to kill, the camera gets to admire the hotel’s interior a bit (Donald Trump, eat your hair out), but sadly, also has a few seconds to spend on Colin and Christie enjoying a makeup kiss, which Christie finishes wearing the serene expression which takes fifteen million material and summonable witnesses for your mental cruelty lawsuit to muster.

Cardinal Chip and the Moms enjoy the view from the glass elevator and heliport, 8:00 a.m. comes at last, and everyone starts ripping open clues. They have to get off the helipad (jumping is allowed and encouraged, but unlikely) and make their way to a water taxi (abra) port. From there, it’s hire a boat ride to get them to the docks, find a specimen of a native boat known as a dhow (would you believe my spellchecker recognized that?), and get their next clue from the captain. More Fun With Taxis is probably about to ensue.

Sure enough, the usual scramble for hired wheels takes place. Kim hopes they have enough money for the ride to the abra station and the abra itself, which puts a slightly freaked look on Padre Chip’s face, as he starts to realize that tipping the cab drivers, airplane pilot, person who loaded the clue box, elevator operator, and the glass polisher responsible for his lovely clear view may not have been such a brilliant idea in retrospect. The Moms, last out of the hotel, pass Colin and Christie’s cab. No lawsuits result, mostly because Colin’s still reconfiguring the budget to deal with his upcoming extradition hearing.

The Holy Ones, The Delusionally Holy Ones, and the Twins hit the abra station at the same time. Brandon discovers that he’s down to twenties in the bill department and the cabbie doesn’t have change (surprise!), so pays out $20 for a $9 ride rather than wait to find someone who can break it. All three teams share the same water taxi ($10 each), compare taxi fares, and, naturally, set off Nicole, who’s once again getting worried about the cash situation – although not as much as Bishop Chip, who’s starting to bleed pennies from every pore in the first-ever sighting of genuine Race stigmata.

The Moms and Team Hitchcock agree to share an abra just as the first boat reaches the bay, and the Racers start their search for the dhow. Your High Chipinence’s politeness wins him the fastest directions, making C&K the first to receive the clue – and the Detour options: Off Plane or Off Road.

For Off Plane, it’s the return of an old Race favorite: the skydive with an instructor – and, because of the instructor, a parachute – strapped to your back. It may wind up being scary, but there’s not much involved: suit up, make sure everything’s fastened, take the ride, and drift down to the clue box (located at the end of the Off Road route, so teams may be able to keep an eye on each other). The hazard is time: each plane will only take one team, and the planes leave forty-five minutes apart. The first team to do this is probably safe. The second team is probably screwed.

For Off Road, the teams have to get to the Margham sand dunes, where they’ll be assigned 4*4 offroaders and a safety instructor who’ll ride along with them. After that, it’s a six-mile course over the dunes and through the desert, following widely-spaced TAR flags and possibly the tracks of another team. There’s no delay to get the cars – all five teams could be on the course at once if needed – but the sand is tricky, and one wrong move could get the vehicle stuck with no traction, waiting for the tow truck to drag them back onto the course track. This could be fast for a good driver, but anyone who has trouble keeping control of their vehicle (and themselves) is probably doomed.

And no matter where they go, they have to take a taxi, which means Cantor Chip had better start singing for his supper: he’s just about broke, and Kim only has a few dollars left. They decide to try the dunes, hoping their scant remaining funds will be just enough to cover the ride. However, this means finding a cabbie who knows the way – which means they find out where all the native Manhattan taxi drivers are: namely, working in Dubai. And they have no idea where the dunes are. One driver, two…

The Twins and Brandon & Nicole both decide to do the skydive, with the Twins declaring ‘We’re jumping!’, leading to momentary hopes that they’re actually heading back to the heliport. (Remember: the second team to do the jump is probably in deep trouble, especially since I haven’t heard the words ‘hours of operation’ once in this segment.)

Crisis & Calamity and the Moms reach the bay and find the dhow. Christie immediately figures out the potential time problem at the airport and convinces Colin to do the dunes and load up the taxi based on her prior display of worship: the Church of Colin grants indulgences, too. The Moms come to the same realization and head for the sand. Both teams immediately get a driver who knows the way and can leave immediately – unlike the one bathed in soft backlighting, which has now gone through four cabbies without finding one carrying a map. By the time C&K get their knowledgeable fifth, they’ve dropped back into last place and have completely forgotten to ask how much the fare would be before leaving. This leaves High Inquistor Chip watching the meter like a man lying underneath a guillotine blade – and the meter is recording the steadily-rising fare in the local currency, with no conversion chart handy. They may have enough. They may not. It’s all in the halo’s ring now.

Colin tells Christie he used to go off-road onto the Texas sand all the time back home, especially when there was a chance of scoring some two-meter whomp rats. He doesn’t feel he’ll have any trouble with this Detour. The beautiful vision of Colin getting the car stuck in the stand, stepping on the gas and sending sand clouds flying up into the air, Christie and the safety driver escaping through the windows while a single-minded, increasingly demented Colin continues to bury himself, his vehicle, and eventually his lungs in silicon particles until, thousands of years later, an inquisitive archeologist finds himself attacked by a crazed skeleton wearing a tattered red and yellow flag, lasts just long enough to record before reality takes it away.

Meanwhile, back at the dash to see who gets pushed out of a plane first, Brandon & Nicole’s taxi goes past the flag (plastered against the airport fence near a gate) before they can really react and get the driver to stop. The Twins, just a few car lengths behind, also spot the flag and thus win a chance to get into the parking lot first – but Karli doesn’t believe the flag. She believes it’s there, but she’s not sure it means anything. After all, just because they see a red and yellow flag doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the race.

Kami, prompted by a disbelieving camera crew, tries to prod Karli into some degree of sanity and turn the taxi around, getting back to the flag before Brandon & Nicole can correct their path – but too little, too late: Team Blessed Art The Piece-Makers get reoriented and go through the gate. By the time the Twins finally reach a truce and follow them, it’s down to a footrace, with B & N out to a major lead – and possessing the first ride token of the day. Thanks to Karli’s mental relapse to Egypt (just because you retrieve a satchel doesn’t mean you’re supposed to do anything with the contents), the Twins are now forty-five minutes behind the immediate section of the pack. They sit down, fume, and wait for the next plane while the Holy Divers are put in their equipment and loaded onto the plane.

The time spent in this little ‘but maybe they changed to green and purple flags while we weren’t looking!’ discussion lets Colin & Christie reach the Off Road site, where Colin channels his inner Mirna with a constant chant of ‘Faster, faster’ during the run to the vehicle. They collect their driver and take off across the dunes – where, as it turns out, Colin’s not the worst driver in the world. He’s keeping them on the course for the moment, and the constant jolts, bounces, and shocks to the system are just part of the natural experience from dune travel. He’s not slightly deviating from the course to increase the shock effects at all. Really. No matter how much he says he’s enjoying himself.

The Moms arrive second, with Chip & Kim third – and in trouble. All the money they have in the world amounts to sixteen US dollars, and the final total on the meter, after conversion, equals $26. They don’t have it. There is no one around to borrow it from. No beam of sunlight is descending from the heavens carrying an emergency ten on drifts of dust. There is absolutely nothing they can do to raise the extra money. The police are probably going to be called in, and some really bad information is going to bring Colin’s cabbie to Dubai as a material witness. They may be going to jail. Isn’t there anything they can do to save themselves?

Saint Chip explains his situation, pleads his case, and grants unto the cab driver the holy hug of karma return as a halo of lens flare light briefly surrounds them. (I’m completely sure it was lens flare.)

The cabbie blinks, looks dazed, accepts the $16, and lets them go, blinking out the confused ‘help me’ signs of a man who has just allowed himself to be shortchanged for no apparent reason. His Most Holiness and spouse race for the 4*4s, convinced their goodness has come back to save them. Either that, or the cab driver just deluded himself into thinking they could introduce him to Carmen Electra.

The Moms and the Holies start within seconds of each other, with The Angel (In Training) Of Dune Driving Chip and Linda at the controls. (Karen’s worried that Linda’s going to flip the vehicle over, but not enough to actually take control of it. In the Race, this is known as the K&D level of partner screw-up concern.) Linda’s driving quickly proves to be a little less than adept: she has the benefit of following both the flags and the trail of slime Colin leaves behind wherever he goes, but the later may have proven to be her undoing. The car slides off to the left while cresting a dune, goes down about ten feet, and gets stuck. Chip & Kim drive past them, suspending the original Good Samaritan doctrine until the end of the detour. (Besides, Chip’s out of money to tip the tow truck driver with.)

Linda manages to back out of the sandtrap and get on the course again – but they’re now in third place for the immediate pack, and in danger of being fourth overall: the Flying Fallen Angels just caught up overhead. Brandon can see Colin’s vehicle and the atmospheric disturbances caused by the wind whipping around his ego – but all he can do is watch. They haven’t reached the jump point yet, and until they do, he’s relegated to being an observer from on high. It’s not quite as much fun as he’d originally hoped.

Colin, ever one for the overly direct approach, drives through a couple of dunes in explosions of sand while admonishing himself not to break the car – after all, what sort of proto-deity is he if he can’t take care of his own creations? – the wind and Colin’s speed of passage blow a flag over, and Brandon & Nicole finally get to jump. The clue box is up ahead and down below. What’s faster: Colin’s driving or the natural force of gravity? If the Fallen And Falling Faster Still Angels don’t bother opening the chutes, they might be able to beat Crisis & Calamity to the next envelope! It’s only sand! It should give way when they hit it! Sure, it might take them a few hours to dig out…

The wimps open the chutes, which lets C&C reach the clue box first. This awards them a camel to ride, a wrangler to walk alongside said camel and direct it, and a pre-programmed GPS navigation unit, whose directions they have to follow for half a mile in order to reach the next Pit Stop: a traditional Bedouin camp. (Since I already made a host of camel-riding jokes in the fourth episode Outback Jack summary and this one could near Landru territory if I paste them in here, feel free to hop boards for a few seconds and mentally paste in whichever ones you like. They’ll only be repeats for four of you.) Colin has an inherent dislike of following the directions of anything that isn’t him, but it’s temporarily negated by his opportunity to boss around both the camel and guide. The team gets onto their dubious mode of transportation (which still smells faintly of high-maintenance perfume) and begin their usual charming style of giving directions: loudly, frequently, and with frequent flashbacks to Mirna’s patented style of speed requests.

The fallen angels can fall no further (at least until next week) and get their clue: according to Brandon, they have to get on a ‘cimell’ (which Nicole accurately terms a weirder experience than skydiving) and ride their ‘donkey’ (Brandon again) to the pit stop. At this point, the order of arrival is set. No one will ever execute a daring pass in traffic on the back of a camel, unless the camel being passed decides to – well, act like a camel, which is to say, a bundle of malicious impulses being held together by an excess of knees. And these are fancy camels: the well-bred steeds of the desert, which means they’re only intermittently homicidal. (With the exception of the breeding aspect, Colin is getting along with his steed fabulously.) With the wranglers there to take control, nothing painful is probably going to happen – other than seeing Colin & Christie arrive first again, and that loses some of its sting about five years after the end of the leg.

Meanwhile, Chip The Monk (traveling with no money, relying on the kindness of strangers) is in trouble again: the blown-over flag hasn’t been righted, and he can’t see the next point on the trail. This leaves them following what few car tracks are visible in the shifting sand and hoping that they’re not following their own trail back to the starting point – or worse, that of the Twins, which may end up back in Egypt about four hundred and eighty months later. Happily, he’s absolutely safe on that option, as the Twins are just now boarding their plane, near-simultaneously wondering why the other teams didn’t choose this option (do the words ‘three hour spread’ mean anything to you?) and considering the possible size of their mistake, which is now looming only slightly smaller than Colin’s ego. And it’s still a better position to be in than Linda’s, which is at the helm of a vehicle that has once again gotten stuck in the dunes, sending up geysers of sand as the wheels churn out a distress signal. There’s no amount of backing up, rocking in the seat, or getting Karen to lie down under the back wheels to provide traction which is going to get them out of this one, and it’s time to call the tow truck. The Twins may not be in as much trouble as the editing would like them to think they are – so we now know exactly who’s going to finish last.

And who’s going to finish first? We knew that already, too. Thanks to endless repetitions of ‘faster’ and orders not to stop for anything or anyone, Colin & Christie pull into the Pit Stop in the pole position, to be greeted by Phil, their Bedouin host, and special guest star Montecore, looking exceptionally healthy after his vacation time in the dry desert air. Their prize for finishing the leg first is a Caribbean vacation, which they can enjoy right now: there’s a plane waiting at the airport to fly them away. Sadly, they opt to continue the race.

Christie c-t admits to having a problem with stressing out over fears of being in last place, then says she never should have been angry with Colin. This is going to look really good when the trial starts. Think she’ll be able to plead mind control?

Brandon & Nicole check in as Team #2 while C&K check into the nearest dune: it’s their turn to go off the trail and get locked into the sand, and as with the Moms, trying to churn their way out isn’t working, plus they’ve used up their one manifestation of divine power for the day. It’s a race to see whose tow truck is going to reach a vehicle first – but, while the editing shows the Moms as getting free ahead of their competitors, the second tow truck (apparently departing on its rescue mission from the finish line, which C&K were closer to) gets Apostle Chip and his follower out of their quagmire before the Moms can fully catch up to them – his tow truck driver agrees to accept an IOU – and the race for that precious two-minute separation before the next bunch point is on again – especially since the unknown amount of time spent stuck in the dunes just let the Twins catch up to their jump point, and the parachutes are visible in the sky…

With only a couple of car lengths separating them from Linda’s bad driving, C&K barrel into the finish line and race for the clue box, trying for those extra few feet before gravity catches up with the Twins (a process that would normally take a few more years). They receive their clue and camel, then start down the path with the Moms close behind and the Twins visible drifting down behind them. And once again, unless something drastic happens with said dubious mode of transportation, third and fourth place are locks.

Remember when I mentioned this was going to be a non-elimination leg? Doesn’t that feel like a really long time ago?

The Camel, The Wife, And The Holy Chip check in as Team #3, with Phil (who must be missing Charla & Mirna something fierce) drawing His Radiance in for a close hug as he welcomes him to the Pit Stop. The power has still been used up for the day, and no further invention or sudden appearance of Carmen Electra occurs. (However, somewhere in Las Vegas, her husband gets dealt a large number of awesome pocket cards and goes on to win his table at Celebrity Poker Showdown. Coincidence…?)

The editing does its best to flip between the teams and make it look like a lead change might have occurred, but we know better: the Moms check in fourth, with Linda c-t believing in their ability to reach the last leg and win – and the Twins are the last team to arrive.

But, sadly for us all, what I predict three times is true: it’s a non-elimination leg (and, for the first time that I can remember, a non-Roadblock leg, which means that I’ve taken up all this space on one Detour and Colin’s extended rant – anyone wanna form a new kind of summary club?), and the only result is the same one we got for the Moms in Egypt: the Twins are broke, which is God thanking them for donating so much money during church services. All of their money has to be turned over to Phil. (Credit where credit is due moment: there’s a lot of it. Either the Twins have been exceptionally harsh on their tips, careful with their spending, or they’ve been using their airport downtime to check every coin return in the vending machine plaza. Until the moment they emptied their pockets, Kami & Karli were flush. Hmmm. D’you think the other Racers have been keeping a close eye on their wallets during the rest periods…?)

They’re out in the desert without a penny to their name. The other teams don’t necessarily love them, and they’ll leave after Pope Chip would have gotten a chance to help them. Whatever will they do to pull themselves out of last place?

Their reply: ‘We’re resourceful. We’re young and cute. We think we can figure out something.’

In the interests of fairness, I have to point out that:

1. Your only real resources just went bye-bye.
2. Well, you’re young…
3. Harem girls do not get paid by the hour.
4. There aren’t enough veils in the world to get you two started.
5. Which means you’re going to have to think your way out of this. And if I have to explain the problems involved in that…

So. What are you really going to do?

‘We are so going to lie to people.’

And somewhere in the world, two women named Adria and Natalie briefly feel very proud of the example they’ve set for twins everywhere.

Five legs remaining.
One bankrupt set of future low-bid slave goods.
One morally bankrupt pair of Christians.
One ongoing investigation by the Church, looking for the three miracles that will allow formal induction into the ranks and create the Patron Saint Of Reality TV.
One ongoing delusion of finishing the race, finishing first, and giving the virtual finger to thousands of fitness professionals around the world.
One tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood.

Next stop: Strid333 and Calcutta. Peace, over and out.