***OFFICIAL TAR3 E5 SUMMARY: “D-I-E-S-E-L. DIESEL. THAT MEANS ‘UNLEADED’ IN PORTUGUESE, RIGHT?” ***

Hey, do you remember back in Episode 1, when we first met Heather and Eve? Yeah? And do you remember when they said that, despite their extraordinary, supermodel-like beauty, they actually possessed genius qualities, but they were going to win by pretending they were dumb? And do you also remember when, in the last episode, they were eliminated because of pure, unadulterated stupidity? Well, kiddies, there’s some irony in there. Can you spot it?

Now, we’re on to Episode 5. There go the opening credits. They’re still the same. Actually, I have no idea if they’re the same. I never watch them.

Commercials. Kodak film is for fundamentally good people who build houses for charity. A check of my film inventory reveals that I use FujiFilm. I guess that must mean I am a cold, heartless b*tch. Who knew? Ordinarily, I hate excessively-repeated commercials just as much as anyone, but I can’t get enough of this new Mitsubishi ad. The guy driving the car is totally hot. In particular, I’m digging the shiny-shirted cowboy outfit. Does that make me weird?

Lisbon, Portugal. We rejoin our ragtag bunch of intrepid Amazing Racers at the pit stop at the Torre de Belem, where, according to Phil, everyone is (much to my surprise) eating, sleeping, and mingling with the other teams. Except I don’t see any mingling. I see eating, and I see sleeping, but I see no mingling. There is a brief shot of Michael waving at someone or something, but without actual visual evidence of mingling, I ain’t buyin’ what Phil is sellin’. I should note here that Phil is thankfully now wearing a shirt that mostly covers up his man-boobs. Hey Phil, and I don’t mean to sound overly critical or anything, but seeing as how you earn your living in the public eye and all, you might want to look into joining a gym during the off-season. Just a suggestion. Not that you’ll ever be Anderson Cooper, The Hottest Reality TV Host Ever, but we’ve all got to start somewhere.

Before we get on with the race, let’s pause for a moment and review, in no particular order, who is still with us:

Derek and Drew. Dumb and pretty, just the way I like ‘em.

Ken and Gerard. Bald and middle-aged. Kind of funny. Along with the twins, they’re the crowd favorites.

Aaron and Arianne. They suck. But they think they’re awesome. Which makes them suck even more. Also, Arianne’s name makes me think of that stupid cheerleader skit from Saturday Night Live.

Andre and Damon. One’s a cop, one’s a fireman. Don’t ask me which one is which. They tend to follow people instead of doing things themselves. Sometimes, they kind of break laws and stuff.

Jill and John Vito. Despite the somewhat creepy way they got together (as explained back in Episode 1), they are notable for being just about the only male-female team that appears to have a normal, healthy relationship.

Michael and Kathy. They’re long-distance dating. They’re boring. Kathy has claimed in the past that she’s a type A personality, but I have yet to see any evidence of this, seeing as how she rarely speaks. I was under the impression that you had to talk occasionally to be classified as having a personality. Michael, on the other hand, talks a little more, but he usually sounds like he’s on drugs.

Flo and Zach. These two bug me. I can’t get past the fact that Flo shares the same annoying name with the annoying tour guide on my eighth grade class trip to Washington D.C. Tour Guide Flo was always yelling at us to follow her, I guess because she was worried that we’d wander off, get lost, and wind up smoking crack with Marion Barry. She had a frilly yellow parasol thing with the name “Flo” stenciled on it, and she carried it high above her head while she screeched at us to follow her. She was so annoying that we made up a song about her (sung to the tune of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”):

Follow the yellow umbrella.
Follow the yellow umbrella.
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the yellow umbrella.
If ever a wonderful tour guide there was,
Flo is one, is one, because,
Because, because, because, because, BECAUSE,
Because of the yellow umbrella she carries!

Hey, stop making fun of me. We were in eighth grade, okay? But now you know why I no longer write song parodies. As for Zach, I am obsessed with the headbands, and not in a good way. No man should be wearing headbands like that, ever. And don’t even try to tell me they’re functional. If he needs them that badly to keep his hair out of his face, clearly he needs to get a freakin’ haircut.

Teri and Ian. These two are so thoroughly loathsome I don’t even have the desire to bash them with humor (or attempted humor, depending on your viewpoint). Empirically, Teri’s not necessarily that bad, except for the screeching maybe, but the fact that she has been putting up with Ian’s wretched behavior for twenty-one years, and continues to pretty much put up with it, makes me lose all respect for her. Grow a spine, woman. Are these two really the best middle-aged married team the producers could find? If so, maybe it’s a sign that they need to give up some of the gimmick casting.

Okay, now we can finally get to the actual race. Ken and Gerard are the first to depart. They must get themselves to Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe. It’s only twenty-two miles away. Flo and Zach leave second. Flo non-sequiturs that “Zach has gotten a lot better at dealing with my emotions.” Well, okay then. Next to depart is Team Don’t Hate Us Because We’re Beautiful. They make their way to a park where Ken and Gerard are studying a map. Upon spotting the twins, Gerard drops the map and goes running toward them. Then he runs up to them with the map. Hooray, continuity editors! Guns ‘N Hoses leaves next. They decide to get where they need to go by being leeches. They immediately latch on to the Band of Brothers and start sucking.

The Brothers and the Leeches decide that the best way to go twenty-two miles is to take a cab, then take a train, then take another cab. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan, guys. Except it doesn’t. Except, as we’ll see later, it won’t matter, even forgetting about the wacky misadventures involving improper use of fossil fuels, because everyone would have bunched at the ferry anyway. So…whatever.

Teri and Ian leave fifth, and of course he starts yelling at her right out of the gate. She tells him to “Zip it!”, and I guess I should be happy about that, but it just isn’t satisfying. I can’t even get excited about making the obligatory Dr. Evil joke. I just despise these two that much. A woman with enormous breasts tells them to go to Cabo da Roca.

John Vito and Jill leave the pit stop sixth. Their decisions are always a group effort. Neither one makes a decision without the other. How boring. They find their way to a cab, where Jill is now wearing a bandanna on her head and large, square sunglasses. From the neck up, she looks like a pale J-Lo. At the train station, Flo and Zach get directions from a slightly disheveled-looking woman who may or may not be drunk. Finally, back at the pit stop, Michael and Kathy and Aaron and Arianne pull up the rear, leaving seventh and eighth, respectively. Aaron says being last was really a kick in the ass, and I only wish they had actual footage, because I would have liked to see that.

After more yelling and screeching, Teri and Ian get a cab. Ian actually says, and (apologies to Dave Barry, no relation to Marion) I am not making this up, “Bottom line is, I’m the pilot, she’s the navigator, and when I say we fly, we need to fly.” No really, that’s what he says. The cab driver looks like he wants to be anywhere but there in the cab with them, and who can blame him?

In Aaron and Arianne’s cab, Aaron exposits something about buses and trains versus taxis, or something, and I don’t really care. You suck, Aaron.

Back at the train station, the Leeches bribe the Brothers to hold their hands and get them on the train. Andre and Damon, I must say you two are certainly doing your respective professions proud. Way to be strong and self-sufficient.

Much to my dismay, Aaron and Arianne are the first to the Cabo da Roca, the site of the first Detour. In Suck-It-Up or Wimp-Out, teams must rappel down a cliff, or take a much longer, physically demanding hike down to the bottom. Wait, a physically demanding downhill walk? Since when is walking down a hill hard? Please.

Aaron and Arianne decide to rappel. So do Jill and John Vito, but not before Jill does a face-plant in the dirt after running from the cab. Ouch. Arianne goes down the cliff first. She and Aaron say “I love you” to each other. Blech. She also says “Woo” for the first of about eight thousand times.

Next to the cliff are Flo and Zach, and we get the first glimpses of Flo’s reversion to early childhood as she starts whining like a three-year old that she’s scared of rappelling. Aaron rappels. John Vito rappels. Teri and Ian show up and decide to rappel. The train carrying the Brothers and the Leeches arrives. Jill rappels. It’s all very exciting. Michael and Kathy arrive and surprise of surprises, Michael is going to rappel. Good for you, Michael.

Down at the bottom, Aaron has unfortunately not fallen down the cliff, and he an Arianne get the next clue. They have to get themselves to the Al-Jazeera studios in Qatar. Oh, I’m sorry, they actually have to get to Algeciras, Spain. Then they have to take a ferry over to Tangier, Morocco.

After Jill finishes rappelling, we return once again to Flo’s Bitching, Whining, and Crying Show. It’s truly painful to watch. She’s worse than most small children. At one point, Zack even kind of starts laughing at her as he’s getting hooked up to the ropes. Okay Zach, I’ll concede that her behavior is ridiculous, but as a grown man wearing a headband, you have no business laughing at anyone.

Flo inches down the rope slowly, growing more and more hysterical with each passing second. Former uber-wimp Michael, suddenly now a pro at high-altitude adventure sports, tries to reassure her from the next rope over. We go to commercial wondering whether someone will just cut Flo’s rope already and put her out of her misery.

Commercials. Thursday on Survivor, Ted says, “It’s always dangerous to assume.” He doesn’t add “and when you assume, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. And also, there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’. But there is a ‘me’”.

Back at the cliff, they’ve managed to pull Flo back up to the top, and the crying mercifully stops. She and Zach go off for the wimp walk, much to the barely contained delight of Ian. Michael finishes, and Kathy starts down. Before the rappelling guy is even finished hooking Ian up to the ropes, Ian starts yelling and generally acting like a major jackass. Not that this is new, of course. Among other things, we hear “C’mon, let me go!”, “Give me space!”, and “Hoo-ah!”, the latter multiple times. Why, oh why, does no one ever tell this man to shut the hell up, already?

Teri starts down the cliff. Ian yells at her. She yells at him to stop and calls him “Eye-an”. Getting to the bottom, she is clearly quite excited and proud of her accomplishment, but does Ian congratulate her, or tell her how proud he is of what she did? No, of course not. He yells at her to get her ass moving because she was so slow. I hate him. Hate him, hate him, hate him.

The rest of the teams all rappel without incident, other than Gerard threatening to break Ken’s ass. Can you break your ass? And could you put a cast on your ass if you did break it?

And then all the teams are off in their SUVs, bound for Morocco via southern Spain. In Aaron and Arianne’s car, Aaron says, “This little baby, she needs a niiiiice batch of unleaded.” Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahaha. Guns N’ Hoses need gas, too. They stop at a gas station and check to see what kind of gas the car takes. It says “Diesel” on the inside of the little door that covers the gas cap, so they get diesel. How very logical of them. Jill and John Vito also manage to decipher the hieroglyphics, and they get diesel as well.

But then all hell breaks loose. Aaron and Arianne assume the car takes unleaded, as do Michael and Kathy. Teri asks Ian, “So we’re not diesel, are we?” Ian answers, “No.” Dumbass. As Ian fills the tank with unleaded, the camera zooms in on the word “Diesel” on the little gas tank door. Oh, those wacky editors.

In Aaron and Arianne’s car, Aaron’s expression changes to concern as he asks, “Did you feel that?” Yes, Aaron, what you feel is the vibration from the massive sound wave caused by the collective laughing of every single person watching this show who is now reveling in your bad fortune. The car dies. I laugh. And I laugh, and I laugh, and I laugh some more. Meanwhile, Flo and Zach get unleaded, while Michael and Kathy break down. Teri and Ian break down, and then Flo and Zach break down too.

Can I break in here with an editorial? I have never owned my own car, and I haven’t even driven any car at all in at least three or four years, but even I know enough to check what type of gas a car takes before filling up the tank. To be driving an unfamiliar car in a foreign country, where standards for many things are bound to be different, and assume that the car takes unleaded, without checking, is totally inexcusable. What the hell were they thinking? All four of those teams deserved to be eliminated for doing something so completely boneheaded. I’m surprised no one suggested that they should put Vin Diesel in the car; given the level of stupidity we’ve already seen, I wouldn’t have put it past them. Alright, I think I’m done. Back to the summary. Here’s an actual exchange between Teri and Ian:

Teri: I hope you didn’t put the wrong kind of gas in.
Ian: I put regular gas in the car.
Teri: I hope it wasn’t a diesel.
Ian: It wasn’t diesel. It was clearly marked ‘gasolina’.
Teri: No, the car.
Ian: Oh. Hmm. Good point.

Gee, folks, this is a great conversation to be having after you’ve put the wrong gas in the car. Nice going.

All the teams who know how to read have left Portugal and are now driving through Spain. The non-reading teams start in on a night of b!tching, moaning, crying, and threatening to quit the race.

Commercials. Again with the Kodak ad? I get it, okay? I don’t use Kodak. I am evil. Let it go already. If you live near Boston, make sure you lock your doors at night. Apparently the WBZ morning team has been breaking into people’s homes while they are asleep. Don’t let the plastic expressions and the saccharine dispositions fool you - these people are dangerous.

Back along the Portuguese Highway of Unleaded Despair, Ian and Teri set off to find a gas station and a siphon hose. Flo says it’s “like a twilight zone”. A? Is there more than one? She and Zach start walking in search of a gas station. Aaron just sits on the curb and cries like a big, whiny baby. Yeah, that’ll help. At least some of these other idiots tried to be proactive after their f*ck-ups. Michael calls the car a “piece of crap.” Uh, Mikey, there’s nothing wrong with the car. Unless you count the driver.

Meanwhile, back in the land of the genius people, Guns ‘N Hoses arrives at the ferry.

Flo bitches and whines. And wants to quit. Zach remains calm, although he looks like he wants to throttle her, which is completely understandable.

Ian manages to get a siphon hose and a tank of diesel from a gas station. He lays down under the car to find the fuel line, and suddenly I realize the camera is kind of looking down his shorts and OH MY GOD! MY EYES! MY EYES! I THINK I SEE ASS! Geez, cameraman, was that necessary??? Are you trying to blind me?

After taking some time to recover, I am back to the summary. Jill and John Vito arrive at the ferry. Flo and Zach’s car gets running again. Ian finishes emptying the bad gas out of the tank, and putting the diesel in, and I was almost ready to actually give him a tiny smidgen of praise when I noticed he left a large, toxic, highly flammable slick on the road. So, uh, sorry Ian, I still hate you. Teri is overcome with pride at her husband’s feat, not clueing in to the fact that it wouldn’t have been necessary had not made such a colossal mistake in the first place.

As Aaron and Arianne continue to whine on the side of the road, Derek and Drew drive past, barely noticing. Aaron is pissed because they didn’t stop and help them. I am not surprised at all that they didn’t stop, and frankly, I kind expected them to start laughing hysterically at Aaron and Arianne. At least, that is what I would have done. Actually, no, maybe I would have stopped, but only long enough to dump a can of diesel on their heads, point, laugh, and then drive away. Unfortunately for those of us who delight in the suffering of people like Aaron and Arianne, a car pulls up, and it’s a cop, not a serial killer. Pretty soon, they’ll be on their way. Meanwhile, Michael and Kathy check into a hotel. Uh oh.

Ken and Gerard and the twins arrive at the port, and the four Reading is Fundamental teams get on the 7:00 a.m. ferry. Not long afterwards, Teri and Ian and Flo and Zach arrive. Flo and Zach start bickering as they run through the terminal trying to get on the 8:00 a.m. ferry. He tells her to stop yelling at him because he’s been driving for twelve hours. She calls him out on his mistake that caused the problem in the first place. Touché, Flo. Flo, Zach, Teri and Ian all make the 8:00 a.m. ferry.

Michael and Kathy eat breakfast. I hope it was good.

In Tangier, the four Hooked on Phonics teams get their clues and rush to be one of the three teams on the first charter bus to the Roadblock. Gerard tells his cabbie to go “rapido”. Do they speak Spanish in Morocco? Huh. I guess maybe they do. Jill and John Vito are the unlucky ones with the slow cabbie, and they have to wait for the second bus. The first bus leaves with the Guns ‘N Hoses, the Twins, and the Baldies. It takes them to the city of Fez, where the Roadblock awaits.

Still in Spain, Michael and Kathy hope someone else made the same mistake they did. Aaron and Arianne are bitter and jaded, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying it.

Commercials. These commercials sucked.

At the Roadblock, they have to find the clue submerged in large vats of supposedly foul-smelling leather dye. I can’t tell if it smells as bad as they say (I don’t have Smellivision), but I must say, it looks pretty difficult. There are a lot of vats. Eventually, all three of the first three teams finds their clues without incident.

Next stop is the pit stop at the Borj Nord. Ken and Gerard make it there first. For winning this leg, they both get digital cameras from Fuji. Ha! Just kidding. They’re from - who else? - Kodak, the official sponsors of righteous picture-taking people everywhere. Guns ‘N Hoses comes in second. Team We're Too Sexy is third.

Jill and John Vito, Flo and Zach, and Teri and Ian do the Roadblock. Nothing interesting happens. Aaron and Arianne wait for their charter bus and debate the location of Michael and Kathy. Arianne thinks they’ll show up. Aaron thinks they won’t. In this case, my heart is with Arianne, but my head is with Aaron, unfortunately. Jill and John Vito and Flo and Zach tie for fourth place. Teri and Ian come in sixth. Aaron and Arianne complete the Roadblock and drive to the pit stop. Aaron thinks they’re pulling in last. If only, Aaron, if only. Phil informs them that they’re team number seven.

Day turns to dusk turns to night. Michael and Kathy seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Finally, they arrive at the pit stop, and Phil looks genuinely pained as he tells them they’ve been eliminated, knowing at the same time that he still has to put up with Teri and Ian and Aaron and Arianne. You can even hear his voice almost break as he tells them they’re last. Let it out, Phil. It’s okay to cry.

Next time on The Amazing Race: Ian yells at someone other than Teri. Flo whines at someone other than Zach. There’s go-carting. There’s zigging. There’s zagging. There’s mad dashing. It’ll be a grand old time.