Of course, a show that has been far from riveting so far has managed to take away one of the few joys I have had so far. So long Erica Rico, we hardly got to know you. Oh, and her family too.
Seriously though, the Rico Family was the only somewhat normal family on this race. Ricardo seems like a fairly cool guy – and let’s be honest, wouldn’t he have to be cool for Erica to marry him? And those kids were rather cute. Little Ricky? Yeah, that’s a cute kid. I loved the bit of editing the show did between the normalcy and love shown by the Ricos in their RV to the “I love/hate you” battles from the DiSals.
I call it “love/hate” because, well, that’s what it is. These are couples – and we all know at least one – that seem to literally despise one another’s presence. Yet, they often have deep affection for one another. I find these couples fascinating from a distance. Why you would want to have every conversation at Volume Level 11 and say such hurtful things to your spouse, I’ll never know. But that’s the DiSals, and to a lesser extent the Favereys.
Not the Ricos. I want to hang out with the Ricos. I want to spend the afternoon in the park with them and then enjoy a fine early evening meal at the local pizza place followed by Team Pictionary in their rec room. So of course, they were doomed.
It’s a shame that Ricardo hurt his ankle during the End of the Road challenge. because their margin of defeat was a matter of half a minute. If he wasn’t slowed, perhaps they could have eked a win out. But it wasn’t meant to be, and we got a Carissa Gaghan moment where we almost saw a cute kid cry from disappointment on network TV.
One interesting thing which sort of came out of nowhere – the breakdown of the families into cliques. Not the kids, as we saw in that play montage, as they could care less and just played with each other. But the parents? Not so much. As it turns out, some of the families have taken to hanging out and shunning the others. And it sort of happened out of nowhere.
The Faverey, Coote and Montgomery Families have grouped together while the DiSals, Ricos and Pollards have their own thing. It’s so strange – it’s not like there is any rhyme or reason as to why they have bunched up like that. It’s not regional, education level, class, race, nationality. It’s not even personalities grouping together – the annoying and the normal seem to have intermixed.
However, the one who has taken it to another level seems to be Amie Pollard. She and her family made signs and shirts showing their support for two of the three teams at the bottom. And when the Favereys beat the Ricos and rightly celebrated their win, she got rather snippy with them. It reminded me of Linda Weaver on the Family Edition of The Amazing Race getting mad at the swing-batter-batter-swing nonsense during the Panama baseball challenge. These are games, games involving kid;, let them have some fun.
Anyway, so that’s the deal here. Five families remain, and at this point I am rooting for the Cootes. When there is no one else to root for, I’ll go for the ones playing the game the best. While this game isn’t really chock full of skill and strategy, they seem nice enough and are doing rather well. I miss Erica more and more.
Destination Carthage, Missouri to Kansas to Oklahoma and ending in Amarillo, Texas
King of the Road Challenge – The dads have to cook burgers for the families at the Red Buffalo Ranch, and the families will blind judge the burgers. The winner gets a brand new giant grill.
WINNER – The Cootes. Again. Papa Coote’s BBQ Coote Burger gets 45 of 60 points. Also advancing with second/third place finishes are the Pollard Patty (and it looked good, onion powder, garlic powder, Italian dressing. Mmmm) and the Meaty Montgomery, which I think is actually a porn star.
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