The Amazing Race: Pretty Fly for a Food Scientist

November 8, 2014 4:40 AM - Season 25, Episode 7

The teams race from Morocco to Sicily.

This episode features painted tamborines, the tarantella, gocart racing down a mountain road, painting a ceiling while lying on your back, terrible operatic impersonations, fancy costumes, the dentists and cyclists focused on each other, complaints that the wrestlers miss tanning and working out, and vintage cars. One team comes in last, but it is a non-elimination leg.

posted by julen (5 comments total)

I liked the irony of three teams aggressively racing to the painting detour when that turned out to be the wrong choice. I guess the clues don't give enough detail because the Opera challenge was so much easier.

I also don't trust any challenges with judging involved because it can be so arbitrary. Today's judge was not bad, but you never know when they can get fixated on some small detail that holds you up*. Judged challenges should only be picked if your other choice is a needle in haystack challenge or something involving animals.

No episode next week due to awards show.

(* - There was a funny reversal of this last season on The Amazing Race Canada when they had to build reclining beach chairs. Some teams were trying so hard to get the chairs perfect, while the judge was accepting comically bad piles of junk as long as the chair kept his head off the ground).
posted by Gary at 9:12 AM on November 8, 2014

I liked the irony of three teams aggressively racing to the painting detour when that turned out to be the wrong choice.

There was also the "only four teams my attempt the painting detour" caveat, which I think misled (perhaps deliberately, on the part of the producers) teams to think it must have been the more desirable choice.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:27 PM on November 8, 2014

Oh, I do hope that the producers did the limitations on purpose to screw with the contestants planning. I also hope they deliberately picked those ugly cherubs to repaint. I know they did it because it was a paint-by-numbers type composition (no shading/layering/etc), and doable by anyone, but that was a very ugly composition.
posted by julen at 2:52 AM on November 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

And the dentists win again. I stand by my assertion of a few weeks ago that the mother-daughter's failure to U-turn them, likely forcing them to use the Save, was a mistake. Instead they took out the couple with whom they'd had an otherwise insignificant tiff.

Had a few nervous moments in this one at the prospect of losing the surfers.
posted by pmurray63 at 12:46 PM on November 9, 2014

I would have aced the opera challenge. There's a few challenges that make me wish I could do them so I could blow people out of the water. The one a few seasons ago where they had to sing Schubert's "Die Forelle" (The Trout) was another one.
posted by matildaben at 12:53 PM on December 3, 2014