TAR - All Stars Episode 9

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...


If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 9 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!


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The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Joe & Bill being the last team to reach the Pit Stop and the fifth team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located inside the grounds of Pieskowa Skala Castle in Krakow, Poland.

The first of two Yields on the Race was located on the elevated walkway near the Kampung Baru Mosque.

The Detour for this leg was a choice between ‘Artistic Expression’ or ‘Cookie Confection’. In ‘Artistic Expression’, teams had to travel one third of a mile on foot to Dewan Lama. Once there, they had to use an ancient technique known as batik to exactly duplicate one of three patterns onto and then dye a 45 square-foot piece of cloth. In ‘Cookie Confection’, teams made their way on foot half a mile to Chow Kit Bomba and had to search through 600 boxes of traditional Malaysian festive cookies, by biting into them, and find the one cookie that had a black liquorice centre.

The Roadblock on this leg was a nod to Malaysia's eco-friendly practice of recycling. Team members had to choose a bicycle with a side cart attached and then scour the nearby Taman Sri Hartamas neighbourhood for residents willing to give them their used newspapers. Once they had collected enough newspapers to make a stack eight hands high, they would receive their next clue.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Oswald & Danny / Uchenna & Joyce
2. N/A
3. Dustin & Kandice
4. Charla & Mirna
5. Eric & Danielle
6. Joe & Bill


Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').


Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').



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1. Dustin & Kandice


Last week: 3
This week: Up two places

They made it to the top of the pack by exploiting the mistakes of others and not making any notable mistakes themselves, so good on them. The main issue that I suspect will come back to haunt them was the yielding of Eric and Danielle. I can only imagine that they felt they were fairly close behind and were a threat, but it only served to make them an enemy.

In the task where one of them had to collect old newspapers on a bike, it was funny to hear a local tell her that she shouldn’t have any difficulty getting free newspapers with the way she looked. Inappropriate and a little sleazy perhaps, but funny.

The girls also taught me that Phil must have a serious B.O problem cause as they arrived at the final destination, one of them said, “I smell Phil.”

2. Charla & Mirna


Last week: 4
This week: Up two places

Once again these two cracked me up. I should state that the ad for this episode made it look like C&M did something really underhanded that may or may not have backfired on them. In retrospect I can only imagine the ad was talking about D&K yielding E&D while confusingly showing footage of C&M cause I don’t think they did anything particularly bad. I suppose it could have been a reference to the fact that they didn’t let E&D share the two computers they were using early on to check flights, but later Mirna admitted to camera that it was fair play for Eric to later deny her asking a quick question of an airport person that he and Danielle were talking too.

C&M were in the lead for the first detour, which involved sorting through hundreds of boxes of small cookies for a single liquorish centered one. After spending quite a while on that, they chose to switch tasks and go to the one that involved replicating a local craft printing project (Batik). This switch cost them a bit of time.

During and after the roadblock task which Mirna thankfully did, Mirna in particular got a bit carried away with her own semi-celebrity status and began referring to local youngsters as the future Charla’s and Mirna’s of the world (heaven help us!). Even going so far as spouting off generic advice such as staying in school and staying away from drugs! It was all done tongue in cheek and was pretty amusing.

3. Eric & Danielle


Last week: 5
This week: Up two places

The most notable thing that this pair did was get yielded and hearing Eric refer to D&K as dirty, pirate, hookers was priceless. I guess they didn’t understand why they’d been yielded either.

Danielle was complaining that while she ended up doing all the tasks which were intended for guys (ie. strength related), such as the newspaper collecting one, Eric always ended up doing the effeminate girly tasks. I should also point out that it was Danielle who found the liquorish cookie (the only team to complete this one, although it wasn’t shown what Uchenna and Joyce did), so she basically carried the team this week. Which was certainly a first.


4. Oswald & Danny


Last week: 1
This week: Down three places

Talk about a reversal of fortune! O&D must be really feeling the pressure cause they made a number of mistakes. Their initial plane flights started them at the front of the pack, but they both wanted to do different tasks on the detour and ended up going back and forth numerous times before finally settling on the Batik craft task. They buggered this up by miscounting the number of symbols they were supposed to print and basically had to start all over again.

Danny was in a really bad mood this entire episode and was put in a worse one having to do the newspaper collecting task as Oswald had some issue with bikes. Quite frankly Danny just seemed really childish throughout this leg.

I hope they can find their stride again for next week, cause they have been going so well up until now.

5. Uchenna & Joyce: ELIMINATED!


Last week: 1
This week: Down four places

I was afraid that this leg was going to be another episode of “The Amazing Airline Ticket Race,” but as it turned out it only E&J suffered an airport fiasco. They made the mistake of having a flight plan with very tight connection times and paid the price. Sometimes a risk will pay off with this type of thing, but other times it bites you in the arse. Personally I think that this was the wrong place for such a risk. It was very early on that this stuff up was revealed and so you would have had to be a fool, to not be able to tell who would be going.

Basically we didn’t see E&J for the rest of the episode until they turned up at night to be booted out by Phil. At least they had won the other series that they were in, so they already had $1 million….minus tax.
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If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.