***SPOILERS***

1. I love the arrogance of Colin/Christie as they’re leaving the Pit Stop and how they were gloating about how the other teams suck, but they don’t suck too badly because they’re still in the Race. Brilliant bit of foreshadowing editing there.

2. Seriously, Linda’s shrieking is getting more shrill by the minute. How Karen puts up with that is beyond me. Actually, she was looking a little perturbed at one point too. And they need to bone up on their map reading skillz. Sheesh.

3. Chim are just now getting that they need to compete? They’re well liked because they are nice and considerate, but if you want to win the Race, you can’t help your competition.

4. Roadblock - Climb the ladder thingy (75 feet) from the boat to the bridge, then cross a girder to the woman holding the Clue. Once you have the Clue you get lowered back to the boat. Cool task. Colin being the intense guy that he is has no problem with the task and he and Christie zoom off to the airport. Brandon is next and while a little slower, he too does well (although did anyone else think that he wanted to weasel his way out of doing it?) and off the Babies go to the airport. (I’m done with their “baby"ing of each other. I’ve never been a fan of that TOE, but I really hate it now. Just saying.) Chip has a fear of heights, but did well considering. He was cracking me up with his one line prayers through the whole thing. Off Chim goes to the airport. And bringing up the rear are the Moms because of their lack of map reading skillz. Linda shrieks her way through the task and they’re off to the airport.

5. Travelling to Manila - At this point, Colin and Christie are so far ahead of everyone that they look like they can’t lose. They get a flight out to Singapore right away, but they’re concerned that they’ll miss their connecting flight to Manila because of the short layover. The other teams all get to the airport pretty late and have to fly through Hong Kong to Manila. Air travel is the great equalizer in this game - and because C/C miss their connecting flight in Singapore, they end up with a new flight from Hong Kong and how happy were the other teams when C/C strolled up to the gate in Hong Kong? Gotta love the bunching.

6. Out of the Airport in Manila - Chim 1st, followed by the Babies, Moms and C/C last. And now it gets exciting because…

7. The Yield! Chim, the Moms, and the Babies all agree that C/C need to be Yielded - hilarious. So Chim gets to the Yield mat first and does what they need to do to Yield C/C. What’s interesting is that but for some fast running by Chim, either of the other two teams’ picture might have been in that “Yielded by” slot on the board and that’s who C/C would have been ticked off at.

8. Decorating the Jeep Thingy - I missed some of the explanation here but apparently, the Filopinos liked to decorate their Jeeps during the WWII era? What? Something about MacArthur was mentioned, but I missed that too. Anyway, the task is to decorate these really extra long Jeeps - so the three teams are decorating while C/C stand on the Yield mat just watching. And seething. And the watching turns to glaring. You can almost see the flames that Colin is shooting Chip’s way from his dead shark stare. And the Moms turn out to be handy, which makes up for their poor map reading - they’re the first done and off they go in their newly decorated (and quite gaudy) Jeep. The Babies are 2nd, with Chim leaving 3rd and mere minutes before C/C can begin because the sands are still working their way down in the hourglass there at the Yield mat.

C/C finish pretty quickly - the watching had to help them a bit. And as they’re heading to the next task, Christie opines how unfair it was that they were Yielded. Honey, it’s a part of the Race. You don’t have to like it, but it’s not unfair. Big whiner.

9. Detour - Plow or Fowl. All teams opt for Plow, which kind of disappointed me because I would have loved to see a team try to herd 1000 ducks. But it turned out that this task had the most hilarious Colin moments, so it was worth it, but I’ll get to that in a second. What I found most interesting is that the other three teams worked as teams on this task. One person led the ox with the rope in the direction they wanted to go while the other teammate followed with the plow to look for the rope/Clue. The Babies found the Clue first, followed by the Moms - they both head to Manila on a bus. Chim gets the Clue next and get a bus to Manila. Then C/C arrive to the task and for some reason Christie decided that she wasn’t needed to assist with the task. So she’s yelling instructions to Colin who’s increasingly losing his cool and temper, to the point where he exclaims, “My ox is broken!” and then later whines, “Oh my God...I hate you.” Now I was almost crying I was laughing so hard about his broken ox. I think he was talking to said ox when he claimed his hatred, although it was hard to tell if he really meant Christie. Who knows...what I do know is that she should have been helping him. And then the hilarious moment when she walked out into the mud and started digging around to “help” and immediately pulled up the rope/Clue.

So off C/C go on the bus to Manila. To recap, the Babies and Moms are on the same bus. Chim are on another bus and C/C are on a third bus. C/C decide to ditch the bus when they see a taxi, figuring a taxi will be faster. In a weird bit of editing, Chim then decide to switch to a taxi. And then we see the Babies and Moms do the same. Only the Moms have a hard time finding a taxi and much shrieking ensues. But the Babies aren’t faring much better because their driver doesn’t understand where they want to go, so that may be a problem. At this point, there’s no way to know in what place any of the teams are by a clever series of edits. Ah, suspense!

10. Pit Stop - We get a camera angle from the back of a taxi as it approaches the Pit Stop. We see Phil (*sigh*) on the Amazing Mat of Philimination with a nice Filopino lady and around the corner comes...Chip and Kim! They’re the first team to arrive and they win a trip to Hawaii. And Chip comes out with the second best line by a Racer this season, “God takes care of His idiots and I’m first on the list!” Heh. The Moms are 2nd. And then there’s a little more suspenseful editing - who will be next? Who will be last? And it’s the Babies in 3rd. So Colin and Christie look pretty despondent as they step on the Mat - they know they have to be last and are facing Philimination. But I’m thinking, we have one more non-elimination leg and with the finale next week, this has to be it. Phil confirms that C/C are still in the Race and penniless.

So next week is the big finale - 2 hours of TAR goodness. Who will win the $1M? It’s anybody’s Race at this point.