IMHO: The Amazing Race (14.10) The karma misses the mark

The latest leg in The Amazing Race featured synchronized diving, hydrophobia and a painful foot massage. Oh, and Victor looking pretty good in a speedo (thank you, Amazing Race producers).

This episode also featured a chance for karma to come knocking. Unfortunately, the wrong person answered the door in most cases, thus prompting this week's sideways arrow. For the full details, watch out for the SPOILERS below.

So far, this season has been low on the airport drama. This time, however, we saw a long segment at the airport. It started when we saw Margie and Luke work at ignoring Jen and Lakisha as they waited behind them at the ticket counter. Their game of "invisible rival team" ended when Jen, frustrated by being ignored by a busy clerk, started dropping racist jokes: 

Lakisha: She just gives that dumb look 

Jen: It's patented in China, that dumb look. 

Lakisha: They should be able to say it, 'Me no speak English' or something. 

Jen: 'No speaka no English' 

That broke Margie out of her silent treatment to give them a look of "Did I really hear that?" For some reason, I'm not sure what bothers me more, the general attitude or that Jen's yellowface pidgin accent sounds wrong for the area. What's worse, racist humor or inaccurate racist humor?

Margie's 'Did I hear that in the 21st century?" look

The producers certainly were looking to drain any sympathy I had for the sisters. After having trouble finding a cab driver who knew how to take them to their next stop, Jen declared that "They all look alike." Okay, so I guess I'm down to liking just Victor and Tammy.

As promised in the previews, the Road Block took the teams to get painful foot massages, a task made worse by having to drink medicinal tea before and afterward. (You know those times your mom would come back from the health food store with some new product which promised amazing cures? Think of that kind of, uhm, flavor.)

Unfortunately, in most cases, it was the team's better-behaved half that took on the challenge. So, the hopes of seeing Jamie pay a price for screaming at people to speak English, Jen for getting into fights at the clue box with Luke or Victor's extended hike of stubbornness in Romania were dashed. So much for this being the week when The Amazing Race makes the world a better place through schadenfreude.

However, there were some bright spots to the challenge. When Jamie tried to berate Cara into enduring the challenge (ironic that offering her teammate words of encouragement did not occur from a former cheerleader) Cara yelled at Jamie to shut up. That was long overdue. Then there was the way Tammy sat down and asked, "Is it really that bad?" as if Cara and Lakisha were only squirming as part of their plan to psych out the other teams. And there was the cute moment where Luke and Tammy offered each other a supporting hand.

The detour challenge was "Synch" or "Swim" where teams had to manage to dive into a pool at the same moment or swim 400 meters in a body suit like the one that helped Michael Phelps win so many Olympic medals.

Two teams balked at the idea of swimming. Victor and Tammy admit to being bad swimmers, though they at least signed up for swimming lessons before the Race started. Jen, meanwhile, turned out to have a fear of water. Both teams started out trying to pass the synchronized diving task, which took Victor on a trip to "skimpyland". Honestly, I wouldn't mind if Victor visited skimpyland more often.

Victors Adventures in Skimpyland

Both teams were awful at synchronized swimming — and I'm pretty surprised no one thought of doing a count of three — but the judges were pretty hard to please. I guess they weren't in a mood to give bonus points for flopping in the air before hitting the water, as Victor did.

Still, they managed not to be the last ones leaving the natatorium ... except that they lost plenty of time when Victor suffers from leg cramps, stopping their cab from leaving. At this point, I was hoping for Tammy to yell "After that foot massage I endured, you can at least suffer your cramp from within a moving taxi!" but no, she had to stay classy.

Did I say karma missed all its targets this week? I might have been wrong because at the pit stop, Jamie and Cara thought they had finally won a leg of the race — and with Jamie telling herself its a reward for holding her tongue and not yelling at a cab driver for once — only to be told to stop celebrating because this is a continuing leg on the Race.

Phil stoically delivers the disappointment

Is that the laughter of Nelson Muntz I hear?

At this point, her "jokes" left me totally disconnected from the drama of Jen facing her fear and, unfortunately, the challenges didn't bring much more than the Jen drama and a flailing Victor in skimpyland. At least that "To Be Continued" managed to get the episode to end on a high note. What did you think? Does any team still hold your sympathies at this point after all the bad behavior?