Team Kentucky began last night's episode of The Amazing Race "marked for elimination", thus putting them in the unenviable position of having to finish first or else incur a 30-minute penalty. The teams began this leg where they finished the last one: on the island nation of Mauritius. Mauritius, off the eastern coast of Africa, is small for a nation (and for an island) but looked cool enough to garner a visit at some point. The teams then flew only seven hundred miles to their next destination, Madagascar.
How cool is that? Madagascar has always loomed large on the world map, a island too big to be believed, a place the child inside you assumes is the most savage and un-civilized locale the Dark Continent has to offer. Apparently, this is not really the case. The capital city looked quite nice, urban, and another city cool enough to go visit. Anyway, a new twist on The Amazing Race was introduced in Madagascar, called an "intersection". This forced each team to partner up with another team in order to complete a detour. The first teams to arrive at the intersection (Team Zoolander and Rob/Kim) paired up and, instead of the detour, decided to go ahead and try the fast forward. Their fast forward was gnarly, to say the least. Each of the four team members were required to travel to an outdoor market, where they had to eat an entire plateful of cow lips. That's not a euphemism, either. Just lips off a cow; some still with hair and teeth. You never know with creative editing, but it looked like it took an hour or so for everyone to finish. Meanwhile, Teams Kentucky and Alabama teamed up, as did the Beauty Queens and the Chos. Who do you think did better in a mattress transporting challenge? Beauty Queens-con-Cho performed the task easily. The final road block involved finding four distinct rubber stamps from different vendors in a busy street market. The Beauty Queens finished first and arrived at the pit stop, surprisingly, before the Fast Forward contingent. Kentucky and Alabama struggled with their mattresses and were in the back of the pack coming into the stamp roadblock. Although Kentucky actually reached the Cathedral-set pit stop first, the 30-minute penalty was the final nail in their coffin. A non-elimination leg couldn't save them this time; Team Kentucky had been eliminated. Mary gave a teary-eyed, genuine farewell lauding the opportunity to see the world and using this as motivation to allow her kids to do the same thing. The three front-runners now look to be Zoolander, Beauty Queens, and Rob/Kim (we need a good nickname for these guys), because they're all cutthroat. Next episode will likely take place somewhere in mainland Africa and probably will feature the elimination of Team Alabama. -Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer