by David McAlpine

Last week on The Amazing Race, the teams flew to the Netherlands, where a slew of Dutch-themed tasks proved difficult for some teams. Even though Brian and Ericka spent the entire leg lagging behind everyone else, it was Maria and Tiffany’s inability to do either Detour that prompted them to cry, hug, then quit the race.

Sam and Dan are first off the mat, where they find they’ll be heading to Stockholm, Sweden. Better yet, a theme park in Stockholm. With five teams left, you would expect more of a race, but, what seems to be the norm on this race happens yet again: a giant bottleneck at the airline ticket counter. Lucky for us, some drama still happens. Gary and Matt and Brian and Ericka are too slow to get tickets on the first flight to Stockholm, so they have to settle for a flight almost three hours later.

It wouldn’t be the Amazing Race, though, if the teams just had to take a plane. They also have to get on a train and a ferry to get to their first location, so it’s a footrace off the plane to the nearest train station. Apparently automated ticket booths are difficult to operate in Sweden because they gave everyone a hard time, especially Gary and Matt, who got held back at least 15 minutes.

Once at the park, one team member had to brave the Frit Fall, a fairly tall drop tower. Once they had reached the top of the tower, they were supposed to look for an arrow leading them to their next clue box. The catch: they would only have 15 seconds to look for the arrow, then they’d spend the next three seconds plummeting to the ground.

Sam and Cheyne work together at the top of the tower and find the arrow fairly quickly, followed by Flight Time. The next stop was a ring-tossing booth inside the park, where each team got the famous Travelocity gnome that they had to bring to the Pit Stop.

But that wasn’t it. They also encountered a Detour: Nobel Dynamite or Viking Alphabet. In Nobel Dynamite, teams had to go to a nearby rock quarry and build themselves a bunker so they could explode dynamite while hiding safely inside. In Viking Alphabet, teams had to decipher a message on a runestone in Ancient Nordic to find their next clue.

As I would have chosen, all the teams head to Nobel Dynamite, not wanting to try and decipher what was on the runestone. Sam and Dan get flustered when the Globetrotters catch up to them, since they see them as their biggest competition, but they still manage to beat them coming out of the detour. Meghan and Cheyne finish in a solid third, followed by Brian and Ericka, then Gary and Matt much later, after they wandered in circles.

The teams arrive at their next destination for a very familiar Roadblock. Remember back in Season 6 when Lena and Kristy sat outside for 8 hours looking through hay bales for a flag that just didn’t seem to be there? Well now, we’ve come back almost 10 seasons later with the exact same task. 168 bales of hay, 7 flags—you do the math.

Sam and Dan start to break down immediately, clearly feeling the pressure to beat the Globetrotters. Sam is the one unrolling the hay bales, but Dan wants to be the one who controls the situation, resulting in lots of yelling and a flash of the finger. Meghan is also stuck doing the Roadblock (mostly because Cheyne didn’t want to), so she starts to cry. That’s two breakdowns.

The Globetrotters keep it cool and find their flag first, allowing them to run over to the mat and check in. For coming in first, they get a sweet trip to the Turks and Caicos Islands, and I’m kind of jealous.

Meanwhile, while the Globetrotters are celebrating, Sam is stewing. Dan gets mad. Sam gets worse. It’s like they’re feeding off of each other. And the situation only worsens when Brian and Ericka and Gary and Matt arrive. The pressure is on for all four teams to find a flag, because it could mean the end of the race for them.

Meghan and Cheyne find the next flag and check in second, followed by Brian and Ericka (shocker!). So it comes down to Sam, who has been searching endlessly for hours with his brother riding his ass, and Matt, who is just hoping that they can get past elimination this week. Sam, however, finally finds a flag and checks in fourth with Dan, who feels bad for yelling at Sam.

Gary and Matt check in last, but it’s revealed that it doesn’t matter, because it’s a non-elimination leg this week. Still, Gary and Matt face a Speed Bump next week—can they handle the extra task?

 

Tune in to CBS on Sunday at 8/7c to see what happens on the next leg of The Amazing Race 15!

(Photo courtesy of CBS)

Follow David on Twitter: @DavidMcAlpine

 

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