‘The Amazing Race 27’ episode 4 review: The colossal U-Turn mistake
Friday night’s episode of “The Amazing Race” was brought to you by three simple letters: LOL. There were so many ridiculous moments in this hour of TV, and most of them are an exercise in really bad planning on the part of Team Texas Tanner & Josh.
We actually think their plan was solid: Get to the U-Turn board first, and then U-Turn Justin & Diana. From there, have Kelsey & Joey U-Turn them, that way no other team is burned and the Green Team is in danger of going home. Unfortunately, the problem for them is that everything had to go right, and they could not make a mistake. They made a big one in using the Express Pass on a doable Roadblock versus a Detour, which is typically much more time-consuming and bleeds right into the U-Turn. This mistake would have been bad in the first place, but adding to this an equalizer made this all the worse.
As the episode went on, it really did appear clear that whoever was in the crosshairs when it comes to the U-Turn would be the person who finished in last place. Both of these were time-consuming, but the staining task (versus the croquet) had a mandatory waiting period so that the staining could dry. With that, it’s really hard to play catch-up. Justin & Diana finished ahead of Team Texas coming out of this, which really set the stage for something hilarious and easily avoidable.
In the end, we had a whole lot of hype for really … nothing? Well, we’re going to give Justin & Diana a whole lot of credit here, mostly thanks to the fact that it would have been so easy thanks to it being an emotional decision to just U-Turn the Texans, but they realized it was better to save it for later in the race. Tanner & Josh’s plan was foiled, but they live to see another day.
Then again, really everyone lives to see another day since there was no elimination at the end of the episode. It was somewhat of a letdown after a crazy episode, but it at least kept us energized for the entire hour. Episode Grade: B.
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