‘The Amazing Race Canada 3’ episode 2 review: Almost the craziest leg in years
We have watching over 30 seasons of “The Amazing Race” when you factor in every English-language version of the show, and as a direct result of that we have come to expect certain things from the series. For example, there will be a dating couple or exes that fight constantly, that someone will freak out over heights, and that there will be at least one team a season that does something really silly as a result of not reading their clue.
One other longtime trope of the show is the edit where you edit teams closer together to make it seem like there is actually some competition between the teams in last place. Thanks in part to the edit of this “Amazing Race Canada” episode, we actually were duped for a few seconds! We were on here last week talking about how Gino & Jesse were capable of being the same sort of team as the Olympians last year, who won a huge chunk of the legs. They’re incredibly athletic and have known each other for so long that they could handle any fight.
The problem we saw with them tonight is that they, when rattled, sometimes make silly decisions. We don’t blame them for their cab driver leaving in Chile. That’s just bad luck, and had they made no other mistakes, we would have felt for them if they were eliminated. However, how do two guys in this great of shape not choose the physical Detour? We’re not going to give them as much flack for not picking another cab up right away (maybe they tried and it wasn’t shown), but going as long as they did without one seemed to be a mistake.
Thanks to these guys’ variety of errors, the most athletic team this season almost went home over Susan & Sharnjit, two women who seem like really nice people, but also people who are not built to win this race. They get lost really easily, and are not particularly quick with any of the tasks at all. Even with a less-physical one last week, they struggled. It would have made for tremendous entertainment had they stayed over the brothers, but Gino & Jesse have a much better chance of recovering from a bad leg.
On a more positive side of things, you have to give some credit to Hamilton & Michaelia, whose selfie skills (?!) in the first part of the leg managed to propel them into first place and the Express Pass, which they picked up … only to later use it? This has to be the most random decision to date; we understand Hamilton not wanting to do the physical part of this that required him to dance around in very little clothing, but they would have easily had plenty of time to go over and do the poetry half of this that the brothers tried. Maybe they figured that they would be bad at it, or maybe they just wanted a prize. We’re not going to hate this move too much, since sometimes the Express Pass can be a curse, winning a leg is nice, and they have two more legs where other teams may help them in return for the other Express pass they have.
Bryan & Cynthia and likable wrestlers Nick & Matt made big jumps upward to second and third place, while Nic & Sabrina are being very impressive so far. Thanks to their Spanish-language skills, they were really able to overcome being probably the slowest team left on the race in terms of athleticism, finishing in fourth.
We really liked this leg a lot. Think about it: We had a Roadblock (hang-gliding), a selfie task, a Detour, and an Express Pass reveal over the course of the episode. That’s a lot of content that they managed to cram into an hour. This is yet another reminder to us why in some ways the Canadian version has become superior to its American counterpart. Grade: B+.
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