‘The Amazing Race Canada’ review: Please learn to drive stick, future racers

Tonight’s episode of “The Amazing Race Canada” began with the same sort of necessary frustration that we have on just about every version of the show: The grand equalizer. We of course sit here and watch Vanessa & Celina be spared early from a big delay thanks to this, but this sort of thing has to be there for a couple of reasons: Day racing is always more interesting from a TV perspective, and production doesn’t want a team to fall so far behind that there is no drama.

Even with this catch-up, though, the sisters fell behind for breaking a huge rule of this show: Not knowing how to drive stick. If you watch past seasons, you know this is coming. Why do you not prepare for it?

What seems interesting at this point is the surge of Jody & Cory as serious threats to win this whole competition. We did not previously think that was going to happen, since they are not the fastest team in the world. But what they are is steady, and not prone to mistakes. Do we think they got a little lucky in the scarecrow-building task? Probably, since their fisherman was a bright shade of yellow, but still, these guys just don’t make mistakes.

With their first-place finish, the only drama in this leg was just trying to figure out whether or not we were going to see the Double U-Turn used by Tim & Tim on anyone else … and it wasn’t. We would have tried to take out Jet & Dave given their overall performance this season (even if they were pretty awful this leg); but, hats off for deciding that they could beat the best. For the record, we would have also U-Turned Vanessa & Celina if we were Jet & Dave in order to ensure that they were slowed down, as well.

In the end, none of this really even mattered in the first place. This was a “to be continued” leg with no one going home, and given that there is a ferry coming up to Newfoundland, another equalizer may be coming. Sigh. We still think that Vanessa & Celina are pretty doomed to go home here, and if they somehow win this leg, it may literally be the biggest shocker this season.

What did you think about this week’s “The Amazing Race Canada” episode? If you want to read some more news related to the show, we advise you to check out the story over here.

Photo: CBS