TAR: Mosey through Moz

When Uchenna and Joyce arrived last at the mat, I thought "This is Africa's revenge for them calling her the Motherland even though Mozambique's about as far away from Nigeria as Mirna is from sanity." But then Phil gave one of his typical hour-long pauses after the "I'm" and I knew that Uchenna and Joyce were saved. Somewhere Rob is muttering and swearing at the television set.

Speaking of Rob, even with him gone, the show could still not stop talking about him and Amber. At the start of the show, we just had to see the reactions the other teams had to their elimination. I look forward to next week's musical tribute entitled "Hello Robby".

This was one of those rare legs where I've actually visited the destination city. I feel so in the know. Word of advice to the contestants: no-one's going to mock you for massacring the pronunciation of 'praça dos trabalhadores', but repeatedly mispronouncing 'fortaleza' as 'fortazela' just makes you look dyslexic. Or dysxelic, as the case may be.

A mountain of a task

For those of you keeping track, the number of people in the world that Charla and Mirna do not hate is two — the names of the two rhyme with Shmarla and Shmirna respectively. One and a half, if you count Mirna occasionally screaming at Charla for no reason as hating. One and a quarter if you base it on size.

Their quarrel with the BQs was the focused feud of the week. When the BQs, who tried to excuse their limpid racing so far by claiming they "playing it safe" (insert eyeroll here), forgot to read their clue and collect an essential piece of equipment, Charla and Mirna could not help but make a crack about how dumb they are. Yeah, so dumb they've beat you to the Pit Stop four straight legs in a row, you geniuses.

The only other team to have trouble with the same task as the BQs were the Chas, a-fluttered and a-flurried over their inability to track anything in the snow. A minor bit of bitchery ensued, but they soon returned to full-power awesome when they found what they were looking for. Danny warned that he would not be conducting search-and-rescue experiments after avalanches any time soon. Pity — he'd make a really cute Saint Bernard.

Of mice and men

This season has been fairly light on stubborn donkeys or high-maintenance camels, but someone on the production staff did see fit to add a few rats to the mix. When I saw that the Roadblock featured Rats of Unusual Size, I was thrilled at the potential horror it would cause the teams. After all, these were the same lot who could hardly deal with fish.

The rats turned out to be quite domesticated. Cute, even. Just think of them as pointy-nosed puppies, just with a fondness for cheese and a few more diseases. Ian managed to overcome his fear of rats, a tad more understandable fear than that of fish, I'm sure you'll agree. Now if only he could acquire a fear of hats and lose that ugly thing on his head.

Charla had great trouble getting her rat to do what she wanted. You'd think if anyone would be have a rapport with rodents, it would be Charla and Mirna. The rat did little more than sit around and lick itself. Charla was the last to finish the task as a result but was confident they'd get out of this scrape like they'd gotten out of all the others Charla then mounted the rat and rode it the rest of the leg. OK, not really.

Of human bondage

Viewers of the first season of 'The Amazing Race' will recall the Guidos were originally moustache-twirlers of the most wicked variety. This time around, they promised to be "kinder, gentler Guidos". I look forward to their upcoming Hallmark film.

The Happy, Fluffy Guidos made a good start, bonding with Teri and Ian over underwear. Ian gushed about his paper underwear while Bill and Joe revealed they were wearing thongs. Look TMI up in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of this moment.