TAR: Risky business

There comes a time when a team must put away their ugly hats and paper underwear and walk off into the sunset together. That time finally came for Teri and Ian.

I was never a big fan of Teri and Ian, even on their original season, so I am not exactly weeping into my martini tonight. They were a strong team so it's a bit of a surprise they didn't last longer, but their form, like Teri's Botox, was only temporary.

Luck be a loony tonight

Fortune favours the brave, as the saying goes, and that certainly proved to be the case this episode. Fortune gave those teams who decided to play it safe the cold shoulder while she flashed the risk-takers a bit of skin and slipped her number into their shirt pockets.

The bigger the risk, the better the pay-off was. Charla and Mirna's wild grasp at a standby seat on a Johannesburg flight netted them a fantastic lead, thanks in no small part to a Good Samaritan named Christo.

The hero of the hour helped them get onto the plane, somehow showing the patience of the saint in the process as this was after all the asylum escapees known as Charla and Mirna.

The things some people have to do to get on TV.

Even if Charla and Mirna had not met the miracle-worker Christo, I have a feeling they'd have weaseled their way onto that flight. Mirna would have declared Charla as carry-on luggage and made it anyway.

Teri/Ian and the Guidos on the other hand decided that nothing was as important as staying in line. While the younger teams made like Barack Obama and embraced change by going to an open office, the two Oldster teams stubbornly stood in line mumbling about "durn kids nowadays" under their breath. This cost them terribly.

There's a lesson in all of this about how we should never respect our elders and elect the Jonas Brothers as the leaders of the world, or something.

You can never fully predict who Fortune will take a shine to and this bore out when Eric and Dani(elle) were kicked off the plane just as they’d gotten on. Excuse me for a second while I savour this moment.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Apparently, the airline mistook the two of them for someone else and gave them seats they weren’t supposed to. Understandable really. I mistake Eric and Dani(elle) for a Ken Doll and a pot plant all the time. Dani(elle) was incensed the airline had kicked them off when they had already boarded. Could have been worse – they could have kicked you off when you were already in the air.

Who put happy pills in the teams' water bottles?

After all the hostility between some teams in previous episodes, you'd expect more of the same, but the teams were surprisingly nice to each other. The worst reaction anyone showed towards any of the contestants was when Charla and Mirna's taxi driver gave them a death glare after one of their stupid comments.

I see they're charming the locals as well as the other teams.

The Chas were stuck with the Cousins for most of the leg but were good-natured about it, helping Charla with her sea sickness in between banter about working the docks and praying to dead grandmothers. Charla and Mirna did not get the Chas' subtle (as a sledgehammer) jokes because they were in the line for self-righteousness back when God was handing out senses of humour