and these two dummies spent time in the hotel lobby mapping out a course while rob stole their cab....LOL

That was a really risky move by Rob. I mean you figure anybody could put away 4 lbs of food in LESS than 4 hours, and they have no idea how far back the other teams are. It was brilliant on his part to get Ray and Deanna to quit also.

1. Ray should've been eating (by watching any of the other seasons of AR, it obvious that they give you a ton of food).

2. Ray has no faith in Deanna so it wasn't hard to convionce him to take the penalty.

Uchenna's reaction to Lynn puking was great. I was hoping Uchenna would finish first and get a nice trip, but Lynn and Alex ended up getting nothing for winning.

I was definitely hoping for Team MotherBoy or Debbie and Bianca to be eliminated so I was a happy-camper the last 5 minutes of the show. It was pure hilarity when the girls are trying to get to the mountains and they had that shot of them riding by the ocean.

Karma's a bitch since Debbie and Bianca showed their mean-ness in the first show when they told Ron and Kelly to dig in the wrong sand pile. Good riddance.

In honor of the Rob, an article from Entertainment Weekly that I htink you guys would enjoy.

[I highlighted the best parts!]


Amber Alert!

On ''The Amazing Race,'' the teams have to play by Rob's rules: The Survivors are the fittest in the second leg, outwitting, outlasting, and outplaying the other teams by Josh Wolk



Last week there was much chatter that Rob and Amber had too many unfair advantages as a result of their Survivor fame to make this game fair: Witness the American who recognized them and helped them out in Peru. But this week it seemed that no one in either Peru or Chile was a fan of the All-Stars and they still came in first. It's time for everyone to concede that Rob is just a great player. (As for Amber, it's time to concede that she sure looks cute as a button standing next to a great player.) Actually, their having won Survivor should be an advantage for everyone else who saw their strategies televised, not them: It was like being given game films of another team before the Super Bowl. But did anyone learn the right lessons? No.

Perhaps Rob has some kind of supernatural mind-erasure powers. The same thing happened in All Stars: No one remembered that he had broken all of his promises on Marquesas. He was one of the least trustworthy players to step onto the All-Stars island, and yet everyone trusted him, including Kathy, who had been on that previous season with him. How far does Rob's power to cloud people's mind extend? As an experiment, I would like to see Rob stand in a room holding a pencil; after dropping the pencil, he would ask someone to pick it up. When the person did so, he would kick them in the ass. Then he would apologize, take the pencil back, and drop it again, asking the person — still rubbing their own smarting ass — to pick it up again. I'm guessing that this would go on for about six hours straight, only stopping when Rob's pencil-holding fingers cramped up.

And now, the Race competitors stared in disbelief when he bribed a security guard not to tell anyone about an earlier bus and then lied about it. The indignation on Debbie's face when she said, ''It makes me nauseous,'' was laughable. Remember how self-righteous everyone on the All-Stars jury was over Rob's lying? And how many of them went home with a million dollars? Exactly. So stop complaining and start playing the game.

The ones I feel bad for are Ray and Deana and Uchenna and Joyce, whom Rob enlisted in an alliance and quickly persuaded to fund his bribe. I used to work at Lifetime Television, and my job was to watch every single one of their TV movies to make five-second promos. I painfully recognize these teams' sad, self-defeating dedication to Rob as the story line of every abused-wife weeper in the Lifetime library. Rob will keep telling Ray and Uchenna separately, ''No, you're the one we're with to the end. I care about you the most.'' Then each player will buy Rob a sandwich or give him a piggyback ride through Namibia, and Rob will screw them both over at the detour and easily get first place again. Then when those two exhausted and bedraggled teams finally crawl across the finish line, barely avoiding elimination, Rob will pull them both aside again individually and say to each, ''I'm so glad you're here. I love you, and we're in it together.'' And they'll perk up, saying, ''Gosh, Rob, you mean it? Allies forever?'' Even if Phil Keoghan tries to stage an intervention — saying, ''He's no good for you! You can make it on your own!'' — they'll reply, ''You don't know him like I do, Phil. The way he looks at me when he's tied my knapsack to a pygmy and stolen my cab. . . . He really cares.'' I'm seeing Meredith Baxter Birney as Ray.

What it all boils down to is that Rob is a great player, mentally and physically, not to mention extremely entertaining to watch. I'm not seeing much competition for him. Ron and Kelly? Kelly's only on the second leg and she's already showing signs of crankiness. But I suppose that's the only good thing about being a POW — you always have a comeback for a snippy girlfriend: ''Oh, you told me we should have taken all the books on one trip? Sorry, they never taught book stacking in the Iraqi prison.'' Whaddya know, another argument won!

Lynn and Alex seem like fun guys, although I was surprised they shot their wad by using their ''bringing up the rear'' double entendre this early in the show, if you'll pardon both of our puns. It's a marathon, not a sprint, boys. And the way Lynn was sweating during a shoeshine challenge does not bode well for any physical challenges. If they ever do a hat-blocking competition, he's liable to keel over from a coronary.

Patrick seems to think he's a mastermind, but why then were he and Susan shocked to be out of money to buy the fish when they had just run out of money on a challenge mere hours before? With that short-term memory problem, I'm giving them 36 hours in the Rob-drops-a-pencil game. And could someone explain Patrick's mystery head wound to me? After the shoeshine challenge he had a bloody gauze pad above his eye, but by the time he landed in Santiago, there was no bandage, and no visible scar. Did Mommy kiss it and make it all better? Or did Mommy actually cause the wound when she kicked him in the head after he spent all their pesos on ''I Hate Rob'' bumper stickers?

As for Gretchen and Meredith, good Lord. I can't even concentrate on how good a team they might be, I'm so distracted by Gretchen's incessant monotonic hollering. I can't tell if Meredith is running to win the race or to get away from her. Which leaves Greg and Brian (whom I never could tell apart, so I will refer to both of them as ''Grian''), who stayed in the game only by barely outrunning the equally indistinguishable Megan and Heidi. Things don't bode well when you're struggling for last place against two women with their sorority letters on the butts of their sweatpants. At the end, Megan or Heidi — what's the difference? — proudly declared, '' 'I can't' never came out of our mouths.'' Well, Hegan or Meidi, here it is out of mine: You can't.

What did you think? Are Rob and Amber going to win the race in a walk? Who is most likely to give them a run for the money?

Team Fudgepack is really starting to annoy the shit out of me. STFU about Rob and Amber.

Rob probably would have finished the 4 lbs. if it came down to it. However, since they will just bunch up again in the future, they were fine as long as they didn't come in last. I would rather finish where they did and save myself a possible horrible stomach and case of the bad shits. It was risky but it worked.

I was a little suprised they got nothing... or was that just edited out?

:lol: Brilliant!

About Team Rombah:
Stealing taxis, turning the locals against teams, manipulating other teams...Mirna & Charla live again! The only difference is that Rob is successful at his attempts.

If it's a trip: it's product placement. I doubt a sponser would like having something like that removed.

I've never really watched AR race before this season. The one thing that surprises me it that they send the teams off in the middle of the night but to a location that doesn't open until the morning eliminating the earlier teams advantage. Is this always the case? I would just go back to the hotel and sleep until morning if it was me.

Yes, and it's been the subject of much debate. If they didn't do this, basically one team would get a runaway lead, and the winner would be obvious early on in the season. Makes for very boring television.

The other problem is logistics. They can only keep the challenges up and running for so long, and Phil can only be checking in teams at one location at a time. If the teams got seperated by days, it would be a nightmare for the production team.

I dont mind them bottlenecking the teams up during certain points in the race...if teams were allowed to get huge leads then that would take all the excitement out of it...is it fair? not really ,but so goes the life on a reality show.

Rob is a Jedi Mind Master. He was brilliant. It takes a lot to get stone-faced Phil laughing like that.

I disagree with those saying how hard could it be to eat 4 lbs of meat. I don't know that I've ever eaten 4 lbs of food in one sitting, let alone 4 lbs of meat which would be much harder to digest than pasta or fruit. Rob realized the key was to just not be eliminated. It was somewhat risky, but I think he figured out quickly that at least a few other teams would have the same problem. They'll bunch up again so he and Amber are OK. Now he doesn't have to deal with getting sick from all that meat and will be feeling better than many of the teams for the next leg.

I wonder if there was much climbing involved in the mountain bike leg? I'd think not since it followed a train track which should be a very shallow incline at most. That leg should have been a piece of cake.

How could the best Spanish-speaking team get so lost? If Rob is "dumb as a rock", what does that make Patrick for taking 2 hours to find their way out of Santiago.

I hope these threads don't turn into gush-fests over Rob every week, but I have to give credit where credit is due. I've seen every AR to date, and he just might be the best player in the show's history. (Amazing Race all-stars anyone?).

Comparing the task vs. the penalty and opting for the penalty was pure brilliance and you can be sure that the show's creators will make penalties tougher in the future.

I think you would find that doing it and saying you can do in an internet forum are 2 very different things. ;)

rotfl
No shit.

Debbie and Bianca deserved to get eliminated last night. There's no excuse for them to get so lost and drive 2 hours away from the location while knowing the language.

If the mother and son team don't start learning how to read maps pretty soon, they won't last long in the competition. Pretty pathetic display of navigating while trying to get out of Santiago.

As everybody has indicated, Rob and Amber seems like the team to beat. The Brothers seems to be jinxed but they made a nice recovery in the roadblock.

I'm begining to take a liking to Joyce and Ucheynna.

It's nice of Ray to have Deanna take the roadblock. Stand up guy.

To win she has to do 6, and as the eliminated girl showed, it WAS possible.

Yeah, this bothers me too. I don't know why they go through the charade each week of "Bill and Nancy arrived at 12:35 PM, so they'll leave at 12:35 AM". We all know their first destination is closed and all the teams will have to sleep on park benches until it opens.

For those that need a bigger TAR fix, there is about 44 minutes of video online at the CBS site for episode 3. That's basically another full episode.

I've found that the little videos they put up are usually worth watching and well done. Especially Phil's diaries.

Actually seems like a disadvantage to the first team, the other teams get to sleep later. I understand they need to keep them close to keep things interesting, seems like they could send them off in 5 minute intervals or something to at least give some advantage for their previous days finish. Oh well, I'm still enjoying the show. Can't believe that girl was able to eat the whole thing.

I'm new to AR, has anyone ever taken a penalty before? I'm sure it's happened, but not in the same context as when Rob did it.

I understand the new rule for roadblock. No need for explanations

My point is that since is only the beginning of the race and the challenge involves eating 4 lbs of meat, that Ray will be the one doing the challenge. Bigger person, easier to eat the meat. Did you see Rob and Ucheynna asking their partners to do this. Even the son did this challenge.

Yeah, I can see what you mean about sleeping longer but the break/rest time is 12 hours for all teams. But remember by leaving first, a team has an advantage and leeway for any accidents or mistakes or delays that could arise. And the teams that leave first can also do more research for flights, locations, etc.

Yes, most recently at the end of season 6. There was a challenge that involved trying a key in 3000 locks trying to find the one that fit. The last team stuck on the challenge knew they'd lose anyway so they just gave up and took the penalty.

But nobody has ever taken the penalty as a strategic move before.

At 9 p.m., "House" set another series high with a 10.6/16, keeping FOX comfortably in front. "The Amazing Race," 7.6/12, held onto second for CBS. ABC improved to 6.1/9 with two episodes of "According to Jim." NBC went with a "Scrubs" repeat, 4.1/6, and "Committed," 3.6/5. "The Starlet" kept The WB in fifth, narrowly beating a "Veronica Mars" repeat on UPN (the latter had a few more total viewers).