What do you get when you win The Amazing Race? A million dollars and a chance at airing your relationship woes with your pouty LOL-cat of a boyfriend in a B-list reality show. What do you get when you lose The Amazing Race? For 11 losing teams from previous seasons, a second chance at a million dollars and dubious reality show fame.
This season reunited a few gay cast members of Season 14, which was possibly the gayest Amazing Race season ever. Season 14 featured sisters Jennifer and out lesbian LaKisha “Kisha” Hoffman, who were eliminated after stopping for a pee pee break in Beijing; mother/son pair Margie and gay-identified Luke, who failed on Season 14’s last task (see AfterElton’s recent interview with Luke here); and father/son Mel and Mike, both gay, who got lost in Thailand.
As the teams stood in the desert in Palm Springs, CA, Phil explained some of the rules: an express pass, which allows a team to skip a task, would be awarded to the winning team of the first challenge. The last team to complete the first task would be given an automatic U-turn. The first eight teams to complete the challenge would be placed on the first flight to Australia, and the remaining three teams would take the second flight, leaving 90 minutes later.
The first challenge was to run into a field of paper airplanes and find one that reflected “Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services.” The right answer was the acronym QANTAS, but it took a while for the teams to figure this out. Kisha and Jennifer was one of the last three teams, which landed them on the tardy plane, though they were relieved that they did not come in last.
After completing the first task, all teams were required to drive from Palm Springs to LAX, a crushingly boring drive thousands of gays and lesbians are forced to take every year after Dinah Shore and The White Party, except the teams were probably not nursing hangovers and no one was passed out in the back seat wearing last night’s sweat and puke-laced outfit.
But there was trouble in the skies. A man suffered a heart attack on the first flight, diverting the flight to Honolulu, allowing the second flight to pull ahead. As the man writhed on the ground, his life hanging in the balance, the teams in the first flight saw their lead slip away. The teams were horrified at the situation. Their lead had “evaporated.” You a-hole! A million dollars is at stake! Stand up, you jerk! As the rest of the teams glared at the man on the floor, one team, comprised of two Harlem Globetrotters, mentioned that they were just happy the guy made it to Honolulu alive.
Phil, just give these guys the express pass. Everyone else should be sent back to kindergarten.
Or they could simply be forced to swim in a shark tank. The next task required one member of each team to scuba dive in a tank filled with sharks and stingrays to find a compass engraved with a code, when deciphered, revealed the pass phrase to the race’s first pit stop, “I am between the devil and the deep blue sea.” Kisha and Jennifer, still in the top three, remarked that the stereotype about African Americans was true: they can’t swim. Even so, they find the compass relatively easily and race off to decode the phrase.
The next leg of the race was to sail a sixteen-foot skiff across a bay to Shelly Beach, a disgustingly beautiful and sunny beach, which makes us blizzard weary Americans teeth hurt in jealousy. Kisha and Jennifer arrive in third place, Margie and Luke came in seventh, and Mel and Mike came in ninth.
The only team left is the cowboys, Jet and Cord, who had not cracked the code by the show’s end. Jet, as you will recall, had revealed himself to be homophobe in the past. I guess karma is a bitch.
The Amazing Race airs Sunday nights on CBS.
