Reality People Talk – Jim and Marsha of The Amazing Race
Elites TV caught up with father/daughter team Marsha and Jim after they were eliminated in round 3 of The Amazing Race 5. Here’s what they had to say about chocolate binging, Charla and Mirna, and those sneaky Bowling Moms.
Elites TV: Thanks so much for talking to Elites TV today. Let’s get right into last nights episode. What happened at the ticketing counter?
Marsha: Basically, the ticketing agent screwed us big time. There was an early flight for 9:10 and a later flight for 10:30. We wanted the early fight but there was only 1 seat left. We bought the seat and were hoping for a standby spot. As plan B, we tried to get the both of us confirmed on the 10:30 flight as well. Unfortunately, the ticket woman ended up giving us 1 ticket for the 9:10 flight and 1 for the 10:30 flight.
Jim: When the guy at the gate found out that he had about 10 seats available for standby passengers, it was very apparent that to me that he wasn’t going to give us seats. It was like we had killed his dog or something. He made it a point to take everybody else in front of us even though we were number one and two on the list.
Elites TV: It sounds like one of the other teams paid him off!
Jim: That certainly crossed my mind. I did see the twins doing some talking at the information desk. At the time we just thought they were getting on the standby list, but who knows what they did or whom they paid off. The bottom line is that we didn’t make it on that plane.
Marsha: Maybe [the ticket agent] thought they were cuter than us!
Elites TV: Well, they seem to be getting a lot of that! You were pretty neck and neck with The Brothers, right?
Marsha: Lance and Marshall are great. They are not very subtle guys. You either love ‘em or you hate them. I really loved them. I thought they were hysterical. Sometimes at the pit stops they’d talk about totally inappropriate stuff. I’m a guy’s girl; I can listen to that stuff. But listening to it in front of your dad is awkward. You don’t want to laugh at everything. It didn’t make for good conversation between my father and me.
Jim: They were ok, I didn’t dislike them. They weren’t my favorite people. Their jokes were rather crude. Every other word out of Lance’s mouth is the F-word. I’ve been around the block a few times and have heard that language before, but after awhile it grew old.
Elites TV? Was the chocolate factory your favorite detour? I would be mine!
Jim: It was terrible! We were in the back of the pack at that time, and you can just imagine what the floors looked like after all the teams had bit into and spit out their chocolates. It was disgusting! I love good chocolate, but this was bad chocolate, and I probably bit into over 100 of them!
Elites TV: Did you take some time off chocolate after that?
Jim: I’m a chocolate junkie, and my wife joked, “Well, I guess you’ll never have chocolate again!” That lasted about a week.
Elites TV: Did you bond with some teams more than others?
Jim: I didn’t bond with any of the teams. I did not trust any of the teams. I tried to keep my distance. Marsha was a little friendlier with the other teams. But that’s pretty much my nature. I’m kind of a loner. And this was a race, not a social gathering.
Marsha: We worked with the twins in the first episode and I really got to like them. I also liked Chip and Kim; Chip is a really a funny guy. Lance and Marshall were hysterical. Really there was no team that I didn’t get along with.
Elites TV: Were some teams more cutthroat than others? What about when the mom’s tricked you two into exchanging your money at the airport in episode 2?
Marsha: Donny and Alison would do anything. Alison would slit your throat to win a million dollars. The Bowling Moms surprised me too, but just because they’re moms it doesn’t mean they’re not going to play the game. We were so pissed at them, and said really nasty things about them, unfortunately [after the airport incident]. But after it’s all said and done, they played the game. Our strategy was to play nice, so even though we wanted to confront the moms, we decided to play it down.
Elites: Jim, you spend 23 years in the military. What skills translated most to Amazing Race?
Jim: Navigation. I know how to read a map, so we were really good at the driving legs. Discipline was big, too. I don’t like to give up on things. It’s not over until it’s over.
Elites: And Marsha, you’re a law student. Did any of the skills that you’re learning translate?
Marsha: I actually graduated from law school and am taking the bar exam next week. I have a job lined up with a civil litigation firm in Ft. Lauderdale. Going to law school teaches you how to see things from different angles and how to be a problem solver. The law school environment is very, very cutthroat. So I wasn’t a stranger to an adversarial environment.
Elites TV: Did you find yourselves following defined roles?
Jim: We had set up roles for ourselves: Marsha was going to be the driver of the car and I was the navigator. I’m a planner and she’s more off the cuff and likes to make split second decisions. So we decided that if there was a fork in the road, and she said to go left and I said to go right, we’d go left. It wasn’t the plan that Marsha would be the leader of the team, but it turned out that there were more quick decisions than planned ones.
Marsha: We knew each other as father daughter and we got to see each other out of that element. Dad got to see my interaction with other people and how they see me as just Marsha. And I got to see how Dad interacted with others in his everyday life as Jim. We got to see each other in a different way, which I thought was really nice.
Elites TV: Which team is the biggest surprise so far?
Marsha: It’s totally obvious: Mirna and Charla.
Jim: I think all the teams have underestimated Mirna and Charla. They’ve done a good job. They’ve used Charla’s littleness to their advantage. Their mission statements was: “We can do anything that other people can do and we don’t want to be classified as underdogs.” But in fact, they’ve used [Charla’s] smallness to their advantage. They’re being a bit hypocritical, I think; some of their actions go against their original mission statements. But that’s cool. They’re still in the race and we’re not and I think they’ve done a good job.
Elites TV: Thanks for talking with Elites TV. Good Luck!
Interview by Laura Kenney
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