The Race is over and U&J won , the Romber haters are Happy the Romber Fans are not ..I guess it all depends on who were rooting for . Now that all is said and done we can never assume anything , point Rob and Amber would have had a good two hour lead on the other teams, there would have been no exciting race to the final Pitstop if not for " The Powers That Be " ( American Airlines is indeed a TAR Sponser ) ..however if Rob & Amber were the team that were let on the plane by "TPTB" the final result would most likely have been the same .
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The Amazing Race: The Finale: The Airport Of Dreams
Last Updated: Sunday, May 15, 2005 - 08:43 AM
Yes, the spectacular seventh season of The Amazing Race has ended. It was an interesting, powerful ride punctuated by high Nielsen ratings, bold strategic tricks, controversies over spoilers — one which proved wrong, one correct — crashes and injuries, interpersonal squabbling, sacrifice and stoic good will, the curious lack of extreme challenges (bungee jumps, sky diving), another humdrum Pit Stop Finale (nothing like Season One, or Two), India!, and, the most knotty flash point of them all... the querulous attitude of some teams, and some members of the viewing public, to the presence of a team consisting of Survivor: All Stars winners Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich.
By David W. Taylor (Email Me)
Reality Reel Media
05.16.05
The Disclaimer: I wanted Rob & Amber to win The Amazing Race 7. I know that makes me some sort of Faustian lunatic — and one of maybe three people on the planet that will freely admit to this shame — but, yes, I did. Why? Simply put, I like fierce competitors in a competitive setting. I like to see people make commitments and stick to them come hell or high water. And I don't like whiners. The team of Rob & Amber routinely exemplified fully all three of these elements; and they consistently fought tooth and nail to complete each leg in the first position. Uchenna & Joyce, and Ron & Kelly (rounding out the final three) while also competing exceedingly well, did not master the rudiments of the game as succinctly nor as wantonly.
The Rub: The fact that Rob & Amber both appeared previously on Survivor on two separate occasions and pocketed considerable amounts of money makes no impression on me other than respecting their considerable achievements. I would no longer hold their past Survivor successes against them in seeking participation on a show like The Amazing Race than I would begrudge someone like, say, Brad Pitt from acting in future motion picture projects because he's already made a few films, banked untold millions of dollars and has become a household name.
The Quarrel: Bandied about by many is the inference (okay, the stampede) that Rob & Amber didn't deserve to be on The Amazing Race in the first place, because they previously appeared on a television show. This is absurd on its face. I cannot fathom any precedent for such lunacy — banning successful people from further success? — unless it's hitched to arcane, delusional class warfare agitprop or dumbed-down Marxian ethics. If Rob & Amber should be excluded on that basis, why should any person who achieves a personal triumph be allowed to strive towards another? Much of this rancor may literally come down to base jealousy.
Just as in any competitive business environment — of which the entertainment industry is certainly a thriving member — there will be a limited number of people cast on a Reality Television show due to certain, maybe unfair, abstract variables. And among people cast, there will be a sizable majority who make their appearance and return to their previous lives without much fanfare. In a very few cases, again for reasons that may be as undefinable and nebulous as reading tea leaves in a voodoo hut, some of the participants will achieve some sort of sustainable notoriety or even, possibly, true stardom.
Certainly Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich are two people that have achieved some small sliver of celebrity. Finding themselves on the cover of a magazine in South Africa or running into passionate fans in Peru, or England, or South Africa on the Race... is certainly a stardom of some order. Having initially appeared on two separate Survivor seasons and then both being selected to appear on a season of Survivor: All Stars, and then winning this Herculean contest as an engaged couple, was a hefty accomplishment I would think few of us could quibble with (though some do).
Bottom Line?: Disliking Rob Mariano for being rapaciously hardcore in his cold-blooded calculating on Survivor (or The Amazing Race) is another issue altogether. I leave that testy subject to the likes of, well, maybe, Lynn & Alex. Or Patrick. Rob certainly is a practitioner of an old school, politically incorrect, brand of sorcery which smells more union thug than hospice social worker. This could be some of the irritation from some corners... he's a fast fading cultural remnant... the unfeminized American male.
So, Rob & Amber's decision to seek participation in The Amazing Race 7 was certainly a hopeful (and understandable, surely) scheme on their part to cart off additional cash and also to sustain their noteworthiness; their bankability. If you can blame this pair for that, you might as well condemn much of human nature and the freedom of expression in American society. Rather than mocking the pair for pursuing an expansion of their horizons — it isn't, after all, illegal to plug after success (at least not yet anyway) — for, in a glib trope, as they say to "Go for it!", I simply salute them. More power to them.
Yet, objectively, signing on to this venture was also a gamble. If Rob & Amber — these notoriously shrewd, bombastic Survivor winners! — had shared the same fate as Big Brother 4 finalist Alison Irwin, and her boyfriend Donny, did on Amazing Race 5 (getting knocked out in the second leg), then much of their luster as Reality champions would have faded. In fact, I suspect that if Rob & Amber had been eliminated in one of the early rounds, plans for their televised wedding might have been pulled.
Casting this pair was also a calculated gambit shouldered by The Amazing Race producers to gain crossover viewers from Survivor with two well known fan favorites. I can only say Thank God! Not only because of the millions of new viewers added to The Amazing Race fan base, which will only increase the likelihood of future seasons, but the additional benefit — thanks to the predatory showmanship of Rob Mariano — of widening the parameters of Amazing Race sport.
Again, there are some who take note of a ripple in the "sporting" nature of The Amazing Race now that Rob & Amber have plowed into the game... thinking this particular Reality Show should remain some sort of gentlemanly game of croquet governed by Victorian Rules of Decency which, in reality, it never has remotely been. There has always been bold deception and falsehoods. In Season One, the team consisting of Bill & Joe (Team Guido) used a hyped ruse and a luggage cart to block teams from entering an airport customs entry so they might miss a departing flight. This move turned into a frightening mess and Team Guido were a thorn despised thereafter. For all of his uncivil deception, I would propose that Rob Mariano himself would not stoop to such a crude tactic.
Another sore point among Rob & Amber detractors is the proposition that their celebrity somehow helped them attract assistance during various legs in the Race. However, while this is certainly true up to a point, as Amber pointed out on at least one occasion, this might have been as much a hindrance as a help — with people stopping you in your tracks to say hello, shake your hand or ask for an autograph, or something else distracting. And, it has to be pointed out once again: this sort of help has been sought after before, by past Race contestants without any celebrity status whatsoever — other than being followed around by a camera and a boom mike. In Season One, comical oddball frat brothers, Kevin & Drew, hooked up with some new acquaintances during an overnight in China and coaxed a local female to meet with them the next morning to help them through a Roadblock. None of the foundations of Rob's manipulations were new. He merely finessed it, flaunted it. Led with it. His influence, if it transcends past AR7 at all, can only tighten the Race and increase the fireworks. What can possibly be wrong with that?
And even with all the ill will being loosed on Rob & Amber... Hey! They didn't even win. The good guy won. Getting back at Enron won. The sacrificing gal won. Unselfishness won. Taking care of the old people won. Being honest won. Faith won. Money for In Vitro or Adoption won. Baldness won. Compassion won. The new American male won. The Good Team won.
You have to give it to Uchenna & Joyce. They stuck with it — without funds or clothes or nicknacks — until the very end; and remained the incorruptible, almost monkish new-age pair, serenely resigned to providential will and destiny. Observing Uchenna, in particular, throughout the finale was to watch a Gandhi-like figure passing through an earthly Dantesque crucible with tranquil aplomb and a pastoral sense that calmed even an increasingly jittery Joyce.
The whole spectacle at the San Juan Airport, Puerto Rico, was a creepy, skin crawling apocalyptic nightmare, that is if you were pulling for Rob & Amber (or Ron & Kelly). If Uchenna & Joyce were your team... the Airport Miracle was the Heavy Hand of God descending upon the gate agents — who had to decide to radio a ramp coordinator who had to decide to radio the cockpit — and into the mind of the American Airlines Captain who — in a highly irregular move — ultimately opted to have a gate agent reopen the jetway security door, reposition the jetway to the aircraft and reopen the aircraft door (resetting the departure time) to allow Uchenna & Joyce to continue to compete in The Amazing Race.
This does happen in regular airports, on regular commercial airlines, with regular travelers, and it is done at the Captain's sole prerogative (if you can get past the gate agents), but it isn't something that is done on a regular basis. Once that aircraft door is closed and that jetway is motored back, that's usually it. Whatever forces were put in motion to finally flip the switch that green-lighted Uchenna & Joyce's fashionably late boarding on that delayed flight to Miami, it was plainly their propitious moment in the Race. One maybe had a quick flashback to a sun-bleached Hindu Temple slab on the banks of some lake in India and Joyce kneeling down for her Hindu Good Luck Ritual head shave... it was all swirling together, like unseen angels, into a purposeful meditation redolent of some childhood fairy tale. At that moment, the spoiler rang true.
As Uchenna & Joyce walked down the aircraft aisle they passed Rob & Amber. I've never seen Rob look so bleak and dumbfounded. There were no smiles or high-fives — his game had been crushed by whimsical happenstance. He had been found out and followed. Peekaboo. The Amazing Race Finale lead of the century smashed.
In Miami, Rob & Amber left their backpacks on the plane and maniacally fought for a lead that was finally broken due to the usual mundane drip-drops of Amazing Race tragedy... taxi drivers and language. At one point, in Little Havana, Rob Mariano was utterly lost, whizzing askance in a fog in that Cuban cultural conclave. A zig-zag vein on his temple was popping out like a balloon, his eyes dazed. At one point, his taxi disappeared. He took out a necklace medal of St. Anthony from under his shirt and kissed it, pleading for heavenly assistance in finding that goddamned cigar store. But the Karma was already set. An American Airlines pilot and a Miami taxi driver had entered the lives of Uchenna & Joyce and moved them to realize their good fortune.
Amazing. At the Final Pit Stop entrance — yards to the Finish Line — Uchenna, even here, remains his Christ-like (even Zach-like) self... refusing to run to the Mat until he has paid his meter tab to his wonderful taxi driver in full. It was sublimely touching and almost too much goodness to witness. I almost expected him to walk off and volunteer at some local soup kitchen. I just wonder if Rob & Amber had REALLY been on his tail, whether he would have begun passing around the hat for his driver or would he have just grabbed Joyce and split? If Uchenna, in that instance, would've stayed and done his duty, he could've started a new religion.
Uchenna & Joyce became the symbol of everything Rob & Amber supposedly were not. It was a battle to the end of the old order and the new cultural age. Perceived lightness and Dark. My only problem with the whole thing playing out in the Finale was the short clip of Patrick, Susan's irksome gay son, standing there with the other contestants in front of the Mat and Phil, and he's gazing down a path awaiting the team who will claim the million dollar prize. His hands are clasped together, eyes ablaze, and he's chanting, "Uchenna & Joyce, Uchenna & Joyce..." This was nauseating, pandering and patronizing.
And this is besides the point of who could care a flip who this useless, whining contestant, Patrick, would want to win in the first place? Was he speaking for everyone? Phil? After calling Rob Mariano, "Dumb as a rock," in Peru, I suppose his pissy rants were suddenly credible.
This utterance signaled plainly that The Amazing Race story editors and producers had handpicked Uchenna & Joyce as the only worthy team to win the Race and made a garish attempt to shove this point across. If you had other favorites you were just wrongheaded! It was Uchenna & Joyce's sob story of corporate oppression, financial woe, and reproductive issues that had become the political force behind their exaltation to deserving beings of our collective charity. One has to wonder why, if this was the buzz, why they just weren't given one million dollars outright.
It all fit in with the Dehumanization of Rob & Amber. (I also wonder why Ron's plan to distribute his winnings to injured soldiers of the U.S. Military got such short shrift). I suppose it was a knee jerk politically correct patch job after Freddy and Kendra's win in Amazing Race 6... after all they were a pampered white couple, models!, who spoke disparagingly about third world squalor and birth rates. Oops! You don't know what it's like to be on the bad side of the Early Show's Harry Smith!
I thoroughly enjoyed this seventh season of The Amazing Race. It was sure wrapped up with a nice pretty ribbon. It's my favorite show. Yet, whatever the reasons behind this FIRST EVER team-specific rah-rah boost from the Finale sidelines, it was totally uncalled for. It had no place in a free-for-all competition. Leave that stuff for a syrupy melodramatic come-from-behind tear-jerker on Oxygen. I can figure things out myself, thank you.
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