Now Who Do We Root For?

Now Who Do We Root For? by Roxanne McDonald

“Amazing Race Allstars” is left with the least likely to deserve, or at best, the least desirable personalities.

All the strong ones are gone (Rob and Amber, Uchenna and Joyce). All the endearing ones are gone (Ian and Teri). All the funny ones are gone (Danny and Oswald). Is it really down to ugly sarcasm and who can out-manipulate whom?

Who cares how beautiful they are? The Beauty Queens, or who Eric longingly identifies as The Blondes, are not all that beautiful all the time.

When on one leg of “The Amazing Race” the Beauty Queens discover there are two teams ahead of them on the list, they tell their ticketing clerk that Danny and Oswald were behind them, so the order of the list is not “right”, is not fair, they insist.

Similarly, on another leg of the race, the Beauty Queens get all frustrated that Charla and Myrna are getting preferential

wait-list treatment, and because they prefer the flirty, bat-your-eyelashes approach, they snipe how Myrna is “oh, my, God…so pushy,” and that she “wins the pushy award of the list.”
The best way to win is to use feminine wiles, they’ve decided, doing so with everyone from the sergeant examining their engine flap cleaning (where their schmoozy bullshit doesn’t fly) to giggling over the naval officer’s manicured nails (which just make the woman smile but doesn’t get them anywhere any faster or anything) to flirting with Eric, telling him “how buff” he looks in his white jersey (right in front of Danielle, no less…what gall).

They have admittedly manipulated by way of their looks, and have covertly tried manipulation, just because they are who they are…sometimes having it work, sometimes not, whether it is with a taxi driver they are trying to get a map from, listening in on ticketing info of the other players, or soliciting townspeople to get them so much money for a task or to get them so far down the road….

Eric and Danielle are not so manipulative, per se, but just selfish, righteous, and/or nasty, according to what the situation calls for.

Eric is big on enforcing the I’m-first-so-I-say-you-must-do-as-I-do format. He makes the followers “obey the line;” he makes any team who refuses him a favor suffer his refusal in return. Eric is also big on checking up on others, fixating so hard on where a particular team is that he often loses sight of his own task at hand.

Danielle complains alot, and is mean about whatever (or whoever) her target of criticism is—be it Eric, the “Guidos” (who she says are just annoying), or any team who passes in their taxi (when Danielle thinks she and Eric should have the right to a race that does not involve being passed up, evidently).

Together, Eric and Danielle are mutually mean, mocking the others or berating each other. And notice how they have not done anything special or expecially nice for anyone? Not even when others have given them a boost (such as when Uchenna and Joyce arrived earliest at an airport ticket counter and reserved as many tickets as they could for the likes of Eric and Danielle, for example)?

I’m sure Eric would have some surly response to why this is, and I am equally sure he would include how persecuted he and Danielle have been, considering how they have been yielded twice, now, etc. etc. and that, like someone cutting in the line at lunch, is just not faaaaair.

And while they have been (and, I suppose, still are) my dark horse bet, and do have some cute moments, Charla and Myrna are pretty damned vicious—coming at their tasks with an sense of entitlement that rivals the Beauty Queens’ belief they should be first cause they are pretty or Eric’s surety that he should be first cause he boasts so many wise decisions and so much traveling acumen.
Charla and Myrna interpret skills and approaches in their own way, calling sneaky maneuvering taking risks. They contradictingly consider themselves moralists and humanitarians and hard workers and etc., given how they “work very hard physically, mentally…to do well,” how they (or Myrna, usually will) “do all the work to compensate for any shortcomings we have,” and how they like to “help people.” But then they get all rudely nationalistic, such as when Charla snips how the BQs have never used the Internet or as when Myrna does that weird fake accent thing—which sounds the same in every country but which she thinks is giving her some favor with the locals.

Well, okay, see how they sneak around, speak over examiners’ decisions by saying a task is perfect when it isn’t, etc.? But then, see how they do indeed lend a hand, give up information, and try to make some alliances?

Could be, then, that while this is of course a cutthroat-style game, while one would clearly use what gifts and assets one has been given to get further, and while some lying and name-calling is inevitable (however unfortunate, however good for TV it is), it could be that Charla and Myrna at least have some edge over the other two teams when it comes to what Oswald earlier reminded us is “kharma”.

Could be that just needing the win won’t be reason enough, anymore than will being the best looking.

Okay, then, I have talked myself into answering my own question of whom to root for of the final three: Go Charla! Go Myrna! Just be a leeetle beet nicer more often, k?

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