‘Amazing Race 14′: Nastiness prevails on lap 9

Lap 9 of CBS’ “The Amazing Race 14” got particularly nasty Sunday night as two teams nearly came to blows at the Pit Stop with one team referring to another as “bitches.”

The teams left Bangkok, Thailand, flying over 1,000 miles to Guilin, China. One of the connecting flights from Guangzhou was delayed to Guilin, but sisters Kisha and Jen Hoffman were on a different flight and reached Guilin first.

The teams were supposed to take a taxi to a nearby hair salon for their next clue. However, Kisha and Jen lost precious time when their taxi driver went to the wrong location. The Chinese American brother and sister team of Victor and Tammy Jih couldn’t stop talking about the fact that they could speak Chinese and hoped they would have a leg up on the competition. But their cab didn’t know where it was going.

So the former cheerleaders Jaime Edmonson and Cara Rosenthal reached the hair salon first. Of course Jaime, who hates foreign languages and foreigners in general, was her usually Ugly American self, even stating: “The only thing I know about China is that it’s very populated.” Ugh.

The clue led them to the nearby No. 24 Bridge where they received the Road Block clue. The teams had to take a boat into the middle of the river where one team member had to train a cormorant to retrieve 10 fish to get their next clue.

Kisha and Jen and the mother-son team of Margie and hearing-impaired Luke Adams arrived at the clue box at the hair salon at the same time. Luke ended up elbowing Jen to get the clue first, causing Jen to call him a “bitch.” Of course, Luke didn’t hear the remark, but Margie did and let Luke know. The young man became livid.

The stuntmen brothers Mark and Mike Munoz, who came in fifth place last week in the non-elimination round, had three hours tacked onto their start time because of incurring two two-hour penalties last week. Plus, they had to perform a speed bump at the hair salon: They each had to shampoo and dry a woman.

At the No. 24 Bridge clue box, Luke pushed Jen into the clue box while racing to get the clue first, which really heated up the friction between the two teams. And perhaps as a bit of karma, Luke was bitten by one of the birds.

After completing the Road Block, the teams were sent by taxi to the Ancient South Gate, a 1,000-year-old structure in the city where they found their Detour: Choreography or Calligraphy. Jaime and Cara and Mike and Mark chose Choreography.

They had to make their way to a park area where groups were dancing in pairs. They had to choose a pair to teach them the routine and they had to perform for two judges. Jaime and Cara, though, couldn’t seem to get it right for the judges leading Jaime to snort “What is the problem?” The two left to do the other challenge, but then realized that they were supposed to keep repeating the routine while the music was playing instead of stopping after completing the routine once. So they went back and finished the task.

The Calligraphy challenge found Tammy and Victor, Kisha and Jen and Margie and Luke going to four calligraphy stations to copy the Chinese characters the calligrapher wrote down. After copying the characters, the calligrapher would stamp their notebooks. Tammy and Victor kept telling the calligraphers in Chinese that they needed to win the competition. “If we don’t win our parents will cry themselves to death,” Victor told one of the men.

After completing the challenge, they were given a drawing of their next Pit Stop on Banyan Lake,  which they reached by foot.

Kisha and Jen ended up coming in first place last night– winning a trip to Barbados. Tammy and Victor placed second, Margie and Luke ended up in third and Jaime and Cara placed fourth. Mark and Mike, who also opted for the choreography challenge, were eliminated from the race.

But speaking of Pit Stops, things got really classless when host Phil Keoghan asked about the tension between the teams. Kisha and Jen didn’t apologize for slurring Luke, which lead to Luke stomping away using sign language to sling the same slur their way.

Then Phil asked Luke to tell his side of the story. As he began to sign, Kisha and Jen started smiling and laughing. Margie thought they were making fun of Luke’s deafness and the war of words began again, with Luke angrily signing that hearing people put deaf people down. Kisha and Jen said they always smile when they are confronted, but apologized for the misunderstanding. Nasty. Nasty.

– Susan King, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: A sculpture garden in the mountains of Guilin, China; Susan Spano / Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 11:46 am by Susan King and is filed under Amazing Race, Asia, China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.