Rob & Kelley continued marching to the beat of their own drummer in The Amazing Race 21 Episode 6, right out of the race.
Teams depart in the order in which they arrived.
First: Trey & Lexi – 12:35PM
Second: Abbie & Ryan – 12:56PM
Third: James & Abba – 1:03PM
Fourth: Natalie & Nadiya – 1:44PM
Fifth: Jaymes & James – 1:55PM
Sixth: Josh & Brent – 2:07PM
Teams will now fly to Moscow, Russia. There are multiple options available.
Abbie & Ryan have opted for a flight with a 1 hour connection. Josh & Brent end up on this same flight after flipping a coin. 1 hour to get through one of the top 10 busiest airports in the world for an international connection? Having been through the disaster that is Frankfurt, I sense danger. Their alternative would be to take a flight that arrives 1 or 2 hours later. Seeing as these flights are all landing before the sun comes up, I’m not clear why it would be worth the risk. What are the odds a task begins before 8AM?
Trey & Lexi are looking for some airline that sounds funny, so they decide to just eat because they don’t know what it’s called. When the twins come along, the four of them book together. Chippendales and the rockers both get on the earliest flight by just dumb lucking into ticket agents that give them better options than others happened to get.
Before they can even get to Frankfurt and run through the airport, Josh & Brent and Abbie & Ryan already find out they are screwed. An announcement is made that their flight will be an hour late, essentially guaranteeing them a missed connection.
It gets worse. The earliest flight will arrive at 3:10PM, a full 11 hours behind the flight that left third, and even accounting for an hours of operation of 9:30 puts them over six hours behind the rest of the pack. At least there are two teams in this boat, or otherwise this would be a very boring leg.
The detour is a choice between synchronize or alphabetized. In alphabetized, teams must find books in a library based on a list in Russian. In synchronized, teams must go synchronized swimming with a future Olympic team.
Alphabetized: Trey & Lexi
Synchronized: Natalie & Nadiya, Jaymes & James, James & Abba (switched from alphabetized), Abbie & Ryan, Josh & Brent
As frustrating as the Russian alphabet is likely to be, I wouldn’t think the second detour is even possible. The good news is it doesn’t need to be pretty, but it does at least need to be in sync. For any struggles the lead four teams may be going through on either task, it’s all moot. Even if they quit the task and take a penalty, they’re still ahead of the bottom two.
The only occurrence of any relevance is Natalie & Nadiya continuing to discuss wasting their express pass, which they’ve been thinking about since before the task even started. The Chippendales tell them not to be stupid. I’d let them go ahead and do it.
The road block requires them to unlock all ten locks securing a ribbon to the Trees of Love.
Road block (in order of arrival): Trey, James, Natalie, Abba
This fairly simple task is nothing like the nightmare lock challenge from The Amazing Race 6. That does not prevent Natalie and Nadiya from calling each other the worst partner ever as a result of it.
Still at the airport, Josh & Brent and Abbie & Ryan make a pact. They will run this leg together. I’m not sure exactly what that entails, but it sounds silly. Ryan has the perfect opportunity to screw them over when they suggest going to the library, but he declines to take it and tells everybody that it closes at 4, meaning both these teams have no choice but to do the swimming task. It seems, though, that this task is much more suited to Abbie & Ryan, which would still allow them to squeak through.
With the two last place teams having spent the past day together, we find out what their pact means. Abbie & Ryan, finishing the detour easily, stick around to watch Josh & Brent hopelessly flail about.
But wait. There’s more. James & Abba left their stuff in a cab. If that’s just their personal belongings, they’re hurting, but they can get through it. However, if either of them let his passport out of his sight, that would automatically mean elimination. That’s exactly what happened. They have several hours to locate that cab, but we now have an unforeseen scenario that may not make things so predictable after all.
What is it with Russian cabs taking off with people’s stuff (and passports)? Toni & Dallas were eliminated in this exact same scenario in The Amazing Race 13.
The pit stop for this leg of the race is The Bolshoi Theater, the picture on the back of the money they are given as a clue.
First: Trey & Lexi (win a trip to Maui)
Second: Jaymes & James
Third: Natalie & Nadiya
After all the drama of the evening, we’re left with a cliffhanger. The most likely conclusion is that James & Abba cannot find their passports in this city of 10 million, but if they pull out a miracle, that leaves the other two teams battling for survival.
What we do know based on the preview is that Abbie & Ryan survive. Whether that means someone else was eliminated or non-eliminated is the question.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Amazing Race 21 Episode 8, which airs Sunday at 8/7c on CBS.