Shocking Showdown

When the last episode of The Amazing Race finished with a teaser proclaiming that this week's ending would be unbelievable, I knew at that moment that my favorites, Rob and Amber, would be eliminated. I really was upset about it because they make the race so much fun and it would be sad to see them leave so soon. I'm sure there are probably a bunch of Romber haters out there who cheered their demise. Is this really the way they had to go, beaten by the increasingly annoying Charla and Mirna?

Everything started going to crap with Romber at the Magellan detour. Frankly, I probably would have picked the signs over the compass, too; with navigation, you're liable to get lost. Then again, the city seemed to be a grid. When you're told to just head in one direction, and you've got a map, you don't need a compass. Your head could be 93 percent magnet and you'd still find your way. And Rob was stuck with a big disadvantage: His brilliant strategic mind doesn't come with spell check.

But still, it seemed like there was no way Romber could lose, especially with Mirna and Schmirna 90 minutes behind. Mirna seemed to be self-destructing, having begun the leg with a soliloquy about how she was carrying her cousin and does "as much as any one player has ever had to do on the race, to compensate for any shortcomings Charla has." First of all, shortcomings? Honestly, Mirna, that's the word you wanted to use? Then when it came time to pick up their sign supplies, Mirna kept wailing about Charla taking a box, and next thing you knew Charla was balancing a 70-pound post as Mirna ran in circles above her on the stairs. I will give Mirna that: She certainly does as much crazy talk as anyone on the race ever has.

I still held a small glimmer of hope that nothing bad would happen, because all of this tension around the detour was moot, as we knew that no matter who pulled ahead, they would all end up on the same charter plane anyway. After the short flight, things continued to go poorly for Romber. Charla and Mirna were like a stubborn piece of toilet paper stuck to their shoe. Whenever they thought they'd pried it away, they'd look behind them, and there it was, trailing them all over again. Romber's biggest mistake might have been playing slightly dirty with them, by nabbing their cab at the airport and then lying to them about having found the clue. Moral indignation is to the Schmirnas as spinach is to Popeye. When they see the slightest evidence that someone is not as pure of heart as them, they get superstrength.

Then again, lying to Mirna is futile. "As an attorney, I can tell when someone's lying," said the human polygraph. Which was odd, as when Rob called Charla on telling her cousin where to look in the mail-sorting roadblock, Mirna snapped at him, "Shut the hell up, I told her to pray to our deceased grandmother to help us — you wouldn't know what that means!" I'm not sure what that means, either. Was her late grandmother's last name "Lookoverthere"'? I guess it doesn't count as a lie if it's just crazy talk, in the same way that a murderer can be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

But the spirit of their dead grandmother did pull them through, and Mirna and Schmirna passed a frustrated Rob, tearing open their angry letter from Lance and Marshall and reminding us all just how many enemies they made in their original season, too. Perhaps the mean note gave them the extra jolt of smugness that carried them to the pit stop. The producers tried to make it seem like Romber were right on their tails — especially as Mirna dragged Charla over tree stumps to get her to the final mat — but it was clear from the way that Rob and Amber were just walking that they knew they were too far back to beat them. If someone as competitive as Rob thought he had a chance to catch up, he would have run.

So when they arrived at the mat and calmly accepted their defeat with a pronouncement of love, I realized that for them, this was just all a show for them. They had nothing invested in this. It was all for show. They would have been happy to win, yes, but the money mattered less than continuing their TV career as "Rob and Amber, cutthroat reality lovebirds." Even still, I will really miss them.

So now, my new favorites are The Beauty Queens, Eric and Danielle, and Danny and Oswald.