That was the funniest moment of The Race, tonight, by far. That was Reichen muttering as he poked around his big moving plate of live octopus chunks: legs and eyes and brains literally swimming around his plate, suctioning onto his teeth as he tried to chew them, Chip gagging as he said it, trying not to puke since it's against the rules.

Runnerup: Kelly bashing her fist through four wooden boards right after Jon tells her to picture his face there. They're not so nice to each other some of the time, but I do find them pretty entertaining.

The intensity was way down tonight, though, knowing it was a stupid non-elimination round. Those things suck the life right out of the show. At least we're almost done with them, I believe. Hopefully they'll do their standard 2-hour  finale, where three teams race to the finish, with the first hour meaningless. So I assume next week will be critical getting there.

If you haven't watched before, be prepared for a letdown at the climax. That's the worst part of this show. In all three previous races, they did the producers did the bunching scenario near the end of the leg, instead of the start. I guess that was to insure a close ending. More like a meaningless one. It has always come down to something really stupid, like who gets the best taxi driver for one last quick hop. Then a footrace in. It's almost a lottery between the three finalists who wins. Incredibly annoying. Total disregard for the audience. I forgot how mad it makes me. But, that's the show.

Meanwhile, I really did wish tonight could have been the elim round. The final foot race is the one factor that matters in the end, and Kelly's the weakest link, so I sure hope she's still in it. And those lamo surfer dudes are the fastest runners. We need them out of there next week. That's what I'd like to see, but my money is on Kelly and Jon getting the boot.

By the way, were Chip & Reichen wearing those matching silver wedding bands before? I never saw them--and surely the other teams would have noticed. How sad if they felt the need to take their wedding rings off for the first month. I never heard of a straight couple doing that. Glad to see them on now. (Update: Ben tells me the rings were there before. Shew! But what's with the other teams not figuring it out?)