Hera Today, Gus Tomorrow

It was truly sad to see my favorite team eliminated from The Amazing Race last night. The father and daughter team, Gus and Hera, were by far the most "real" of the teams this season, with the possible exception of "Team AARP", Don and Mary Jean.

G&H are certainly not flashy, nor are they models or specimens of athletic excellence. They were, though, pretty entertaining. Their running around in the Berlin beer garden, asking the customers if they had seen pictures of black people, was one of my favorite TAR episodes ever. Gus couldn't resist taking a few extra chugs of beer (and judging from his rotund belly, he loves his beer!), and Hera couldn't resist being embarrassed by her dad. And who could help but be at least a little moved by Gus' strong reaction at the "Door of No Return" in Africa, where slaves were loaded on ships for their journey to the new world?

But, alas, TAR doesn't seem to reward the "real" people very often. It seems that you have to be fairly athletic, competitive almost to a fault, and ruthless to have a chance. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed, though, that "Team Psycho", Jonathan and Victoria, will be the next to be eliminated. Not that I have anything against Victoria, but the guy she's married to just has got to be the worst reality "character" I've seen. Watching him slap his wife around when they were beat to the finish line was bad enough, but it got even worse last night when Jonathan kept accusing Victoria of being a "drama queen" as she was violently vomiting spicy soup one spoonful at a time. I know Jonathan is now claiming his behavior was amped up for the cameras and that he's a victim of unfair editing, but I think it's pretty clear, he's one of the biggest jerks ever on reality TV.

Now, we just have to keep Aaron and Hayden in the race. Hayden is more annoying than chalk scraping across a chalkboard, but Aaron is just too cute. They need to stay around so I have something to look at.