The thing I like most about The Amazing Race is that it takes us around the world, which is just fun to watch. Only slightly less entertaining is to watch it reveal people as they take that trip. As they become more stressed and the road wears on them, you get to see people further and further from their “hidden” selves, and you see them as they really are, which shows you just how much we try to hide ourselves from people – and what we do to win when we think no one is looking.
April 26th, 2006 Archives
The Amazing Race Recap: Perth, Australia
The Amazing Race · Season 9 · Episode 9 · Aired April 26, 2006
Mythbusters Recap: Brown Note
Mythbusters · Season 3 · Episode 1 · Aired February 16, 2005
Blown Away. The build team checks out two different myths during this episode. In the first, they try to see if being shot with a gun can really send you flying. A pig carcass does the honors, and it seems that being shot by just about everything has no noticeable effect on the 180-pound weight, barely causing a ripple. So how do those actors fly through the air, windows and even walls? Usually with the help of cranes or ropes of some kind. Busted.
The Twilight Zone Recap: The Lonely
The Twilight Zone · Season 1 · Episode 7 · Aired November 13, 1959
A man (the great Jack Warden), who insists that he killed only in self defense, is sentenced to 40 years in solitary confinement. On an asteroid. His only visitors are seen four times a year as they deliver supplies. One of the visitors (John Dehner, who also starred in The Jungle) shows compassion by dropping off a female robot on one trip, to ease the lonliness.
The only problem is that the convict falls in love with the robot, so that on the return trip, when he learns that he’s been granted the long-sought pardon, he doesn’t want to leave. Finding out that he only has 15 pounds of space on the rocket to freedom, he isn’t sure what to do – he doesn’t want to leave his beloved Alicia. So the compassionate Captain does the only thing he can – he shoots her in the face.
Perhaps not the most subtle episode, but not a bad one for the questions that it raises about both our society and ourselves.
