A recent leg bound the four remaining Amazing Race 7 teams together in Jodhpur, India. There, at the city’s sparse airport, Rob Mariano had let loose a highly corrupted rigged question meant to roil an opposing team. It was his piddling attempt at an amazing mind game in The Amazing Race.

By David W. Taylor (Email Me)
Reality Reel Media
05.06.05

The question’s concept was rather smug — Rob thinking his loaded concoction would somehow tip Meredith & Gretchen, and ultimately Uchenna & Joyce, into some sort of dark foggy confusion: Maybe they would all end up on a cattle barge to Yemen or something? At the very least, Rob was just having his usual way with people.

Unfortunately for Rob & Amber, and their luckless (and very temporary) alliance partners Ron & Kelly, this subliminal plant had the opposite and undesired effect of scrambling their adversaries into action. Before long, thanks to Rob’s meddling, his competition was securely two hours ahead in the Race. And huffing and puffing and scrambling now themselves... were two teams who just a short time before had thought themselves comfortably invincible.

Also in that leg, in the connecting city of Delhi, India, both Rob & Amber and Ron & Kelly had made concerted efforts with a few local travel bureaus to gain the identical flight itineraries they suspected Uchenna & Joyce and Meredith & Gretchen at having obtained under their upturned noses. After stiff personal assurances from all professional concerns that no such routings existed, these two teams left for their flights fitfully snug in a wavering confidence. And unaware that they were both heading square for the Amazing Race dustbin.

This clutter of hijinks, missteps and failed pursuits had been a knock-knock wake up call for both Rob & Amber and Ron & Kelly. Thanks to a non-elimination round, Ron & Kelly would have the chance to reevaluate their squishy alliance with Rob & Amber — purely on the premise that Rob was no longer a reliable superhero; that he, as much as anyone, is susceptible to prolific human error; and specifically, in Rob's case, prone to personally instigated drama and intrigue.