I had to do a lot of introspection before recapping tonight's episode. The idea that someone would find unscrambling the word "FRANZ" so impossible that they would rather take a four-hour penalty than continue to try to finish the job flabbergasts me. And normally (as when teams struggled to unscramble "Chekhov" last season) I would revel in the mockery. And yet, when it happens to Big Easy, I just feel sadness, and very subjective defensiveness.

How to reconcile this? For the Roadblock, teams had to enter a K-Mart Kafkaesque "office" full of empty desks and phones. Five of the phones had someone else on the other side of the line, ominously speaking a letter. Once the teammate had collected the letters to spell FRANZ, they needed to go see an uptight "supervisor," who would give them a long form to fill out, at the end of which they had to unscramble their letters correctly. Meghan tried it first, and after one wrong submission, she was free to go. Fine, I thought, teams are showing progress on the international-literature front.

Then it was Dan's turn. He started out submitting words like "NAFZR" and "FZRAN." Ha ha! What a moron Dan is! Look at him randomly stick letters together and hope they equal a word! Laugh, laugh at the dopey brother! Now who is the dumbass? Listen to him say, "These supervisors are like the biggest douches ever." Was that the topic sentence of your book report on The Metamorphosis, Dan? Ha ha ha ha…

And then Big Easy arrived, and the cognitive dissonance set in.

He was no better than Dan at this, handing in "FZARN." But I didn't want to laugh at Big Easy. I immediately went from snickering at Dan to thinking, "This test is culturally biased! I call thee unfair, test! How dare you embarrass Big Easy like that!" But isn't that just being patronizing? Big Easy himself would probably reject such excuses. Anyway, it's a cop out. I strongly doubt that Meghan spent a lot of time steeping herself in Kafka in between volleyball tourneys, and she figured it out. There are only so many permutations of these letters that spell anything resembling a word. You never even had to have heard of Franz Kafka or had a clue what the term "Kafkaesque" meant to solve it. You could get through it and go, "Wow, what an interesting 'bunch of phones and a dickish guy with a stamp' challenge!" and still put the letters in the right order. Hell, all you needed to know is the old Saturday Night Live sketch Hans and Franz and you'd be home free.

But no, Big Easy could not crack this case. He and Dan vowed to work together, but as soon as Dan got it, he, predictably, dashed off, telling Big Easy only, "The first letter is F." Now, I'm of the mind that people are too sensitive about "backstabbing" on The Amazing Race, but here I thought Dan went too far. They did have a deal, one Dan didn't need to have made. But then I entered the same endless loop of waffling that I'd just gone through: Was I preaching morality in alliances because it was Big Easy who got screwed? Had it been Big Easy who yoinked Dan, would I have been standing up and cheering? Likely.

Plus, though Dan's offering of one letter seems harsh, mathematically it should have been a big help. Correct me if my recollection of high school math is wrong, but with five letters there are 70 (whoops, my math was wrong -- make that 120) permutations, but if you have one letter locked in and just four left, it drops down to 24. You could certainly eliminate all the options in less than four hours. And therein lies the painful truth: By just going through every possible variation, Big Easy could have finished this task in far less time than a penalty. I cannot wrap my mind around the idea of someone taking a four-hour setback rather than try to conquer a Word Jumble. By the end, the guy playing the bureaucrat in charge of stamping Big Easy's forms with giant X's looked truly annoyed, perhaps because what had started as an easy fun day gig had turned into a developing case of carpal tunnel.

It was especially horrible to see Big Easy passed by Brian, after he and Ericka tackled their Speed Bump. Their extra job was to go to a bar that was a reality producer's idea of a happening nightlife spot, complete with women dancing on the bar like robots who were programmed to arouse the humanoids. Brian and Ericka had to make an absinthe shot and then down it, even though alcohol has never touched Brian's lips. I keep waiting for a dark side to appear on Brian, but I don't think it exists. I'm not even sure the guy casts a shadow. Anyway, I'm beginning to resign myself to dull Speed Bumps, as, by definition, they can't be that difficult. If they were, they'd hold up the lagging teams too much and make them a lost cause. So instead of complaining about tonight's Speed Bump, I'll just be thankful that it was better than the Saunabuss, and it wasn't some sort of Massage Buggy or Mani/Pedi Go-Kart.

The bonus task this week involved going to a gym and ducking into a room cooled to 180 degrees below zero Celsius and stay there for two minutes. Apparently this is some kind of holistic treatment, but I think it's just a scientific test to see if it's actually possible to freeze your balls off. Really, what could the benefit be? If you have a disease, is the hope that you go in, the bad cells freeze up and then drop out of your ass like it's an ice cube dispenser?

Then came the Detour: either slather a straw golem with mud and then drag the incredibly heavy statue across town to a rabbi, or deliver 30 glasses of beer through the streets to a bar, all while trying to avoid grabby drunks. Meghan and Cheyne and Sam and Dan both chose the golems, and considering that they avoided the alcoholic challenge, there was still quite a bit of whine. (Ba dum bum.) Cheyne groaned and complained, and I was impressed by Meghan's telling him to knock it off. "I'm yelling for power" was his rationale. Yeah, well, best reign that in before you turn on your thrusters of sobbing and you're afterburners of wanting your mommy.

Meanwhile, Sam and Dan's vows to treat each other more kindly after the haystack challenge have all but evaporated. Their entire slog was accompanied by a volley of "Shut up!", "Stop yelling at me!" and "Dumbass!" These guys are like Slap Shot's Hanson Brothers, minus the strength or charm. When they finally dropped off the golem, Dan just demanded, "Give us the blessing." Granted, you don't have to worry too much about being religiously insensitive to a fedora-rocking rabbi who has pimped himself out to a reality show, but still, a little respect, please.

As this happened, Brian and Ericka persevered with the beer shuttling, a task that looked a lot harder than I thought it would be. I had not counted on the roving packs of Czech partiers who thought that the couple wandering the streets with glasses of beer meant that the keg fairy had finally answered their prayers. By the time Ericka had dropped a whole tray, even Brian's calm had been exhausted. When one person tried to grab a beer off his tray, he snapped, "Are you kidding me?" Though that was still positively Bambi-like compared to Ericka's, "Yeah, I do have American attitude. Touch me and you get punched." Please, Ericka, must you quote your own Miss America platform speech at every turn?

I have turned around on Brian and Ericka. They drove me a bit crazy at first, because they seemed less like real people than two actors hired to play an interracial couple, what with all their "Team Zebra!" cries and lighthearted "That's my wife for ya!" comments. But when they crossed the finish line and were told by Phil that they were in third, their genuine enthusiasm moved me. Call me a softy, but I suddenly saw them as real people. Their moments of dissent (like Ericka nearly quitting after her beer glasses fell and shattered, saying, "This is not gonna work. I'm not willing to make it work," was ridiculous, but it was ridiculous in the realm of normal people at their worst in a stressful situation. So there.

Meghan and Cheyne, however, don't seem real to me. And it seems pretty likely that they're going to win. They placed in first yet again this week, winning 52-inch HD TVs. (And once more, I was left to wonder why the Amazing Race can't lock in a sponsor other than Travelocity. It says something sad about how inured I've become to product placement that when I hear that someone has won a gift where the manufacturer is not mentioned, it makes me uneasy. And Pit Stop side note #2: What was with Phil's model mat mate? Usually his partner is someone dressed in local garb, either historical or current. So what does that make the Czech Republic, land of the hot women? Other countries get squat fishermen in funny hats, but the Czech Republic gets a tribute to Paulina Porizkova.)

So it was Meghan and Cheyne in first, Sam and Dan in second, Brian and Ericka in third…and the Globetrotters finished long after they had to let the model go home for more beauty sleep. It was so sad to see them go (did they even make them go through with the Detour and the cold-air shower?) and yet, and yet, and yet… The merry go round of logic goes round and round: Yes, they finished as supportive as ever, with Flight Time not blaming his friend for a minute. And yes, they got screwed by Dan. And yes, it's a shame that they won't be barreling into the final episode. And JESUS H. KAFKA, A FOUR HOUR PENALTY FOR A SPELLING CHALLENGE? IT'S "FRANZ!" FRANZ, I SAY! IF FOR A MOMENT "FZARN" SEEMED LIKE IT MIGHT BE A WINNER, DID "FRANZ" NEVER SET OFF ANY LIGHT BULBS?

Sigh.