With the third episode of what is becoming an enjoyable premiere season of the Amazing Race Canada we leave beautiful British Columbia and head east to sunny Alberta. Okay, so it hasn't been all that sunny this summer, but at least when they ran the race through southern Alberta they didn't have to contend with flash floods and torrential downpours that seem to be plaguing our summer this year. Anyway, another episode, another province.

So it's off to Calgary, Alberta to start this leg of the race where they will need to search for the statue of the notorious bull "Outlaw". During the flight Kristen and Darren decide to go back on their agreement to give the second Express Pass to the married doctors and instead pass it off to the sisters Vanessa and Celina. Not sure that was the best decision but it did add a little tension during the Roadblock and could have been a determining factor in this episode. At the airport the doctors decide to hide all the Calgary maps but it didn't seem to help as every team had no problem finding the statue and their next clue.

Off the teams race in their nice new pickups (in Alberta you get a truck, that's apparently how we roll) to find Ranchman's Cookhouse and a slightly more challenging Roadblock which only one team member has to perform. The Roadblock is a fairly intense line dance with lots of turns and the usual back and forth wash, rinse, repeat that line dances are known for. Joanne of Team Body Break managed it on her third attempt and she and Hal were in the lead. Most teams manage to complete the task on their third attempt but this slowed the doctors down quite a bit, taking Holly eight attempts before finally nailing it. Jody with his prosthetic legs 
took seven (and over three hours to do those) and Tim Sr brought up the rear with nine attempts before moving on to . . . 

Drumheller and this episodes Detour task. Teams were given a choice between filling a coal cart (the manual task) or building a dinosaur model (the brainy task). Sure shovelling coal into a large railroad cart is a gruelling and time intensive task, and why the sisters wanted to do this by hand is anyone's guess, but it's not exactly a quintessentially Albertan thing to do. It didn't help the sister that they seem incapable of reading a map and lost their third place position to Jet and Dave.

The doctors, of course, decide that they should do the dinosaur skeleton as they reason that they should have no problem putting together a simple little skeleton. I mean, after all, they're doctors . . . how hard could it be? Apparently harder than they thought as Holly starts freaking out to the point that Brett has to tell her to step away from the table. They appear to be the only team having any internal squabbles at the moment but the season is still young.

Through careful editing of choice clips you're never quite sure where everyone is during the race in regards to each other until they give you the little caption but eventually the Tims arrive while the doctors are still deeply entrenched in dino bones and find that the easiest way to load coal is not by hand as the sisters seemed to think, or by the shovelful as everyone else did, but to load their wheelbarrow and then dump the whole barrow into the cart. This helped them to make up some time against the doctors who were still struggling with a simple little skeleton and had to race back across the museum for another look at the original. All that careful editing makes it look like these two teams are neck and neck as they leave the badlands and head north to Horsethief Canyon. That was north Tim Jr, not south. Pay attention. He was sure he saw the canyon on the way to their last task but, well, not so much.

And herein lies the offending ad screwup. I won't mention it at the moment but if you've read Wayne's post you already know what happened. Not everyone caught it but it was there. Suffice to say that revealing the end of the episode before the end of the episode is like telling everyone that "Under The Dome" has been renewed for a second season when you were looking forward to it wrapping up in one. Wait, you didn't know that? Sorry.

Regardless, while the Tims head south, totally disregarding the map in Tim Jr's hands, the doctors head north to Horsethief Canyon and sixth place. A little depressing for them to go from first to sixth but sometimes that's what's needed to get a team focused. The Tims arrive last to the Pit Stop only to have Jon tell them that this is a non-elimination leg (as many already knew) and that they will have a Speed Bump to perform during the next leg. Well, better that than a sad trip back to Winnipeg.

I've been warming up to Jon Montgomery's "Phil Lite" delivery and he does seem to be getting a little more relaxed during his bits. I feel he was a really good choice for the host of the series. I've also been impressed with Team Body Break Hal and Joanne who have gone from third in episode one to second in episode two to first in this episode. Their celebrity status aside they've been an uplifting team to watch and they've done well throughout. Kristen and Darren going on about their integrity when they showed none backing out of their Express Pass deal was a little annoying but not unexpected. Don't make a deal you're not going to stand by, especially since the doctors would have used it about halfway through that dinosaur.

A little disappointed that the episode only visited the southern quarter of the province but that does leave more room for the season to encounter Edmonton and Fort MacMurray (which I actually thought they'd hit this time). Next episode they're off to Yellowknife for a polar plunge and what appears to be a challenging Speed Bump. See you next week.