So after Zev lost his passport and he and Justin were eliminated last week despite reaching the mat first, Sam and Dan ended up getting bumped up to the pole position. I wonder if they got the prizes too; I assume they did. The teams were told they had to travel to the Persian Gulf - which Sam and Dan did not seem to realize was NOT in Cambodia (sigh) - and find the world's tallest building, which is the Burj Dubai in, duh, Dubai. It's twice as tell as the Empire State Building. Crazy.

Team Miss America and Team Globetrotters figured out the clue pretty quickly, and Team America told Sam and Dan where to go. Bad idea, Miss America, but this episode had a recurring theme of teams helping other teams, mostly due to a misguided sense of karma. More on that later. Team Awful - Lance and Keri - explained that despite their constant terrible behavior toward one another, they have a "strong foundation" and nothing can tear them apart. I think maybe wild dogs could, and I would like to see that happen.

When the teams landed in Dubai it was funny to see how foggy the cameras were; it must be extremely humid there. The shots from Dubai were nuts. That place is FLUSH. The teams had to sign up for one of two elevator rides to the top of the still-in-construction building the following morning, and Team Poker, Team America, Team Gay Bro, and Team Bland (Cheyne and Meghan) made the first group. That left Globetrotters, Team Country, Team Awful, and Pinky & the Brain pulling up the rear. Acrophobic Micah was having a full-blown meltdown about the height when they were still on the ground. Had she never seen this show before volunteering to go on it?

Once they got up to the top, the teams just had to...get a clue. That was it. No task, no thrilling height-related challenge, just walk and get a clue. LAME. That clue instructed them to grab a car from a specific parking lot and go out to the desert for their next task. In keeping with tradition, Lance and Keri couldn't even get to the nearby parking lot, and ended up wandering around like the idiots they are. Also of note, there was an option for a Fast Forward - the only one in the race - and all the other teams just turned it over to Meghan & Cheyne without any fight whatsoever. I do not understand. Four of those teams were in literally the exact same position, and three of them essentially just handed a first-place finish to one f the other teams. Why would you do that?

The Fast Forward, by the way, required Cheyne and Meghan to go to racetrack and drive a race car. It's fitting that the challenge was about as boring as they are. The whole time Cheyne drove the car Meghan sat on the sidelines crying because she was so worried for him. Note that he was not, for a single second, in any real danger. God, they are lame. Speaking of lameness, Cheyne dropped a Ricky Bobby reference. Really? I think I may hate this team.

The rest of the teams had to drive out to the Dubai desert conservation reserve. You have to conserve the desert? That seems counterintuitive to me. But honestly, the car ride out to the desert seemed way cooler than the Fast Forward racetrack challenge. Both Micah and Canaan and Lance and Keri had major navigational issues, especially Lance/Keri, who couldn't even listen to one another enough to get to the desert from a city surrounded by sand.

Roadblock: one member of the team had to search the dunes for water urns buried in the sand, and fill up a water bag to give to a Bedouin. The clue wasn't specific on how they should go about finding the urns, so various folks worried that perhaps the urns were fully buried. Ruh roh. To make it worse, not all of the urns had water in them, and Brian of Team America was the first to find one with water. Since he believes the race is about karma, he then helped out Tiffany of Team Poker and Dan from Team Gay Bro. And then Tiffany helped out Dan when his ladle was broken. And then once Team America finished, Brian helped Canaan and Micah find the reserve. What is with all the warm fuzzies? They can fend for themselves!

After finishing the task the teams had to travel to Ski Dubai, a massive indoor ski slope. The people in Dubai have everything. Before they could head out Team Poker SERIOUSLY screwed up their car by running over...something, and they punctured their radiator wide open. That must have full-on sucked. They had to wait for a new car, and Sam and Dan - who are essentially in an alliance with Team Poker, which reflects fairly poorly on their part - offered to wait with the girls. I understand that Dan would have been screwed without Tiffany's ladle during the urn task, but that was STUPID. But it looked like they got a new car fairly quickly.

The Detour: teams had to choose between building a snowman, or sledding down a hill and digging through a pile of snow to find one of a bunch of tiny little snow dolls. Conventional wisdom says not to pick the needle-in-a-haystack challenge, but most teams chose the dig. Meanwhile, back in the desert, Lance could not find any urns with water, and got so infuriated with dry urns that he threw one and shattered it, and then tipped another one full of water all over the sand. What a fucking asshole.

All the teams worked together to do the snowman challenge, and that was IT for me. This is not "The Amazing Friend Show"! This is "The Amazing Race"! RACE, you bastards! Team America got their snowman first. At that point most of the other teams ditched and headed over to the build-a-snowman challenge, except for Sam and Dan and the Globetrotters. As soon as Sam and Dan bailed, the Globetrotters found their snow doll. Stupid gay brothers! Why do you make such poor decisions?

Meanwhile, Lance and Keri discovered they were driving the total opposite way on the highway. Amazing. They are possibly the worst racers ever on this show.

The Globetrotters were leaving as Micah and Canaan were coming in, and they told the newbies to go get their snow gear. More helping. Unacceptable. Meanwhile, when given the Detour option, Micah refused to sled and because she'd "never done it before." You can't...sled? It requires almost nothing of you. You basically just sit there. That, coupled with the height freak-out, also begged the question: what exactly CAN you do?

By the time Lance and Keri got to the Detour, the other teams had all finished and most of them had checked in. So that kind of destroyed the suspense. Lance couldn't even build a snowman right - he broke the carrot nose - and before taking his clue he begged to kick his snowman. What is wrong with this man?

They were the last team to arrive, and I thought Phil was going to spare them from elimination, but thank God they were finally vanquished. The. Worst. Can I kick HIM before we go?

Next week: shirtless men! Micah freaks out over heights, and Canaan literally grabs her and tries to force her down a crazy tall water slide. This is what I told them to do!