Why Amazing Race 7’s Kelly Is Not in the Hall of Shame

Last week, we began a new type of column here at the Reality TV Hall of Shame. In discussing Janu from Survivor, we looked at why she was not inducted into the Hall. Today, we look at another person who recently did something bad enough to merit plenty of Hall nominations, but not an induction or a Hall of Shame Moment.

That person is Kelly from The Amazing Race 7. Kelly, a beauty queen dating Ron, a former prisoner of war, said something so monumentally stupid that we began receiving nominations a week before the episode aired, when a snippet was shown on the preview.

Ron had been talking about wanting to see the world before settling down to get married and have kids. Kelly apparently took this as a direct shot at herself and decided they were in a lover’s quarrel. So she countered that he was bad at commitments. Ron seemingly could not believe his ears as he said he had committed to the Army for years. Kelly came back with her stupid statement – that he got out of that by becoming a POW.

Wow. Now that was stupid! But was it Reality TV Hall of Shame stupid?

The decision of the Hall judges was no. Despite the nominations and the obvious idiocy of the statement, it was just one dumb comment and was not worthy of the Hall of Shame.

But the topic also came up, how was her dumb comment different from AR6 Kendra’s dumb comment about “breeding,” which earned her a Hall of Shame Moment? A good question! But one for which we have answers.

Kendra had shown her distaste for third-world countries prior to her “breeding” comment. In fact, she talked about how much she hated Africa. When she was there, she complained about it repeatedly. Even after visiting the monument to slaves who had been taken, she still just didn’t seem to get it and made the “breeding” comment later. She made negative remarks about an entire nation that bordered on (or crossed over into) racism.

Kelly, on the other hand, made one negative remark about one person.

But even besides that, Kendra said so many things that it was part of an ongoing monologue of sorts. She obviously had thought about these things.

Kelly made her stupid statement in them middle of a fight with her boyfriend. It just came out after she had said something and Ron came up with a good retort. She was left in a losing position and just said what came to mind, even though it was a ridiculous thing to say.

We’ve all seen people in “lover’s quarrel” type arguments. Heck, most of us have been in them ourselves. People in those situations often say things that don’t make a whole lot of sense upon further analysis. But they get emotional and things just come out.

It doesn’t even have to be a lover’s quarrel – any emotional argument will do. Remember the Alicia/Kimmi yelling match in Survivor: The Australian Outback? They started arguing a specific point, but it quickly degraded when Kimmi told Alicia not to wave her finger in her face and Alicia retorted with the oh-so-witty comeback of, “I will always wave my finger in your face!” Was it funny to watch? Yes! Was it the best retort ever used in an argument? Of course not! In fact, it really made very little sense. But Alicia was mad and that was what came out of her mouth.

Getting back to Kelly, Betsy Wasser explained it well in giving Kelly the “Cargo Class” award for the episode: “Ron crashed his helicopter, almost died, was captured by the enemy, and spent time in an Iraqi prison. To suggest he was anything other than committed to serving his country is absolutely absurd – and utterly selfish. After that remark, Cargo Class is too good for Kelly.”

And Betsy is right, even the lowly Cargo Class award is too good for Kelly. But after all was said and done, it was still just a really stupid statement made in the course of a tiff with her boyfriend. And that’s not enough to make it into the Reality TV Hall of Shame.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of the Reality TV Hall of Shame, and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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