Hall of Shame Moment: The Amazing Race 12’s Julia Gives a Helping Hand and Loses a Million Dollars

It’s hard to give a Reality TV Hall of Shame Moment to people who generally seem nice and don’t cause any trouble. But the point of the Hall of Shame is to showcase mistakes or errors in judgment made by people on reality TV shows. In Episode 3 of The Amazing Race 12, Julia made such a mistake, and it cost her and her sister Marianna their shot at a million dollars.

Helping other teams isn’t necessarily a bad thing on The Amazing Race, but teams must ultimately remember that the race is every team for itself. You’re not going to cross the finish line with a team you’ve helped. In fact, you shouldn’t even expect to have your favor repaid. There can only be one winning team, and if you help another team get ahead, that team most likely won’t feel bad if they win the million dollars and you don’t.

Julia may have learned this lesson the hard way. She thought she was doing something nice for someone she felt a connection with, but ultimately, it sent her home empty-handed. It’s okay to help a team in desperation if it doesn’t hold you back, but when it does, you’re just going to wind up kicking yourself.

Marianna & Julia found themselves in last place at the leg’s Roadblock, which required one team member to milk a camel, then drink the milk. Julia took the task for the sisters but had a lot of trouble with it. In the sisters’ interview with RealityNewsOnline, Julia revealed that she spent four or four-and-a-half hours trying to milk a camel, thanks to various obstacles. But she wasn’t the only person having problems.

While a few racers sped through the Roadblock, Julia and Lorena were the two who took the longest and became the last two racers to complete the task. Julia finished before Lorena, and while she and Marianna were passing by Lorena & Jason on their way to the Detour, Julia tossed out some helpful advice to Lorena – milk a camel that has a baby with it. Obviously the four to four-and-a-half hours had taught Julia something, and she decided to impart that wisdom. She should have waited for the education-themed Detour.

Thanks to Julia, Lorena was able to successful finish the Roadblock task faster than she would have without the information. This allowed her and Jason to reach the Detour at the same time as Julia & Marianna. If Julia hadn’t helped Lorena, she and Marianna likely would have gotten to the Detour way ahead of the other team and would have been able to complete their chosen task, Learn It, without worrying about Lorena & Jason’s position.

As it was, the two teams did the Detour task at the same time, with Jason & Lorena finishing first by a matter of minutes. Minutes mean everything in The Amazing Race, and that small head start allowed Lorena & Jason to get to the Pit Stop ahead of Marianna & Julia, who were eliminated. Jason & Lorena stayed in the competition, while Julia & Marianna only received a trip to Sequesterville.

If Julia had said nothing to Lorena, not only would one of the bickering couples have been eliminated from the race in that episode (pleasing a number of fans, as well as a certain recapper), but a huge threat would have also been gone from the competition. Lorena & Jason had come in first on the previous leg, proving that the couple was a force to be reckoned with. Julia had the opportunity to let that couple burn out and get eliminated. If she’d kept quiet, the team would have been gone and the weaker teams in the race would have had one less strong pair to worry about.

To her credit, Julia said in her RNO interview that she doesn’t regret her decision as much as some people think she should. “We were both going through this, we were both feeling the frustration,” she said about struggling through the Roadblock with Lorena. “At that point it was like, I had a small victory and I wanted to help her, relieve her from some of her stress.” Away from the race, this would be commendable, but in a competition in which only one team can win, it’s not quite as praiseworthy.

Julia also said, “I thought what I did was the right thing to do, you know? …That’s the kind of person I am.” There’s obviously nothing wrong with being that kind of person, but when it costs you a million dollars, it shows that niceness isn’t always the best quality in a racer. While it doesn’t hurt to be kind and polite, there’s a time and place for generosity in a competition. As the saying goes, sometimes nice guys finish last… and sometimes nice women do, too.

Even though we didn’t get to see much of them, it was sad to see Marianna & Julia eliminated, knowing that it didn’t have to happen. They might not have lasted much longer in the race – they might have been eliminated in the very next leg, for all we know – but they would have at least gotten another shot at the million dollars. Instead, Lorena & Jason took their place, and they may not even be grateful to Julia for giving them such important advice. Even though she was just being nice, Julia lost her and her sister a great opportunity and a great prize, and all she gets for her trouble is this Reality TV Hall of Shame Moment.

Jenn Brasler is an Associate Editor of Reality News Online and an aspiring writer from Falls Church, Virginia. By day she works for a court reporting firm, and by night she’s a spy for a covert branch of the CIA. You can e-mail her at luckyjenn@hotmail.com.

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