As you may have heard by now, SchwartzDY were eliminated last night on the Amazing Race. I’ll have a post up sometime in the near future about What It All Means, perhaps bundled with similar reflections on Jane Randall’s more successful run on America’s Next Top Model. And by “in the near future,” I mean, “probably three months from now.”
Perhaps my procrastination is for the best. In all likelihood, you, like me, are just not Over It enough to really reflect on all that happened to Team Nassoon between the starting line and their Swedish sendoff. Even using the past tense hurts right now, knowing that it’s all over for them, for us. One minute people you semi-know are mushing dogs and pitching tents in Lapland, and the next they’re just gone?
It’s like, is that it? Is that the “real” we’re supposed to take away from “Reality TV” — that people just leave, and there’s no reason why, and we’re all supposed to be a-OK with it? How bleak. How horribly bleak. How cold and hard and bleak that is, like the frosty tundra our boys got stranded on as the Race passed them by:
But wait! All is not lost. Apparently someone eventually remembered about the permafrost-bound Princetonians, because here they are arriving at Elimination Station:
Elimination Station, if you’re unfamiliar, is the online-only audiovisual program that asks the question: What do you get when when you sequester a bunch of Amazing Race rejects in a Cancun-ian villa for three weeks?
I’ll tell you what you get: fitfully compelling web entertainment at its most fitfully compelling. Elimination Station is kind of like a shorter, even lower budget Big Brother, but with a cast featuring 100% fewer sexually liberated cocktail waitresses. Or maybe it’s more like an old-person Real World where people “Stop being real… And start getting polite.” In any case, it’s awkward, and also appointment viewing for the next eight weeks of your life.
Edited to add: Oh! Perhaps amid all this “Where do we go from here” navel-gazery, you found yourself wondering, “But what of Schwartz and DY? Where will they go?” Look no further than this interview with TVGuide.com:
TVGuide.com: What are you up to now?
Connor: I’m actually leaving in two days for South Korea. I’m going to work with South Korean PBS. I’m going to be writing and acting in children’s educational videos, so I’ll be teaching children English and I’ll also be writing educational materials for them.
Jonathan: I’m performing in the Broadway musical Spider-Man that opens in a little while.