Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Couch Trip
By M. Giant | Season 18 | Episode 8 | Aired on 04.17.2011
Gary and Mallory are en route to the eating task, while the Globetrotters are jogging to the Freud Museum and talking strategy. "I don't want to take a chance eating that food and then throwing up," Flight Time says. Over at the Ferris wheel, a shot of the wheel with the cars containing racers highlighted and captioned shows that Jen and Kisha are almost to the top. Or, in other words, halfway done with the ride. Inside the car, their clock counts down from six minutes and change while they hack away at their food. Two cars behind them, Zev and Justin are already regretting their choice. Pretty much the only good thing that's coming out of this for them is a lot of belches.
Kent and Vyxsin get on the bus to the Freud museum. And Kisha and Jen's last five seconds tick away, leaving them with a significant amount of food on both their plates when a buzzer goes off and the door opens. "We have to eat all this over again?" Jen asks. Yeah, this doesn't seem like the kind of task you try a second time. As the waiter dumps their remaining food in the trash, they head off to the Freud Museum. They may be behind, but at least they had a big brunch to keep them going. They meet Gary and Mallory arriving and tell them, "Ya'll will be all right." Which isn't lying, exactly.
Jet and Cord are still trying to get to the library. Zev and Justin's ride is almost over, and when Justin drops his fork in defeat, Zev cheers him, "Come on, you fat pig!" Which I'm sure makes Justin feel like Rocky. They decide to spend the last seconds of their ride packing up to leave instead of trying to finish eating, although Zev takes the time to drop a quip: "I want to talk to the manager." As they head out through the gift shop, they agree to pretend they completed the task if they run into anyone else, and since everyone's running into everyone this leg, they soon have a chance to tell Gary and Mallory at the entrance to the cafeteria that the food was delicious. "We didn't lie, it was pretty good, "Justin interviews. Gary and Mallory get on and get eating, and she's determined to finish beyond reasons having to do with the race: "I am not taking these calories for nothing."
Flight Time and Big Easy have found the museum with a big sign reading FREUD out front. The sign is red and vertical, thrusting ardently at the sky, but we probably shouldn't read too much into that. Once inside, they find the room with six couches waiting, and Flight Time clearly doesn't know the history of psychology as well as, say, Tom Cruise does. "I don't know nothing about the couch," he interviews. "I guess he just enjoyed couches and relaxing on couches. Maybe he was doing his philosophical thing laying on the couch and having his weird Freudian slips and things like that." Okay, so obviously Flight Time is more of a Skinnerian behaviorist. The Globetrotters each take an end of a couch, complete with pillows and a big rug and some little four-wheeled platform thingy that looks really uncomfortable to lie on, and head down the stairs. Kent and Vyxsin arrive in time to see them exiting the building and setting the couch down endwise on that little wheeled platform, which makes a big difference if you ask me. The Detour clue probably left out the two facts that are vital to making the right choice, namely that in this one you get a dolly and in the other one the amount of food you have to eat is a metric fuck-ton. The Globetrotters are soon on their way, and the Goths are heading down the stairs with their couch as well. Jen and Kisha see them leaving. "I'm gonna go as fast as I can while I've got the strength," Kent says, and then disappoints me by not immediately collapsing. Going down the stairs, Jen threatens, "I have food in my stomach, I might barf on this couch." And just think of what Freud would have to say about that.