Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Squid and the Fail
By M. Giant | Season 14 | Episode 11 | Aired on 05.03.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The Beijing leg continues, and Jaime and Cara's lead doesn't hold up, to say the least. A lot of early-morning scrambling and gnome-hunting and bike-riding through Tiananmen Square leads to a Detour where the teams have to either relay restaurant orders in Mandarin or paint each other's faces for the Beijing Opera. Everyone selects the latter save Tammy and Victor, and they finish the Detour first, allowing them to U-Turn Kisha and Jen. Enjoy the sisters' miscommunications which make them sound like madwomen using Babel Fish. Then Victor does a gross-food Road Block (I was starting to let myself believe we were done with those) and they finally win a leg in China. And easily, at that. Margie and Luke are running out of patience with each other, but make it to the Pit Stop in second place. Jaime and Cara get so lost after the Detour that the U-Turned sisters are able to pass them up. Cara out-eats Jen at the Road Block, but is it enough? Even when Jen stops for a pee on the way to the Pit Stop? Well, let's put it this way: your final three are Tammy|Victor, Margie|Luke, and… Jaime and Cara. Should be plenty of meltdowns in next week's finale.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Okay, looks like we're getting right back into it. A music cue right out of the Frank Stallone opus "Far From Over" brings us into a replay of Jaime and Cara's arrival at the mat beneath Beijing's brilliantly illuminated Drum Tower, in first place for the first time ever. They quickly read the clue Phil hands them and sprint away. They find a cab driver who Cara thinks knows where they're wanting to go, and the back door that Jaime just threw open swings back shut as she bends to pick something up, smacking her in the head. After the way she's been treating the world's taxi drivers for the last ten legs, it's hard not to see that as karma. "We're not done racing! We get to the Pit Stop and we're not done racing!" Cara chatters in the cab as Jaime nurses her battered skull. Jaime interviews that it was "disheartening," but "as long as it's us in the final three, I honestly don't care who is the other person." Or people, as the case may be. But maybe she does mean person, singular. God knows the only way they could win this whole thing would be against half of one other team.
Margie and Luke are now approaching the Pit Stop, and they're saying that of the remaining teams, they'd like to see their allies Jaime|Cara and Tammy|Victor in the final three. And themselves, one assumes, filling in the third spot rather than Kisha and Jen. When they arrive at the mat, Phil doesn't know how to sign, "You are the second team to arrive," which means Luke is left asking his mom, "What, what?" She signs that they're second while Phil is telling them they're still racing and handing them their next clue. "Good luck, guys," Phil calls to their backs as they run back to find a taxi. Luke's in the lead, as always, and he calls back, "Mom!" "You yell at me again and I'm finished," Margie tells him." Yikes. In an interview, Margie explains that "The longer we're on the Race, the harder it is. I just don't want to hear him yell, 'Moooom,' one more time." It must be difficult to put up with all the noise made by your deaf son. In the cab, they express their frustration at making up lost time when there wasn't even an elimination. Because that regained time certainly won't be useful as the leg continues.
Jaime's saying something similar in her cab with Cara: "The one time we come in first at the Pit Stop, it's not over." They reach Bei Hai Dong Mei, a street of charming storefronts with a clue box outside on the sidewalk. The clue tells them to search the shops on the street for a Travelocity Roaming Gnome. Oh, haven't we all missed the gnome-schlepping legs this season? Yeah, me either. Over shots provided by cameras zipping around the street from shop to shop under a lightening sky, Phil narrates that the next clue is printed on the base of each gnome. Having received their marching orders, Team Go Team runs back to the cab for their bags, and presumably warmer clothes, because they are indeed still wearing the borrowed Speedo LZR swimsuits under their fleece jackets. Speedo is like, "Move on, nothing to see here." Margie and Luke find the clue in second place by the time Team Go Team has gotten back into their winter gear and begun the search.