Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 232 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Bollywood Travolta
By M. Giant | Season 20 | Episode 9 | Aired on 2012.04.22
For the Detour called "Cricket," each team member will have to hit one ball past a cricket pro positioned far out in the pitch, to the low yellow-and-white barrier indicating the boundary of the pitch, either as a grounder or a pop fly. Are those even cricket terms? Admittedly, I don't get cricket at all. As a fan of Douglas Adams and old-school Doctor Who, and someone who actually sat and watched a pickup cricket match once, I think I've been exposed to more cricket and understand it less than any human on earth. Unfortunately, this will not help. Wearing the big puffy shin-guards while standing in front of the wicket, Phil takes a swing of his own as he says the coach will hand them their next clue after they hit the ball to the boundary. And we will have learned nothing new about cricket at all.
For the next Detour, we see Phil behind the handlebars of an auto rickshaw circling around a slalom course on a grassy field somewhere. He happens to mention that India has more than five million auto rickshaw drivers, which is a very large number. Either some of them are part-time or they drive each other to work a lot. Anyway, for the detour option called "Clutch It," the racers will have to come to this driving school and drive "passengers" around the course in one of the three-wheeled vehicles. Other Rachel wants to do Clutch It, even though Dave wanted to try cricket. Other Rachel points out in an interview that they don't have skill and ability in that. "I have skill and ability in nearly every sport," Dave insists. Other Rachel groans. I'm not even sure cricket counts as a sport, that's how little I know about it.
Other Rachel and Dave head to the driving school and find the field out back with lots of other auto rickshaws already buzzing about. They sit down at mock-ups of the driver's seats to learn about "accelerator, brake, clutch, steering" (what, no horn?) and then head over to some actual vehicles to try it out. With an instructor sitting next to her, and Dave and another random passenger in the backseat, Rachel drives over to the start of the course. Soon she's bumping into slalom flags and cracking herself up, even though Dave isn't at all amused. Because things aren't going well, you see. So she lets him go first, probably so he can see for himself that even though these vehicles are about the length of a surfboard, their turning radius is about a hundred yards.
Back at the college, JJ is making a second attempt at the dance, but falls behind his squad again and is flagged out. "Never gonna look like these chicks out here," Art says. Does Jezebel.com know about his deep thoughts on gender and the performing arts? Vanessa says she used to be able to dance but now can't seem to manage this. And Mark is the only one who hasn't given it a try yet, as he freely sweats through his cream pajamas. His choreographer tells him to relax, and Mark explains about having thrown up on the way over, and the hot morning sun, and how he keeps phasing in and out of reality. Well, he calls it being dizzy, but like I said above, I'm an old-school Doctor Who fan. On the sidelines, Bopper says Mark really wants this, adding that of the two of them, Mark has been a fan of the race for much longer.