Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT There's nothing like a clean elephant
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 6 | Aired on 04.09.2002
Boston gets help with the train at some kind of tourist center; then we're at the train station. The teams discover that the next train doesn't leave until three o'clock (remember, it was very early morning when they left the pit stop), and that, in a great reminder of the fact that everything is relative, it's a "rapid train" but takes fifteen hours. "We're all going to get bunched up again," Wil says. Shout-out! Talking to Mary, the Weasel says that the train ride will be "grueling." Actually, he says "grueling, grueling, grueling." Three "gruelings," Wil? I understand it won't be pleasant, but really, to paraphrase the Bad Teen Novel? IT'S A TRAIN.
Teams arrive, Gary and Dave find out that in third class, you don't get a bed, and Oswald takes note of the bunching. Several of the teams decide to take a shopping excursion in Bangkok while they wait for the afternoon train. It looks like this trip includes Taraweasel, Boston, the Teeth, and Mary and the Fruit. Wil does not go anywhere without that hat, it appears. Do you realize that he has been wearing that hat nonstop for three episodes? At any rate, Blake takes the opportunity to shop for sunglasses, having lost his in London. He pays four bucks. As Mary tries on a shirt, she calls in Chris to get her a better deal. He offers the woman in the shop "one hundred...and I'll give you a hug." At least, I think that's what he's doing. But he winds up hugging the Fruit, so I don't really understand. Blake tries to negotiate for a book, and gets shot down. Chris, on the other hand, is going like gangbusters with the Bangkok retail crowd, and now that he's using his alleged hotness (which escapes me entirely) to extract favors from women, he looks like he is in his element. The teams eat lunch, and Alex eyeballs Tara over his noodles.
Chris explains in an interview that Wil doesn't like Alex as much as he once did, ever since Alex has been openly pursuing his wife. Quite a shock, that. In an interview, Wil chalks his unhappiness up to race strategy, saying that having friends is fine, but winning money is what really matters. Of course, Wil. It's not the sex part or anything like that. Man, one of my missions is to try to get these people a group rate for therapy. Alex says that Wil doesn't like how he flirts with Tara, since "that's his ex-wife." No, Alex -- actually, that's his present wife. Do what you're going to do, but don't tell yourself falsehoods, my dear. Here, we get the Alex and Tara Looove Parade, in which they touch and flirt and pretty much get pinned right in front of her husband. Classy. "I haven't been with Wil for two years," she interviews self-righteously, "so he's got to suck it up." Take note of the unseemly fact that Tara is enjoying her situation immensely. Seeing this, don't you wish there were some kind of legal process that existed so that people who were married but wanted to leave that relationship and go back to dating could, I don't know, end their marriage or something? We should invent that. Women like Tara should not be made to suffer like this in a situation over which they have no control.
That entire sequence was completely nauseating.