Episode Report Card Miss Alli: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Head wounds and foot races
By Miss Alli | Season 7 | Episode 5 | Aired on 03.28.2005
Because Lynn and Alex didn't get the word "Witbank" from the toll booth lady, they take the wrong exit on the way to the airport, while Meredith and Gretchen did, and don't, if you see what I'm saying. These two teams get their 1:35 tickets, and the suspense turns to Lynn and Alex, who quickly realize that they're lost. As things turn a little dicey in the neighborhood they've hit, they comment that they're a little scared. Which I don't blame them for, really. "This is like...Compton," Lynn comments. And really, the only difference between that and Kris's "Harlem of Shanghai" is context. Kris had such a good record by then that it was clear she couldn't possibly mean anything gross by it, while Lynn's situation is a little more sketchy, what with yelling at the locals and such. I'm not skunking them for being nervous on unfamiliar territory, but you have to watch it with that.
Commercials. I just can't get excited about UPS just because they call it "Brown."
When we come back to Johannesburg, Lynn is saying, "Pick someone who looks the least likely to have a gun," which was pretty off-putting when I first saw it, but the EEFPs in the know have been pretty emphatic about the fact that that's no idle fear, depending on where they are, so they may well have seen something in a guidebook or something that's motivating this particular discussion. I'm not wild about Lynn referring to a random guy on the street as "Tupac," but it's also the kind of thing I can imagine any number of my perfectly respectable friends saying, just because we can be a little stupid and random, so...whatever. Alex offers "Tupac" some money to lead them to the airport, and he apparently does, because we watch Alex and Lynn get to the airport just as the other teams are leaving. All end up on the 1:35 PM flight together.
Botswana. The lead plane is landing, and the first four teams are taking off. They're all looking for the train station, and they all eventually get taxis there. When they arrive at the station, however, they learn that the train doesn't leave until 9:00 in the evening, so it's likely that all the teams will bunch up right here. Which, to make a long story short, they do.
But before that, we watch an ugly little scene in which Rob flags down a van that he believes to be a bus, but which is apparently a taxi, and unfortunately for him, it's carrying Lynn and Alex. "Not enough room, not enough room," Lynn starts saying. And they keep this up incessantly, saying, "There's not enough seats," when clearly there are. See, as much of a raging dick as Rob is during much of this episode, I think this was in part a misunderstanding -- I think Rob believes that this is a bus that just picks people up, and he thinks he has every right to get on it over Lynn and Alex's objections, so he just thinks if he climbs on, he can climb on. So I think that's why he keeps arguing that there's "plenty of room" -- because at first, he legitimately misunderstands what this mode of transportation is. "There's plenty of room," he says again. "Is this a bus?" Ultimately, Lynn and Alex tell him it's a taxi, and they start telling him to "calm down," which...not very credible. And then he closes the door and says, "Okay, we'll play like that," which is, if such a thing is possible, even less credible. Come on, dude. I mean, I think that was a little bit of a pussy move on Lynn and Alex's part, being all, "No room, no room!" instead of just saying, "This is our taxi, and we're not sharing it with you, so close the door." Which is what they should have done. But boy, would Rob have had a better case without that BS line at the end, because what BS. Interestingly, the appeal of Boston Rob to me up to this point has been that while he's sneaky and sort of mean, he is at least not a hypocrite, so that's a little disappointing. I hope it's a momentary lapse. And all things considered, I can't entirely blame Lynn in the taxi for saying, "I love to see Rob pissed off; it makes me so happy." That's up there with Rob and Amber enjoying the teams they gobsmacked last week, so I'm not on them for that, either. I'm not crazy about Lynn's gloating speech in the cab about why they didn't share, and I'm even less crazy about Rob hanging back talking about how Lynn "spazzed out like a little girl," because seriously, shut up, dude. I find their entire conflict boring.
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