Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Back to School
By M. Giant | Season 17 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.10.2010
The volleyball team returns to the foreman and gets their clue. Meanwhile, Nat and Kat are finally arriving at the supply depot in last place. Off they go with their two wheelbarrows, Nat saying, "does this look easy? Cause it's really easy." Try doing it twice.
Chad and Stephanie are in the classroom, and he wants to try to flag Ghana. Suddenly I'm having 24 flashbacks as we find ourselves in a four-way splitscreen, also showing the respective classrooms where Brook, Katie, and Thomas are taking a crack at it, seemingly simultaneously. All four of them get it right, and all four of them opt for Language Arts. Either they think that's going to be easier than it is, or it must be so hot there that they can't face the prospect of running.
Nick and Vicki get their clue from the foreman in eighth place, and Nick's still being rude to her. Meanwhile, that group of four teams are all arriving at the adinkra Detour at about the same time. Brook and Claire get off to a stellar start, because Claire has decided that since there are eight highlighted phrases on their scroll and there's a group of eight children dancing in a circle nearby, and they have a stick of chalk to circle things with, they need to draw a circle in the ground around the group of children. Which Brook does. And then the other teams do the same thing. Nobody has any idea what's going on, until Brook suddenly sees the giant puzzle hanging from the shed. "Oh, maybe the small African children don't have anything to do with this," Claire chortles. Yes, let's use humor to overcome our creeping discomfort at the sight of a bunch of white people circling off groups of West African children.
They and the other teams head over to the wall, but there all pretty clueless, starting with how they can't find the decoder key. Thomas, ever the charmer, starts ransacking kids' homework and dropping books on the ground. Dude, that's not cool. I'm starting to see a pattern of him thinking the world is like a game show set that he's running through, not a place where actual people live actual lives. "Just keep your eyes peeled," he says while the Amazing Editors show us a nice shot of the decoder key COVERING AN ENTIRE END OF THE BUILDING. Katie and Rachel are the first to decide to bail on this and head for the soccer field, making them the second-most successful team at this Detour so far.
Michael and Kevin arrive at an indoor classroom, and Michael looks pretty glad of the chance to sit down, which is a worrying sight at this point in the leg. Unfortunately it wont be a long rest, because Kevin identifies Ghana on the first try. They have their clue in seventh place, and Kevin says they're doing Language Arts. Good choice; that seems marginally less likely to kill Michael.