Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All About the Melons
By M. Giant | Season 20 | Episode 3 | Aired on 03.04.2012
Art and JJ appear to be on the fifth or sixth tier of their pyramid, which means they're more than halfway done. Nary and Jamie are also making good progress, although one of their melons shifts ominously. A melon in their rack, I mean. I mean the melon in their stack of melons. Jeez. The other teams are also making progress, but the next thing you know the Border Patrol agents are done. The other teams pause to watch them finish and celebrate, as teams always seem to do for some reason with particularly challenging tasks. They get their clue, which is sending them to a place called Plaza de la Democracia. In their cab on the way there, Art cracks to JJ, "Stacking watermelons in Paraguay was on my bucket list. Gone." JJ congratulates himself and Art: "We dominated -- we got the right flight, we did the right challenge, we did it perfectly. We gotta get this next clue and we've got to get it done. We've gotta finish first today. There's no excuse for not finishing first." So if they do win the leg, that's just expected and not cause for a lot of bragging and gloating, right?
Back at the market, the locals are watching and filming with their cell phones when suddenly one entire side of Nary and Jamie's incomplete pyramid collapses. Bopper and Mark lose a whole corner. The locals laugh heartily, as a whole face slides off of Other Rachel and Dave's when they're only a few melons from being done. Up ahead, JJ says he loves being on the race. "I love it, I love it, I love it." So romantic, with Art's arm around him in the back of the cab. The other three teams behind them at the Detour are having a bad enough time, however, that it's time for a commercial break.
Nary and Jamie and Bopper and Mark are surveying the damage to their respective pyramids and realizing there's no easy fix for either one of them. Other Rachel decides it's time for her and Dave to leave. Dave wants to use their Express Pass, but Other Rachel flatly refuses. Dave interviews, "You're essentially guaranteed to finish first." Yes, ask Ernie and Cindy about that. As they leave, Nary and Jamie are also making the decision to switch Detours, but Mark has to all but drag Bopper away. Which they discuss as quietly and calmly as all of the other things they say.
Kerri and Stacy are the first team from the second flight to show up at the fruit market and they encounter Bopper and Mark outside. Team Kentucky assures the cousins that the stacking task is not that hard -- it only took them two hours. And then Bopper and Mark claim the ladies' taxi. By the time Kerri and Stacy enter the market and see several incomplete pyramids, standing there in various stages of collapse, they realize they've been had. "Damn and Kentucky just took our cab," Stacy says. In an interview, Mark congratulates Bopper, "You finally played the game like I told you to." They both seem pretty amused with the whole situation, whereas the cousins are emphatically not. In fact, after they secure a new cab, Stacy writes the word BETS on a piece of notepaper, holds it up to the camera and rips it in half, meaning all bets are off. Shudder!