Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Eisenstein, Tchaikovsky, and Babushkas
By M. Giant | Season 17 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.31.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Let's hope Nat and Kat really enjoy the trip they won last week, because an overnight wait for a train to Stockholm grinds their lead to dust (although they have the consolation of sharing a compartment with Brook and Claire, so they can smell each other's footwear). From there, it's on to St. Petersburg, where a Detour requires them to identify either three Russian piano compositions in a roomful of pianos or a clip from an Eisenstein film from a pile of celluloid. The musical task proves so frustrating that three of the four teams who picked it switch to the film, leaving Chad and Stephanie there alone, where she totally saves his whiny ass. Then, for the Road Block, racers have to dress up like Russian babushkas to plant and fertilize potatoes with manure. Jill and Thomas win the leg, while Mallory gets lost on the babushka task. Thus the big race at the back of the pack is between Gary/Mallory and Chad/Stephanie. But Nick and Vicki, who pulled a rare double-switch at the Detour, come in a distant last -- only to learn it's a non-elimination leg. What's it going to take with those two?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"This is Narvik, on the west coast of Norway," Phil announces. It may be a "quaint seaside town" now, but was first settled during the Stone Age, possibly by some of the same people we saw in last week's episode. Speaking of the Stone Age, apparently the Norwegian military helped the British bomb the German Navy back there during WWII at Ankenes Marina, which more recently and more importantly became the fifth Pit Stop in a race around the world.
Nat and Kat, who won the last leg, will be leaving at 8:26 PM, even though it looks like the middle of the day. That happens in the northern latitudes in June. Makes it a bitch to put your kids to bed. Anyway, Nat reads from the clue that they'll be going to St. Petersburg, Russia, which Phil says will happen via car, train, and plane, although they're only covering about 1,200 miles. Upon landing, they'll need to get to Vasilievsky Island and find the Rostral Columns, which Phil says are a monument to Russia's two largest rivers. Do those really need monuments? Were St. Petersburg residents likely to forget them? Whatever the case, the Columns are the site of the next clue box.
As they jog back to the car they drove here, Nat and Kat marvel about how light it is outside even though "it's so late at night" (again, the timestamp on the screen reminds us it's 8:28 PM, so it's not that late at night for anyone who isn't a morning-radio DJ). As Kat drives them to the train station, we hear them talk about how they are used to succeeding in a male-dominated environment, so they think that mojo will translate to making them the first all-female team to win. After 16 seasons, that's certainly overdue. They reach the train station, which -- oops -- opens at 6:00 AM the next morning. Oh, come on. They ate a sheep's head for this? They do succeed in getting a security guard to open the door and check a schedule for them, which is how they learn the next train will be leaving at 10:26 tomorrow morning. "It looks like probably everyone's going to be on the same train," Kat narrates. And after a quick shot of Narvik's nighttime sky -- which in summer actually just looks more like what we in more civilized latitudes like 45 degrees north know as sunset -- it's 10:26 AM, and all the other teams are indeed at the station. So we never find out how far apart the teams actually were at the end of the last leg. I hate that. It's just about the only objective information we get about how well teams are actually doing in relation to each other.