Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Build Me Up, Buttercup
By M. Giant | Season 19 | Episode 9 | Aired on 11.20.2011
Bill and Cathi are the next to leave, at 10:34 AM, so unless the bunny task took an hour and a half last week, it really wasn't necessary for Ernie and Cindy to U-Turn them at all. But now we're flashing back much further than that, to their first leg when they spent an entire afternoon lost in Taiwan looking for the second clue of the race and we all assumed they were done. And yet here they are in the top five, beginning the ninth leg in second place. I have to hand it to them, they're taking the "token" out of "token grandparents." Cathi says they don't like to think about that first leg, and they're still nervous every time they open a clue, but they've been able to keep it together better. As a demonstration of this, we see Bill sitting behind the wheel and musing thoughtfully about ice cream.
Andy and Tommy are of course leaving in third place, at 10:35 AM. That is, if Andy can get the clue envelope open. "Are you Copen-hangin in there?" Tommy asks Andy once they're back in their car. "Copin' and hangin'," Andy says. Jokes like this are the real reason Hamlet was always so depressed.
Cindy has already returned to Ernie at the HCA statue before any of the other teams have even shown up. They open the clue she got at the theater, which tells them to drive to Legoland. Phil says that's in Billund, Denmark, "the birthplace of Legos." Of course it is. We see lots of shots of big stuff made out of Legos as Phil says that they'll need to find the Pirate Carousel ride, which looks like one of those rides in the spinning teacup family, and there they'll get their next clue.
After they leave, Bill and Cathi arrive in second place, and Cathi's taking this one. Andy and Tommy get there in third, and this one's Tommy's. Cathi's busily memorizing the poem as Bill tells us that Cathi was an English teacher, so he mock-threateningly says, "I think she better do it right!" Too bad she was never a geography teacher, because she's not able to find the theater on her wheel map, even though the Amazing Editors can (and helpfully pop it out in an onscreen bubble), so she figures she'll just go ask somebody at a nearby hotel. While Tommy finishes memorizing the poem and checking his wheel-map, Cathi gets directions from the hotel clerk. She should have brought the bike in to have him show her on that.
Amani and Marcus are leaving at 11:43, in fourth place. As they get going, Marcus interviews about how proud he is of Amani. She modestly says she's not Peyton Manning, but can hold her ground. Well, who among us is Peyton Manning, after all? Seriously, I'm asking. Is he a football player or something? They get to the statue and she takes on the Roadblock. While she tries to memorize the poem, Marcus keeps calling out numbers and nonsense phrases, on the theory that distracting her now will pay off later. Like the mental equivalent of swinging two bats in the on-deck circle, I guess. He keeps doing it all the way up to the point where she gets on her bike and rides off, while Bill and Andy laugh. It must be refreshing to see another team interfere with itself so they don't have to.