Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Tea and Treachery
By Miss Alli | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.25.2001
Everybody rings the bell, blah. The only noteworthy moment is that Emily, in a way that's kinda sweet, lets her mom do the ringing. "You want to ring the bell, Mom?" That was nice.
Next, we are wading through the teeming humanity on the streets of Paris. (Teeming humanity, in this case, seeming to consist largely of Japanese tourists.) Pat and Brenda make it to the Pantheon and find the cat, finally. They agree to keep a positive attitude, noting that all they have to do is stay in the pack, and they can win it in the end.
Commercials. Zoom zoom zoom.
Team Guido walks toward the Hotel de Ville, talking yet again about the reasons why they're the coolest kids in school -- everyone else probably got taxis, everyone else is stuck in traffic, and they are free to just walk in a serene way in the direction of the hotel. Cut to Paul and Amie, running like hell. (That's a nice edit, incidentally.) Paul and Amie are the first to arrive at the man-in-blue-suit stop, where the teams hit a roadblock. As Lenny and Karyn arrive, and then Nancy and Emily, Team Guido is still strolling, speculating that the other teams will all "have to figure out where [the hotel] is." How hard do they think it is to get somebody in Paris to tell you where something is? I don't think I need to emphasize any further how seriously the Guidos have overestimated their advantage here. "They don’t know Paris, and they don't know where they're going," Joe continues. Cut to Frank and Margarita, already at the roadblock. In one final stroke of couldn't-have-planned-it-better, just as Joe and Bill are congratulating themselves on smart they are, they literally look over to see Rob and Brennan next to them, waiting to cross the street. It would, of course, be better if they realized that they are two of the LAST three teams approaching the roadblock, but even this is brilliant. I don't care much for Esquire, but their smiles here are priceless. Brennan, in particular, looks nearly drunk with excitement. "Oh, my God, look who's here!" Joe says, pretending to be cheerful, as if his poorest and most uncultured relative just dropped in, bringing burlap-sack clothing and missing front teeth, on his fancy dinner party. "Uh-huh," Bill says unhappily. "So now it's 'run.'" Heeeee hee hee. Thank you, Team Esquire, for that. I may give you extra points for foiling the Guidos, much as the Guidos once got extra points for foiling Frank. More whining: "How could you guys beat us here?" Bill laments when they reach the roadblock. "Shut up! Don't worry about it," Joe counters. The theme of this sequence? The shattering of the Guido Mystique. ["You know, 'mystique' is a French word." -- Sars]
The roadblock today involves walking two blocks through the Paris sewers (though remember that only one team member has to do it). In case you forget what a sewer is, Phil reminds us that it is "filled with steaming raw sewage." Thanks, Phil. I thought it was where they kept the confetti and party hats.