Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | 141 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT All About the Melons
By M. Giant | Season 20 | Episode 3 | Aired on 2012.03.04
Other Rachel and Dave reach the bottle-dancing Roadblock and she nominates Dave to take this one. It doesn't go well, with him losing bottles and trying to catch them with his feet and shit as they tumble to the ground. He's soon drenched. "I have an odd-shaped head," he explains as he fetches a fresh bottle from his table. On the sidelines, Rachel says they might take a two-hour penalty. He tells her it isn't going to work. Soon he's down to two bottles, and then one, which smashes on the stones. They open the next clue and read, "Warning, the last team to check in may be eliminated." Off to the Pit Stop. "Today was not our day," Dave understates. Harps are strung, watermelons are stacked and Other Rachel and Dave come down the stairs to the mat, apparently having overshot the Pit Stop by a block or so. Phil tells them they're the second team to arrive, but they need to wait out their two-hour penalty on a bench off to the side. At least it's in the shade. As the clock on the screen starts counting down from two hours, Dave interviews, "Today was a complete failure on us as a team. We're hopefully still in it." Hopefully indeed.
At the auditorium, Brendon and Rachel are doing so well that they're the first team to finish stringing their harp. Which is surprising, because as we've seen on Big Brother, they normally do their best at challenges when they're surrounded by people who hate them and want them gone. Rachel hops onto Brendon, like she does (that's only Annoying Habit, like #48, and thus barely worth commenting on) and they jump into their cab, now in third place. Bopper, however, just has two strings left. "Ol' Magic-Finger Bopper," he dubs himself, which should make him popular back home. They get approval and have their clue in fourth place. Andrew tells Elliot, "You are killing us right now! Absolutely killing us!" Teamwork!
At the fruit market, it's getting later in the afternoon as the two teams still there work on their upper tiers. Team Jersey's pyramid is neat and square, but Ralph and Vanessa's looks more like a random pile, which does not bode well for its longevity. Indeed, melons are rolling off it as we speak, triggering flashbacks of the tragic melon-slides that have taken so many lives in the Andes. Ralph watches as Joey "Fitness" puts the "star on the Christmas tree," and the team from New York gets their clue in fifth place. Behind them, Ralph and Vanessa suffer another collapse. "We tried, angel," Ralph says, but Vanessa doesn't want to quit. She seems to think that switching Detours and quitting are pretty much the same thing. "If I take one out, the while thing's gonna come down," Ralph argues. Or even if he doesn't, as we see when the whole thing starts to come down without his touching it.