Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Solving for Pie
By M. Giant | Season 14 | Episode 2 | Aired on 02.22.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Nine teams take off from the Swiss Pit Stop and borrow cell phones to turn their taxis into mobile travel agencies, while the Stuntmen rest on their third-place laurels and end up tied for ninth on the flights to Germany. Outside of Munich, the Road Block is a choice between waiting around for safe wind conditions for a six-thousand-foot paraglide, or giving up and hoofing it down the mountain. Mel's injured groin muscle leaves him stranded alone atop the hill, until a miraculous wind change helps him and Mike pass half the field, ultimately finishing second. Meanwhile, Linda gets lost on the footpath down and ends up having to hitchhike back to the course. The Detour, an uneventful choice between a Segway ride and a cake fight, sends a messy Tammy and Victor to an easy victory at the Pit Stop, before roughly half the other teams go the Segway route. As the leg stretches into the evening, the Flight Attendants go fully Blondes Mark 14 and are once again in a race for last, this time with Steve and Linda. And it's the latter team who fails to recover from their mistake, and are Philiminated. But at least they still like each other.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!This week's previouslies are capped off by a montage about how impressed everyone is with Margie and Luke. Everyone gushes about him so uniformly that I'm wondering if they suspect he's not really deaf, and actually standing right behind them.
Phil welcomes us to the Bernese Alps, at the base of which stands Stechelberg, the first Pit Stop of the season. Mandatory rest period, blah blah blah. Since Margie and Luke arrived first, at 2:56 p.m. the day before, they're leaving at 2:56 a.m. And the clue tells them to fly to Munich, Germany. From there, they'll drive to Ruhpolding, ride a cable car to the top of a mountain, and find their next clue. There's no reason I should think this, but when I hear Phil say the word "Ruhpolding," I'm expecting to see a two-meter drag queen telling the Racers they'd better work
.As Margie and Luke leave the Pit Stop and get into one of the minivan taxis waiting nearby (what, they didn't think the Racers would be able to hail cabs at a remote Swiss post office at three in the morning?), Margie interviews about the misconceptions that arose during Luke's youth: "He has been called retarded, slow...it couldn't be farther from the truth. He has been to college." Thanks, Margie, but we can see that Luke's got a brain in his head, if not functioning ears. In a joint interview, Luke says he wants to prove that deaf people can do different things. We get to see a little clip of them together in the taxi, as he tells her they'll want to find a flight soon. I can't believe that was the best evidence of Luke's intelligence the Amazing Editors could find.
Tammy and Victor rip open their clue at 2:57, and read that they have $585 for this leg. In the taxi, Victor borrows the driver's cell phone and hands it off to Tammy while he interviews, "It's hard not to think of myself as the leader of our team." I'm sure he's trying really hard, though. "The question, though, is whether or not we'll be able to unprogram decades of big brother/baby sister interaction." Continuing to say "baby sister" at every opportunity should be a step in the right direction.
The miniature stuntman brothers, Mark and Michael, are leaving at 2:59, dressed in rain gear. Which makes sense, because it is raining. I didn't want to imply that they were just in the mood to encase themselves in polypropylene. They boast about their confidence level, which they gauge at 98 percent. In the taxi, they even say that they made up a half-minute to the taxis just by running. Well, might as well coast from here on out, then.