Episode Report Card Miss Alli: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Zach and Jill went up the hill
By Miss Alli | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.26.2002
It isn't until everyone is off the train in Zurich that the other teams realize Jill and John Vito have been there the whole way. The group emerges from the train station in one mega-bunch, as Gerard notes, and they make it to Lindenhof, the officer, and the underground vault at essentially the same time. And when they get there? Detour.
A Detour is a choice between two tasks, and it may be time to remind Ken and Gerard that when we say "choice," we mean you only have to do one of them. This week's Detour starts inside the vault, and the options are Count The Money or Run The Numbers. The clues are in five wall safes that open with a keypad combination. The two Detour options are two ways of getting the combination. In Count The Money, you count a fishbowl full of Swiss money that's sitting right by the safe, and when you total up the money, the amount will be the combination. In Run The Numbers, you complete three mini-tasks out in the city around the vault. It's a sort of scavenger hunt that will take you as far as a mile away. The three steps are to count how many trees in a park are marked with red ribbons; add up the numbers on the face of a church tower clock; and write down a number that appears on a particular statue. (If you want to know how cool the music guys are, note that there are church chimes mixed into the tense music when the church tower is first shown.) Those three two-digit numbers will make up the combination as well. This is a very good Detour, I have to say -- well thought out, challenging either way, not obvious as to the right choice, and interesting to watch. Thumbs-up on the Detour design. More like this, please.
Jill arrives at the vault slightly ahead of John Vito, and she leans out the doorway, calling to him. When Ian and Teri get there, they have trouble squeezing by her, and he whines exasperatedly, "Please don't block." She lets him by, insisting that she isn't blocking and asking Ian to "chill out." I don't think she was blocking on purpose, but I don't blame him for wondering, considering how evident it is that everyone hates his guts. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, and so forth. The Bald Snark chooses Count The Money, while the other four teams go for Run The Numbers. The twins and FloZach decide to cooperate in finding the answers to the scavenger hunt. Ooh, fear the powerful alliance of Nerd Lust! Ken and Gerard dump out the bowl and start counting the money.
Nerd Lust starts out to count the trees in the park. On the screen, a helpful caption fills us in on the fact that the correct answer is fifty trees. JVJ, meanwhile, starts by looking for the statue. Asshat is starting with the trees as well, and they're already snapping at each other. Teri, reading: "How many marked trees..." Ian: "What are we counting, Teri?" Teri: "The trees!" Ian: "What are we counting?" Teri, louder: "The trees!" Miss Alli's Mom: "Can I request someone else to represent my age category?" Nerd Lust concludes that there are forty-seven marked trees. Asshat concludes that there are forty-three, which Ian incidentally gets by adding twenty-one and twenty-four. That sound you hear, by the way, is four hundred thousand math teachers weeping into their protractors. Finished with the trees (or so they believe), Nerd Lust heads for the church. They see that it is a standard clock face, so they just have to add the numbers from one to twelve. The helpful screen prompt clues us in that the right answer is seventy-eight. Zach helpfully starts off with, "Three plus two plus one is five." Well, hey -- he's only off by one. Precision is overrated. "Drew and I just could not figure out what the sum of those numbers was," Zach laments. I suppose it is hard to walk and add at the same time. Zach and Drew are not so much at the multi-tasking. JVJ finds the statue with the big "12" on it. Asshat gets to the clock numbers, adds them up, and gets seventy-seven. Heh. And Ian did the counting, too. And as we know, when he makes a decision, it's a decision, so Teri had better write it down and not ask questions. Questions like, for instance, "Did you pass or fail third-grade math?"
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