Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 47 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Pole to Pole
By M. Giant | Season 23 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.27.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.We left last week with Nicole insisting on exchanging the location of the Pit Stop for Marie's extra Express Pass, and we come back to Marie accepting the deal, though she's pretty crabby about it. Also, as expected, the Pit Stop is actually a Pit Keep Going is at the end of a non-elimination leg, so even though the baseball wives arrive last, they're still in it. Kind of an anticlimactic resolution to that cliffhanger, if you ask me.
So then everyone travels to Gdansk, Poland, where they have to start by finding Solidarity Square near the shipyard. Three teams (Tim & Marie, Leo & Jamal, and Ally & Ashley) take the "shipyard" part of the clue too literally and fall far behind the other five teams. Okies Tim & Danny end up in the lead, but when they find themselves at a polka-dancing Detour that requires Danny to wear a dress, he's deeply demoralized as they plummet in the rankings. They end up getting passed by Jason & Amy, then Travis & Nicole. Meanwhile, baseball wives Nicky & Kim hustle for tips posing as statues and actually finish the Detour in first place. But then they blow it on their way to the U-Turn. Yes, the U-Turn: we haz it.
And most teams decline to use it, at least at first. Tim & Marie, after getting to the Detour late, decide to bag it and use their remaining Express Pass rather than risk getting U-Turned themselves. They briefly consider U-Turning Travis & Nicole, but then chicken out and head to the Roadblock, no longer in the back of the pack. In fact, they catch up with lead team Jason & Amy at Poland's longest apartment building (seriously, this place is ridonkulous), where they have to visit multiple apartments in search of a specific kind of donut. Travis actually finds the correct apartment first, and per an agreement forged in the building, he shares the info with Marie and Amy. And thus Tim and Marie end up at the mat just ahead of Jason & Amy, who barely beat Nicole & Travis. But Nicole & Travis now have the only Express Pass in the game, so there's that.
Brandon & Adam, who had a pretty good leg last week, aren't as lucky this time around. On their way to the polka task, they stumble on the statue task and decide to try that instead for a while, then give it up as a bad job. By the time they finish their polka, they're in dead last -- and they find out that they've been U-Turned by the Afghanimals (who had been U-Turned by Tim & Danny). The baseball wives come in fourth, Tim & Danny a close fifth, Leo & Jamal sixth (despite being U-turned), and the blondes seventh, before the Hairballs finally make it to the mat in last place. And thus they become the second team this season to go from first place in one leg to Philimination in the next. This is either an extra-tricky season or people need to get their acts together.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Hope you didn't show up late, because tonight's previouslies bleed right into the episode. One moment, we're watching a recap of last week's ending, with Nicole demanding the Express Pass from Marie in exchange for information on the Pit Stop location… and the next we're seeing new footage of the moments immediately following. Suddenly, we can hear Tim barking in Marie's ear, "Give it! Give it!" Marie interviews that she's been making all the decisions, but Tim wants her to give Nicole the Express Pass, so Marie agrees to hand it over. With that, Nicole shows them the tiny canvas painting of the Viking Longhouse that they're supposed to be finding and the two teams are on their way. Marie is pretty pissed for some reason about having conducted a successful and mutually beneficial transaction, but grudgingly says they'll hand it over at the end of the leg anyway. Nicole asks Travis, "What's she mad about? She wouldn't have known where the damn Pit Stop was otherwise." Excellent point that. But in Marie's car, she tells Tim that's the last time she's letting him make a decision. "Give me a break," Tim sighs wearily rather than asking if she'd rather just be driving all over Scandinavia for the rest of the day. And then, credits! Weird. Like I said, I hope you didn't show up late. Like most episodes of this show do.
Brandon & Adam -- who just won the fourth leg mere minutes ago and thus were the first to learn that the Pit Stop was actually a Pit Keep Going -- are now driving back to Svolvær to catch the ferry. From behind the wheel, Adam mentions that it's four o'clock in the morning, though it's still daylight due to this leg having taken place north of the Arctic Circle. He adds that they've been racing for about thirty hours, which they are actually happy about. They're going to be disappointed in what comes next, then.
Jason & Amy arrive at the mat in second place for the second leg in a row, and they seem to have been expecting the news that they're still racing. "How did you know?" Phil asks. "Because the sun's still out," Amy non sequiturs, and reads from their new clue that they will need to travel to Gdańsk, Poland. "Yay," she says unconvincingly. Phil narrates that this will be more than 1,500 miles by boat and plane, and when they arrive they will need to get to Solidarity Square. That historic spot is dominated by three tall crosses at the gates of the Gdańsk shipyard, which Phil says is "the site of the civil resistance that led to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe." And Phil has the archival photos to prove it. More significantly, that's where their next clue is. But that's not all the first clue of the leg tells them, as Amy reads, "'Caution: U-Turn Ahead.' Oh, crap." I mean, I assume that's where the quote marks go. They salute the Norwegian revelers in the hall and are soon on their way. Then Nicole & Travis are told by Phil as they leave in third place, "Rip it, read it and keep on racing." Leo & Jamal, Tim & Marie and Tim & Danny get the news that they're still racing all together, in fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, and then the blondes look a little shell-shocked as they get their seventh-place clue. I think they might still be traumatized from having to drive stick.