Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Tea, totally
By Miss Alli | Season 7 | Episode 7 | Aired on 04.11.2005
Morning comes, and the teams pile onto their little plane. Gretchen notes that their "bags are already on," and it's hard not to be reminded that when Gretchen says "bags," she means bags, as in "bags, comma, Hefty" rather than "bags, comma, checked." The teeny-weeny plane takes off, and Lynn explains that it was "an amazing experience." Uchenna, too, is impressed with this "postcard" view of Africa. The Amazing Map demonstrates the Amazing Rigmarole, in that all the teams are headed for Francistown, and then will take their assigned flight to Mumbai and then get to Lucknow in whatever way they deem appropriate.
Rob and Amber are first off the plane, and they can't help noting that the Francistown Airport is not exactly O'Hare, in terms of scale. I'm thinking there's no Laptop Lane. The teams head inside to pick up their Mumbai tickets and the woman tells them to give her an hour or so to get that done. The teams initially scatter obediently. Outside, Alex procures a cell phone from a woman (you'll notice he does most of the third-party contact, since talking directly to Lynn would cause people to...well, not want to help them), and he calls to start working on the tickets from Mumbai to Lucknow. He gets in touch with a travel agent. Inside, Rob and Ron are talking to the ticket lady when she tells them that she's finished with the Mumbai tickets. Rob asks her to put the finalizing of that aside for a second and see if she can work on their Lucknow tickets. He tells her he wants to take a look at flights while the other teams are gone. Outside, Alex is still working the phone, and Lynn is starting to whisper to the other teams about why Rob is inside with the ticket lady, looking at the computer. Someone on the phone tells Alex that there's a way to get to Lucknow with a stop in Delhi, landing in Lucknow ultimately at 9:35 in the morning. He asks to book tickets for himself and Alex, Meredith and Gretchen, and Uchenna and Joyce.
Inside, Rob and Ron get word of the flight Alex just learned about, but also learn of a flight that lands in Lucknow five minutes earlier -- at 9:30 AM. They have the ticket lady get them tickets on that earlier flight, and ask her to do it before the other teams get back. Outside, on the phone, Alex thanks his travel agent. Alex and Lynn congratulate themselves for being so awesome as to get Meredith and Gretchen and Uchenna and Joyce on what is, in fact, the inferior flight. Way to take care of your friends, fellas. And then, as they are outside the airport, Lynn says to Alex, "Tell her [the cell phone lady] not to help any other teams." And they go over, and that's just what they do. "We don't want them to use your phone," Lynn tells her.
So they're total hypocrites, because what they just did is not only exactly what Rob is about to do inside, but it is even more exactly what they have been bitching that he did in the bus station, which they treated like something akin to a war crime. It's completely fascinating to me, this peculiar type of self-delusion, and maybe the reason why I like Rob and Amber is that while they can get up to the same nonsense on rare occasions, their quotient of it seems to be far lower, because they've seen themselves burned by their own comments on television before. It just thrilled me to no end to see Lynn do that, because it ended forever any possibility that he will ever be able to play that card with any credibility, ever again, for the rest of his life. And rightly so. So shut up and run your race, dude, because your "horrible, horrible people" argument is finis, and every time you try to play it, you will only look worse. Oh, and it's even better when Alex says, with great self-satisfaction, "That's how you play the game." Unless you're Rob, in which case it's how you go to hell, I guess. I certainly do get disoriented at Lynn and Alex's Morality Emporium. I think it's all the funhouse mirrors.