Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT I Wonder As I Wanda
By Miss Alli | Season 9 | Episode 4 | Aired on 03.20.2006
In a rather brilliantly composed sequence, Wanda and Desiree are driving when Desiree says that they want to get on 8 (that's the Autobahn, so she's right) towards Munich. She says, however, that she hasn't seen signs to Munich. Just then, the camera zooms (or the shot is pulled in) to show the sign over Desiree's shoulder, through the car window, facing the other direction, to Munich. Meaning that they've managed to grab exactly the shot they need, which is facing Desiree, looking over her shoulder, and seeing the sign she wishes she were seeing as it fades away into the distance. It's very, very nicely done. Desiree does catch on to this -- maybe because she sees what the camera guy did, and maybe not -- and she tells Wanda that they need to get turned around. Danielle and Dani, meanwhile, are still following, and are now thoroughly confused as to where Wanda and Desiree are leading them. Serves them somewhat right, really. Wanda and Desiree are beginning to bicker and fret, which is never a good sign. Apparently, they're well aware that Danielle and Dani are following, because when they pull off, Desiree gets out of the car to go back and "tell the girls" what's going on. She says that they need to get going the other direction, but that it isn't possible to turn around right here. This situation is going downhill in a hurry.
Way up ahead, the short-haired branch of the Choad Family is finding its way to the field. Silly music plays as we look at a field that is decorated with cones sticking up and something else that can't be identified at first glance. Yutz finds the clue box and gets a clue, and it turns out to be a Roadblock. Or, I really have to say, a "Roadblock." The Roadblock is…wait, give me a minute to recover from having to talk about this again. Okay. The "Roadblock" is hunting through 150 cones and upside-down boots that look like they could, in theory, be either the hat or the feet of (I shit you not) a partially buried Travelocity gnome. Only 11 gnomes are actually hidden -- the rest are just hats or boots, so you have to lift them up and look under them. Now here's the idiotic part -- the ones that are really hiding gnomes aren't actually parts of gnomes. It's not like when you find one, you find that the cone isn't just a cone, it's a gnome's head. Instead, the cone or the boots will still be completely disconnected from anything, only it will be covering up a hole with a gnome in it. It's just stupider than stupid, even if it weren't naked product placement, which -- by the way -- it is. Moreover, once the person doing this "difficult" "task" finds the gnome, they'll have to carry it around for the rest of the leg. Oh, that's dignified. Why don't you just make them stick some Hanes underwear on their heads, huh?