Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Wooden Shoe Like to Play Some Golf?
By M. Giant | Season 15 | Episode 6 | Aired on 11.01.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.After Sam and Dan come out to everyone, everyone flies together to the Netherlands. Brian literally has trouble getting it in gear in the race to a tower-climbing, bell-counting Road Block. Gary and Matt briefly grab the lead while Sam forgets who his allies are and Ericka compounds her team's trailing position. An unusually complicated Detour forces everyone to dress up in traditional Dutch clothing and either swim a canal and play mutant golf in their underwear or do a dance and then eat herring (though like I said, it's more complicated). Meghan and Cheyne have enough trouble with the golfing that the brothers are able to beat them to the Pit Stop at last. Meanwhile, Gary|Matt and Team Inside Straight switch Detours, due to Matt's dislike of fish and the women's inability to ring a bell with a hammer. Even switching back doesn't help Team Inside Straight, and they just about have an emotional breakdown. Their only hope is that Team Miss America is still screwing up, walking when they're supposed to bike. The poker chicks end up pulling a rare triple-switch while Brian and Ericka have to ride borrowed bicycles to the Pit Stop to wait out their half-hour penalty for failing to pedal instead of walking. And ultimately Maria and Tiffany admit defeat, forcing Phil to come out to the golf course to accept their resignation. At least they knew when to fold 'em.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what the Race would have been like 60 years ago in No Prior Knowledge.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Now Phil comes off the information. "This is the Palm Jumeirah," he tells us over shots of the land... form, I guess you'd call it, that I described in last week's recap. He says it's "a man-made island off the coast of Dubai. Shaped like a palm tree, it is actually bigger than eight hundred football fields, and cost more than twelve billion dollars to create." Eight hundred football fields? Something wrong with saying "twelve square miles?" The twelve-billion-dollar construction cost is illustrated by a time-lapse clip of the main building of the Atlantis resort going up, which is nice, but I've seen buildings being constructed. I have not seen giant, fancifully-shaped peninsulas being artificially extruded into the Persian Gulf. That's what I want to see next time. Phil, still in his dorky sun hat from last week, reminds us that this was the sixth Pit Stop.
Meghan and Cheyne, who won the last leg, are leaving at 1:13 PM. They open their clue and Meghan reads, "Fly to Amsterdam." Phil adds that this is a 3,000 mile flight, and after they land they'll need to drive to something called the Afsluitdijk, which, as much as it looks like something I typed by dropping a salami on my keyboard, is described by Phil as "a 19-mile causeway that connects North Holland and Friesland." Yes, I've often wondered how people travel between those regions. Somewhere on that causeway is the "Lely Monument," a statue in the middle of the wide grass median with a clue box at its feet. Some cursory research (and not Phil) tells me that the statue is of Cornelis Lely, who was (who else?) the guy who built the causeway. One wonders if the statue was in his original plans. As they taxi to the airport, Cheyne interviews that the only way they know how to run the race is in the front. They can't help winning! They keep trying to fall behind but it's just not working! They are helpless in the face of their own speediness! "If there's a target on our backs, there's nothing we can do about it." Cheyne adds, as if this is one of those shows where people get voted off. They get to the airport before anyone else has even left the Pit Stop, but since the first flight to Amsterdam doesn't leave until midnight, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
Maria and Tiffany are leaving at 3:09 PM, which shows that Meghan and Cheyne certainly didn't squander their Fast Forward lead. Tiffany interviews that it's nice to be in second place, "But we've learned from poker, it's really, really easy to get comfortable...The higher up, there's a longer way to fall." Whatever, they're totally playing with house money now. Even in the cab, they're aware that Sam and Dan are probably only a minute behind them.