Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Tea and Treachery
By Miss Alli | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.25.2001
Rob and Brennan leave at 12:11. Their initial read of the clue is that they are camping out until the next morning. Fools. You have twenty minutes! In keeping with last episode's vow by the Esquire/Danza Group (The Alliance Formerly Known As World's Most Tenuous Alliance, Minus Team Guido), the lawyers wait for Frank and Margarita, who come out at 12:18. While the trio of idiot men serves itself a big slab of self-pity on a Kaiser roll of defeatism, Margarita suggests that they do have twelve minutes, and they can at least make a go at getting there before it closes. In case you needed proof that Margarita is the brains of the operation where she and Loud Pushy Frank are concerned, you need look no further than this moment. Speaking of LPFrank, he explains that he's more "physical," whereas Margarita is more "cultured." Translation? He shoves her, and she enables him in French. In a total shout-out to Alex Richmond, Frank compliments himself on his "grit." Whatever, Loud Pushy Frank.
After EDG considers taking a shot at the Fast Forward (which Frank dismisses as "sissy stuff"), they decide to just make a break for the Ferris wheel. In their continuing effort to bring the Guinness Book of World Records people out of their offices to invent a new category called Worst Cab Etiquette Ever, Rob and Brennan appear to actually guilt-trip a pair of older women into giving up their cab. For cryin' out loud, what IS with the cab-stealing? People, please. Don't push. There's room for everyone. And keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle, too. What were you, born in a barn? Your face will freeze that way. There goes my mind, wandering again. At any rate, I'm still right about the cab-stealing. The availability of ground transportation, after all, has yet to be a major factor in this race.
EDG develops its first official Cracks Of Discord as Frank and Margarita see Team Esquire jump into a cab without them, and then have to wait to get one of their own. It's not an unambiguous abandonment, but it appears to worry the Danzas. Frank is misanthropic enough that he's not crazy about the whole alliance thing anyway, so this is playing into his every paranoid fantasy. (Miss Alli's Internal Alternative-Audio-Track Narrator: "Frank's issues are many and varied, but those who have had the opportunity to examine him closely suspect a fear of abandonment, low self-esteem, and a benign golf-ball-sized cyst that overstimulates his temper.")