Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT There's nothing like a clean elephant
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 6 | Aired on 04.09.2002
Blake is shopping for jewelry, and Paige is gently trying to rein in the spending. He relents. Elsewhere, the Fruit voices over that she and Mary disagree on "just about everything," as she ponders a pair of pants. Peach says that Mary is "thrifty" because she's the middle child. Is that a middle-child quality? I'm confused. ["I believe middle children are generally considered steady and responsible; I guess 'thrifty' would follow from that." -- Sars] The pants are cute, though -- sort of a cream-colored peasant thing with embroidery or appliqué or something around the waist. The Fruit says that Mary wanted her to "barter for them." I hope she brought her Beatles CDs, her Levi's 501s, and her autographed picture of Bob Hope, then, because barter means "trade," not "negotiate price." When Peach doesn't haggle to Mary's satisfaction, though, Mary pressures her not to buy them. (This appears, incidentally, to be a matter of a thirty-baht difference between the price the woman wanted and the price Mary wanted Peach to negotiate for, which is -- if I'm following -- about sixty-five cents. Do we need a fight over sixty-five cents?) In the cab, they argue. Peach says Mary didn't let her buy the pants. Mary says Peach could have bought them if she wanted to. Peach says she thinks they should agree on spending their joint funds, and she didn't object to what Mary bought, and she doesn't want to "beg" Mary to let her have her damn pants. Mary calls her "dramatic." Bicker, fight, snipe. In an interview later, Mary says that Peach gets this way from time to time when she's tired and frustrated, and Mary overlooks it. Peach feels like she can't do anything right. Well, if they need a bonding activity, they could always look up the word "barter."
Bunching Train to Chiang Mai. It's apparently very, very hot, and there's no air conditioning on the train. Train boarding, blah blah blah. As Cha-Cha-Cha boards, Oswald interviews that "five-star hotels are worth every penny that you pay for them," and that the race has made him realize how much he likes them. He says that he almost bolted altogether when he heard about the fifteen-hour train ride. Danny interviews that Oswald is really unhappy, and that although Danny doesn't want to quit, he can't make Oswald race if he doesn't want to. Very true, wise Cha-Cha-Cha.
Commercials. Drink Red Bull, and never sleep again.
Slow Train to Chiang Mai. No one particularly is enjoying the train. "Bad," says Peach. "Nightmare," Alex opines. "Horrible," Tara adds. On the upside, Tara mentions that they met "the cutest Chinese boy ever." Apparently, she deduced that the kid was Chinese through her contact with him, because Tara and Wil have spent enough time in this country that I'm thinking she knows that people who live in Thailand aren't Chinese. The Weasel, finally having located someone he can relate to on a comparable level of maturity, has a great time playing with this little kid on the train. "At the beginning, we were actually getting along better than ever, but now I have no idea." I certainly hope she's not implying that she's still attempting to save her marriage, because if she is? First of all, I can't imagine why, considering that they obviously don't like each other. Second of all, it might help if she weren't dating. Jiminy.
Miserable racers sleeping on the train. Oswald and Danny wake up in the morning and roll their clothes, Guido-style. They tell the story in an interview of how Danny basically said to Oswald that if he wanted to quit, they could quit. This outpouring of affection (not to mention, I'm sure, the attention to his feelings) made Oswald feel much better, and he says he found himself with "tons of energy" after the horrible train ride. No quitting for Oswald.