Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Gypsies, Vamps, and Beams
By M. Giant | Season 14 | Episode 3 | Aired on 03.01.2009
After the break, Victor finds what he thinks is proof he's right: a new kind of marker on a tree, this one an arrow pointing both left and right. Tammy is the opposite of convinced. "Where? Are we going?" she demands. Victor points to the summit, and to the right, for no reason he can articulate, and Tammy gives in and follows him. Again. By now, the only team more screwed than them is just boarding the train at Bucharest. They're smiling, at least. Which is more than we can say for Tammy and Victor.
Kisha and Jen wrap up the "Gypsy Moves" task in third place and head out. And while Team Go Team is still struggling to unchain their coffin, Margie finds the frame with the flag inside and they take off, with her sporting a trickle of gore down her chin. They're out of there in fourth, leaving the cheerleaders to feel kind of abandoned and hopeless. And back at the other Detour, the Stuntmen roll their car body off their cart and get their clue to leave. You know, for all the stereotypes that exist with regard to the Romany people, this episode would have you believe that their household belongings are suspiciously...standardized.
Somewhere in the stratosphere, Tammy and Victor have hit the end of their respective lines. Victor squats down on the trail and starts crying, and Tammy tells him that if he's taken on the role of decision-maker, he needs to make one now. And here he pulls a classic dick move that I'd really like to blame on oxygen starvation due to the altitude: he tells her she can help make decisions, like he hasn't been willfully ignoring her input for the last several thousand vertical feet. To her credit, she calls him on it: "I can help make the decision now that we've walked up the whole mountain?" she says. Finally, finally, he agrees to turn around and go back. I really think that if she hadn't put her foot down, he would have walked all the way back to Munich and started the whole leg over.
The Flight Attendants have their coffin open and find their flag. Off to the Pit Stop for them, while one of the left-behind cheerleaders says, "We're clearly last." Clearly. Well, normally they would be, but this week? Last is the new seventh. Once Christie and Jodi are gone, they finally get the lid off. "I'll freaking rip it open with my bare hands at this point," one of them says. Their cab driver should be very nervous, because now that they have their clue and are off to the Pit Stop, she might do the same to him if he gets lost again.