Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Enjoying the glory of Darwin
By Miss Alli | Season 9 | Episode 10 | Aired on 05.02.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's all about pettiness this week as the teams make their way around Australia. BJ and Tyler kick things off by confirming that they indeed did threaten to Yield anyone who didn't give them money, so there goes the effort to give them the benefit of the doubt. Eric and Jeremy then break new ground in This Isn't That Kind Of Show sabotage when they call and cancel Ray and Yolanda and BJ and Tyler's taxi reservations. Karma whaps them upside the head when their taxi doesn't come either, but because the only cab that shows is Joseph and Monica's, BJ and Tyler and Ray and Yolanda concluded that MoJo must have been the cab-cancellers. BJ and Tyler, in particular, are so convinced that this is the case that they do in fact Yield MoJo when they're the first team to get there and MoJo is the second, which is (as previously explained) the stupidest possible way to use the Yield. You know, if you're going to use it for reasons of personal vindictiveness, it's a good idea to check and make sure you know what the hell you're talking about first. At any rate, MoJo waits around for the hourglass (and then some), and then chooses the better Detour, meaning that they catch up to the two teams of boys on the way to the pit stop. After a surprisingly surging Ray and Yolanda get their first taste of first place, the other three teams wind up in a footrace to the mat. Eric and Jeremy wind up in second, while BJ -- who foolishly (for a few reasons) decides to do the footrace with no shoes -- and Tyler are last again, but they're not eliminated again, because they're incredibly lucky again. Sigh. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Closer To Fremantle: Teams left Oman, either with money or with idiotic TTOW shirts, but not with both. BJ and Tyler got free cash from a few pliable suckers whose names rhymed with "Stan and Mary" and "Gray and Frolanda," but they got no love from MoJo or JerkJerk. Nobody was happy to see BJ and Tyler barely make the flight to Australia, but weary overnight travelers paid them handsomely to shut up and read the in-flight magazines instead of running up and down the aisles playing demolition derby with the beverage carts. MoJo bickered, while Ray and Yolanda finally stopped bickering, and both teams found that their fortunes changed surprisingly little as a result. Fran and Barry's reserved taxi wasn't so reserved after all, or else their driver picked up someone else named Fran and Barry and took off. The Roadblock sent various team members running into Fremantle prison to search among the rock hammers and Rita Hayworth posters for a way out that did not involve swimming in sewage. Everyone was a little slow and unimpressive, really, and Fran wasn't able to make up much ground, so she and Barry were eliminated. Hey, just like they kept saying they would be! You know, they may be eliminated, but it must at least be satisfying to be right. Now, we're at final four time. Who will be eliminated...next? And as to the suspense of this particular episode and its ending, who...has seen this show before?
Credits. If you took Muppets made for a sketch about hippies, and you went to a mad scientist to create people who would be the human forms of those Muppets, the people you would wind up with would look eerily like BJ and Tyler. [BOMP.]
Commercials. Sure, Duracell batteries saved your kid's life, but did you know they're also boffo in MP3 players? Priorities, people.
Something that sounds like the love call of the Australian Staccato Bullfrog as interpreted by a Moog synthesizer brings us back to the pounding surf of Perth, which Phil explains is very important, despite being even more in the middle of nowhere than Australia is generally. (Just kidding, Australia!) A small collection of women go running into the water with some urgency, like it's part of Jaws V: Opposite Day. It's all becoming quite the tour of beachy grandeur, when all of a sudden Phil reminds us that we are at the human-infested anti-capital of actual beachy grandeur: a sailing club. At least he looks good, even though he's in a conservative button-down in the one locale where a silly Thurston Howell shirt might have actually worked. All I really care about is that the pants-related malfunctions of the past seem to be behind us. He tells us that this was the ninth pit stop, and he reminds us how the last thing that happened was that teams arrived here at the end of the last leg. It's like he knows we've been watching other things in the interim, and he feels the need to remind us that we didn't leave off with Nnenna being unexpectedly booted, or with Trump making Bill Rancic his bitch, or with Katharine McPhee flashing her goodies at the crowd. Phil promises that the four remaining teams "have no idea what's in store for them." Could be sophisticated bank transactions! Arena football! Competitive eating! The things that are preoccupying Phil this week include whether the animosity between MoJo and BJ and Tyler will continue, and also whether Ray and Yolanda can improve their performance after noodling around in the neighborhood of last place since the days when mankind emerged from the primordial ooze.