Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Only God Can Make A Brick
By Miss Alli | Season 5 | Episode 9 | Aired on 08.30.2004
A sitar is all, "Welcome to Calcutta!" A snake. A rickshaw. And...teams, landing! There is running through the airport, although not as much as you might expect, because exhaustion is beginning to run high. Brandon and Nicole are the first to get into a cab and head for Sahid Minar. The Twinkies are next, then Colin and Christie, and then the Moms. As they ride, Brandon comments simply, "This ride is nuts." He notes the chaotic streets (mark that one off your Bingo card) as well as the bad smell (yeah, that, too). A Twinkie also blinks against the smell and looks unhappy. With a smirk, Colin says, "Calcutta is just a beautiful city; it really gives you a good look into human culture." There is an uncomfortable pause. Christie shakes her head unhappily, and he says, "What?" "I don't think you should make fun of the culture here," she says firmly. "I'm not making fun of it," he insists. "Everybody's gonna talk about how ugly it is, and I didn't want to talk about how ugly it was." Now, he's an asshole, but there is a tiny part of me that leans toward forgiving him for this, because it is absolutely true that every time they're in India, on the first ride through a city, people spend a lot of time talking about how smelly/dirty/crazy it is, and it's also always clear that people have no idea how to react. (My personal favorite reaction ever was TAR4's Chip, who acquitted himself very well.) On the other hand? Less smirking would be appreciated, there, jackass.
In an effort to make Colin look even more like a dick, which I almost think is a tiny bit unfair, we cut immediately from this to Linda and Karen commenting on how beautiful the women's clothes are, as if it's hilarious because he's wrong and nobody really does talk about how ugly India is, which...they do. I mean, they try to be nice, and I get the point, but for good or for ill, they do indeed always talk about how dirty and smelly it is, too. As a matter of fact, I sense that Linda and Karen had that conversation precisely in the spirit of how nice the women all look in spite of how dirty and smelly the city is. I don't know. If Colin were the kind of person who had earned the benefit of the doubt, I might give it to him here, but...of course, he isn't. So the odds are, he made that remark for the same ass reasons he does a hell of a lot of other things. The fact that there's a fairly innocent explanation available doesn't mean it necessarily applies.
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