Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Bollywood Travolta
By M. Giant | Season 20 | Episode 9 | Aired on 04.22.2012
Mark is learning the dance, even though Bopper says, "Normally I'm the dance man," but of course he's having to sit this out due to his knee. In case you hadn't heard.
Out on the busy street, Other Rachel and Dave find an auto rickshaw and hop in, as Dave congratulates Other Rachel on killing it. Vanessa is about to take crack at the dance on the stage, but Mark is getting dizzy and has to take a break from his lesson. During Vanessa's first attempt, the camera freezes as she makes a mistake, raising her arms at the wrong time, so she'll have to try again. Rachel is about to give it her first try as Art continues with his enlightened thoughts about dancing dudes: "It doesn't look the same." Why is he not a dance critic for the New York Times? Rachel takes a mistimed jump, so she's going back to the drawing board.
Other Rachel spots the sign for the Indian Coffee House. "Nice eye, honey!" Dave says. Good to see he can stop himself from acting like a dick while things are going well. All they have to do here is go inside and collect the clue from the headwaiter. Cut to Phil on a cricket pitch, where he says the racers will have to "master the skills of India's most popular game, or master the skills of India's auto rickshaw drivers." Again, anybody who sticks around a Detour long enough to "master" anything isn't ever going to see Phil again, but let's keep moving.
For the Detour called "Cricket," each team member will have to hit one ball past a cricket pro positioned far out in the pitch, to the low yellow-and-white barrier indicating the boundary of the pitch, either as a grounder or a pop fly. Are those even cricket terms? Admittedly, I don't get cricket at all. As a fan of Douglas Adams and old-school Doctor Who, and someone who actually sat and watched a pickup cricket match once, I think I've been exposed to more cricket and understand it less than any human on earth. Unfortunately, this will not help. Wearing the big puffy shin-guards while standing in front of the wicket, Phil takes a swing of his own as he says the coach will hand them their next clue after they hit the ball to the boundary. And we will have learned nothing new about cricket at all.
For the next Detour, we see Phil behind the handlebars of an auto rickshaw circling around a slalom course on a grassy field somewhere. He happens to mention that India has more than five million auto rickshaw drivers, which is a very large number. Either some of them are part-time or they drive each other to work a lot. Anyway, for the detour option called "Clutch It," the racers will have to come to this driving school and drive "passengers" around the course in one of the three-wheeled vehicles. Other Rachel wants to do Clutch It, even though Dave wanted to try cricket. Other Rachel points out in an interview that they don't have skill and ability in that. "I have skill and ability in nearly every sport," Dave insists. Other Rachel groans. I'm not even sure cricket counts as a sport, that's how little I know about it.