They're Slithering To The Finish Line Like The Rest Of Us (II)

Previously on Hit the Ball, Drag Flo: Vietnam proved to be Flo's undoing, to whatever degree she wasn't already undone. The choo-choo chew-chewed her up and spit-spit her out, the bikes knocked the Schwinn out of her, and the boats presented a Titanic challenge. (Oh, shut up, it could be worse. There was originally a "her life is a living hull" joke in that sentence, so thank your lucky stars you escaped with your life.) Come harpy or high water, however, Zen-like Zach persevered and managed to get them to the end of the leg, albeit in last place. Teri and Ian snapped and spit and sputtered along the way, but they ultimately sped into first place and spoke of their love for each other at the pit stop in a way that was right on the borderline between endearing and just plain unsettling. You know, it's surprising how fine that line really is. Ken and Gerard struggled with yet another flat tire and a few more issues relating to gravity and the proximity of one's nose to the floor, but they held on to their usual good humor and finished second. And they hit each other in the head, but we're pretty sure they didn't mean it.

No credits. Who took the [BOMP] from the [BOMP]-sh-[BOMP]...oh, forget it. You get the idea. (It's a good thing there aren't any more trivia requirements, because I was so tired of research that I was about to be reduced to looking around my apartment for things I could tell you about. There are thirty-five slats on my vertical blinds, for instance, and I own forty-five chick movies, not counting the musicals.)

It's time to eat, sleep, and mingle again, and it appears that somebody has become addicted to room service, because yet again, all the teams are in a nice hotel to rest up for the big finish. I think this is the first race where they're going to come home with backpacks full of terrycloth robes and little bottles of complimentary shampoos with those strange half-institutional, half-dreamy names like "Luxurious Host" and "Residence Moonlight." My first complaint regarding this season's final leg? Not rank enough. I want more stinking! Seriously, there should be green squiggly lines leading away from your body at this point. I want to see people so tired they can't summon the energy to comb their hair. I want to see spines that are twisted into Mobius strips from too many nights spent sleeping on benches and concrete floors. I want to see dirt under the fingernails. Seriously? More stinking.

5:35 AM. Asshat. They open the clue, and it tells them to scout out a route marker at the Guang Minh Temple in Da Nang. The temple features a very large stone Buddha, as well as some amiable-looking cows. Teri and Ian take off, and Ian once again offers his indignant voice-over about how the other teams all underestimated him and Teri simply because they continually finished near the back of the pack. He seems to chalk this up to unjustified failure to take the old people seriously, but I would point out that of all the reasons to suspect a team of sucking, the fact that they keep narrowly avoiding elimination is one of the more merit-based. At any rate, they grab their cab. As usual, he snaps at the cabbie to go faster. "You gotta go! Go fast, go fast!" Just once, I'd like to see the cabbie put the pedal to the floor and see Ian and Teri pressed back into their seats with their cheeks folded back over their ears as the cab screams forward, leaving their teeth floating above the street like the little puff of smoke that's left when Wile E. Coyote falls off a cliff.

5:52 AM. Ken and Gerard. They count the money for the leg, which rings up at $250. As they leave, Gerard interviews that they've done a good job working together by pooling their strengths. Gerard: "I have no doubt that we can win this amazing race." You know how I love Gerard, but seriously, I hate it enough when they overuse the word "amazing" without actually incorporating the entire series title into casual conversation. I can tolerate only so much synergy between corporate and editorial, if you get my drift. ["I chalked it up to the sarcasm born of sheer exhaustion, and excused it on that basis." -- Sars] They get in the cab and talk about being on their way to the Buddha. Or, as Gerard says, "Buddha's feet and America's door."

Teri and Ian de-cab at the temple. They pull the clue, with Ian yelling, "Head for the U.S.A.!" Despite the fact that it would be much funnier at this point if the clue said, "Okay, back to Switzerland, suckers!", it indeed tells them to fly to Honolulu, Hawaii and "receive a blessing from the Kahuna." Teri reads this clue with great excitement, and even augments her delivery with a melodramatic arm-flourish. Acting! Brilliant! Over typically frenetic airplane footage, Phil explains that this will be a 6500-mile jaunt to Honolulu, beginning with a seventeen-hour train ride to Hanoi, where the airport is. Oh, goody. Seventeen hours on the Flo-rient Express. That'll be a hoot. Phil adds, however, that the teams can't enter the airport without tickets, so they'll have to secure their tickets from a travel agency in the city of Da Nang. Ian says in the cab that they're very happy to be heading home. That much I can believe. Can you imagine the things they must find to yell at each other about when they're at home? Appliances! Dinner! Bill-paying! Who left their shoes in the front hallway! If nothing else, going home will at least add a little variety to their usual menu of bickering about Teri being too slow, Ian being too irritating, and cab drivers not being aggressive enough. And as we all know, variety is the spice of strife.

At the Buddha, Ken and Gerard read the clue as well, and it brings a smile to their faces. I suspect that flying to Hawaii sounds pretty good at this point.

Teri and Ian arrive at a travel agency. They both go in and stand at the counter, and they start talking to the travel agent. After a little back-and-forth, Ian finally turns to Teri in that calmly snotty way he has, and he says, "One of us talks. Either you or me." What he doesn't add, but what is always implicit, is the part about "P.S.: It's not going to be you." After all, if it was okay for her to talk, and he really just didn't want them to talk at the same time, he could always just, you know, stop talking. Anyway, as she generally does, Teri stops and lets him talk. As Ken and Gerard approach outside, Ian says to Teri, "Do not tell them what we're doing." Because Teri, apparently, would give away the store if he didn't remind her that she shouldn't. I don't think so.

As Ken and Gerard come in, Ian says, "Have a seat. Wait your turn." Gee, thanks, Dad. Ken and Gerard and Ian chat a little bit about the effort the travel agent has been making to find tickets on the computer, and Ian gets so antsy about her progress that he actually goes behind the counter -- zoiks! Bad customer alert! -- saying, "Let me just come around...may I? May I?" The poor lady acquiesces, because honestly, what's she going to do? Call the police? Scream for help? Ken and Gerard voice over that the travel agency experience was very unpleasant, partly because Ian was behind the counter being all Mr. Spacely with the staff. Teri, reflecting on his repeated forays into this kind of thing, voices over that she doesn't think he even realizes when he's "speaking harshly" to people. As Ian gets louder and pushier with the travel agent, Ken leans over and encourages him to come back over to the customer side of the counter so that the two teams can "have a powwow." Teri nods emphatically. Ian says he's going to ask two more questions first, and then they can talk. Ken looks disgusted, because Ian has unfortunately missed the entire point of what he was trying to say, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, "Oh, please shut up and stop bothering the nice lady."

8:02 AM. FloZach. Flo, in her interview from this last pit stop, says that she already feels better just knowing this is the last leg, and now she can "go back to functioning at a hundred percent." Yeah, I think she's just fine now, don't you? I mean, what could go wrong? Zach, meanwhile, interviews that they are not quitting, dammit, all appearances to the contrary. "We didn't come all the way around the damn world to quit." And besides, although he doesn't bring this part up, Flo said at the end of the last leg that she would never threaten to quit again. She pretty much promised. And as a matter of fact, when they were on the boat on Lake Geneva after they finished last in the non-elimination leg, she went on and on about how wrong it was of her to give up then, so she's actually promised this twice now. I'm sure she would never threaten to quit again. Never! "I don't think she's going to break down again," Zach says. Foreshadowing squawks menacingly in the background and sharpens its big pointy teeth on a rock. "Hiss! Hiss!" says Foreshadowing.

At the travel agency, Kenny tells Ian, gently but firmly, that Ian is frankly wigging out the travel agency people, and it would be better if they all stayed on their side of the counter to let the nice lady work. He goes on to make Ian an interesting and rather blunt offer, pointing out that the two teams are bunched, so they'll wind up getting on the same flight anyway, and it might be better to turn the negotiations over to Gerard, who can presumably get the same thing accomplished without turning into quite such a nightmarish apparition from the dreams of everyone who has to wait on the public. I get the feeling that this entire thing really must have been going south, or Ken never would have intervened like this. I would also point out that when Ken suggests having Gerard do it, Teri nods emphatically. Because she is no dummy. Ian, on the other hand, continues to insist that he's getting along just fine with the lady. He also claims that she invited him behind the counter, which isn't the case unless that happened before Ken and Gerard got there and Ian was returning to the area behind the counter when the teams met up, because that certainly isn't what happened the time that we saw him go behind the counter. Anyway, a cooperative Teri agrees that they should all work together. The travel agency lady, trying a new approach to defending her territory, actually comes out from behind the counter to talk to them, at which point Ian immediately starts in again. "Let Gerard talk for a while," Teri says firmly. (Everyone at TARcon: "OH!") Ian angrily flops into a seat, doing his passhole-aggresshole routine for us one last time. "Do it," he says. "Do it. You want to do this? Do it." At this point, the travel agency lady looks about ready to throw all of them out into the street. Ian goes on to snot to Kenny, "I'm telling you, before you guys got here, this lady and I were holding hands." Well, maybe so, Ian, but it doesn't really count as "holding hands" when you've got her wrist in a death grip. Just saying.

FloZach reads the clue at the Buddha. At the sight of the word "Hawaii," Flo literally starts screaming and jumping up and down. Gosh, she's so happy and positive! It seems oddly fitting that the weather is fair.

Asshat and the Bald Snark book their tickets to Honolulu. Ian voices over, as we see him and Gerard shake hands, that the flight goes from Hanoi to Japan tomorrow morning, and then from Japan to Hawaii. Ken and Gerard leave first for the train station. In their cab, Gerard says with distaste and surprise, "Do we have an alliance with Teri and Ian?" An alarmed Kenny says, "Oh my God, I think we have an alliance with Teri and Ian." Gerard, a little squicked out: "How'd that happen?" They laugh. I just think it's so impressive that with all the crap they've been put through -- remember, they've been subjected to exactly the same conditions as everybody else -- these guys have somehow not lost the ability to chuckle at absurdity. Normally, by this stage of the race, the teams look like hell -- even winning and runner-up teams looked like hell by the time they finished. Ken and Gerard, for whatever reason, look pretty much like they did on day one, except that Ken is skinnier, I think. I'm so happy they stayed around. What good company.

FloZach arrives at the travel agency. As soon as Flo explains the route, the travel agency lady is like, "Yeah, yeah, I just went through this with those other morons for like two hours, so stay on your side of the counter." At least, that's what I get from her courteous but exasperated expression. Flo is happy to hear that the other teams were there, because now they can take the same route, but the travel agency has some bad news -- there are only business class seats left. As you know if you watch this show regularly, the only thing the teams don't pay for out of their wad of cash is air travel. The crew guys have credit cards that are pulled out to pay for plane tickets and plane tickets only. We've never heard of any limitations on what you can spend, except that you can only pay economy price. No first class, no business class. This has, in the past, always been a rule that related to the kind of ticket you can buy, not the seats you sit in. Teams have been known to wangle business class seats for an economy price, but it has always been my understanding that the show won't buy you anything but economy. Anyway, this obviously presents a problem for FloZach, because there's no space in economy class, they can't buy business class, and they're desperate to be on the same flight as the other teams. Flo literally throws her lower lip out in a pout as she paces miserably in the travel agent's office. Zach continues to press for any other options they have, and the travel agent agrees to keep looking. Zach voices over that there didn't turn out to be any other options, so they had no idea how they were going to get the tickets.

At the Da Nang train station, Ken and Gerard hop out of their cab and head inside. They get tickets on a train leaving at noon and arriving in Hanoi at four the following morning.

By the time we return to the train station, Flo has resumed her regularly scheduled defeatist whining. "It couldn't get any worse than this. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse..." Surprisingly, she is referring to their travel circumstances, and not the aforementioned defeatist whining. She then reaches a new low, even for her: "Why uuuus?" she blubbers. "Why doesn't anyone else go through this?" Well, let me explain it to you, sweetheart. The teams ahead of you had an easier time than you did today for the simple reason that they were ahead of you. Now, they were ahead of you because you lost your shit and wouldn't do the Detour and cried instead of paddling or pedaling. Your luck has been excellent, not awful, considering that you managed to finish last in two out of the three non-elimination legs. To the degree your shapely fanny hasn't been saved by luck, it's been saved by your partner, so if anyone here had a right to act put-upon, it would be him. But even for him? No. So wipe your nose, pull it together, and try to look like you could survive a stiff breeze without blowing away. Zach voices over, again impressive in his capacity for understatement, that "it's difficult to keep Flo's spirits up." I still say he should have just knocked her out and stuffed her in his backpack. Or, actually, her backpack, since he's probably going to have to carry it anyway. In the travel agent's office, Zach assures Flo that he'll get them on the flight. She has her response all ready. "If we don't get on this flight," she says, "I want you to get a flight to JFK, and I'm not joking at this point." Oh, how interesting. It took the prospect of exactly one setback which hasn't even happened yet to get her to threaten to quit yet again. That lesson she learned about not quitting certainly didn't turn out to be very sticky. It's those cheap newfangled adhesives, I suppose. She needs some good old-fashioned Krazy Glue to attach that particular lesson to her ass, or she'll never remember to take it with her.

At the train station, Ian and Teri arrive. Ian says that he suspects that Flo and Zach have "absolutely great flights," because they seem to have "the luck of the Irish" (I can't help wondering which one of them he suspects of being Irish), so he's not counting on anything.

Back at the travel agency, Zach has a new plan. They'll buy business class tickets, and when they get to the airport, they'll try to trade them in for economy. Now, this sort of confused me. Zach makes it clear that they are buying these tickets in spite of the fact that they have no intention of using them -- they'll cancel them and get economy class later. Zach's voiceover suggests that you can't fly business class, but you can buy business class, which I think is wrong, too -- they've never cared if you fly business class as long as you only pay the economy price. Based on what Phil said before, I guess it's possible that the issue is getting into the airport, for which you have to have tickets out of Hanoi. But suppose that there had been no business class seats on the flight they wanted, either. Would the show have gone along if they had wanted to buy tickets on a completely different flight to, say, India, just so they could enter the airport, planning to cancel those tickets and get tickets to Tokyo at the last minute? Not to overthink the reality television or anything.

FloZach arrives at the train station in time for the train to Hanoi, so all the teams are on the same train from Da Nang. Flo voices over that they had booked business class tickets from Hanoi to Tokyo, and they knew they couldn't use them. Flo says that it was "a very distressful situation." You know, if she had made that word up on purpose, it would be sort of clever. As it is, she sounds drunk, like that girl who sits in the corner with her friends and her thirteenth Fuzzy Navel at four in the morning going, "The way he disresect -- disexpect -- the way he was so mean to me is makes me so -- distressful!"

Commercials. Looking good naked is all about quality lotion, you know.

The train makes its way toward Hanoi. Flo claims that she and Zach decided on the train to explore other options for getting tickets. I think it's safe to assume that "we" in this case refers to "Zach," because she certainly doesn't appear to be lifting a finger. Flo voices over that Zach came up with a plan to call travel agencies from the train using someone's cell phone. He begs a phone off someone. "I love you, sir," he says to the guy who eventually gives him a phone. Heh. He says that he's going to call and try to find out whether tickets are available now that weren't available before. Now this is where it gets really interesting. Not only does Zach's travel agent get him economy seats from Hanoi to Tokyo, but he gets him seats on an earlier flight from Tokyo to Honolulu than the one all the teams have tickets on already. Man, I'd been under the impression that that was a rule too -- once you book your flight, you're booked, and you can't cancel and change to an earlier flight. They either rewrote all the flight-booking rules on this leg, or I never understood them, or I missed something. Certainly, any of those is plausible.

The business/economy issue has touched off a lot of talk in the forums, but here's my take, in the end: if Flo and Zach sat in economy class, but the show never got the money back for the difference between business and economy, then that's just not right. That would mean that they essentially bought economy seats at business prices, which is pretty clearly not within the no-business-class rule as I think any team would understand it. If Flo and Zach sat in economy class and the show wound up only paying the economy price, then I think the issue is whether the fact that they already had the business class seats somehow made it easier for them to get any available economy seats. If it did, then that's not fair either, because that means that giving them enough "float" to temporarily hold business class seats worked to their advantage. On the other hand, it's possible that they got a full refund on the business class seats, and economy seats just happened to open up while they were on the train, the way airline seats sometimes do, and they didn't get any kind of priority on those tickets just because they held existing business class tickets. The conversation on the train sort of makes it sound like that's what happened. If that's what happened, then I still think they shouldn't have bought them the business class seats, and I still don't get what's up with letting them switch flights after they were booked, but in the end, it didn't really matter. I suppose that at that point, you'd have the issue that the clue as Teri read it specifically required them to buy their airline tickets "at a travel agency in the city of Da Nang," meaning you could argue that FloZach should have had to cool their heels in Da Nang until economy seats opened up, but that's a different problem. It's a complicated business, rule enforcement. I think they do their best.

Street-running ensues. Teri is panting, but she keeps going.

For reasons that may or may not include the fact that Zach has aimed right at the Space Needle instead of at the fountain, while Ken and Gerard continually asked directions to the fountain itself, Ken and Gerard are the first to the clue box. The clue they breathlessly extract tells them to go to Lincoln Park and follow the arrows to the route marker. Phil explains that Lincoln Park is on the west side of Seattle, and they'll get yet another clue when they get there. Just as Ken and Gerard run off, Teri and Ian run toward the clue box. Ken and Gerard look for a cab, but the cabs all seem to have someone in them.

Oh, guess what? FloZach is running toward the fountain, and Flo? Is whining at Zach, again, some more. "You made us go totally out of the way!" she snaps. I'm sure she could have done much better, aren't you?

Teri and Ian open the clue. They trudge off looking for Lincoln Park.

Ken and Gerard continue trying to hail a cab. Now, what I didn't know when I watched this, but I know now thanks to our excellent Eagle-Eyed Forum Posters, is that you reportedly can't just hail cabs on the street in Seattle. You can either call for one, or you can make your way to a specific designated spot where you can pick one up. So what Ken and Gerard are doing right now is pretty much time-burning, pure and simple.

Now FloZach is opening the clue, and Flo is still fit to be tied when she sees that Teri and Ian got ahead of them, too. "I'm really going to get mad!" she yells. For God's sake, what threats does she have available to her at this point? She'll get mad and she won't let him drag her from place to place anymore? Anyway, they read the clue. Or, rather, Zach reads the clue while Flo pouts.

Ken and Gerard (sniff!) continue running rather randomly, looking for a taxi, while Teri and Ian take the better approach of asking someone where they can get a cab. They get directions to a taxi stand.

Flo screams at Zach some more. "Stop giving me the wrong directions if you're not sure! Not the Needle, the fountain!" she shrieks. Shut UP, Flo.

Ken and Gerard stop somewhere and call a cab. Yeah, like, on the phone. Oy. I love them, but that has to be about the worst option there is. It's not like them not to ask someone, so I'm really curious about why they missed the fact that there are indeed places where you can pick up taxis -- you just have to get to one.