Episode Report Card Miss Alli: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Come on baby, let's do the twist
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 03.12.2002
Hope and Norm are in a cab on their way to the bus station, and things aren't going so well -- Hope is worried they'll miss the bus.
Blake and Paige take off in their glider. (Note that Blake and Paige are, according to the editing, well behind Hope and Norm at this point.) They land on the beach and hug. "Ah felt like a biiiird," Blake says. Certainly is a lot of drawling going on -- this entire show is turning into a Tennessee Williams play. In an effort to shift the focus to a different deeply troubled writer, the Woody Allen Brigade runs up the mountain, firmly in last place. They prepare to hang-glide. "I'll probably die," Dave says, "but it's better than losing." If only they could do both. "What about screaming? Is screaming okay?" Gary asks. So fake. Shut up. When they get to the bottom, Gary reads the clue that says they can get to the Rio bus station by any means available. "Why don't we take the glider?" he says. (THUNK.)
In the Blake and Paige cab, she's relieved that somebody is behind them (namely the dorks). Blake calls this "the most critical moment of the race." Thanks, Drama Boy. And nice bandanna -- not.
Bus Station Of Teeming Humanity. Doyin tells us that during the volleyball game, he twisted his knee. I'm not sure I don't need to change their name from Xerox to Job. But I guess now they have matching limps. Damn! Now I can't tell them apart again!
Tarawil at the bus station. They grab the next-to-last pair of tickets on the first bus. And here, just behind them, are Jeebus, followed by Team Boston. There's a lot of interesting timing here. I get why the twins were first, but Wil and Tara passed Jeebus, and Boston passed Mary and the Fruit and caught up to Jeebus. I'd also point out that Boston runs into the bus station rather than strolling, which turns out to be pretty important, it would seem. They run to the escalator, run up it, and get to the ticket counter ahead of Cyndi and Russell. In an interview, Alex tells us that getting the last tickets on the first bus was "huge. Huge, huge, huge." You know, I could be wrong, but I think he thinks it was huge. Jeebus runs into the twins and asks about the Fast Forward, and Xerox confirms that they got it. Russell congratulates them.
Doyin explains that he and Shola thought the FF would give them a lead, but they actually wound up on exactly the same bus as Tarawil and Boston. Note that this is a direct bus, a 22-hour ride. The next direct bus leaves carrying Jeebus, Oswald and Danny, and Mary and the Fruit. What the heck happened to Drawl? Anyway, the Groanies are next at the bus station, followed by Blake and Paige. As the two teams make conversation, Blake says, "Paige, I don't have the wallet." Stunned, she says, "What?" "I don't have the wallet," he repeats. "You don't have the wallet?" she repeats yet again. "No," he says simply. "Oh, God," she frets. They quickly figure out that he left it in the cab -- probably when they got out the fare. "I just should go home," he says disgustedly. "No, Blake, it's okay," Paige says, earning herself big points in my book. After they walk off to figure out their next move, Peggy turns to Claire. "This may be our break!" she says gleefully. You know, I get that she's relieved, but you don't have to rejoice in other people falling on crummy fortune. Ideally, I'd think you'd want to beat them in some other way, and I find it pretty unseemly that they're quite this happy about the really sad scene they just witnessed. Furthermore, in a reference that, based on the previews, it's going to take me another week to complete, I'm just going to call this moment What Goes Around.