Episode Report Card Miss Alli: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Clueless, in every sense of the word
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 12 | Aired on 05.14.2002
Commercials. Did you know Barry Manilow is cool again? Yeah, I didn't either. I'm not sure CBS isn't trying to put one over on us. I'm not sure he really is cool again. I know the Carpenters are, but I hadn't heard anything about Barry Manilow. Do you know anyone cool we could ask? Yeah, I don't either.
Ardmore Airfield in Auckland, New Zealand. Drunken cameramen careen right up to the wing of a plane before Phil appears, like a spiky-haired oasis in a desert of chaos, to restore order. He explains that there are these two-person teams, and they're racing around the world, and this is one of the so-called "pit stops" in that race. He also explains that the box you're staring at is called a "television," and he's not really inside it, and he's not really talking to you. It's just a moving picture of him that you're seeing. Teams arrived here at the end of the last leg and so forth, and there's probably eating and resting. They don't know what's in store, because they didn't watch the last couple of episodes of last year's race, and furthermore, they won't get anywhere unless they figure out that the whole thing has something to do with those damn red-and-yellow flags they keep seeing everywhere. Apparently, there's quite a rush to get through the preliminaries this week, because The Exposition Hands are in speeded-up mode, like they've had twenty-six cups of coffee.
As Phil sets up this week's intrigue, we do get a bit of mingling footage from what was apparently The Mandatory Partially-Naked Rest Period, and which evidently included a Gidget-style beach party. (It's the first mingling we've been made aware of in a while, unless you count sex as a form of mingling. Which, incidentally, I do.) Tara throws a Frisbee really ineptly, not that anyone cares. The cute blonde is allowed to throw it like a dork. If she were the brunette, they'd never speak to her again. (Issues? Issues? Not at all, I'm just saying.) Blake and Paige pose for the July layout in their upcoming pictorial calendar. They smile. "Ding!" goes the bell on the soundtrack in my head. Chris rubs some sunblock on himself. Oh, stop it. I'm certainly not giving in to that sort of shallow manipulation now. In fact, I feel a little insulted. Do these people think they can just take everybody's shirt off at this point and somehow worm their way into my heart? Not. I'm a deep, serious person, and I require the slow development of shirtlessness over time in order to become truly attached to a contestant. Phil wonders aloud whether Wil can "continue to work effectively with Tara." (Entire viewing audience: "'CONTINUE'?") More shirtlessness, more tense questions from Phil, more Frisbee, Chris walking in a purposeful manner through the frothy waves as if on his way to an important appointment (okay, now they're just trying way too hard).