Previously on Dead Puppets' Society: Every flight out of Morocco was full for the year and a half, so it was all about standby, begging, and prayer. In Munich, history's creepiest puppet loomed, so it was best to get out of town and catch the Olympic spirit in Innsbruck. In other news, FloZach got hostile about a hostel, and Ken and Gerard retired a tire. Teri gave a hand to Derek and wanted a leg up in return, but he turned his back and went ahead. FloZach got the Fast Forward by just asking for it, and Ian and Teri got treated badly by...well, by just asking for it, actually. The Band of Brothers disbanded, and a navigation face-off gave an uncharacteristically zippy Derek and Drew an unexpected advantage over an uncharacteristically slow-pokey Ken and Gerard. In the end, Firecop folded and was finally Philiminated. Farewell, Firecop.
Now, Phil recaps the teams that remain: FloZach, with their baffling hair and puzzling relationship; Derek and Drew, whose many enemies have thus far been unsuccessful in toppling their toothy grins; Teri and Ian, who manage to combine tireless bickering with otherwise tiresome personalities; Jill and John Vito, who seem committed to the remarkable view that there are ways to communicate other than yelling; and Ken and Gerard, who have a way with both the cutting wit and the folding map. "Who will be eliminated..." Somewhere, a glacier carves out a new ski area. "…?" ""? Well, I suppose it's slightly more subtle than tattooing "Non-Elimination Leg" on phabulous Phil's photogenic phorehead.
Credits. Legend has it that a ghost ship can still be seen at the Rheinfall, carrying the ghost of a man who died after surviving an accidental drop over the falls and then going over again voluntarily. According to the American Chiropractic Association, a child's backpack should weigh no more than ten percent of the child's body weight. St. Peter's Church has Europe's largest clock face, at 8.7 meters in diameter. Grindelwald will host the twenty-eighth international curling championships in January 2003. Visitors are encouraged not to tamper with fences. [BOMP.]
Drunken cameramen try not to get tangled up in their lederhosen as they careen through the Alps. Phil reminds us that Neuschwanstein Castle and the nearby Lowerproductioncostenstein Meadow were the highlights of the most recent pit stop. Phil has temporarily abandoned the drab green button-down in favor of his gray T-shirt. I won't claim it's a great look, but for once he doesn't look like succumbed to the silky siren song of some glitzy catalog and blew his entire salary at The Rugged Executive Boutique. (Motto: "Just Because It's Casual Friday Doesn't Mean You Can't Kick Some Ass.") Phil also doesn't look quite as used-up and gaunt as he has recently. I think someone gave him a massage, a facial, and a really big sandwich. Man, where were these production people during Julie Chen's hour of need? Phil explains to us that as usual, when the contestants got there, they had the opportunity to eat, sleep, and mingle. By way of illustration, we see Ken and Gerard munching on pretzels, Ian snoozing (probably with his Jerk-o-Matic mechanism plugged into a wall socket for recharging), and Drew, Flo, Zach, and Kenny chuckling around the dinner table. Zach is doing his mingling in a yellow rain slicker with the hood up, so apparently, Zach knows what you did last summer. We also see some ale-drinking out in the meadow, the showing of which is contrary to the usual practice of concealing from the audience that the name of this segment should often be "eat, sleep, and booze your pants off." Unfortunately, however, FloZach's mugs seem to be filled with all foam and no ale. Wow, Blunt Metaphor Alert. Woop woop woop! At any rate, sealed envelopes, red-and-yellow flags, "clues," et cetera.
And now, for this week's semi-romantic interlude. Phil mentions that during this particular eat-sleep-mingle, "new bonds begin to form." Rather oddly, this is said over a shot of an unusually unglamorous Drew and Flo, in nearly identical black nerd glasses, taking a bite of food in unison. Not exactly up there with Alex and Tara's grainy back-room "strategizing," with the finger-quoting and the leg-wrapping and the foiling of the gruesome ex-husband. This is more like Love Among The Actuaries. In an interview, Drew acknowledges flirting with Flo. He wonders aloud, however, about what exactly is going on with Flo and Raincoat Man, and conveniently we once again see Zach fully decked out for, I suppose, the coming monsoon. You know, if Zach is trying to keep Flo on the hook, he might start with a wardrobe consult. Just a suggestion.
It isn't until everyone is off the train in Zurich that the other teams realize Jill and John Vito have been there the whole way. The group emerges from the train station in one mega-bunch, as Gerard notes, and they make it to Lindenhof, the officer, and the underground vault at essentially the same time. And when they get there? Detour.
A Detour is a choice between two tasks, and it may be time to remind Ken and Gerard that when we say "choice," we mean you only have to do one of them. This week's Detour starts inside the vault, and the options are Count The Money or Run The Numbers. The clues are in five wall safes that open with a keypad combination. The two Detour options are two ways of getting the combination. In Count The Money, you count a fishbowl full of Swiss money that's sitting right by the safe, and when you total up the money, the amount will be the combination. In Run The Numbers, you complete three mini-tasks out in the city around the vault. It's a sort of scavenger hunt that will take you as far as a mile away. The three steps are to count how many trees in a park are marked with red ribbons; add up the numbers on the face of a church tower clock; and write down a number that appears on a particular statue. (If you want to know how cool the music guys are, note that there are church chimes mixed into the tense music when the church tower is first shown.) Those three two-digit numbers will make up the combination as well. This is a very good Detour, I have to say -- well thought out, challenging either way, not obvious as to the right choice, and interesting to watch. Thumbs-up on the Detour design. More like this, please.
Jill arrives at the vault slightly ahead of John Vito, and she leans out the doorway, calling to him. When Ian and Teri get there, they have trouble squeezing by her, and he whines exasperatedly, "Please don't block." She lets him by, insisting that she isn't blocking and asking Ian to "chill out." I don't think she was blocking on purpose, but I don't blame him for wondering, considering how evident it is that everyone hates his guts. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, and so forth. The Bald Snark chooses Count The Money, while the other four teams go for Run The Numbers. The twins and FloZach decide to cooperate in finding the answers to the scavenger hunt. Ooh, fear the powerful alliance of Nerd Lust! Ken and Gerard dump out the bowl and start counting the money.
Nerd Lust starts out to count the trees in the park. On the screen, a helpful caption fills us in on the fact that the correct answer is fifty trees. JVJ, meanwhile, starts by looking for the statue. Asshat is starting with the trees as well, and they're already snapping at each other. Teri, reading: "How many marked trees..." Ian: "What are we counting, Teri?" Teri: "The trees!" Ian: "What are we counting?" Teri, louder: "The trees!" Miss Alli's Mom: "Can I request someone else to represent my age category?" Nerd Lust concludes that there are forty-seven marked trees. Asshat concludes that there are forty-three, which Ian incidentally gets by adding twenty-one and twenty-four. That sound you hear, by the way, is four hundred thousand math teachers weeping into their protractors. Finished with the trees (or so they believe), Nerd Lust heads for the church. They see that it is a standard clock face, so they just have to add the numbers from one to twelve. The helpful screen prompt clues us in that the right answer is seventy-eight. Zach helpfully starts off with, "Three plus two plus one is five." Well, hey -- he's only off by one. Precision is overrated. "Drew and I just could not figure out what the sum of those numbers was," Zach laments. I suppose it is hard to walk and add at the same time. Zach and Drew are not so much at the multi-tasking. JVJ finds the statue with the big "12" on it. Asshat gets to the clock numbers, adds them up, and gets seventy-seven. Heh. And Ian did the counting, too. And as we know, when he makes a decision, it's a decision, so Teri had better write it down and not ask questions. Questions like, for instance, "Did you pass or fail third-grade math?"
Train station. Jill and John Vito buy their train tickets, and are told that they have about three minutes to catch the train. They run for the track.
Asshat, dismayed to return to the vault and find that three safes are already open. Ha!
Gerard, correctly counting the fifty trees.
11:33 AM. Jill and John Vito, running for the train.
Ken and Gerard, returning to the vault to find Ian and Teri already there. Actually, this makes Gerard cackle again.
11:34 AM. Jill and John Vito, running for the train. Upstairs, Drew hopes they don't catch it.
As Gerard punches the code into the safe, he asks Ken to cover the numbers with his hand so Asshat doesn't cheat off them. The numbers Gerard punches in are correct. As they grab their clue and start to leave, Teri turns to Kenny and asks what the last number (the number of trees) is. Is she out of her mind? This is the hard part of the Detour! Why is anyone going to tell you? Why doesn't she just ask them to give her some of their money? "I'm sorry, honey," Ken says, and leaves. Teri tilts her head, as if in disbelief, and makes a face. Man, that was so ridiculous. "I'm like, 'Sorry, kisses, love you...bye!'" Kenny interviews. Hee. Teri has perhaps the most seriously screwy sense of entitlement I've ever seen on this show.
11:35 AM. Jill and John Vito miss the train by probably about thirty seconds. That's gotta hurt. "We were right here!" Jill says to JV in frustration. Dang. She notes that had they made that train, they would have been an hour ahead. Did someone say something about a transportation curse?
Commercials. There's something cosmically appropriate about Wayne Newton shilling for Target.
John Vito reiterates that missing that train was rather a sucky development. Elsewhere in the station, Nerd Lust prepares for their 12:35 departure. Drew voices over about how helpful the Nerd Lust alliance is at this point. He comments on how alliances shift quite a bit, depending on what's "convenient." It's almost as if they're mutually opportunistic and transitory, not that anyone would have ever noted that before.
Asshat heads out of the vault to count the trees again. As he and Kenny walk to the train station, Gerard explains that Asshat is stuck in last place, "in a bad way." They're getting out of it, though, as they split the counting and come up with fifty at last. As Gerard and Kenny continue to stroll, Gerard manages to wander right onto the tracks, and comes uncomfortably close to being smacked by a cable car, until Ken reaches over, grabs his arm, and pulls him back. If you look carefully at where Gerard was walking, he really did come close to getting bumped, no joke. "Kenny, I owe you my life," Gerard teases, but...he sort of does. That was not a good situation.
Jill and John Vito continue wandering.
"We gotta go," Ian snots to Teri again. "My pants. Are falling. Down," Teri says again. "This is more important than your pants falling down," he snots back. "Oh, you think so?" she says. "I know you are, but what am I?" he asks. Oh, no, I'm sorry. What he actually says is, "Yeah, I think so. You're not modest." She makes him stop, and insists that he come around behind her and pull her pants up. She hoists her pack up a little, and he pulls up her pants. This is beginning to make me think that someone who cuts tape for this show doesn't like this team very much, because there isn't a whole lot of purpose to this footage except that to demonstrate what unpleasant people they are. Which, of course, is why I love the way this show is edited. Anyway, once her pants are hoisted, he insists that now they have to run.
The Bald Snark and Nerd Lust reach the church and make the left. Ken and Gerard take a cut to the left again, up a set of stairs. Gerard interviews that he thought it was a worthwhile risk to try to get away from the pack. Yeesh. At any rate, it goes bad almost immediately, and they wind up lost in a field. They try to scramble up the side of a hill, but things aren't looking great. I think there's no question that Ken and Gerard's biggest racing flaw at this point is a tendency to overthink things, and I have to wonder if they're going to outsmart themselves sooner or later.
Jill and John Vito find their way to a taxi stand, of all things.
Nerd Lust gets near the pit stop, and they make a turn up the road. It's uphill again, so ebbing Flo once again hands her pack to Zach. As soon as she gives him her pack, Flo takes off running. "Come on! Like we want it!" he urges.
Elsewhere, the Bald Snark is still lost.
Asshat keeps on trekking up the road. "Either step aside or walk," Ian orders from behind Teri, whom he apparently believes is walking too slowly. "Go on this side," she bitches. "I can't," he snots. "I don't know why I'm always the one who has to move." My God, make it stop.
Flo spots the pit stop flags. "I see it! Come on!" she yells. Zach very humorously interviews that as soon as she handed him her pack, Flo started urging him to go faster. Miss Alli's Brother-In-Law: "Carry your own pack, slacker." Nerd Lust heads for the mat. Zach dumps both packs by the side of the path so that they can move faster, which she endorses.
Welcome, Derek and Drew, you are team number one. I guess they haven't gotten their Easy-Share cameras yet, but they get them now. "Woo hoo!" Derek says, doing his best for the product placement fairies.
Welcome FloZach, you are team number two.
John Vito and a sweaty Jill manage to get themselves into a cab for the chalet. Asshat finds the pit stop flag, while Ken and Gerard continue wandering somewhat aimlessly in the hills. The JVJ cab progresses.
Asshat reaches the mat. "Get with me, we do it together," Ian orders coldly. They hold hands reluctantly, and step onto the mat. Welcome, Team Asshat, you are team number three. Phil tries to give them a broad smile to make up for the intense hatred he flung in their direction last week. They hug with as little affection as possible.
The Bald Snark figures out that they're actually above the meadow where the mat is. Aargh! They wonder if they're third, not realizing that they're now in a race for fourth. They run into a bunch of goats and a barbed-wire fence on their way back down the mountain, as a stressed-out Jill and John Vito sit nervously in the back of their cab. Gerard half-collapses the fence. Goat #1: "Freedom! We have a chance at freedom!" Goat #2: "Not now, I'm eating a shoe." The JVJ cab pulls in at the chalet, but they have a long run down the path to the mat. JVJ and the Bald Snark spot each other, making for the mat from different directions, and they start to peel for the finish.
The music thumps. Ken and Gerard run from above. Jill and John Vito run from the path. Ken and Gerard slide under a fence. Jill and John Vito slide under a fence. Ken and Gerard, tearing toward Phil. Jill and John Vito, tearing toward Phil. BOOM! Ken and Gerard land on the mat. Welcome, Bald Snark, you are team number four. It really was close, because John Vito comes up right behind them as the Bald Snark is being told they're in fourth place.
Jill and John Vito step up to the mat. "John Vito and Jill," Phil intones, "you are the last team to arrive." They stare at him in horrified anticipation. "The good news is..." Jill and John Vito's faces break with relief as Phil explains that this is, as the eighth leg has been in past seasons, one of the non-elimination points, meaning that they are indeed in last place, but they're still in the race. Jill hyperventilates as she comes down from the race to the finish, and she actually makes a little squeaky noise as she tries to get her breath. John Vito encourages her to kneel down for a minute. "I'm okay, I'm okay," she insists. "Just kneel down, you'll feel better," he says, and she does. "I almost had a heart attack," she says to him with a smile. "I don't like coming in last," he says warily. "This is not fun. I guess we needed a taste of it," Jill says.
In an interview montage, Derek and Drew say that they weren't very happy that it was a non-elimination leg, because I think they were looking forward to eliminating JVJ. Gerard points out that the race is "tense," reiterating that the twins are a major threat to win, and he wants them to go home as soon as possible. Flo says she and Zach think they can win, and Ian says the leg will be a killer.
Executive producer? Jerry Bruckheimer.
week: Bungee jumping. Teri falling off a bike. Flo yelling at Zach (again). Derek yelling at Drew (again). Flo throws stuff. Woooo!