Previously on Cut Off The Red-Nose Reign, Dear: Seoul? Do these people look like they care about Seoul? Much to the relief of the embattled Korean taxi industry, it was time for the teams to scram out of Asia and make another leap west, this time to Brisbane, Australia. The airport swallowed another victim into its menacing maw as Al and ClownJon failed to double-check their information and wound up all alone in last place after their flight succumbed to a debilitating case of Fog Fever. (Catch it!) Once in Brisbane, Kelly learned a little something about hanging in, while Chip and BuffJon that they both have more buttons to push between them than a universal remote. Team Who went belly-up a bunch of times before finally making sense of a watery Fast Forward that nearly resulted in the untimely drowning of the local talent. They managed, however, to come in first and wangle yet another trip out of Phil, which means that they're totally taking me on one of them. I will even accept "festive Latin America" as my destination. (What? I can pretend to be festive.) Reichen almost got himself eaten by a shark, or else he waved his hand for a minute and nothing of consequence happened, depending on which version of the story you want to believe. In a desperate rush to catch Jon and Kelly, the Chipsters decided that reading, while fundamental, is annoyingly time-consuming. Having ignored the basics of the clue, they received a "minimum punitive penalty," but it wasn't enough to save Al and ClownJon, who were ultimately unable to fix what got broken in the Seoul airport. And so, sadly, we waved goodbye to the only one of these teams you'd let your kids stay with if you didn't want them to come home knowing a lot of swear words. "Who will be eliminated..." Al Franken sues the estate of Mary Shelley. "…?" Hey, don't mess with me, Phil. The people to be eliminated will be Harvey and Mel, the lovable short order cooks who will get lost on the way to the Atlanta airport on the first leg of The Amazing Race 5. Don't try to tell me otherwise; I won't hear it.
Credits. This Week's Fun Fact You Can Learn From Zaprudering The Credits With The Assistance Of TiVo: In some languages, "west" starts with an O.
Commercials. If you're a really talented tap-dancer, I don't really recommend squandering your talent on boneless chicken wings. There's nowhere to go from there except the latest public education campaign from the American Association of Bar Food Producers in which you tap out in Morse code, "Your odds of dropping dead from a heart attack due to ingestion of a single mozzarella stick are less than one in three."
Bridge! River! Tall Buildings! Marina! Beach! Boats! Phil welcomes you to the Sunshine Coast portion of Australia, which he calls a "seaside playground." Unfortunately, he does not mean this in the teeter-totter sense, which is a shame, because it would have been really fun to see Jon and Chip trying to fling each other into orbit with alternating butt-whomps of increasing ferocity. No, this is a seaside playground in the "frolicking rich people" sense, and we are accordingly marooned at the Mooloolaba Yacht Club. (Motto: "Unamused By Cow Jokes Since 1850.") It looks like eat/sleep/mingle was pretty friendly this time around, what with the toasting and everything, but on the whole, folks are looking tired and dirty and ready to get home, as they usually do by this point. Phil wonders whether Team Who can ride their strong finish in the last leg into good placement for the final dash, and whether Kelly and Jon can knock out a strong leg without knocking out each other's teeth. The Chipsters, of course, will be starting out with the time penalty they richly deserve for having completely failed to read their clue. One can only hope they read their departure time correctly.
10:41 PM. David and Jeff. David's wearing one of those disposable V-neck shirts they seem to have stocked up on. Particularly in conjunction with the darkness and harsh TV lights, those are projecting a whole COPS guy-in-his-driveway vibe that I'm just not excited about. They rip the clue, and it tells them to drive themselves to the Australian Woolshed, which Phil tells us will require about an eighty-mile drive to the town of Ferny Hills. For some reason, I suspect that there are at least fifteen dirty jokes that circulate among the fifth-grade boys at Ferny Hills Middle School, in which the punch line is, "Ferny Hills." Anyway, when they get to Ferny Hills (hee hee), they'll have to search through a giant pile of raw wool to find their clue. Much to the Whos' dismay, they have been given a grand total of one dollar for this leg, which is only going to buy six or eight of those shirts they've been wearing, so they'd better conserve. David explains in his off-the-mat voice-over that their approach was to use the Fast Forward to get into first place, and then to try to expand their lead. It's a fine plan, as long as you don't worry about the fact that no other team has ever been able to do it, ever. Other than that? Kick-ass thinking, dudes. In their car, Jeff explains that Ferny Hills isn't on any of his Sunshine Coast tourist propaganda materials, so they'll have to ask directions somewhere. In the interview we see, David is sporting the V-neck with sleeves and Jeff is sporting a V-neck from which he seems to have ripped off the sleeves in an apparent moment of confusion in which he believes that he's a scrappy dancer/welder and the year is 1983. Oh, my eyes. Anyway, Jeff explains that he thinks that the other two couples, because they're couples, may be prone to a more emotional attachment to the things that happen in the race. He and David, of course, have no emotions that cannot be expressed with a single well-placed "dude." Or in the case of an extreme emotional outburst, "bro." They stop at a gas station and ask directions to Ferny Hills, and then they get on their way.
10:59 AM. Kelly and Jon. (So that's a twenty-minute lead that the Whos are hoping to parlay into something more substantial. Good luck, there, fellas.) For whatever reason, Jon is wearing a very, very dorky hat here, as well as displaying his goofiest smile as he waits for Kelly to rip the clue. You know, it's remarkable how hat-averse the teams have been this year. If they all came home with sunburned scalps, I'm going to feel sort of guilty. When Kelly rips the clue open, Jon makes a show of counting the dollar for us. In a voice-over, Kelly explains that although she and Jon fight, "what happens on the race stays on the race," and their fighting has yet to actually interfere with their racing, which seems to be largely true. As they get directions, Jon returns in an interview to the increasingly tiresome theme of Kelly's girlhood, and how it's unique among the remaining racers, and how it will hopefully cause the Chipsters and Who to underestimate the two of them, allowing them to just sneak by and win. Hmm. I'm thinking that if I were Jon and Kelly and I were selecting a strategy, "remaining inconspicuous" would probably not be one of the ones I would try. They get going, and Kelly adds in a voice-over that they've been "saving [their] money like crazy," so they'll have plenty to spend on earplugs if they ever get tired of listening to each other, I guess.
11:33 AM. Chipsters. Reichen is also sporting a white V-neck shirt, but in his case, it seems to be of high enough quality that you can't see right through it like tissue paper, so that's a little less eye-gouging. I would also say that either he has the bod to pull it off a little more successfully or the cut is about a hundred times more flattering, or both, but that would be shallow of me to notice, and it disturbs me when I find that the water doesn't even cover my toes anymore. Chip hams it up for us with the dollar for our amusement. The teams sure are finding that dollar bill a lot funnier than I am. Reichen voices over that in spite of the penalty, he and Chip are very glad to still be in the race, so they're trying to be "intense" but "relaxed." Also, they will try to be "fast" and yet "slow," as well as "tall" and yet "short." In a sunny pit stop interview, Reichen says, "We're going to catch back up -- watch out." And then they flash their matching pretty smiles and show you all those pretty teeth -- ding! Oh, and out on the road as they load up the car, Reichen is again wearing the yellow shorts. Oh, the ubiquity! Chip interviews that he's learned that he and Reichen both really want to be right, and really want to show each other that they're right, and he thinks this "intensity" of an almost competitive nature can really hurt them. Not that he has any buried hostility he's going to be trying to exorcise by resorting to violence during the leg or anything. They ask for some directions to Ferny Hills, and learn that they should expect it to take a couple of hours.
Team Who is in their car, driving through the darkness, and Jeff suggests that David make use of the trip meter in order to avoid losing track of where they are and where they're supposed to be. Not a bad idea, for a guy who sometimes seems to have trouble finding his own hair with a compass and a set of blueprints. Elsewhere, Jon isn't happy with Kelly, because he's had to run into a convenience store to get supplementary directions. When he returns to the vehicle, he's exasperated. "My little navigator," he says. She defends her attempts at giving directions, he needles her for being wrong...it's pretty much a typical morning of wacky bickering for them. I suspect that if they were at home, he'd be complaining about the coffee and she'd be hiding the cereal. The Chipsters, on the other hand, say that the directions they got were "perfect," so they're finding the Woolshed with no difficulties at all. "Your navigational abilities are awesome," Chip says. Surprisingly, it also appears that Jeff and David have found the right place. "When we get our momentum, it's tough to stop us," Jeff voices over. Eh. I bet you could stop them with a Rubik's cube. Or a word search. When they pull up to the gate with the big red and yellow flag on it, however, they find a sign indicating that the hours of operation are going to hold them up until 6:00 AM. Kelly and Jon arrive shortly thereafter, and Jon remarks, "Looks like we're sleepin' in the Mercedes." Indeed. Kelly voices over that this left about four hours to kill, and just then, we see the Chipsters pull up. "And here's everybody," Reichen remarks. We get a lovely shot of the big "Australian Woolshed" billboard, complete with cartoons of a sheep, a koala, a kangaroo, and what I can only assume is supposed to be a dingo, because it appears that this place is all about reinforcing the Weekly Reader version of Australia. I can only wonder where the cartoon boomerang is, and why there's no loud prerecorded version of "Waltzing Matilda" blaring from a loudspeaker. The same sign also mentions some kind of a dance on February 15. Ah, yes. That would be the dance where you try to convince the gods to make it rain cash-toting tourists.
The sun rises the morning, and Chip has himself a little stretch by his car. Kelly emerges at the same time. "Good morning, Chipper...are we feeling chipper?" she asks. Jon explains that Chip at this point offered a little speech about his past in Connecticut and how he knows all about sheep farms. "It's just fun between Chip and Reichen and us," Kelly interviews. "It's just fun to push their buttons and get them all riled up, 'cause they take it seriously." Back at the gate, Jon decides to share his own wool expertise with Chip: "And I...own a lot of wool sweaters. So I'm quite familiar with wool." Hee. Chip explains in an interview that he thinks Jon's strategy is to distract him by being annoying. He's very perceptive, Chip is. Reichen adds that indeed, when they're racing, he and Chip are all about being in Show Mode. Kelly now points out in her interview that in fact, the Chipsters won't even wave to her during the race. My sense is that if you heard this quote with more context, she's contrasting this with their behavior during the pit stops, which sounds like it's probably friendly. Being a person who sometimes cannot resist poking at people who are in Super-Serious Intensity Mode, I'm a little sympathetic, I admit. Angry people confronted with silliness are funnier than you'd think. Except cops. Don't try it with cops. Anyway, you can also see Chip doing a quadriceps stretch here, which I would point out is exactly how a guy gets himself mocked by his peers. I bet he does lunges, too. Add some deep knee bends, and I'd be making fun of him, too.
At the Woolshed, as the clock ticks from 5:59 AM to 6:00 AM, the gate opens and the teams run in, Pantheon-style, in the order in which they arrived -- Who, Jon and Kelly, and the Chipsters. Some scenic and contractually-required kangaroos hop in the foreground as the teams scamper across the grass and then onto a paved path. When they hit the pavement, they take off running. We cut to the big shed, where there are three huge stalls, all piled many feet high with wool. David and Jeff don gloves and are the first to plunge in. Kelly wants her gloves, too, but Jon tells her to forget it and start digging. "This is a lot of wool," Kelly observes, demonstrating that she is no dummy when it comes to identifying natural fibers. In no time, the teams are making quite a mess here, because they're dragging the wool out of the stalls in order to go through it, and basically they're each forming a new big pile of the stuff they've already sorted through outside the stall on the ground. "It's warm and sticky," Jon says of the wool as he's knee-deep in it, "and it smells like..." "Ass," Kelly finishes. David remarks that they expected the clue to be easy to find, but it wasn't. Where would they get the idea that they'd find it easily? From their successes? Yeah. Congratulations on the groundbreaking investigations, Geraldo. A crop of sheep wanders up, intrigued by the piles of wool lying outside the stalls. I sort of half-expected one of them to nudge a particular hunk of wool and go, "I'm fre-e-e-eezing! Can I have this ba-a-a-a-ack?" Furthermore, apparently part of the challenge here is playing a game called Hit Your Camera Guy With Sticky Wool That Smells Like Ass, because there are about six shots of wool wads flying directly at the camera. Teams continue flinging wool at everything in sight, and the first person to locate a clue is Jon. "Here it is, here it is," he says. They bolt the stall and stand a bit away to tear away a bunch of wool that's seemingly stuck very stubbornly to the clue envelope. Jeff spares a moment to look at Kelly and Jon a little wistfully as they run off. He wants a clue, too!
The clue tells the teams to fly to Cairns, where they'll choose a marked car outside the terminal. When they get the car, they'll drive themselves to the Wild World Zoo. Goodness, there certainly have been a lot of goofball animal tasks involved in these last couple of legs. I swear, if we see the Crocodile Hunter, I quit. Kelly and Jon get in their car and go, and Jon comments that there's nothing that feels better than being out in the lead, ahead of "the two boy teams." I swear, he's more preoccupied with Kelly's only-girl-ness than she is, even. I would be a lot more comfortable with these remarks if I didn't have the feeling that Jon wanted to win with Kelly in part so that he could have a t-shirt made that said, "I Won A Million Dollars...And I Did It Dragging My Wife!"
Back at the wool piles, the two boy teams are still engaging in some good wool hunting. Another wad hits the camera as Chip remarks, "We have to beat them." Hey, he's getting the hang of it! Beat them! Go faster! But has someone caught on to his clever plan? "I want this clue first," David says with a particularly attractive chunk of wool stuck to his shoulder. He then explains in a voice-over that he and Jeff went all the way through the wool once and found no clue, so they realized that they had probably overlooked it, which would then require them to go back and start over, looking a little more carefully this time. That's exactly what happens every time I look through the mail for my car insurance bill. Over in the Chipster stall, Reichen retrieves the clue, which is quite well-covered in wool, and he and Chip leave. Everyone is being very secretive and whispering a lot about their progress, which seems kind of pointless, since nobody is going to know where their clue is just because they know you found yours. We've apparently reached a point of secrecy for secrecy's sake. What would a competition be, after all, without conspiratorial whispering? The Chipsters take their clue and run back to the car, leaving the again-hapless Whos to continue digging. The Chipsters are on the road in a jiff.
David: "We probably just grabbed too much stuff at the beginning, and just...threw it out of the way instead of...finding it." You know, that's an impressive word-to-syllable ratio that boy's got going, especially if you don't count "ing" words. "It's not there, man," Jeff mutters. "Keep looking," says his partner in bumbling.
Commercials. Is Burger King claiming that two pieces of toast are in fact "giant croutons"? Oh, the things those marketing people come up with on the third night of a four-day bender.
When we return, David and Jeff are seriously in the weeds as far as the wool-searching. Among other things, the pile they pulled out of their stall is perilously close to the piles from the other people's stalls, so now they have to worry about their clue getting mixed into a whole different stack. Finally, David comes up with it, and the boys are impressed to see how well-coated it really is in wool. Quite a change from the way they usually "hide" clues in haystacks or piles of poo, where the clue is usually practically sticking out of the side waving a little red flag and yelling, "Pick me, pick me!" to identify itself. They run out, read the clue, and hop in the car. On the road, Jeff comments that the Chipsters can't be too far out in front of them, so it sounds like the searching that went on after the Chipsters took off wasn't all that grueling.
Meanwhile, Kelly and Jon and the Chipsters are out ahead, taking it easy on the way to the airport to grab a flight to Cairns. Kelly and Jon are the first team to park and head inside at 6:55 AM. They hightail it to Qantas ticketing and inquire about flights to Cairns. Jon checks to make sure that there aren't earlier flights, and given that the flight he's offered leaves at 7:45 AM, he can probably assume other people are unlikely to get out much quicker than that. While they're making arrangements, the Chipsters pull up outside, with Who close on their heels. Inside, Kelly explains that she and Jon have booked the 7:45 flight, and they're confident there's no one leaving any earlier than that. As the Chipsters enter the terminal and run for Qantas, Kelly and Jon are finishing up with the ticket agent, so the teams cross paths just as Kelly and Jon are leaving and the intense-as-ever Chipsters are approaching. A Chipster mutters, "Damn!" to which Kelly just says, "Why the sad faces, boys?" As usual, it requires nothing more to aggravate the Chipsters but an upbeat, relentlessly cheery attitude. Meanwhile, Jon makes like he's going to body-block Chip on the way by. He pulls up at the last minute, though, depriving the audience of what would undoubtedly have been a very satisfying collision. Kelly screeching, Reichen swearing, shiny white teeth everywhere...but alas, it is not to be. At the ticket counter, Chip says, "Can we just do what they did?" Reichen tries to regain their dignity by saying they need tickets on the flight to Cairns, because he would never just hang onto Jon and Kelly like a skateboarder on the bumper of a pickup truck or anything like that. Elsewhere, Jeff and David are checking the Arr/Dep board, and they spot the 7:45 flight. When Jeff gets to the Qantas counter, he neither follows the other teams nor asks what the earliest flight is -- he just asks for tickets on the 7:45 flight. Hmm. Worked out okay here, but I still say you always want to schmooze the airport guy a little.
In a quickie interview at the gate, Jon explains that they arrived first at the airport, but that "there's this thing called the airport equalizer." Way to miss your shot at the shout-out, punk. The Brisbane-Cairns flight takes off, carrying all three teams. For some reason, when we arrive at the Cairns airport and swing over to look at the three marked cars that await the teams, there is a creepy, Psycho-ish strum of music, as if each of the cars is carrying a pack of attack monkeys or something, which -- and I'm sorry if this spoils the suspense -- is not the case. The teams all dash out of the airport in a big clump and run to the cars. Kelly happily observes that she and Jon are first into the cars, and it's going to get really old really quickly if she keeps telling us all the time that they're first to this and first to that. They all caravan out of the airport one after the other. Reichen says that he and Chip are "literally six feet behind David and Jeff, who are six feet behind Kelly and Jon." And by "literally six feet," he means "a few car lengths." Sigh. In the Kelly and Jon car, she comments that the two guy teams both seem awfully intense, which is making her nervous. Jon thinks she has nothing to be nervous about, based on how the racing has actually been going. "You're not the only girl; you don't have to feel the way I feel." And with that, I am officially tired of that motif. I gave her some slack for it at the beginning, but it's time to put it down, dear. I don't think Sally Ride gave herself as much play for going without gravity as Kelly has for going without Starbucks.
Some actual car racing ensues, complete with tense racing music, as Who tries to pass Kelly and Jon. Jon stays even with them, and because there's a car in front of them, David and Jeff aren't able to pass. Jeff tells David to flash his brights at the guy in front of them. Oooh, I hate people who do that. I love, however, the way Jeff hangs roguishly onto the handle over the car door like he's on an unsecured boat in a Duran Duran video. The teams pull even for a bit, and then Jon pulls out ahead, chuckling as he goes. "We are just having a little game of cat and mouse," he remarks. He points out that the girl in the car to him, ahead of David and Jeff, is helping with a sort of rolling blockade that keeps Team Who from passing. It takes a village, you know. But will she share in the million? Noooo. "This has to be drivin' them crazy," Jon laughs.
In the Chipster car, Chip indeed looks peeved in the extreme. He's stuck behind Who in the left lane and Kelly and Jon in the right, and remarks that he's "boxed in." In an interview, Jon says that "when Chip is in a car, and he's in traffic, he's got smoke coming out of his ears, his blood pressure's going through the roof...I mean, he's a few ticks away from having a heart attack." The shot we get of Chip suggests that Jon is pretty close to the truth. Chip himself now interviews that he's all about finding ways to get ahead of the other teams in any way possible. "I think there's going to be some bumping and grinding, and there's going to be some bitterness." He doesn't mean "bumping and grinding," I don't think. Come to think of it, that would make a great Detour, though. And he's certainly right about the other half, because "bitterness" does seem likely.
The teams are approaching the entrance to the Wild World Zoo. They all pull in together, park, and grab clues. And what is the clue? Well, your favorite product placement and mine has returned in the form of the Kodak Easy-Share digital camera. Phil explains that they have to take a camera and follow a path to the crocodile pen. Once they get there, one team member will feed a fish to Sultan the crocodile, and the other team member will take a picture of the feeding moment with the camera. Then they'll take the camera to the souvenir shop and use an oh-so-convenient and easy-to-operate Easy-Share printer dock to print out the picture, which will have the clue on the back. You know, although product placements alone don't bother me, they do when they're completely extraneous to the task, the way they are here. You could undoubtedly design tasks where the picture-taking wouldn't seem quite so tacked-on. I also have to say that as much as I love Kodak for supporting the coolest show ever, just writing the words "Kodak Easy-Share" this many times makes me feel like I am cheating on Fujifilm, which made both of my digital cameras. Forgive me, Fujifilm. It didn't mean anything -- I was drunk, and I was thinking about you the whole time. Come to think of it, I can see Kodak as the Alex in a Fatal Attraction-style consumer parable, so I'd better end this metaphor before it starts to scare me. At any rate, this task can only be performed by one team at a time, so they'll be going in the order -- Jon/Kelly, Who, Chipsters -- in which they arrived at the clue box and took numbers.
The teams are led past a table with three cameras on it. For whatever unknown reason, Jon and Kelly walk right by the table without grabbing a camera. As they walk along the path, David realizes that Kelly and Jon didn't take one, and he gives Jeff a camera with a heads-up not to wave it around. As everyone arrives at the crocodile pen, an oblivious Jon greets a snapping Sultan with a hearty "holy cow!" They meet up with the crocodile guy, and he asks who's feeding and who's taking the picture. Jon will be feeding, so Kelly starts looking around for the camera. She quickly realizes they must have walked right past it. Frustrated, Jon exits the croc pen and they start walking back to the entrance, stuck going third instead of first. "It's our fault for getting too excited like we always do," she says, probably correctly. "You grabbed the clue out of my hand, Kel," he says, substantially less correctly. She takes umbrage at being blamed for the whole thing, pointing out that he had the clue before he gave it to her, but he maintains that he didn't get to read it before she took it. "How am I supposed to know we have to grab a camera if I don't have the clue?" he says. This would be a reasonable argument for him to make, except that he actually read the entire clue out loud on camera when they opened it, starting with, "Choose an Easy-Share digital camera." So...that would be how he would know. Not to be picky or anything. She asks again why he has to blame her, and he says, "I'm not blaming anybody; I'm just pissed." He was, of course, completely blaming her, but it's somewhat to his credit that he seems to know that he's mostly just frustrated at the situation and that he has no case. They both did it. And he knows it.
At the croc pen, Who is getting ready to take on the task in their newly-minted first-place position. Jeff interviews that they're always ready to capitalize on other people's mistakes, as we see Jon head back and take the camera he left behind the first time. David takes the feeding stick -- which is basically a fishing pole -- and gets ready to meet Sultan. The way this works is that the crocodile guy tosses something into the water at the edge, which brings Sultan over, and then Sultan sees the food on the stick and snags it. David manages to complete the task without losing any part of his arm or growing any new orifices, so he and Jeff are free to go. They run for the souvenir shop.
Chip takes on the crocodile for his team. (Sultan: "[CHOMP.] Hey, look over there. Who's the banana with the camera?") He finishes quickly, so he and Reichen are quickly on the way to the souvenir shop as well.
David and Jeff find the shop and the camera docks. They start to print their picture.
Kelly and Jon are finally getting on with the crocodile business. Jon feeds the croc, Kelly takes the picture, and they run for the souvenir shop.
The Chipsters, closely followed by Jon and Kelly, locate the shop and run inside to the camera docks. Reichen starts out ahead of Jon in setting up the camera to print the picture. However, in a piece of business that was probably not what Kodak had in mind when they set this whole thing up, Reichen cannot understand how to work the camera dock, which, according to Kodak, has directions consisting of, "Put down camera. Push 'print' button." It's interesting to speculate about where he could have gone wrong, but he probably doesn't want to contemplate what it means when you goof up an idiot-proof process. Team Who, meanwhile, is getting their printed picture at last, and when they get it, it tells them to make their way to Wangetti Beach. Phil explains that this is a fifteen-mile drive, and claims that the beach is "secluded." Well, not today, of course. Team Who runs for it.
Kelly and Jon's picture is the to print. They leave, at which point Reichen rather nonsensically says, "I just want to punch them both right now...they just get so frickin' lucky." If he can explain why being able to successfully follow the directions on a camera dock makes Kelly and Jon "lucky," I'd be interested in hearing it. Luck can certainly screw you, but it had nothing to do with this. Outside, Kelly and Jon are running to their car. "Another picture for the fridge!" Kelly happily says. Yeah. Right between the sticker of Calvin peeing and the nail salon promotional magnet, I suspect. They hop in, but Jon goes to get some directions before they leave.
Reichen seems to finally have the hang of the camera dock, but he voices over that "because [he] screwed up," Jon and Kelly were able to get out ahead. It actually looks like the teams leave at pretty much the same time, given that Jon took a minute or two to ask for directions. It's a shame, really -- I'm sure Kodak would have been thrilled beyond belief if it had actually become a plot point that the printer dock was so perplexing that it caused someone to fall substantially behind. The show would be all, "Well, make the docks easier!" and Kodak would be all, "Well, get less stupid contestants!" Now there would have been a battle royal.
David and Jeff are having a supremely rare moment of banter in their car. "I saw you flinch when [the crocodile] came out of the water," Jeff says, showing off the picture for the camera guy. David grins and makes a "pfffft" noise that he intends to convey "Oh, yeah, right," but that actually conveys, "That doesn't mean you have to tell everybody, but thanks a lot." He can only comment, "That thing was large." In one of several interviews in the episode that seem to be there for no particular reason, Jeff goes on this whole mellow rant about how they didn't come here to finish second, blah blah blah. Yuck, down with fillerviews. I realize they have to show these guys saying something when we're down to so few teams, but I'd rather hear Jeff tell knock-knock jokes than listen to more of this bland will-to-win philosophizing.
In the Kelly and Jon car, she says, "Sorry, babe, about the camera." "It's all right, babe," he says back. And with that, they're done with the camera thing. Kelly voices over, "I love Jon. There's no changing that. We're going to fight at least once a day, and we'll get over it, and we will be together forever." I know what she's saying, and I think she's sincere, but...I have to think it's going to get tiring after a while, too. It's also going to be very hard on the neighbors. In the Chipster car, Reichen is feeling no love. "Kelly's mouth is definitely the biggest of all the crocodile mouths in Australia." Is that it? That's his joke? A girl like Kelly, with a mouth like Kelly's got, and that's his line? For such a fierce competitor, he lacks a certain killer instinct.
Team Who is the first to find the route marker. Kelly and Jon are behind them, and are talking about how exactly they're supposed to find the spot on the beach. Jon thinks they need to just look for flags and route markers. David and Jeff, meanwhile, get out of their car and hit the clue box. It's time for this week's Detour, and the choices are Saddle or Paddle. Surprisingly, there is nothing dirty about any part of either option. As Phil explains, Saddle will require the teams to ride horses along a one and one-half mile stretch of beach that has four groups of clues (one per team in a group, presumably) hidden along it. Only one of the clue clusters actually has clues in it, though -- the other three are just bunches of empty envelopes. It seems to me that this would have been a much better task if the clue envelopes had been labeled for each team and each team's real clue could be in a different spot, for reasons that will become obvious. Phil comments that this task isn't difficult, but if you're unlucky, you could come up empty three times before you hit the clue, and it could be slow going. In Paddle, the teams inflate a kayak and paddle out to a buoy to get a clue. The task is a little more demanding physically, but the clue is sitting right there for you to find.
For reasons that are a mystery to me, depending on what the teams' Detour explanation actually said, David and Jeff decide on the horses. I don't know how far out the buoy is, but it can't take all that long. Maybe they're afraid that if they start swimming, they'll wash ashore in Hawaii. At least if they follow the beach, they'll know they haven't left the continent.
Kelly and Jon are looking for the beach, and she comments that she thinks they might have just missed it. He asks her not to "second-guess" what they decided to do, and she responds that it's not second-guessing; that was her first guess. She voices over that because Jon drives and she navigates, she'd like him to listen to her a little more. She'd probably have a better argument if she hadn't been wrong quite a bit over the course of the race, even when (if not especially when) she seemed especially sure she was right. In fairness to her, she's probably been right a lot more than she's been wrong if she's doing all the navigating, but in fairness to him, she certainly hasn't been entirely reliable.
The Chipsters, on the other hand, have regained second place by being to reach the beach. Very Intense Chip runs up to the clue box very intensely, as we see David and Jeff strapping on their horse helmets. "You want to do horses?" Chip asks Reichen once they've reviewed the clue. "I love horses," Reichen answers longingly. The Chipsters now get into long pants, which is a relief if only because it gets Reichen out of the you-know-whats that I am so tired, tired, tired of seeing. Well, that is to say, that's why it's a relief to me. It's probably a relief to them while horseback riding for reasons that are considerably more intimate. Chip voices over that he and Reichen were expecting to see Jon and Kelly ahead of them at the route marker, but they were nowhere to be found. Indeed, we see Jon and Kelly still driving as all the boys saddle up. Seeing that David and Jeff go right down the beach, the Chipsters decide to go left, apparently deciding they'd rather risk falling behind in return for the opportunity to wind up ahead. Reichen voices over that "it's obvious" that the Chipsters and Whos are "archrivals." It is? When did that happen? Did that happen while I was making a margarita? He also says they're "racing against each other tooth and nail." Reichen, cliché-mangler extraordinaire.
Jon and Kelly hit a Detour of sorts, but not the kind they're looking for. It's the road construction kind. They ask the flagman, who looks like an Oppression Studies major at Hippie University of Australia, whether they've already passed Wangetti Beach, and he confirms that they have. They turn around, and Jon explains that they have to backtrack probably ten or fifteen minutes. Kelly reminds him that she was right about the turn they should have made -- which seems fair, considering that he never forgets to point out when she's wrong -- to which he says, "All right, Kel, that was my mistake. I take full responsibility for it." Man, that is so low. How do you argue with that? Jon goes on to say that he has to hope other people got lost, but he suspects they didn't.
Commercials. Nicolas Cage with tics in a commercial for thirty seconds? Kind of funny. Nicolas Cage with tics in a movie for two hours? Bring on the extra-large bottle of Tums.
We return to Jon and Kelly in their car, where she is despairing that they haven't done anything right all day. In the back of the car, she remarks, "You get to a point when you're that stupid...that's when you need to be eliminated." Heh.
Back at the beach, the two teams of boys are hunting for clue clusters. The Chipsters reach a race flag and de-horse. They look around for the clue cluster, and eventually find it. When they open the clue, however, it says, "Sorry. Try again." They get back on their horses and get going, with Chip voicing over that he was very "bummed out" that they struck out on the first group of clues. They see another flag and take off in its general direction. Reichen hops off the horse and scampers up to take the clue from a crevice between a couple of rocks. "Aw, shit," he says as he finds another "Sorry. Try again." clue. "This sucks," they mutter as they head off in the other direction.
David and Jeff, meanwhile, are reaching a flag down the beach in the opposite direction. The first set of clues they find, sort of stuffed into the side of a tree, is the one they need, so they've hit the Detour jackpot. They find a real clue telling them to drive themselves to the town of Julatten and look for something called the "Off-Road Rush," which Phil explains is an "adventure sports company."
Jon unhappily notes the presence of the other two cars as he and Kelly arrive at the beach. "Jon, let's just get it done," Kelly says, trying for a mellow moment. They run to the clue box and talk about the options. She wants to do the horses, and he agrees. As they get ready to leave, the Chipsters are coming back past the starting line, having come up empty. Jon notes that obviously, the Chipsters didn't find a clue by going left, so he and Kelly should go right. Reichen snorts in a voice-over, "Jon and Kelly followed us like flies on cow manure." Of course, flies don't quite "follow" cow manure. It's not easy to make a wrong turn in the middle of a joke that short, but again, Reichen displays a remarkable ability to make cliché-slaw of a sort, in which the clichés are still recognizable, but in a different form than you expect.
David is encouraging Jeff to hurry as they leave the clue cluster, because he sees the other teams coming down the beach. Jeff, in particular, seems to be awfully hard on that horse, pulling incredibly tightly around its mouth, the poor thing. I don't like thinking about the horse going "Ow! Ow! Ow!" as he heads down the beach. As the Whos and Chipsters pass each other, there are some Chipster voice-overs about how bad David and Jeff looked riding the horses, and...yeah, it's true, actually, although I'm not quite sure what Chip means when he says Jeff looked like "a frozen rabbit." What exactly does a frozen rabbit look like, and where would Chip have seen one? Do they ride horses? The Chipsters find their way to their third consecutive empty clue cluster, so it's back on the horses to find the last one, which they now know must have the clue in it. Meanwhile, the departing David and Jeff pass Jon and Kelly on the beach, and then they head for their car. Before they go, they ask a passing friendly motorist for directions to Julatten, which he's kind enough to provide.
The Chipsters finally get a clue, and they finish reading it just as Jon and Kelly pull up on their horses. Back at the Chipster car, they throw their stuff in and get ready to leave. Chip suggests that Reichen repack the back of the car, and as Reichen fusses by the back driver's side door, a sudden burst of tense music announces that something bad has happened. Chip is all, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." "You ran over my foot," Reichen says angrily. He explains in a voice-over that Chip started the car without the clutch in, and he managed to roll over Reichen's foot. "Are you okay?" Chip asks as they finally drive off. "Yeah, I'm fine," Reichen replies. "Did I really run over your foot?" Chip says. "Yes!" Reichen barks. "Be careful!" "I did not mean to do it, Reichen," Chip says defensively. "Will you calm down? Like I meant to do it, like I meant to run your foot over." Chip appears to be the one who now mutters, "Asshole." "I'm the asshole?" Reichen asks incredulously. "I'm sorry, I said I'm sorry. I did not mean to do that," Chip says. Heh. As I've explained before, my dad ran over my mom's foot once. If my parents' experience is any guide, Chip's got nothing to worry about, because he should be done hearing about this in about fifteen years. ["I've had my foot run over a few times, and it's one of those things where you're more offended by it in theory than hurt in physical practice. If you have the wherewithal to give the driver guff for it a few minutes later, it's not that serious an injury." -- Sars]
Kelly and Jon finally locate the clue. He initially walks right by it, earning him a hearty "Jon, you freak!" from Kelly when she tracks it down.
In the Chipster car, they're realizing that they don't actually know how to get to Julatten. Chip hops out and runs up to some poor lady's house for directions. She first corrects his pronunciation -- it's ju-LAT-ten, not JOO-la-tten -- and then tells him to "take a left." Nice specific directions, there. Jon and Kelly aren't doing much better, as they return from the Detour and start trying to find someone who knows where the town is. No luck with the first guy, though he's got a boxy little yellow car that's cute as heck. It looks like the product of the forbidden love of Sparky the Sportscar and Speedy the School Bus.
Team Who, on the other hand, has reached Julatten and spots the little sign pointing off the highway to the "Off Road Rush." "This must be the outback!" some Who or another says in a very, very bad Paul Hogan voice. "Bitchin'," David adds. Isn't he a little long in the tooth for "bitchin'"? Come to think of it, isn't "bitchin'" a little long in the tooth? They drive down a dirt road for a bit until they spot a flag. The flag is by a set of goofy-looking vehicles that Phil explains are "race buggies." We've reached this week's Roadblock, and the chosen team member will, unsurprisingly, be taking a buggy around a race course. This is no little jaunt, either -- it's a seven-mile course. David and Jeff talk it over, and David decides to take it for their team. Jeff gives him a stern talking-to as he gets into his black racing jumpsuit thing. "Don't roll it...make the course," Jeff advises. He forgets "don't get lost," but since it's a closed course with an instructor, David probably isn't likely to be calling from a pay phone in half an hour, like, "Dude, you won't believe this." David smushes himself into the buggy, the racing instructor gets in with him, and they're off. "Let's go, bro," Jeff advises, using perhaps the only expression more dated than "bitchin'." Vroom! David drives, giving a little "woo hoo!" as he goes all Dukes of Hazzard and gets airborne. "It had tons of power," he says in a voice-over. "It was bad-ass." And, undoubtedly, "bitchin'."
Jon and Kelly finally find a fellow who's staffing some unmentioned tourist attraction (but if you want to go there, it's apparently $24 for adults and $12 for children) and who's able to give them directions to Julatten. When Jon returns to the car, Kelly congratulates him with their usual "good job, babe."
Here come the Chipsters, approaching the Roadblock. Reichen is doing a little bit of grumbling about the quality of Chip's driving. "How do you want me to drive?" Chip asks. "However you want, Chip. I don't know. Just...be safe." He forgot to say, "Let's see...straight...fast...safe...oh, and if you see my foot in the road? Drive around it." That's what I would have said.
As David drives by Jeff, Jeff seems to actually be trying to give him instructions by making the "down, down" motion with his hands. Apparently, he fears David will blow the engine, probably because of the loud "vroom-vroom" noises the buggy is making. He may not realize that it's specially constructed to vroom as loudly as possible, to the point where "Vrooming Decibels (Vdb)" appears in the specs. Jeff then sees the Chipsters pulling up to the Roadblock, and notes their arrival with disappointment. "They're driving some kind of, like, dune buggy or something," Reichen comments as the Chipsters get out of their car. "This is all you," he continues. When they read the clue, Chip does indeed agree to do it. Meanwhile, David is finishing, and the guy hands him the clue. Jeff reads the clue, which tells them to get to the pit stop at Ellis Beach. Fifty miles away, Phil reveals. He calls the beach "picturesque," and indeed, it looks like one of those beaches that could easily be used for generic "Life's A Beach" merchandise, or maybe for commercials where a guy dreams about living on the beach with nothing but beer and chicks to keep him company. Unfortunately, Jeff offers one more "good job, bro" before they leave. Man, as much as I don't like "dude," I prefer it enormously to "bro." David has a cackling moment as they leave, noting that he has to get out of crazy buggy driving mode in order to take to the regular streets again. I love cackling, by the way. Everyone should cackle from time to time.
Speaking of people who probably do not cackle at all, unfortunately, Chip is suiting up for the Roadblock. He reaches over and gives a re-yellow-shorted Reichen a little peck before he goes. So cute. And it is indeed smart to adopt the philosophy, "Never do anything death-defying while you're officially fighting." In a continuation of the episode's unfortunate theme of endlessly dishing up racing platitudes like scrambled eggs at a Vegas buffet brunch, Reichen voices over that in order to be successful, he and Chip both need to be "extremely vigilant about details." Yeah. Like walking. And the definition of "parking lot." And not buying business class tickets. Whatever blows your ever-present shorts up, there, dear. Chip zooms off in the buggy, as Reichen grins after him. As one of my friends at work observed, Chip on the course looks a lot like someone playing a racing videogame for the first time, always half in the grass and overcorrecting and that sort of thing. He even runs over some tires, which seems vaguely ironic and disturbingly cannibalistic. You get the feeling that if you were trapped in this car with Chip, you'd spend a lot of your time with your hands over your eyes. We see quite a bit of grass go by in front of the windshield, and eventually Chip goes right off the road and wrecks. Reichen observes this with frustration and notes that this leg has been one nightmare after another, for the most part. The instructor lets Chip in on the news that he's broken the car but good, so they're not able to get going again. Chip yells "Fuck!" but they're nice enough to bleep it out for you. Fortunately, it does not exactly require crazy lip-reading skills to figure it out.
Team Who happily observes that they're now at least ten minutes in front of Reichen and Chip -- and getting more so by the minute, I'd note. There is more boring racing philosophy from Jeff about how a strong finish in this leg should help them not to feel rushed in the final leg and so forth. This is just more of this stuff than I think I need to hear. If you've ever been at a party with someone who won't stop telling you about their home improvement projects, you'll recognize the phenomenon. Jeff is also hoping that if other teams hit problems, "some people may not stay cool about that."
Cut to Chip, not staying cool about his little car being out of commission. Reichen notes that they're sending out a new one to him. Chip and the instructor take off in the new car, with the instructor presumably having updated his life insurance during the interruption. Unsurprisingly, Chip is in the grass again almost immediately. He does, however, manage to finally finish the course. They pull the pit stop clue. "How was it?" Reichen asks. "Was it horrible?" "I cracked the first car up," Chip answers impatiently, managing not to add, "How do you think it was, moron?" As they get in the car to leave, Chip vows not to run over Reichen's foot anymore. Ha! As they leave, they pass Jon and Kelly on the way in.
Jon isn't at all happy to see how far ahead of them the Chipsters apparently are. As they pull up to the flag, Kelly unhappily says, "Oh, no, it's dune buggies." "Ya-hoo!" Jon calls out happily. "Do you want to do it, or do you want me to do it?" Kelly asks. "What do you think, Kel?" he says. Seriously. When one person greets a Roadblock with "Oh, no," and the other one greets it with "Ya-hoo!", you definitely send the ya-hoo person and not the oh-no person. Nevertheless, when they open the clue, they just stare at each other, grinning. Kelly finally says, "It's my turn, though." She doesn't look like she wants to do it so much as she looks like she feels she's not doing her half of the work and doesn't want to come off like the Flo. He's grinning so broadly, however, that she just eventually says, "Fine," and he takes it. He turns to the camera for a Carrey-esque fist-pumping "Yes!" gesture. Kelly voices over that she saw how excited he was, and she knew she wasn't going to deny him the opportunity to do it. "There was absolutely no way I could take this special moment away from him." He literally skips away over to the little shack where you get suited up, and as he stands in front of it, he does a happy little skipping dance, which he's still doing as he wiggles into the suit. "Boys will be boys," Kelly comments. As he gets ready to go, she leans in and gives him a smooch. "You sure you don't want to do it?" he smart-asses as he gets ready to leave. "Goodbye, Mario Andretti," she says, undoubtedly using the only car-related name she can think of. He smiles and puts on the helmet. "Be careful, Jon," she says as he drives off. She helps the flag guy wave the big green flag, and Jon is off like a shot. Oh, no, wait. Actually, Jon apparently has problems with the gears, because what he does is roll about a foot and a half, making Kelly laugh. Finally, he gets going, as she laughs hysterically. "That's just downright embarrassin' right there," she says as he drives off. Seriously, as annoying as they can be, and as much as I doubt I'd want to take large doses of them unless they were partnered with other medications, I'm also capable of enjoying them more than either of the other remaining teams when they're being funny, like they were right there. I wasn't so happy with him for pushing to do the Roadblock last week, but with this one, considering that it was something he was excited about and she didn't want to do anyway, it makes a fair amount of sense that he would take it.
Jon zooms around the course with quite a lot of confidence, as some long-lost relative of the lead guitarist from a ZZ Top cover band plays in the background. As Jon drives by Kelly, one wheel comes up and off the road, and she gasps. "He's driving like a maniac," she says with a shake of her head. ["Pfft. He's from Jersey, rookie." -- Sars] We see a nice aerial shot of Jon fishtailing into the grass, and then he comes into Kelly's view again, so she gives him another "go, babe!" Before you know it, though, he takes a turn substantially too fast, and the buggy rolls. Kelly screams. She takes off running toward the buggy, as does one of the course guys. Maybe he's dead! Maybe that's what Phil meant by "Who will be eliminated ?"! I mean, that's always what I hope is meant by "the most dramatic rose ceremony ever," and it never pans out over there, but maybe my luck is about to change.
Commercials. Bowling and going to Wal-Mart are really cool things to do. No, they are. No, they are.
Back at the race course, Kelly hauls ass to the overturned buggy. She voices over that she was "absolutely flipping out." She goes on: "I thought he was dead, that was it, I wasn't going to have my fancy-schmancy wedding, I wasn't going to get to win the million dollars, it was all over." This is rather obviously not the reason she's flipping out, in case you're concerned that she actually only cared whether he died for these rather shallow reasons. She's playing it off in the later interview -- which he may have even been present for -- because it was scary, and because going into great mushy detail about how scared she was is not the way they operate. She dashes over to the overturned buggy and says, "Are you okay? Jon!" The course guys extract a laughing Jon from the buggy. "Are you okay?" she asks again. And then when it's clear that he is, she runs over and smacks him on the arm. "What's wrong with you?" Yeah, see, he scared the living crap out of her. That's exactly why she's acting like this. As the guys get the thing righted again and he gets back in, she calls out, "Babe, please be careful!" She pauses. "I need you to win the million bucks!" See, that's what I would do, too. Only I'd say something more like, "You'd better not die, because it is way too hot for me to drag your dead carcass out of here."
Elsewhere, David and Jeff are approaching the pit stop. Jeff claims that he can see Ellis Beach on the map. There is more random, meandering race talk as Jeff says he thinks this leg has built "a momentum for [their] confidence." Not even sure what that means, but...okay. "There is no second place," he adds. Well...there is, of course, but far be it from me to argue with a guy with a two-volume soul patch. They pull in by a red and yellow flag and stop. They run down to the genuinely gorgeous beach and by some very attractive palm trees in the direction of Phil, who's waiting on the mat with a friendly old dude. The boys run up the beach. Welcome, Team Who, you are team number one. Phil tells them that they've won "a vacation to Europe." Not "scenic Europe"? "Exotic Europe"? Not even "festive Europe"? I smell a trip to the French equivalent of Cleveland. (Just kidding, Cleveland people! Love you! Don't write to me! Boil your water!) Phil asks the boys if they're feeling any anxiety as they get to the end of the race. "Well, the pressure's constantly on," Jeff says. "We've got to get to the finish line first in the last leg," he adds, showing that all this talk hasn't been for nothing, as he has certainly developed a keen grasp of racing strategy. I mean, "get to the finish line first" is totally the approach I'd take, too. In an interview, he adds that he thinks other teams will make mistakes that they won't make, and that will keep them in the lead. I suppose it's possible, as long as the final leg doesn't involve finding stuff or going anywhere. Good luck with that.
Jon finally completes the course and gets the checkered flag. Kelly runs over to see him as he gets the clue from the instructor. He's giggling like a maniac. "Babe!" she says, trying not to laugh, because she's still officially mad. "Are you crazy? Oh my God." Still in the suit and helmet, he hands her the clue and she reads it. As he gets out, she asks him again whether he's okay. "Yeah," he says, seeming almost surprised she'd keep asking, when all he did was roll the buggy over. As he goes to get out of the suit, she takes a water bottle and gives a congratulatory dousing to his face and hair. She comments that she thinks this has all helped Jon grow up. "I know you can't tell, and at times I can't," she explains. But she thinks that all this craziness is stuff that Jon is better off getting out of his system in one big whoosh before they get married. Generally, I'm not a fan of the theory that you have to have all your fun before you get married, but I do sort of see her point that being married can force you into a life that feels a little older, so indulging in a little pre-wedding goofiness might not be entirely bad. "That was awesome," Jon says as he drives away from the course.
In the Chipster car, Chip is making the classic mistake of asking a question to which he does not want to know the answer. "Am I really that bad of a driver?" "I'm not answering that," Reichen smirks. Heh. They discuss hurrying along to Ellis Beach in order to get the best possible position for the final leg, which Reichen calls "the one for a million dollars." Yet another young man with a firm grasp of the obvious. They spot the route marker and park, and then they're running up the beach. "Look for Phil," Chip says. A good philosophy for life generally, I think. Chip hoots and pumps his fists as they approach the mat. Welcome, Chipsters, you are team number two. Phil asks Chip how special it is to be here with Reichen, and Chip explains that the feature of Reichen's personality he's seen during the race that he hadn't seen before was Reichen's patience with Chip's blunders. Hmm. "Patience" wasn't the word I was carrying around to describe Reichen's reactions to much of anything, but I guess it depends on your definition. Now here's my favorite (in the sense of "least favorite") Reichen moment: He says to Phil, "I think there are a few critics out there who didn't think we'd do so well, and I'm pretty proud to have made it through to be here." What the hell does that mean? How could there have been critics out there at the point when they were on the race and the teams hadn't even been announced? How exactly were there critics? Like who? Unless he's talking about other teams (in which case you'd think he'd just say that instead of referring to "critics out there"), Reichen apparently made this remark in anticipation of the fact that by the time it aired, there would have been critics for him to prove wrong. It's just more of the fact that he seems way too aware of how he's going to look on television and how everything he does is going to play.
Kelly and Jon drive up to the beach. They park and hop out. They hold hands and head up toward Phil. Phil tells them they're last, but as they know very well, they're not eliminated and will participate in the race to the finish line. "We came to one very sad conclusion today," Kelly says. "That we cannot have children, because we do not want them to inherit our stupidity." Hee. "Really?" Phil asks. Kelly points out that not only did they make a mistake everywhere it was possible to make a mistake, but they made mistakes in situations where it almost didn't seem like you could make a mistake. Jon takes the position that this was the leg where they cleared out all of their bad karma and all of their mistake-making, so they won't be making any more mistakes in the leg. He explains in an interview that Kelly does whatever it takes to win, and he loves her for it. "I like our chances," he says. In a sequence that seems a lot more like a beginning of an episode than an ending, Phil wonders aloud whether David and Jeff can stay in first place to the end, or whether the Chipsters -- Phil has now adopted the "archrivals" moniker as well -- will pull ahead of them. Finally, he wonders whether Jon and Kelly, now dubbed "the underdogs," can make a break for it and pull out the win.
Executive Producer? Jerry Bruckheimer.
week: A tree bursts into flames. Skydiving ensues. Something is found underwater. Jon gets naked. There is running. Jon brings a hammer way too close to his naked wonderfulness. Kelly and Jon miss a flight. Someone goes off the road. Jeff remains faithful to the sleeveless V-neck. And in New York, the insanity begins anew.