Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The one with all the eating
By Miss Alli | Season 7 | Episode 3 | Aired on 03.14.2005
We find Rob and Amber and their helpful local arriving at the parking garage where the cars are being kept. When they get there, they find that the garage doesn't open until 5:00 AM. Boo! That's the kind of bunching that's very annoying, because it's just lazy planning. I realize the bunches are always planned, but this is reaching a point where they might as well just put it in the clue that you can't leave until 5:00 AM. I mean, at least there's usually an event or a facility or something that's legitimately got a task associated with it that might have real hours of operation, even if they're faked up for the show. But considering all the places we've seen cars parked over the years, there's certainly no reason to stash them in some underground garage except to explicitly wash out any previous leads. It's not like I'm surprised, it's just sort of ham-fisted. Rob thanks the guy who walked them over, and he and Amber head off for their hotel.
Ron and Kelly arrive at the garage and also find it to be closed. My favorite part is that then, when Ray and Deana get there, rather than looking at the sign first, Ray gets all clanging away at the locked door, going, "It's locked!" Like he's going to go all Mr. T on the doors. And then Deana points out the sign, and they realize that they're just going to have to cool their heels for a while. Easy there, Ray. I sort of imagine them all with soundtracks running in their heads, and it's like...less metal, dude. More sitar.
When Debbie and Bianca get to the garage, they have their driver wait while they take a look, and when they see the hours posted, they go back to their driver and head for the hotel to get some directions, because they wouldn't want to get lost on the way to Argentina or anything. HA HA HA! I know, I know, my gloating laughter is spoilery. Just pretend I covered it with black bars.
Uchenna and Joyce get to the cars. Lynn and Alex, Susan and Patrick, Meredith and Gretchen, Brian and Greg. Everyone decides to camp outside and wait for the thing to open. Because it's that or storm it with a battering ram, not that it doesn't sort of seem to be the week for unconventional strategies.
As Debbie and Bianca are inside the hotel getting directions, Rob and Amber emerge, apparently having gotten some sleep. (Remember, Rob and Amber left the pit stop almost three hours before Debbie and Bianca did.) When Rob and Amber get out front, they find Debbie and Bianca's cab waiting there. The driver indicates that he's waiting for Debbie and Bianca inside, and Rob says he'll take the cab nevertheless. He asks the driver how much Debbie and Bianca are paying him, and the driver says they're paying four. Rob says he'll pay ten, and the driver laughs. They have a deal. The driver lets them in and they take off. "Hop in, honey," he says to Amber, and she does. In the cab, you watch Rob say in one voice, "That'll teach 'em," and then in an entirely different voice while he's not on camera, you hear him say, "accusin' somebody of lyin'." And then we come back into the cab, and he's laughing. Something about the way that was cobbled together struck me as suspicious from the first time I heard it, and the millionth time I listened to it, I figured it out -- the "accusin' somebody of lyin'" bite is cut from the fight with Debbie and Bianca in the bus station last week. It's a snip from the line, "Accusin' somebody of lyin', that's personal." So he may or may not have said again in the cab that it would teach them about accusing him of lying, but that particular bite is from last week's show. (And had he said it again, I'm not sure why they wouldn't have just used that.) He also may have said, "That'll teach 'em to go inside and leave their cab sitting out here without their bags." I usually find the show's editing pretty fair; I was surprised at that, because that's a pretty big cheat and makes it look like he was still ranting about old business, which it looks like he probably wasn't.