Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Macau, Right In The Kisser
By Miss Alli | Season 11 | Episode 10 | Aired on 04.21.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The dumbest season continues apace in mainland China, where the teams are faced with the highest building to jump from in the history of the race. Before they can do this, however, they run into a Yield, which Danny and Oswald agree to use if the BQs give them some money. The BQs take them up on it, choosing to have Eric and Pink Yielded for forty-five dollars. The remainder of the episode consists of Danny and Oswald moaning over making this deal, Danny and Oswald getting lost in the rain, Danny and Oswald contemplating their "karma," Eric threatening violence, and Mirna becoming more abusive and crazy -- even to Charla, which is new. The Detour involves a semi-obscene noodle-making machine that brings out the energetic rider in Kandice and the whining brat in Mirna, as well as the horrible navigation task that screws over Danny and Oswald. It's depressing, but Danny and Oswald are racing so poorly throughout the leg that the fact that they're falling farther and farther behind seems to be no one's fault but their own. And it isn't because of their karma, either; it's because they're letting a bad cab driver go all over the place without stopping to fix the problem. Finally, the BQs surge ahead and finish the leg, followed by Eric and Pink, who have to serve a half-hour penalty left over from the last leg. Mirna and Charla come in about halfway through Eric and Pink's penalty time, so Danny and Oswald have about fifteen minutes to get there. They don't, so Eric and Pink check in third, and Danny and Oswald are last. But! They are not eliminated, because we are getting -- yes, indeed -- the second consecutive non-elimination leg. So there will be an elimination next week, presumably, and then the week after that will be the finale, so get yourself some popcorn. It should be...come to think of it, it should be a finale I'm very unlikely to enjoy. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on To Err Is Human; To Yield, Not So Much: In Hong Kong, the BQs decided to use the Yield allotted to them by the rules, which caused the other three teams to conclude that they were obviously willing to do anything within the rules in order to win. This was considered quite shocking. A succession of Hong Kong stereotypes challenged the teams to more kicking, laundry-visiting, and stunt-car-flipping than you can shake a pair of nunchucks at, although none of them chose the "Hey, Chinese Isn't Even Made From Letters!" Detour option. Ultimately, Eric and Pink limped across the finish line in last place, but they were non-eliminated, meaning that they will have to serve a thirty-minute penalty unless they manage to come in first. Who will be eliminated next?
Credits. The credits now merely serve as a reminder of how much better this race would have been if different teams had stuck around. [SIGH.]
Hong Kong. Phil assures us that it is an incredibly important city. I'm still waiting for the episode that's like, "Welcome to [name of city], which once was a bustling cultural mecca and center of commerce, but now features mostly empty malls and excitable gangs of monkeys." In the center of the "thriving metropolis," we find ourselves at the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which was the pit stop for this leg of the race. Phil wonders whether the marked-for-elimination Eric and Pink can keep themselves in the race, and then he tells us how Oswald and Danny arrived first and won an incredibly amazing package from Travelocity that was so cool that we have to mention it again. In fact, we have to watch them researching their good fortune on the internet and saying, literally, "Thanks, Travelocity." And the thanks are captioned, in case you missed the part where the contestant loves the sponsor. There's little more they could do, other than declare Gnome Night and superimpose a gnome head over every contestant for an entire hour. And make all the captions temporarily say "Danny & Oswald: Gnomes And Best Friends." "Dustin & Kandice: Beautiful Gnomes." (I think we'll leave it there before I get myself in trouble.) It's interesting, considering what will occur in this episode, that Danny and Oswald seem to be sharing their good news and excitement with the BQs. Who are evil, as you know and will continue to learn.
3:41 AM. Oswald and Danny. The clue tells them to take a TurboJet ferry Macau. Phil explains that this trip to mainland China is 40 miles by ferry -- so, not a quickie ride, exactly. (Although "TurboJet" is the name of the company and not, as I was hoping, a description of the way the ferry will rise up out of the water and travel, airborne, on a cloud of smoke. When they get to Macau, they'll find a guy with a rickshaw who will give them their clue. Danny and Oswald find that they're getting $73 for the leg, which is an issue for them, owing to their tight finances. Oswald insists in an interview that he and Danny have been "incredibly fair" in their dealings with other teams. I'm not sure I consider trying to jump one team above other teams in a standby line, as happened last week, to be "incredibly fair" if you're going to get into what's "incredibly fair" and what isn't, but...I don't really care about all that in the first place. In the cab, they discuss the fact that they really are quite short of cash, so they have to be really careful. They arrive at the ferry terminal and pay their driver, then they head down the stairs to where the ferry supposedly is. They pay about $50 just for their ferry tickets, so that's not a good thing right there. "Are we allowed to prostitute ourselves on the race?" Oswald wonders as they get on the boat. Several thousand people of all genders and persuasions write letters to CBS to argue that this is the best rule change ever suggested.