Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Look Back in Angkor. Wat?
By M. Giant | Season 13 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.26.2008
Dallas and Toni finish up, to the alarm of Terence and Sarah. "Kenny, that guy's done," Tina warns, because apparently four legs isn't enough to learn everyone's names. Dallas and Toni are off. Andrew? Still getting nowhere. Dan bitches, "Dude, you can't just pump like a baby. Pump stronger." That, if you'll pardon the expression, is what she said. Andrew is indeed turning that crank pretty slowly for some reason, but he insists that isn't the problem. Team Divorced finally arrives, and gets to work finding a truck. Dan and Andrew finally start wandering around the lot, trying to figure out how the other teams are managing this. "There's no trick," Ken assures them. "It's just like pulling a zipper down and letting her flow, boys." They go back, and continue to get nowhere while Kelly and Christy's gas starts flowing. Andrew galumphs over to them. "Dandrew looked bewildered as usual," Kelly laughs in an after-the-fact interview. Ken and Tina finish up and head out in third, with Terence and Sarah close behind in fourth. "Nobody's behind us," Terence tells Sarah. I'm going to have to start calling them Team Rearview if they don't quit looking behind themselves all the time.
Ty and Aja's flight is landing at Siem Reap airport, and they hit the tarmac running. In the taxi, Ty says, "We just need some time to catch up." Agreed; a week or two should do it. Aja is still confident. I don't know how they're staying this positive.
At the pumping station, Kelly and Christy finish up and take off, leaving the Frat Boys behind. "Yep, we're last," Dan whines. But he's discounting Team Long-Distance, as Aja remarks, "It is hotter than Satan's toenail up in here," while Ty quietly counts their money and hopes other teams are having problems. Right, Andrew and Dan? Andrew is still saying, "This is impossible," and I'm beginning to actually wonder if their pump isn't properly connected or something. It would be just like them to have difficulties with a stopcock. But Dan finally grabs the crank and turns it so furiously that not only does he look like his head is about to explode, but some fuel actually flows into the reservoir. "You gotta do it like a madman!" he yells over the thundering noise of the fuel drum buckling under the pressure he's applying to it. He steps back to let Andrew take over again, bouncing on his feet like a triumphant boxer. One whose rotator cuff is flying through the air and halfway to Thailand, but triumphant nonetheless.
On the road to the harbor, Nick is telling Starr how much he'd like to pull down trees in their wake to slow down the other teams, and Dallas is remarking to his mom about what a rock-star day they're having. They have been finding a pretty good pace for themselves ever since dismounting those wooden bikes way back in La Paz. In third place, Ken and Tina are getting passed by Terence and Sarah, the latter of whom is encouraging her driver, "fast fast fast!" Of course, it's subtitled, and she's saying it in what I assume is one of Cambodia's four main languages, the third we've seen her speak so far. I do hope there's a leg at the Las Vegas Hilton and we'll get to see her ask someone for directions in colloquial Klingon. They pass Kenny and Tina, and then Dallas and Toni, and then Ken and Tina pass Dallas and Toni, making pulling motions and high-fiving as they go by. They're also making me very nervous, perched on the narrow edge of their truck bed instead of down inside it in relative safety. The Frat Boys finally are on their way out of the pumping station, and in the truck bed, Dan postmortems, "Another case of us not getting things that everyone else is getting. And we can't let that continue or we're gonna be in trouble." So I guess we can move "lack of self-awareness" closer to the bottom of Dan's list of poor qualities. At least they got out of there ahead of Ty and Aja, who arrive and get cranking.