Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Gratuitous Footage
By M. Giant | Season 14 | Episode 10 | Aired on 04.26.2009
Luke finishes the first lap and Margie jumps in. Phelps beat Luke by less than a minute for the first hundred. 0:54.92 vs. 1:54.50, to be exact. Maybe it's the slower backstroke that Luke finished up with. Way to pace himself. He's out of breath, and interviews through Margie, "After swimming that distance, I had a lot of respect for Michael Phelps." Who knew swimming in the Olympics was hard? Margie meets Jaime coming back, and Jen's now in a life jacket, watching Kisha reduced to the point where she's pulling herself along the floating lane marker. Speedo is like "Oh, HELL no." Jen's already prepared to give up, as Jaime climbs out the pool, 300 meters done for her team. "I knew we should have done the other thing," Jen complains. Wasn't she the one who wanted to switch in the first place?
Tammy and Victor are not improving their scores, even though they're counting off before leaping now. A two and a three is not encouraging. "This is hard," Tammy realizes, but Victor insists they can do it. Uh-oh. Stubborn Victor is not winning Victor.
Kisha continues to struggle in the pool as Jen tries to get some guidance from her coach as to whether she should do a front or back crawl. "Okay," is all he'll say. "Okay, okay, okay." Not encouraging. Luke jumps in for his second lap, and Jen has to watch Margie complain, "I can't breathe with this suit on," and Jaime sitting and panting, "Oh, my God, it hurts, which also can't be encouraging. Especially to Speedo, who by this point is wondering when they stopped being the official swimsuit of the Olympics and became the official swimsuit of respiratory distress and extreme discomfort. Still. Jaime's not too tired to hurry Cara along. "I was freaking tired, but not hanging out at the other end all day," she yells down the length of the pool.
Kisha finally reaches the far end of the pool, and Jen calls out to her, "We should have done the other one." Not helpful. Kisha doesn't bother responding, and instead starts hauling herself back along the lane marker. Luke's back in the pool for his second lap, and Margie doesn't fail to notice that he's slowed down quite a bit. "He's awfully slow," Margie chuckles. Cara climbs out of the pool, and they've finished with a time of 9:53.30, compared to Phelps's 4:03.84. And right here's where I get it" this isn't a product placement by Speedo, it's a product placement by Michael Phelps. It's his way of saying, "See? It wasn't just the suit, fuckers." But the point is that the cheerleaders have their next clue. They're still in their suits as Jaime rips the clue open and quickly reads, "Make your way to the Pit Stop: North gate at the Drum Tower, Gu La Min. And suddenly we're at Drum Tower, which just happens to be the scene of a random murder of a prominent Minnesota businessman during the Olympics last year. But Phil leaves that part out, preferring to concentrate on facts of less recent vintage: "Built in the thirteenth century, it was where drums were beaten to announce the time of day in ancient Beijing. It is now the Pit Stop for this leg of the race." But when did the thirteenth century become "ancient?" I can think of a few octocentenarians who might take issue with that. Jaime says they're rushing out without even changing. So they just get to run off to the Pit Stop in those five-hundred-dollar swimsuits, then? Okay, maybe after this display, the suits are worth more like three hundred.