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An overnight leg in Prague begins with a Kafka-esque Road Block that requires negotiating a roomful of telephones to collect and unscramble the letters in the Metamorphosis author's first name. While Brian and Ericka do a Speed Bump that's all about preparing and drinking a shot of absinthe, Dan and Big Easy form a brief alliance on the Road Block, which Dan abandons as soon as he finishes. After getting passed by Brian, Big Easy just bails on the task, leaving himself and Flight Time staring down a four-hour penalty.
Then everyone has to chill in a "cryotherapy" room for two minutes in their underwear before proceeding to the Detour. Meghan|Cheyne and Sam|Dan choose the option of covering a wooden Golem with clay and then delivering it to a synagogue, with the former team once again reaching the Pit Stop without ever encountering any other racers. The brothers, however, do not have such a smooth experience. But they still stay ahead of Brian and Ericka, struggling to deliver trays of beers across town; and the Globetrotters, spending a long night crashed out in an alley before starting back up in the morning and going through a long greatest-hits montage instead of the final tasks on their way to Philimination. So your final three will be the Americas, the brothers, and Meghan|Cheyne -- not necessarily in that order.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Prague! Buildings! Statues! Graffiti! Wait, graffiti? "Known as the Golden City," Phil says Prague "suffered under Soviet rule for more than forty years [hence the graffiti, I guess] but still emerged as one of the most vibrant cultural and political cities in Central Europe. And dominating the city's skyline," he adds, over a shot of Prague Castle dominating the city's skyline, "Prague Castle." He says it was built in the ninth century, and has lodged kings, emperors, presidents, and, most recently and most importantly, four Amazing Race teams.
And now the first of those teams, which as usual is Meghan and Cheyne, are departing this edifice at night -- 9:46 PM, to be exact. They open their clue, which is sending them across town to the Spanish Synagogue. So it's another leg in the same city as the one, which means Meghan and Cheyne will hardly ever even see another team until week, let alone get passed by one. I don't think it's a spoiler if I'm telling you something you already know. Over b-roll of the synagogue that was clearly shot in the last few minutes of evening twilight, Phil says this is the oldest synagogue in Prague, "Where they'll find their clue." Meghan and Cheyne get into a cab, Meghan claiming that their only focus for this leg is to make it to the final three. Considering their track record so far, you'd think they'd want to aim higher than "not dead last." Cheyne is less modest in an interview recorded before their departure: "The competition's stiff, but, you know, we do have the most wins and have made probably the best decisions, I feel like, that got us here." After he nearly elbows Meghan in the head while putting on his headlamp in the back of the cab, they reach the first clue box of the leg, not failing to notice the big Speed Bump sign waiting there for Brian and Ericka. This clue is sending them to a place called "Stara Kanalizacni Cistima, Ekotechnicke Museum." I do like it when they zoom in on the clue so I can freeze it. Then some sped-up street footage under the darkening sky accompanies Phil's explanation that they need to take a four-mile ride to the edge of town, which is where the museum is. It looks a rather grim place, except or course for the bright colors of the clue box waiting outside. Meghan and Cheyne run up to a cab, show the clue to the driver, and get in when he says, "Okay, I know that." Except he says it in subtitled Czech. But since he also nods, they get the message and get in. I wish there were more legs in countries where nodding meant "no."
Sam and Dan are leaving at 10:13 PM, reading the clue in unison like they're the Wonder Twins or something. Sam interviews that they're probably seen as the villains, since everyone was playing really nice up until the cab-stealing controversy of the leg. We even get a long, black-and-white flashback of said controversy, and then they say they don't care; it's not going to stop them from making it to the final three. Yeah, I don't know if Brian and Ericka have forgiven them, but I have. And I think "villains" is kind of a strong word. I'm not sure I'd refer to them (or any of the rest of the teams, for that matter) by anything harsher than "those guys."
Meghan and Cheyne find the dismal little courtyard outside the museum, and Cheyne reads the Road Block question: "In order to obtain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd." Whoa, trippy. That's not even a question. Just that intro is enough to freak Meghan out. And then, over a shot of Prague's statue of Kafka, Phil narrates, "The existential author Franz Kafka rejected technology and questioned the meaning of life." And then Phil's inside what I hope is not the museum's main hall, because it's a dreary, dusty, depressing cavern packed with scores of small tables, each table holding at least three old-timey black rotary phones. It looks like a call center for the Iron Curtain. Phil says, "To complete the Road Block, one person must enter a convoluted, bureaucratic world that many people refer to as Kafkaesque." In fact, "Kafkaesque" is the name of the Road Block. As Phil vanishes and the phones all start ringing, he voice-overs that the person doing the Road Block will have to search for what Phil calls "the five phones that actually have someone else on the end of the line." Each of those phones will state one of the letters in the word "Franz." Once they have all five letters and have unscrambled the word, they have to go into the supervisor's office. There, two humorless judges in black turn-of-the-century suits with high shirt collars will have them fill out a form. At the bottom of each form are five big boxes, one for each letter in "Franz." Then the "supervisor" will give them their clue, but not before loudly stamping the form with a giant black KAFKA. Cheyne thinks Meghan can do it, even though neither of them knows what "it" is yet. Oh, who are we kidding, there's no reason not to think that.
She goes inside to get started and is pretty clearly overwhelmed by the noisy scene before her, but she seems to take her own advice from last week, systematically picking up receivers and listening one at a time, working her way through every phone on every desk and bookcase. There must be hundreds of them. Hearing the racket outside, Cheyne calmly says, "It sounds like mayhem in there...But I've got a lot of confidence in her. She's going to make it happen." Really going out on a limb there. Over one of the phones, Meghan hears a mechanical voice saying, "R," and she repeats it back as though someone's actually there. "R as in rabbit," she reminds herself loudly and repeatedly as she continues answering phones. Soon she's got a Z for zebra to go with it, and an F as in Ferret. I'm not sure what she'll do if another racer catches up to her while she's still reciting letters to herself, but then I don't know what she'd do if the earth were to suddenly lose all its gravity and atmosphere, which seems about as likely.
Flight Time and Big Easy are departing the Pit Stop at 10:17, and it seems like a lot more than four minutes since Sam and Dan left. We also learn that the allowance for this leg is $113. As they cab up and get on their way to the Spanish Synagogue, Big Easy interviews that they're proud of how they've run the race. "As I said earlier, who you really are is going to come out." For a moment I wonder what Mika and Canaan would think about that, but then I remember that it's been a good long time since anyone cared what Mika and Canaan think.
"N! What's an animal that starts with N?" Meghan asks herself. One letter to go, unless she gets flustered trying to come up with "nematode" or "naked mole rat" and forgets some.
Sam and Dan get to the Spanish Synagogue, and ask their cabbie to wait, which is tempting fate. "Look how cute they are," Sam observes of Brian and Ericka's photo on the Speed Bump sign, causing fate's trigger finger to itch. They get back in their cab, which screams around a corner on the way to the museum. "We got Jeff Gordon up here," Sam says happily.
Meghan has her five letters: RZFNA. Now for the really scary part: facing those two stone-faced judges. From behind his desk, the supervisor hands her a clipboard with a form on it for her to fill out. In addition to the unscrambling, you have to fill out the entire sheet of questions, the purpose of which Meghan thinks is to drive the letters out of your mind. "This is freakin' ridiculous," Meghan says. I think the word she's looking for is actually...let me think..."Gilliamesque." Finally she finishes the form and hands it over. But since she filled in the letters in the order she discovered them, it's wrong. The supervisor seems to come alive for the first time, using a big rubber stamp to energetically pound three giant X'es onto the form, like a bureaucratic version of Family Feud. She asks for another form to give it another try.
The Globetrotters get to the Spanish Synagogue and get their museum clue, still in third place.
Meghan has figured out on her second try that she needed to fill out the boxes on the bottom to spell out "FRANZ." I notice that elsewhere on the form, in addition to her name, initials, and a list of check boxes to indicate what kind of task this is, she also had to give answers like "Patrick Henry" and "Cabernet." How very Ionescan. But it doesn't matter, because the supervisor pounds home the black KAFKA stamp, hands her a clue, and sends her on her way, with neither him nor his underling ever even cracking a smile. For one last, perfect, Kafkaesque touch, we even get to see the supervisor dumping her completed form into the trash bin as she trots obliviously but happily out. Outside, she and Cheyne read the clue sending them to a place called Kryocentrum. Sounds cold, and the flash we get of the place's storefront sign, which includes the characters -160˚ C and a drawing of a harp seal lying on its side to wave a friendly flipper, would seem to support that. But that's where their clue is. They go running off in search of a cab, but the one they spot is the one that belongs to the brothers, who are just arriving. Sam and Dan firmly tell the cabbie to wait for them before leaving. And when Meghan runs up and asks their driver for a ride, he declines. "No, tell him it's okay!" Cheyne calls out to the departing boys, but Meghan says they're not going to do that and asks the driver to call another cab. "This sucks," she says. Yes, they actually encountered another team. So much for a clean leg for them.
Sam and Dan open their clue in second place, and as Dan heads in to do it, Sam warns him, "Hey, don't get frustrated, okay?" That should work. Dan takes in the scene inside, and Sam describes it as it's happening: "I know Dan's gonna get so frustrated because it's gonna be all obnoxious and he's gonna get distracted and flustered." Out on a limb much? But Dan seems to quickly get an A. The letter A, that is, not the grade. As if there's any danger of the latter.
A taxi arrives to pick up Meghan and Cheyne, and they hop in. Dan gets an N and then picks the phone up again to make sure. It's still an N.
Brian and Ericka -- remember them? -- are leaving at 11:40 PM, not quite two hours behind Meghan and Cheyne, and almost an hour and a half behind Sam and Dan. More than could be accounted for by a simple stolen cab, in other words. "Caution: Speed Bump ahead," Brian reads from their clue. They're staying positive despite everything. "We've overcome much more than a little Speed Bump on this race," Brian says, and adds that they're the only team in the final four that's been on the bottom. "So we know how to come back." Wow, that's impressive. His ability to think positively almost reaches the level of a superpower. If he ever comes to a Road Block that requires him to find an upside, he's a lock.
Dan gets his fourth letter, so he's got ANFZ. He's still in there when the Globetrotters arrive outside and Big Easy jogs in to take this one, though just barely; he gets his R and heads for the Supervisor's office just as Big Easy starts answering phones. Big Easy gets his R as Dan finishes completing his form, apparently having put the letters in random order. "I don't know if it's a Czech word or an English word," he says as the supervisor hammers the three X'es onto the paper. By now Big Easy has his F. Consider that a bit of foreshadowing.
Meghan and Cheyne arrive at the Kryocentrum, and outside the building, Cheyne reads the clue instructing, "Check out the coolest holistic treatment in town." And then there's footage of a guy in gloves, sandals, a swim cap, a dust mask, and underwear descending into a kind of reverse sauna. Phil claims that Czech athletes do this to boost healing. "Teams must strip down to little more than their skivvies," Phil narrates over a shot of a close-up of some rather well-packed boxer briefs, and I have to say that if that doesn't merit blurring, I have no idea what was going on with Sam and Dan's junk back in Estonia. In this state of undress, they'll have to walk into a "cryotherapy" room, "which is kept at a brisk 180 degrees below zero Celsius." Holy fuck! That's -292 Fahrenheit, which I wouldn't have previously thought survivable, and I live in Minnesota. But after cooling their heels (and their goddamn livers) in there for a full two minutes, they'll get their clue. Meghan and Cheyne hurry in, change, and Cheyne pronounces the low temperature "gnarly." Then they walk down the mist-shrouded steps into the deep-freeze, open the glass door, step inside, and start howling. Because honestly, they're in an environment that's 5˚ C warmer than liquid oxygen. I'd be howling too. I think I'd still be howling.
Brian and Ericka have finally reached the Spanish Synagogue, and they open up their Speed Bump clue which says, "Pay a visit to the Green Fairy." Suddenly Phil's in a tiny but trendy barroom full of women, the only dude in the place other than one bartender as he explains about the Speed Bump that only Brian and Ericka have to complete. Phil says they'll need to find this place, the M1 Lounge, where the bartender will show them how to prepare a shot of absinthe. Phil describes this as "a complicated three-step process," which sounds like kind of an oxymoron. We see the bartender in quick-cuts, pouring the shot, lighting a sugar cube, and then dropping it into the liquid. After Brian and Ericka drink their shot, they'll be able to get going again. Brian leads them into a neighboring bar, where the bartender directs them "right over there." Easy enough.
Dan lets us in on his foolproof strategy for completing the Road Block: "Right now I'm writing down random words because I have no clue what any Czech words are and these letters are really random so I'm just guessing, basically." Which is getting him nowhere. Post-leg, he interviews, "The supervisors were, like, the biggest douches ever." I disagree. I find their commitment to their roles delightful, if not Beckettian.
Big Easy has all five letters now, and he joins Dan in the Supervisor's office. He's filling out his form as he sees Dan get slapped down, the bangs of the stamp echoing in the bare room. "That's mean," Big Easy says, getting back to his form, which also turns out to be filled in wrong. "You wanna work together?" Big Easy asks. Dan seems to agree, although in an interview he's clear that it was an alliance of convenience. "They are very independent, on their own, will stab you in the back in a second," Dan claims, as if that's a) a bad thing, and b) not a statement that would also apply if he made it in the first person. They both go through a few more attempts, getting nowhere.
Meghan and Cheyne emerge from cold storage, and very loudly, too. "I feel bad for polar bears," Cheyne jokes lamely. Then apparently they have to go warm up on elliptical trainers for a bit, because that's where they are when an employee brings them their clue. The elliptical trainers are a good choice; you'd want a low-impact workout after being turned into a human popsicle. The clue directs them to Charles Bridge. Phil says this bridge "links the old and new sections of the city." Back in their clothes, they emerge out into the street. Upon second examination, that harp seal on the sign is not waving: he has frozen to death. They get in a cab to get to the bridge.
Dan and Big Easy? Still totally ZFNARed.
Brian and Ericka reach the M1. "There was a party going on in there," Brian says emphatically, as we see chicks dancing on the bar Coyote Ugly-style and bartenders behind it breathing fire. "This is the Speed Bump?" Brian says incredulously. As they watch the bartender demo the prep process for the absinthe, Brian interviews that he doesn't drink. You will be tonight, sunshine. While they wait for their sugar cubes to melt, Brian takes in some of the scenery and says it's going to get him in trouble. "You'll get yourself in trouble," Ericka corrects. Afterwards, she interviews about how he was looking around at all the girls. "There was girls in there?" Brian asks innocently. She is not fooled. They suck down their drinks and get their clues as soon as they've finished recovering from making all those horrible faces. Hurrying back to the Speed Bump sign, Brian expresses a hope that there aren't public intoxication laws here. He'll change his mind about that later. They grab a cab to the museum in last place.
Dan finishes his form and brings it to the supervisor. He examines it for a long time under his desk magnifier, then hands it to his underling, who nods. Big Easy asks Dan what he got, but Dan's done "working together," now that he's finished. "It starts with an F, that's all I'm saying," Dan tells Big Easy as his form gets stamped. Big Easy is stunned that Dan is ditching him. "I was giving you every time before I got mine," he protests, as though useless gibberish was somehow valuable. Dan interviews, "I was thinking, why in the heck would I tell him the answer to the Road Block when we're trying to make it to the final three?" Indeed. "That would have been the dumbest mistake I could have made." And for the second leg in a row, Big Easy is left in the lurch, this time by Dan. And I can't really blame Dan, other than for agreeing to work with Big Easy in the first place. Giving him the F was more than generous, effectively reducing the number of possible permutations by a factor of five. It's not really the other kind of F that Big Easy seems to think it is, the kind that is generally followed by a "you."
Dan comes outside and meets Sam, again in second place. "Big Easy hates me right now," Dan says as they walk off in search of a cab and explains what happened. "Should I have told him the clue?" he asks as they get in a taxi. Sam says he told him enough. "He's gonna get it in the five minutes, I guarantee it," Sam says. Sometimes, especially when he's arguing with Dan, Sam is right, at least factually. Note that Sam is not currently arguing with Dan.
Has it been five minutes yet? After failing again, Big Easy casts a frustrated glance out the door Dan just exited by and lets out a loud grunt. "I wouldn't have done him like that, but like I always say, you are who you are," he tells us. He settles down and says, "It is what it is. I'm here, I just gotta get it before the team comes."
Too late, because here are Brian and Ericka. Brian will be doing this one. He gets right to it, with the underling in the office watching him creepily through the office window in a rather Magrittian fashion while Big Easy continues toiling, and admits that he's losing track of attempts but he'll figure it out. Brian gets an R. As in, he R catching up.
Meghan and Cheyne have reached the Charles Bridge, and run onto the span to find a clue box not far from where Jon Voight toppled over the railing in Mission: Impossible. It's a Detour, and the choice is "Legend" or "Lager." I know which one I'd go with based on the names, but let's let Phil describe them. For Legend, Phil says that teams will be "building a Golem, a figure made of straw and clay that was constructed to protect the Jewish Quarters in the fifteenth century." You already know what a Golem is if you've read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or ever played Dungeons and Dragons. And they really don't have to build one, per se. The wooden shells, in the vague but threatening shapes of humanoid hulks with squashed heads, are already built for them and enveloped in a layer of chicken wire. All the racers will have to do is plaster heavy wet clay (provided in wooden buckets right there) all over the figure. The hard part, actually -- and it will be hard -- is getting it across town to the Old New Synagogue, which Phil calls "the Golem's ancient home." If the rabbi there is happy, he'll give them their clue. As for Lager, Phil says, "Teams must drink in the local culture and deliver beer to a group of rowdy soccer hooligans." The camera winds down a steep, narrow spiral staircase and into a basement taproom, where said hooligans are raucously wearing and waving their various teams' colors. Phil says that soccer is Europe's most popular sport, with beer-drinking coming in a close second in Prague. "The Czech people drink more beer per capita than any other country in the world," he informs us. Judge much, Phil? Back to the task, which requires the teams to carry a total of thirty beers -- in open pint glasses, on trays -- "through the busy town square" (which actually looks abandoned in the high-speed trek the camera takes through it) to the previously shown bar. Then the bartender "will serve them their clue." Meghan and Cheyne quickly agree to do Legend.
Sam and Dan's cabdriver tips us a thumbs-up as he drops the brothers off at the Kryocentrum in second place. They are led to a changing room, where a young female employee looks a little rueful about having to close the door to their changing room with herself on the outside of it. "My ass is too big for these," Sam says of his borrowed trunks as they head down the steps. Sam describes what they had to wear, including the "SARS mask." "It was a bizarre little costume," he says. In they go, trying to best each other's equanimity as they disappear down into the mist.
Brian is getting his last letter. "Can you confirm Z as in zebra?" he asks the mechanical voice. It repeats automatically, and he hangs up, satisfied. "Piecing them together, that's the tough part," he says as he heads for the supervisor's office. He gets his clipboard and takes up position in the back corner with a causal "What's up, Big Easy?" that belies the fact that the two of them are now effectively tied. He sits down and watches as Big Easy gets the dreaded triple-X yet again. "I've been here about two and a half hours," Big Easy confides. What!? How is that even possible? I mean, I'm no math whiz, but if I'm calculating correctly, there are 120 possible permutations of those five letters. And if you lock in the F, that reduces the number to only 24. Now, maybe Big Easy is not taking it for granted that Dan was telling the truth about that, but it still seems like a good place to start, if only because Dan isn't generally that sneaky. Of course, Big Easy may not be a math whiz either, but at least he knows when to ask for a calculator. Brian, meanwhile, doesn't fill in the last five letters before messing around with them a bit on scratch paper. "It's like we're missing a vowel," he remarks. Well, then why not try locking the vowel in the middle? That reduces the number of possibilities to six. Brian fails on the first try. "He's so mean with the stamp," he remarks as the supervisor does his thing, like Big Easy hasn't noticed. In two and a half hours.
Meghan and Cheyne arrive at the riverbank and are met with a rather intimidating scene: four hulking Golem frames. They pick one and move it closer to the clay buckets, thrilled to see it's on wheels. Not half as thrilled as they will be. They get started on applying the clay, and Meghan gets the idea to lay the figure down so they can both reach all of him. Makes sense now, but it might be risky given the weight the clay will add before it's time to stand him up again.
Sam and Dan come out of the Polarium, saying, "Not too bad!" No blurring now, which is not surprising considering their dicks have probably shrunk all the way in to their sternums. Sam is happy to hear they're going to the Charles Bridge, which he says is "really pretty." They catch a cab at a gas station/convenience store across the street, so Sam can hurry up and get some more sightseeing done.
"I'll tell you one thing, if we don't get this word right and we come out of here last, I'm never coming back to the Czech Republic," Flight Time tells Ericka, who laughs. Inside, Brian writes down "FRANZ" in the five blocks, gets his clue, and celebrates on his way out. He does not tell Big Easy what the word is, or even the second letter. So Brian, a.k.a. Mr. Karma, a.k.a. Mr. Help The Other Teams And They'll Help You, doesn't give him anything at all, which lets Dan even further off the hook he already wasn't on, in my opinion. "Babe, I got it!" he crows outside, and he and Ericka are now officially in third place. "And I did it drunk, too!" he says as they get in their cab. Watch, now he'll get home and not be able to accomplish anything without a shot of hooch.
Big Easy is running out of patience. "That is some bullshit!" he bellows. Finally, he makes his way back out among the still-ringing telephones, goes outside, and calls out, "Herb! I ain't get it yet, dawg." Flight Time asks if he wants to take the penalty, and calmly accepts it when Big Easy says he does. I can't believe I'm seeing this. I don't believe I've ever seen it before, even. Over shots of the unimpressed supervisors, Phil narrates, "In the event that a team is unable to complete a Road Block, a four-hour penalty must be served before they can resume the race." Ouch. A clock on the screen duly starts counting down from 4:00:00 as Big Easy blames himself, and Flight Time tells him not to worry about it. Because it's apparently impossible to make Flight Time mad. In an interview, Big Easy talks about how you never quit. "But in this instance, it benefitted us to quit, so I just took the four-hour penalty to maybe have enough time to catch up with the other teams." Flight Time backs him up, calling it a "strategic move." I'm sorry, I'm failing to see the strategic value of voluntarily putting yourself another four hours behind everyone when you're already in last place and there's only going to be half a leg to catch up in. And no matter you look at it, as they go to sit down on some nearby steps, that is going to be a long-ass four hours. Even after the ads, There's still 3:47 left on their penalty as they sit on a staircase, hoping for the best.
Meghan and Cheyne have finished coating their Golem -- front and back, having rolled it over at some point -- and now have to lift it back to an upright position, now that it's a lot heavier than when they started. They're up to it, though, and Cheyne takes hold of the convenient dolly handle that spans the Golem's shoulder blades and starts wheeling it across the cobblestones, grunting with the effort. He interviews that it weighed enough that he could barely lift it alone. So Meghan joins him in the pulling. Of this copy of a sacred religious artifact, Cheyne observes, "He is a fat-ass."
Sam and Dan find the clue box on the Charles Bridge and also decide on Legend.
Brian and Ericka reach the Kryocentrum, in third place. I can't get over that. As they change, Ericka talks about being from Florida and hating the cold. "I didn't see snow until I was 21," she says. "I'm just not a winter baby by any stretch and I'm fine with that." But they head down into the Polarium anyway, because what else are they going to do?" My ankles are frozen!" Ericka cries from inside. The ceiling of the Polarium actually protrudes about a foot up into the room above, with glass windows. Which you can't see through anyway because it's filled with opaque mist. That's some good TV right there.
Meghan and Cheyne muscle their Golem down the street, Cheyne continuing to struggle. Meghan explains that's because he's hogging the dolly bar, making it impossible for her to take any weight. She makes him scootch over, and that seems to work better.
Sam and Dan find the Golems, and are glad to see they aren't that heavy -- yet. Complaining the whole time, they start plastering clay, going from the top down. Which seems like a recipe for dangerously overbalancing the whole thing, but they're the experts. After Dan's working on the left arm, and Sam warns him to be careful because he's going to walk over to get more clay and thus can't hold it up for a minute. But either Dan or the weight of the clay already applied to that side pulls the Golem over sideways, and the wooden arm snaps clean off at the shoulder. Only the chicken-wire armature is holding it in place now. "It's okay, Dan, we can fix it with clay," Sam calmly assures his freaked-out brother, and they lift it up again. Dan asks doubtfully, "Should we just keep doing this?" Never too early to bail, is it? Of course, given where the Globetrotters are right now, they probably have time to complete the other task after completing this one.
Brian and Ericka finish their Polarium visit. "It was clearly the coldest I've ever been," she says. No shit. Like I said, I live in Minnesota, and that's two hundred and fifty degrees colder than I've ever been. I would think it's colder than anyone's ever been who has not been in that room, or in outer space without a suit. But anyway, soon they're on their way to the Charles Bridge for the Detour clue. In the cab, Brian says, "The last leg, everything went wrong and today everything's going right." Oh, man. What is he trying to do to them? I know he likes to stay positive, but that's totally calling down the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing.
Meghan, Cheyne, and their Golem are trying to cross a busy street and getting honked at for their trouble. After pausing on the trolley track in the middle (because it's easier to stop a streetcar than an automobile for a giant clay man in your path, I guess they figure), they finally get it to the curb and stand it upright. Meghan takes Cheyne to task for all the yelling he's doing, which is totally not directed at her, but she firmly tells him to knock it off anyway. "Encouraging, positive, not stressed-out and loud," she instructs. Because Meghan is the only one who's allowed to get frustrated, I guess. They get going again.
Sam and Dan look almost done, but Dan is complaining about the time Sam's spending on that broken arm. "I'm covering this dirt, Dan," he protests, and utters a line that should have been this episode's title: "I can't have dirt all over him or else the rabbi's gonna be pissed!" Yes, we all remember that episode of Seinfeld.
Brian and Ericka reach the Charles Bridge and decide on Lager. "I used to be a server, I can carry that stuff," Brian says. They ask directions from a guy in a doorway, who unhelpfully slurs, "I'm lost also." They leave him to it, Ericka adding, "And drunk." She's not kidding; dude is so tanked his face is blurry. Fortunately for the Americas, a cab pulls up, and the driver directs them 700 meters thataway. Now that's precise.
Meghan and Cheyne reach the Old New Synagogue, and the old bearded Rabbi looks over their Golem with approval. "That ain't bad. Very nice work." The younger rabbi gives them their clue, and off they go to the Pit Stop, once again in first place. What else is new. Phil says that this week, the Pit Stop is Strelecky Ostrov, whose establishing shots were either filmed under a very rapidly darkening sky or in time-lapse. "This small island to the world-famous Charles Bridge is the Pit Stop for this leg of the race," Phil informs us. "The last team to check in here may be eliminated." The mud-caked pair find a taxi with a perky female driver and offer to pay her extra to take them there. And to wipe down her own seats afterward, presumably.
Sam and Dan are dragging their Golem from the riverbank up to the street, bickering once again. Sam suggests Dan use one of his own arms to hold the Golem's broken one in place. For some reason, Dan wants to park their Golem right there in the middle of the street, yelling, "That will stop a car! Dumbass, put it up!" Is Dan also going to suggest adjusting the broken arm to hold up one hand like a mythic traffic cop? Sam tells Dan to stop being immature, and then devolves right into sarcastic sniping right back at him as they stand behind their Golem, which is now guarding the middle of the road. Legends of it will be passed down through generations of cobblestones. Dan explains in a post-leg interview that he wanted to find the synagogue before schlepping the Golem around, "and Sam didn't want to do that." Sam doesn't even want to look in the camera at this point. As they spot a passing taxi to break their deadlock, a camera happens to notice a clock on a lamppost that reads almost 2:00 AM. Damn, this is a long leg. The cabbie gives them directions, and as they return to their waiting Golem, Dan starts to voice doubts about whether their directions are valid. "Dan, absolutely, we're going there, okay?" Sam snaps, cutting him off.
Brian and Ericka find the brewery, where they go downstairs to find all the beer glasses already laid out for them, filled with a dark brew that makes Guinness look like 7Up. Brian says he'll take eight and she'll take seven, and gives her a little demonstration on how to pick up the little round server tray by putting your hand under the center. They emerge onto the sidewalk thus laden, and are immediately waylaid by a small group of five soccer hooligans who walk along with them noisily, making Ericka very nervous. "You guys don't have jobs?" Brian snipes at them. About here is when everything stops going right for them. As you knew it would.
Meghan and Cheyne's cabbie drops them off at the park, and they run down a set of stone steps toward where Phil is waiting by the river with a model in a red dress. "Big Philly!" Cheyne calls out as they run up. The greeter welcomes them to Prague, and Cheyne responds, "Sorry we're so gross." Phil shakes his head and tells them, "Once again, you are team number one." Even he's bored by it at this point. They celebrate as Phil tells them they're in the final three, plus they've won a 52-inch TV -- each. Maybe they can link them together to make one 104-incher, or just put one in their sauna. In their post-leg interview, Cheyne has given up all pretense at modesty as he says, "We are the best team going into the final three, absolutely. We've won the most legs. I think we're the most confident, we're both physically strong, mentally strong, and we're prepared for what's going to come our way."
Unlike, say, Sam and Dan, the latter of whom is bitching about how heavy the Golem is as they try to cross the Charles Bridge. Well, duh. How do well do you think Prague's medieval Jews would have been protected by a Golem made of meringue and helium? "I know it is but you have to tough it out," Sam says. "Meghan did it, let's go." Meghan not only did it, she got Cheyne to listen to her while doing it. Finally, Sam gives in and lets them stand it up with an enraged, "Gosh dang it, Dan!" Dan screams at him to shut up, threatens to drop it just out of sheer pissiness, and finally agrees to get going again. I think Dan's just about due for a fresh epiphany. If by "epiphany" you mean "five upside the head."
So how are the Globetrotters doing? Well, their penalty is now under three hours. 2:58:24, to be exact. Big Easy continues to beat himself up, even as Flight Time tells him to let it go. Big Easy explains to his partner about the form they had to fill out with each attempt. "How many times you do it?" Flight Time asks, probably wondering if it's too late to go back in and try again. Big Easy laughs, holding his hands about a foot off the ground to indicate the size of the stack he generated. "I killed about four trees." Flight Time continues to hope for other teams' suckage. Because that's a solid strategy in the penultimate leg.
Still, Brian and Ericka might be about filling the bill. Attempting to rest their beer trays on a garden-level windowsill, Brian spills all but four of his glasses. "It's all right, it's all right," he says calmly, even as Ericka, getting out if his way, somehow spills all of hers, the glasses smashing on the pavement. There's just one sad little empty glass on its side rolling back and forth on her tray, but Brian continues to play it cool. Ericka, however, is not buying, and wants to switch tasks. "This is not going to work. I'm not willing to make it work," she declares. Yeah, can you imagine her laboring beneath a Golem? Think she'd be more willing to make that work? Brian puts two of his surviving glasses on her tray, assuring her they won't be there all night. "This is in. Sane," she in. Sists.
After the ads, Brain prevails on her to continue walking with the seven glasses they still have. But it gets harder as they start encountering people on the sidewalk, and order them rather impatiently to stay clear. Eventually they move to the other side of the traffic barrier, walking on the shoulder to avoid the drunks. Even so, one of them reaches over to try to snag one of Brian's, which might have tipped the whole thing. "We had a lot of challenges within the challenge," Brian interviews. Finally they reach the bar and carefully deliver their pathetic seven beers to a table of hooligans in the bacchanal below. 23 to go, and then they will have brought enough beers for one of them.
Sam and Dan are still hauling their Golem and still arguing, and Dan claims to be getting lightheaded from the effort. "With brothers, sometimes the person who wins is whoever yells the loudest, so we gotta try and get over that right now," Sam says. They get back underway, under their Golem.
Brian and Ericka are back at the brewery, where a confusing exterior shot shows both an evening-blue sky and a clock that reads 9:05. They load up for a second trip, Brian attempting a fresh strategy of not overloading. Either Ericka is not shown saying anything, or she has simply lapsed into sullen silence.
As they're walking back to the bar, nervously eyeing a passing street sweeper, a woman they meet is like, "For me? For me?" and makes a grab for Brian's tray. "Out the damn way!" Ericka snaps from in his wake, and even Brian roars back at her once she's safely past, "Are you kidding me?" They continue this service with a smile, as Ericka tells a bystander, "Yeah, I do have some American attitude. Touch me and you get punched." Well, at least she's owning it.
Flight Time and Big Easy are still on their stairs. Flight Time is not ready to give up. What's it going to take with that guy?
If Sam and Dan could move their Golem by the power of bickering, they'd be there already.
By the time Ericka and Brian make it back to the bar, it's closed down and the drunks are doing their cheering outside the locked outer door. They're up to nineteen beers, and they jump in a cab to return for the other eleven. Good plan.
Approaching the synagogue, Sam suggests raising the dolly bar to chest-level, which turns out to be a lot less labor-intensive. I guess it puts more of the weight on the Golem's wheels and less of it on the brothers. "Why didn't we do this the whole freaking way?" Dan wonders. They reach the synagogue with the waiting rabbis, who either don't notice the broken arm or don't care, because the brothers get their clue. "Detour from frickin' hell," Dan says before they open their Pit Stop clue. They get into a cab, and Dan admits, "I was a complete baby during that." Classily, Sam agrees. "It was really pissing me off," he says. I'm glad Dan had another epiphany, but I'm a little worried that they might come in threes.
Brian and Ericka load up with six and five beers respectively, which seems to me like cutting it close. If they drop only one, that's a whole trip back, after all. Only two soccer hooligans are waiting for them outside this time. "Where'd your other friend go? They left?" Brian asks them. Ericka patiently pretends to engage them in conversation. "How's life? That's what I thought." "Our goal is to finish this Detour before the sun comes up," Brian says as they turn the corner into a shot that shows the sky is getting lighter in the east already. Better hurry.
The brothers arrive at the mat, and Dan gives a little wolf-howl at the sight of the model. You're already out, dude. Phil gives them a rather severe look before telling them they're team number two, and the brothers hug happily. In their hotel room afterward, Sam says, "Every team's going to be thinking of us as second or third place, second or third place, so they're not gonna see us coming from behind and taking the million from them." Back at the mat, they resolve to catch Meghan and Cheyne, and even Phil asks doubtfully if they think they can do it. "We have twice before, so why not again?" Dan asks. Uh, because of the eight times they didn't?
The sun comes up, and the last seconds of the Globetrotters' penalty tick away. Big Easy returns to the supervisors' office, and gets handed his a clue. Man, those poor guys had to stay up all night too? No wonder they were in such a sour mood. It's like they knew.
That must be a hellish long walk back to the bar for Brian and Ericka, because it's full daylight by the time they return. "Looks like the party died," Brian observes, setting his tray of beers down to the bartender who's now dozing outside his locked door. He hands them their clue, and they're off to the Pit Stop. "Sorry to keep you up all night," Brian says, and they leave him sleeping there again, surrounded by thirty beers. One can only imagine what people might think about the night he had, walking by this dude who's passed out surrounded by pint glasses that are still full. In the cab on the way there, Brian hopes the other Detour was just as hard as the one they chose. "It took us all night long."
Flight Time and Big Easy get a cab to the Kryocentrum, Flight Time remaining optimistic and hopeful, because what else are they going to do? Quit again?
Brain and Ericka reach the mat, and when Phil tells them they are the third team to arrive, they go ballistic with joy. Even Brian seemed certain they were done. In their jubilation. Brian throws Ericka up in the air so high I think they're both going to end up in the river, but once again they avoid disaster, because that's what they're all about. Ericka admits that they've made their share of mistakes, but plan to keep fighting. "We're in it to win it," Brian says.
Flight Time and Big Easy, in last place and a full Detour behind, reach the clue box outside Kryocentrum, but their clue doesn't say the same thing the others' did. "Make your way to the Pit Stop," Flight Time reads. They grab a cab, and Big Easy says they're not done racing until Phil tells them. Flight Time adds. "We're Globetrotters, we travel the word, but all the things we've done on the race have been new to us. Experiences that we'll have for the rest of our lives. We can always look back and say that we did it." Well, except for during this leg.
Cue the memory montage over one last repeat of "Sweet Georgia Brown." Big Easy paddles his dinghy by hand. They do the Dutch dance. They lead their crowd across the Tokyo intersection. Flight Time dances on the stage of the Estates Theater. They ride their bikes, looking like buffoons. They go down the water slide in Dubai, Big Easy drags himself up the rope, and finally they dance away from the mat in Sweden.
Finally they're entering the park. "Love you, dawg," Flight Time says. "Love you too, baby," Big Easy returns. By the time they reach the mat, the model has given up and gone home and Phil's there alone. He tells them they're the last team to arrive, and Philiminates them. "Loved watching you guys race around the world, I have to say," he adds. They respond that they had a great time. Even the last four hours? Big Easy says, "Sometimes this race can tear at relationships, and I think it built ours and I love Flight Time to death, and hopefully me and him will be teammates for another twenty years, and I know we're gonna be friends forever anyway." Flight Time smiles, and in their post Philimination interview, he says they finished the race like they started it. "We're Harlem Globetrotters. We go as a team and we leave as a team. We didn't win the million dollars but the experience that we had is priceless." They hoist their backpacks and walk away from the mat, arm in arm. And Big Easy can look forward to the rest of a career that will involve autographing basketballs, jerseys, sneakers, and now, paperback copies of Metamorphosis.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.