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The four remaining teams head to Shanghai, and thence to the "Venice of China," Zhujiajao. The brothers and the Detectives get lost while the Cowboys and the models cruise the canals and do a Road Block where they make noodles under the watchful gaze of World's Smallest Man Pingping (or over it, more accurately). The Cowboys grab an early lead, even through a fashion-based challenge back in Shanghai. Then, for the first time ever, it's the second Road Block of the leg, requiring players to put together a giant puzzle out of stadium cards that will direct them to the seat concealing their clue. Gusts of wind that re-arrange the cards even things out a bit, but don't prevent Jet and Cord from winning yet another leg. And Michael is fatally flummoxed by the puzzle, but even after arriving at the Pit Stop in the dark of night, a non-elimination leg means they live to race another day. Not Pingping, though, apparently.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!I never recap the previouslies, but this one is almost like a season finale sequence, from the word go. Literally, we see Phil telling all eleven teams, "Go!" at the Starting Line, as a set-up for the longstanding, if one-sided, feud between Carol|Brandy and Brent|Caite, complete with the umpteenth replay of the entire recorded litany of offenses, which is that Carol and Brandy allegedly made a lame joke early on about Caite racing with a tiara, and Louie passed it along to Caite. Which of course culminated in the leg, with Caite's U-Turn of the other team and her status as "the last woman standing." Four teams remain, and I must confess: at the beginning of the season, I wouldn't have thought any these four would even be among them.
"This is Singapore," Phil reminds us. It's been two weeks, after all. He continues, "Once a rowdy fishing village, it is now a model of order and cleanliness and one of the richest cities in the world." All we learn about Marina Barrage, other than that it was the ninth Pit Stop, is that it's a "massive reservoir." Thanks for that valuable data.
Dan and Jordan are leaving in first place, at 4:47 PM. They're going to Shanghai, which Phil says is more than 2,300 miles away, so it's off to the airport. After landing, they'll cab it to Zhujiajiao, a musically-named city of pagoda-lined canals that Phil refers to as "The Venice of China." They'll have to ride gondolas to the clue box and everything. In a pre-start interview, the brothers talk about how well they're getting along with each other, although there have been moments. "I hate him just as much now as I did before," Dan deadpans. Jordan more seriously says he loves Dan even more, "Because he's making my dream come true every single day." I'd suggest Jordan marry him, then, but I don't think the compatibility goes both ways. For instance, I suspect Dan would want sex once in a while.
That Fast Forward made a big difference, because Brent and Caite are leaving an hour and a half later, at 6:18 PM. Caite talks about how proud they are of having "used the U-Turn successfully" last leg. Wait, is there a wrong way to U-Turn somebody? Is it possible to screw it up? Because I'd argue that they in fact kind of did. "I'm sorry, Carol and Brandy, that we U-Turned you," she lies laughingly. In the cab, she gloats about being the "last girl standing," and how "it shows all them haters out there what I'm capable of, so I'm really proud of myself." Yeah, haters, she'll show you how a real pro hates. Look upon her works, ye haters, and despair!
Dan and Jordan are at the airport, and learn that a) the flight to Shanghai is at 12:55 AM, and that b) the ticket counter won't even open until 10:25 PM. After everyone arrives, in other words. So much for their Fast Forward lead.
It's early dusk outside as Jet and Cord rip open their clue in third place, at 7:04. We learn a little about what they left behind: Jet has a wife and a 17-month-old daughter, and Cord just got engaged. "It's kind of funny to think, you ask a girl to spend the rest of your life with you and you leave." It's kind of funny to learn after ten weeks that they have women waiting for them at home. I guess I just kind of assumed they were single this whole time, although I also assumed they probably wouldn't be for long.
By the time Louie and Michael open their clue at 7:35, it's either totally dark outside or foreshadowing has literally blotted out the sun. Michael interviews that as the old-guy team, they are both wise and experienced, yet are used to being underdogs. "People should fear us here," he says. Fear the underdogs! Wait, what?
Jet and Cord reach the airport not long before the Detectives do, and the four of them head inside, where they soon meet Dan and Jordan. The three teams start discussing the leg's U-Turn. Then the six of them spot Brent and Caite from the food court and call them over to hear their story. Caite happily relates it, and everyone acts happy for her, even Jordan. Bleah. But then later, Jordan interviews about what a dumb move it was. He says they should have U-Turned the Cowboys instead. "We're all gonna look back on that and question that decision," he says. Well except the team who did the U-Turning, and the team who told them whom to U-Turn, and the team who benefited from not getting U-Turned even though they should have been. So by "we all," I guess he means himself and Dan. Not that Dan looks all that interested.
Everyone gets on the plane, and the Amazing Red Line heads north-northeast a surprising distance to Shanghai. Some snazzily edited B-roll shows it as a bustling, colorful, sprawling metropolis, and of course it's winter there, so it's probably good that Steve and Allie didn't make it this far with their two outfits between them. The plane lands at Shanghai Pudong International Airport at 6:10 AM. "First place!" Dan crows jokingly, coming out of the terminal a half-inch ahead of an otherwise undifferentiated knot of racers. It's a footrace for the taxis, and the Cowboys get out of there in first place for once. "Good morning, Shanghai," Jordan says in their second-place cab. Brent and Caite take off in third, but Louie and Michael are not only in last place, their cabdriver doesn't speak any English. The Cowboys are enjoying their speedy ride, even though the editing would have us believe it goes from daylight to pre-dawn twilight at one point. Whereas the brothers' driver has to get out for directions. Unfortunately, he's getting them from the Detectives' driver, who doesn't seem to know any more than he does, so there are probably limit to what they'll be able to accomplish together.
The Cowboys reach Zhujiajiao just before the models do, and it's a bit of a scramble in search of the boats, past Tai Chi squads and over footbridges. The models reach the waiting boats first, and the gondolier starts rowing them out into the canal, using a single stern-mounted paddle that doubles as a rudder. Looks like it takes some finesse to navigate one of those. The Cowboys aren't far behind, but both teams have plenty of time on the leisurely voyage through the city to admire the atmosphere. "I feel like I'm in, like, Sicily," Brent says, getting his Italian cities mixed up. Caite doesn't even think it looks real. She has a point; the place is so clean and picturesque that it looks more like a theme park than a city where people actually live and work. In a post-leg interview, Jet describes the setting as "tranquil," which seems to be a new word for Cord.
Meanwhile, the other two teams are way lost, and not able to communicate with anyone, least of all their cabbies. Michael complains about how people on the plane told him a third of the people in Shanghai speak English, but "we met the other two-thirds, that was for sure." Watching this at home, 13.3 million Shanghainese citizens say to each other, "Oh, yeah, those guys!"
The models' boat docks, and they soon find their clue box to a big old steam pot of some kind. Which seems like kind of an unnecessary beacon, given how few times we've seen people failing to find clue boxes this season. I'll give them that at least. The envelope indicates a Road Block. "Noodles have been a staple of the Chinese diet for at least two thousand years," Phil says. I think I heard that somewhere. "Even in the Middle Ages, noodle houses like [the one in the background behind him] were open 24 hours a day." Then Phil is transported to an outdoor table outside that establishment, where a chef is deftly stretching, swinging, and twisting massive ropes of dough into noodles, and even Phil looks impressed as he says the teams will have to "master the complex art of making noodles by hand." As we'll see, "master" is a pretty strong word, but starting with a big lump of dough, they'll have to imitate the chef's work until they've produced one thousand grams (or a "kilo," for us metrically-challenged Americans, at least those of us who don't deal cocaine) of noodles, which will be weighed on a scale sitting right there on their work table. And then Pingping will give them their clue. Who's Pingping, you ask? Why, he's the world's shortest man. Indeed, dressed in a miniature chef's jacket, with an elfin face peering out from under a miniature toque that still looks gigantic. Dude looks like Verne Troyer's Mini-Me. If this isn't specific enough, his official height is stated as two foot five. Caite will be doing this Road Block, and as America's goodwill ambassador, dressed in her own chef's jacket and toque that she needs to wear for the Road Block, she gingerly approaches Pingping like he's a skittish zoo animal. "He was so adorable," Caite interviews, seemingly unaware that she's referring to an adult human. He and Caite watch the chef-judge perform a little demonstration, as from the viewing area on a nearby footbridge, Brent estimates that Pingping is the length of his shin. Good for you, Lurch. Caite gets started twisting the dough, but she's not exactly smooth. In fact, she knocks the pan off her scale with one early swing. Or maybe that's just a subterfuge so she can sneakily recalibrate it. No, just kidding. That would never occur to her.
By now, Jet and Cord have found the clue box, and Jet will be doing this Road Block. Jet interviews of Pingping, "If he jumped out of your trash can, it would scare you to death." If not much less demeaning, this remark is at least funnier than Caite's request, "Can I take him home?" Wearing both cowboy hats on the sidelines, Cord remarks that he doesn't know where Pingping shops, "but he wears a small." "This ain't like roping," Jet says, as he struggles almost as much as Caite does. At the same time, I wouldn't advise him to try to bring down a steer with uncooked noodles.
Meanwhile, the other two teams continue to be lost, to the vast frustration of the brothers. And the Detectives don't feel much better about it. "One bad cabdriver could cost you a million dollars," Michael remarks, having completely forgotten that they control their own destiny.
The desperate little caravan pulls over at a desolate parking lot somewhere, which is not the right place, but both teams are satisfied with having found an English-speaking local who can give their cabbies directions to Zhujiajiao in the local language. And according to them, it's only three kilometers away. Back underway, Dan complains, "I feel like I'm in the movie Behind Enemy Lines." That would indeed suck for me, because I've never seen that movie and so would be totally lost, even before Owen Wilson shows up with short hair.
Back at the Road Block, Pingping now has a smoldering length of one-inch PVC pipe dangling from his lips. Oh, wait, it's just a regular-sized cigarette. Think he gets carded when he buys those? From the sidelines, Brent offers Caite some encouragement: "I can't marry you if you can't cook, babe." Is that supposed to make her go faster? Jet, however, has discovered the trick of adding more flour to keep the noodles from sticking together, but with only a hundred grams of noodles in the scale, he's got some work left to do. "Whoop that pasta!" Cord calls from the footbridge. Jet does, risking whooplash.
The other two teams have reached Zhujiajiao, and Brent is telling us that Caite needs to be more gentle with her pasta, like how Jet is doing. "I will never ask her to make homemade spaghetti," Brent confides to us. I'm sure she'll be relieved to hear it. The two trailing teams have found the village and are now reaching the boats. Caite asks for chef-judge approval for some of her noodles, which are just a sticky, tangled mass, to Brent's frustration. Jet, however, is "so close I can taste it." The two late-arriving teams glide by in their gondolas, offering a little mild heckling as they pass. Jet's way ahead of Caite by now. The brothers are the third team to reach the clue box, and Jordan is taking this one. "Let's go, you little noodle master," Dan calls. Louie is going to be taking this one: "I remember helping my grandmother make pasta when I was a kid," he interviews. Now all four teams are here, and Jordan is jealous of Jet's powers of control over seemingly uncontrollable objects. Which must seem doubly impressive to Jordan, as the list of thinking Jordan is unable to control looks as though it will soon include Jordan. Jet finishes first, and Pingping hands him the clue, nobly refraining from jumping out of a trash can to do so.
Over some traffic-zooming footage, Phil says they now have to return to Shanghai, specifically the fashion district. "Good job, Pasta Man!" Cord says as they head out. Louie, meanwhile, is learning that this noodle-making process isn't how he remembers it. And Caite is getting annoyed with Brent's unsolicited input, telling him to shut up. In the cab back to Shanghai, Jet and Cord marvel over Pingping and his giant-looking cigarettes. "So apparently, smoking will stunt your growth," Jet says with a straight face. I'm sure Pingping's never heard that one before.
The three other noodle-makers are still struggling, to Brent's increasing impatience. After a while, the Cowboys have reached Shanghai, about which they only thing they know is the movie Shanghai Noon. This is becoming quite the Owen Wilson film festival of references here. But wait, wasn't Shanghai Knights the one set over there? I don't know, I've never seen either of those movies either. As the parent of a five-year-old, I've absorbed enough Owen Wilson through Cars and the two Night at the Museums to meet my recommended daily allowance of Butterscotch Stallion for the rest of my life.
Caite is getting close to done, but still not quickly enough for Brent. Michael jokingly asks her to make some for Louie when she's done. And Louie starts singing some spaghetti-commercial music to keep the mood nice and Italian.
In a narrow Shanghai alley, Jet and Cord have found their clue, which is a "Route Info" directing them to "go inside the fashion house and work together." Now here's Phil, explaining how Shanghai is "the fashion capital of China, with trendy designers and runway shows rivaling New York and Paris." Milan and London kick its ass, though. He adds, "Now teams must battle against quantity to achieve the right quality." Whatever that means. Phil is in a cavernous design warehouse, where casually dressed models are holding up sketches of outfits. Each team will have to pick one of those models and then recreate the outfit from the sketch -- pulling from racks and racks of clothes and accessories. The designer (a bespectacled young woman in a glittery appliqué sweater, and look at what this challenge is doing to me if I'm already using words like "appliqué") will give them their clue if they get it right. "Aw, shoot, not more fine arts," Jet says, which sounds incongruous in a way I can't quite put my finger on. But they bravely enter the fashion house, to the strains of the Heroic Cowboy Theme. They pick a sketch and get to work as best they can, deciding to have fun with it by joking like they're totally in their zone. "Don't let the clothes fool you," Cord interviews. "We're into the fashion world, let me tell you."
Caite finishes up, gets her clue, and gives Pingping a condescending hug and a kiss on his cheek in exchange. Dude's a grown-ass man, Caite, even if he's not particularly grown-ass. Off they go to their cab. As Pingping walks past Jordan (the top of his toque barely level with the work surface), he nearly gets whipped in the face by Jordan's wildly swinging pasta dough. The danger is probably worth it to Pingping, if he's going to get more smokes. Jordan asks the chef-judge for approval of his latest batch of noodles, but the judge only cuts off a small length and pops it in the scale's pan, rejecting the rest. Jordan's frustration has him nearly on the verge of tears. Louie sees this as an opportunity to jump ahead, and although the giant lump of noodles dropped on his scale puts a large dent in the project for him, Jordan is only about halfway done.
The Cowboys are wandering the racks, not having much luck finding a shirt that matches the one in the sketch. "Can I borrow your shirt?" Cord asks one of the other models. She doesn't bother to answer. Jet says they need to hurry up: "If Jordan gets here, he's gonna catch us." Okay, heh. They both agree that this is way harder than bull riding. They deliver a pile of clothes to a model, and she starts back to a curtained-off circle to change while they speculate whimsically about their future in fashion design. I can see the runways of Shanghai being taken by storm in a revival of cowboy hats and giant belt buckles.
Louie is comparing himself to Lucille Ball as he whips out his last batch of noodles, and hums a little tune while the chef-judge gathers up his product and an amused Michael says he's going to punch Louie in the head. He is in fact done, while Jordan is still turning out what looks like one noodle at a time. Left alone, Dan says he feels bad for Jordan, having to do this in the cold. He's definitely making slow progress, and his hands are freezing, but then Dan comes up to give him a hug. "Just relax, okay? You're doing fine. I know how hard this is, okay?" Jordan hugs back with his forearms, avoiding putting his doughy, flour-covered hands on Dan's jacket, so he hasn't totally lost it. But it's still a stressful enough moment to trigger an ad break.
After which, Jordan interviews that he needed that. Dan even gives him a tissue and tells him he loves him before returning to the footbridge. Aw. Now that's how you deal with a teammate's meltdown, right there. Of course it probably helps that Dan doesn't want this as much as Jordan does, and patiently encouraged Jordan to give himself a break rather than screaming at him from the sidelines, like most other teams in this situation.
Jet and Cord's model returns to the platform in an outfit that includes a big, poufy, black jacket, boots, and purple tights. They love it, but the designer doesn't. They figure the only thing they could have gotten wrong was the shirt. Back into the racks. "It's not for everybody, out here on the trail," Cord deadpans. Jet finds the right shirt, and they hand it to the model. While she changes, Jet points knowingly at the sketch, saying, "See the texture? Attention to detail." "Where you been all day?" Cord retorts. This time they have it right, and the Heroic Cowboy Theme accompanies their reading of the clue sending them to their destination: Hongkou Football Stadium, which Phil says is across town. Cord vaults a railing on their way back out to the street, and the cabdriver knows where that is. They're on their way, but they aren't done making jokes about the challenge they just completed. "Shopping wears me smooth out," Jet says in the back of the taxi. Okay, now they're done.
They're well clear by the time Brent and Caite arrive in second place. Unsurprisingly, the models seem off to a good start. Then here come Louie and Michael, who read the clue right outside the door they're supposed to enter -- and then go right past that door in search of the fashion house, which they just walked away from, completely oblivious. This must have been an example of what Michael meant when he said the other teams should fear them.
Meanwhile, Brent and Caite interview about how this is a different experience from what they're used to; usually doing the dressing instead of being dressed. And the Detectives continue to search for "Fashion House," like there's going to be a sign on the front of the building that says that. Jordan drops a bundle of noodles on the ground, then snatches it up, looking around guiltily to see if anyone noticed. Pingping did, going by his amused grin. "Do not laugh at me," Jordan tells him firmly. After adding another handful to the pile on the scale, Jordan is finally done, and he hugs the chef-judge before accepting the clue from Pingping with a gracious bow and expression of gratitude. It's worth pointing out that even though Jordan may seem to live in a fairytale fantasy world sometimes, he wasn't the one who treated the two-and-a-half-foot-tall man like a member of the Lollipop Guild. They're off to Shanghai. In the cab, with Jordan trying to restore circulation to his cold-stiffened fingers, Dan remarks as if in surprise, "You smell like noodles!" Heh.
Brent and Caite hand off their collected clothes to the model. "This is going to be so hilarious when the dads get here," she says. What's even more hilarious is that the "dads" are wandering a farmer's market or something. She asks the model while she's changing, "Do you need my tiara to help you?" Sure, it's funny when she says it, but coming from anyone else, it's a U-Turning offense. Is "tiara," like, the beauty queen version of one of those words that when an outsider says it, it's totally offensive, but when the person it applies to uses it they own it and it becomes empowering? That's kind of good to know, because I'd hate to accidentally offend a beauty queen. Even though they are all completely horrible people who should die.
"That football stadium is hoooge," Jet says as their cab approaches. Inside, they soon find the Amazing Arrows and Flags leading them to the clue box, out on the edge of the field. So what kind of Detour is this? Well, believe it or not, it's another Road Block. "For the first time ever," Phil announces, "teams are facing two Road Blocks in the same leg of the race. But what they could never have predicted, is the person who sat out the first Road Block must do this one." Well, that part's actually less surprising than throwing two Road Blocks out there. While he's been talking, the camera's been swirling around him until it shows a section of the otherwise empty seats behind him, occupied by a solid block of a hundred or so locals, hidden behind a set of those stadium cards you see sometimes. The cards show a picture of a dragon, of course, because we're in China. They flip them, revealing some English text on the flip side that disappears into the description of the Road Block before we have time to read it. In that description, we first see an 8x10 painting of that same dragon, which is an example of the guide that the racer will have to use in assembling 96 cards into a full-sized version of the picture. Then they'll need to hand them out to the group of "spectators." If the puzzle is correctly assembled, when the spectators flip them, the other side will show the racer a section, row, and seat number where they'll find their clue. And I guess if it's not correctly assembled, it'll just say something like "<|)_-'ˉ/^--(~.├⌐∩."
Cord is doing this one, clearly. "Oh, my gravy," he says, bent over a tall stack of cards on the outer track, facing a small crowd of locals chanting "Let's go, let's go" in the local language. Cord gets to work, and can tell this'll be tough. Watching from the sidelines, Jet says, "There may be places he's not as talented as other people, but he's always made it up in try. I'm definitely glad to have him as a teammate." Aw. Cord, however, has realized that he's working with an unwelcome partner of his own on this Road Block: a wind that seems to be whistling down through the large roof overhangs of the open-air stadium like breath over a beer bottle. Except the bottom of this beer bottle holds tiny little cardboard squares that a tiny little person is trying to lay out neatly in a specific pattern before they blow away. That person's going to need some beer after that.
Louie and Michael are now going back to the clue box to reboot their futile search for "Fashion House." And Brent and Caite finish on the first try, and take off in second place to the stadium. They're long gone by the time Michael and Louie have found their way back to the clue box, and Michael literally looks at the door right to it and says, "Hey, what's this?" It opens when he pulls it. "Idiot," he says, with impressive verbal economy. They both feel pretty stupid. "What kind of detectives are we? We walked right by the place," Louie interviews, which saves me from having to say it. They get to work picking out clothes. "Boy, you're gonna look sexy," Louie tells their model. Right now she just looks irritated. Which I understand some people find sexy, especially coming from models, but then there's a lot about the fashion world I don't understand.
Dan and Jordan reach the clue box and the adjoining fashion house in last place, and enter with the Detectives still inside. Dan all but disappears from our screens as Jordan gets to work like a one-man team. "Being the gay male that he was, he was in heaven," Michael interviews. Stereotyping is fun! And no, I know I didn't call the Cowboys on it, but they were at least funnier. The Detectives' model comes out, and even I can tell from looking at her that they've got the wrong stockings on her. The fail-gong, along with the designer shaking her head and waving her hands in a "get it away from me" manner, confirms it. Louie gets her another pair of stockings, which just happens to be the last item Jordan is looking for. Jordan and Dan load up their model while Michael complains, "This is not my forte. Could we have a shooting challenge, please?" Maybe there would have been one, but then the producers had to drop it when they realized it meant putting firearms into the hands of Brent and Caite. And who expected them to still be in the race at this point, after all?
At the stadium, Cord is making progress on his puzzle, but a gust of wind takes one of his cards out into the field. Brent and Caite arrive in second place, and Caite's a little disappointed not to be doing this one. "I freaking love puzzles." Especially the kind with fewer than a hundred pieces, I'd guess. Brent jogs over and calls, "Hello!" to his ready-made cheering section, getting to work quickly enough to narrow the gap between himself and Cord. Where's that wind?
Michael and Louie's model is still not dressed correctly on the second attempt. They're still trying to figure it out when the brothers' model emerges, and she's wrong too. Jordan quickly realizes that their models are wearing each other's stockings, and he jumps up and down rushing them to go back and switch. "Our girl, hurry!" he calls back to the curtained-off areas. It's down to the models now, and I'm sure everyone at home is cheering for "Our Girl." But Louie and Michael's comes out first, and she's dressed right, so the Detectives are off in third place. Dan and Jordan are right behind them in last, but closer than they were before thanks to the Detectives' unscheduled walkabout. Michael is still lamenting the unfairness of the challenges. "We had a rodeo in Argentina. Can we get some shooting? Kick a door in? Chase a crackhead, something?" How about finding an address? Jordan tells his and Dan's driver to follow Louie and Michael's cab, so at least somebody is being pursued..
Cord has assembled his puzzle in two sections (head and body), so now he just needs to integrate them. Caite and Jet watch from the sidelines, in a shot where the stadium's giant scoreboard clock can be clearly seen reading 12:25. The two trailing teams arrive shortly thereafter, and of course this is down to Michael and Dan for their respective teams. Cord already senses victory. On the way to his area, Dan jumps over some cards Michael just dropped on the ground. "Normally I'm sitting where they're sitting, watching people have to perform," Dan remarks, which I'm sure is not his way of reassuring us that he's a red-blooded sports fan, if you know what I mean. Which is good, because the backwards hat tipped all the way forward over his eyebrows sends that message loud and clear. Brent and Cord are both close to finished, although Cord is increasingly worried about the wind. Brent has an errant card get away from him, and Cord is just starting to say something that begins with, "If these things blow away," when a rogue gust kicks up and sends a dozen or more of his and Brent's cards -- each -- tumbling across the field. I guess he doesn't need to finish that hypothetical remark, because it just quit being hypothetical. Brent angrily chases after his cards like they're a flock of flightless, geometric birds. Cord concentrates on keeping what he's got, throwing down his jacket and hat (?) and then spreading his body over the surviving part of his puzzle like he's a drunken hydrophobe on the pitching deck of a stormbound fishing boat that's lost its engine, lights, and gravity.
After the ads, Brent interviews about how now he had to start all over. Jordan yells out at Dan to hold his cards down with their backpacks. Although he and Michael seem to be less vulnerable to the wind on their side of the stadium, Dan hurries to do so. Better safe than screaming your way into the commercial break. Brent comes over to Caite to get theirs, bitching the whole way, and Caite tells him to calm down. As soon as he's gone, she turns and gives us what's actually a kind of endearing little mock-cringe. I appreciate that moment showing their team as only half-annoying.
Cord, meanwhile, is lucky enough to have been working right by a whole rack of folding chairs, which he throws out onto his area of the field one after the other like some kind of infernal WWE pitching machine. "That is a little frustrating," he interviews later, "but throwing a fit, kicking and screaming wasn't gonna help get my puzzle done." Yeah, it's not working for Brent, either, but not for lack of trying.
On the far side of the stadium, Dan and Michael don't seem to be having such problems, although Michael seems to be making a career out of searching for one particular piece. "Come on, baby, I love you!" Caite screeches shrilly, then asides to us, "He's so pissed right now." Even before Brent screams, "STOP!" at a card that gets up to leave, she can tell this. They know each other so well. Cord, meanwhile, is finished, and starts gathering up the cards one row at a time to distribute them to his spectators in similar fashion. "You're number one!" his first spectator says. Nice of these people to be so into it. Soon all the people in his section are obscured by a big orange dragon. "I hope I got it," he pants, admiring the result. Everyone pauses to watch as the cards flip to flawlessly reveal the words "Section 20 Row 16 Seat 33." Cord reads it off while standing to the guy with the megaphone who must have given the order to flip. Cord starts quickly gathering up all of his stuff he's been using as ballast, including his belt (and after all the airport security they've been through in the past few weeks, I'm sure he has this down to a science), while Jet yells at him to go get the clue already. Cord hits the stands and runs along behind the back row of the lower deck, vaulting the railings between sections. And there's his clue, right where the cards said it would be. He runs back past his section, where the restored dragon seems to be cheering him on as he waves his new clue at them. "Man, you were awesome," Jet says as he opens their clue, which is telling them to take the Metro to the Pit Stop.
Phil says that Pit Stop is the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum," which we can see is a sprawling facility with an open-air courtyard dominated by gyroscopic sculpture and a giant glass sphere. "Built in 2001, this immense facility is the size of fifteen football fields," Phil says, once again deploying The Amazing Race's standard unit of area measurement. "The last team to check in here may be eliminated," he says, and Jet repeats that in reading the clue before they dash off, telling Caite, Louie, and Jordan, "See you guys." For what it's worth, the analog scoreboard clock in the distant background now either reads 12:55 or 1:55. It's hard to say which, because the show is too cheap to shoot in HD. Which is actually fine with me, because I'm too cheap to have HD anyway.
We're about to see how two different approaches to the puzzle work. Or, more accurately, how one of them does. Michael is going back to his stack and paging through it to search for each individual piece as it comes up, which is a method I can only describe as magnificently dumb-ass. Jordan, however, is doing like his dad taught him (and how mine taught me), starting with the corners and then the edges and then working his way in. Which I'm not sure is as valid when every piece is a perfect square. This might actually be a situation that calls for my own annoyingly bizarre technique, which is to stare closely at each individual piece, figure out where it goes based on which tiny part of the picture is on it, and then place it there, whether there are adjoining pieces in place yet or not. Jet and Cord are already outside the stadium and getting directions to the Metro, which just happens to be passing by high overhead on an elevated track. They probably shouldn't try to catch that one.
Brent finishes his puzzle and raises his arms in victory. Caite and Jordan bounce in sync on the sidelines, excitedly going, "Eeee, eee, eee!" WTF? The Cowboys are asking a fellow train commuter for help getting to the museum from a fellow commuter for getting to the museum, which is a mere five stops away according to the wall map (with its text printed in both Mandarin and English). Soon they're on the train, en route to yet another win. Sorry if that's a spoiler.
Brent's cards are flipped to read Section 3, Row 10, Seat 26. "I think he got it, and I'm proud of him," Caite says in what sounds a lot like surprise. He finds their clue, and they're off to the Metro in second place. "Dude, we'd have beat the Cowboys, had the wind not blown, that's how close I was at the beginning," Brent carps as they walk to the station. "I know, baby," Caite says patiently, if not indulgently, if not skeptically. Why is she in such a good mood today? It's kind of suspicious. Maybe someone should check her backpack for Pingping.
Now it's just Michael and Dan, and Michael's still on a mission to find the one piece he's after, while Dan is making much better progress. The models, meanwhile, are at the Metro station and finding the overhead map directing them to the museum all on their own, so at least they beat the Cowboys in that sense. "What a day," Brent sighs as they ride the train. Up ahead, Jet and Cord disembark their train and ascend to ground level onto the grounds of the museum. Phil's standing on the mat in front of that glass sphere, and the greeters this time are four young women, who are clearly not the same models from earlier because they're smiling. The Cowboys sprint up the mat and are duly welcomed to Shanghai, China. Phil makes them wait before telling then they're team number one, and they've won a trip to Alaska. "Great day today," Phil tells them encouragingly. Jet says Cord had a great day and Cord says he didn't want to let Jet down. "Winning first for the fourth time is awesome," Cord interviews. Yeah, good thing Carol and Brandy are gone. As for their prizes, Cord adds, "We've won three trips around the world, and me and him both say we ain't going with each other, we're going with somebody else." As well as they've been getting along? Maybe all those trips just sound too romantic.
Michael and Dan are still at it. "It's not just a puzzle," Michael interviews. "It's a puzzle for a million dollars." And apparently, he's under the impression that he's paid by the hour.
Here come Brent and Caite, in second place. "Which is not bad," Phil tells them. Especially for them. They don't argue, but they're not thrilled either. Brent in particular. He looks like he's hoping for a chance to U-Turn the wind at some point.
Jordan keeps leaning on Louie's shoulder as they wait for their respective partners. Dan's down to his last few tiles, and he beats Michael handily. "Now get those pieces up there!" Jordan screams. Michael looks to be only about halfway done as Dan passes out the cards, and Louie keeps calling out, "It is what it is. Just do it." Again, "It is what it is" on this show can almost always be translated as, "We're fucked." Dan's going to Section 8, Row 2, Seat 5, at what looks like either 2:15 or 3:10. Either way, they have their clue, and they high-five Louie as they run past him. "The only team behind me is now ahead of me," Michael laments, but adds, "I'm not gonna give up here." Dan and Jordan find the museum and the mat with no trouble. "They're so cute," he says of the four greeters. Phil tells them they're team number three, and as he observes, "You don't know whether to high-five or hug?" "I like hugs," Jordan explains. Dan interviews that his goal was to "give Jordan his dream of running the Amazing Race, and no matter what happens, from this point on, that dream has been achieved." So does this mean he's going to sleep in tomorrow morning?
Dude, it's getting dark outside and Michael's still there, futzing with his puzzle. "We've been here so long that the lights just came on," Louie tells us, "So this could be it." With four teams and two episodes left? We'll see. As Michael finishes up at last, and is sent to Section 17, Row 17, Seat 27, Louie rhapsodizes in voice-over about having no regrets and being blessed to have gotten this far. "I love you man," Louie says, and they hug as Michael meets him on the sidelines with their clue. The sad part is that yellow envelope was white when this Road Block started. "Warning, the last team to be checked in may be eliminated," Louie reads from the clue. Note his hopeful emphasis on the word "may."
It's full dark by the time they reach the museum, and Louie's voice-over is still going on, like he's Michael Westen or something. "I was sad because I didn't want this race to end. Me and Mike have been on the journey of a lifetime." The first of those four increasingly cold models welcomes them to Shanghai, and Phil tells them they're the last team to arrive, which can't be news to them. "I'm sorry to tell you that you are out." Of course he never says it that way, so they look sad until he adds, "Out in the cold!" He grins like a dork as they celebrate their survival. "I had you two times in a row, man!" Phil tells them. He remembers to warn them about their Speed Bump, which they aren't worried about. It's just a Speed Bump, after all. It's not like it's screwed up anyone else this season. I'd be more worried about the multi-hour lead the other teams will have on them at the starting line, if I were them.
Louie interviews that they're blessed, and plans to give them "the fight of a life." That's something I'd like to see. "I want to be able to say I finished the Amazing Race, no matter being one, two, or three, I finished it." So yet another final four team not that motivated to win. That should make for an exciting finale. Back on the mat, Phil tells him, "Louie, don't make me eliminate you." Louie vows that it won't happen. Man, non-elimination legs. I probably hate them less than anyone, because they're a way to maintain suspense even when one team is time zones behind the rest, and I can always hope for one when one of my favorite teams is dragging ass to the mat when everyone else is asleep. But three in a season is too many. Especially when one comes after a week off. You realize the last time we saw an elimination on this show was before tax day?
And then there's a little slo-mo shot of a smiling Pingping, with the subtitle, "In memory of He Pingping." Turns out he died just last month, at the age of 21, and it wasn't even the cigarettes. But wherever he is, I'm sure he wishes his memorial episode would have been a better one.
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.
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