Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Huger than Huge
By M. Giant | Season 16 | Episode 12 | Aired on 05.09.2010
straight ahead. Virtu-Jordan steps on the goal, and suddenly he's back in the middle of the empty starfield, but now he's surrounded by a lengthy helix of text spinning around him at high speed. Dan wonders what's going on, seeing the letters whiz past Jordan's virtual field of vision, and it takes him a minute to realize that Jordan's not moving, the words are. Dan tells him to hold on while he tries to read it. "It's going by the screen, like, wicked fast." Almost in hyperdrive.Brent would appear to be making short work of the Coit Tower. He enjoys the view on the way down with his clue. Might as well get something out of the day's experiences.
Cord directs Jet straight ahead. Meanwhile, Dan figures out that he can see the text better when Jordan turns his head to "follow" the moving words. So now he's going to have to make Jordan do that, seemingly indefinitely. Cord, meanwhile, is trying to get Jet lined up on a final approach to the level-one goal, which is going to put him on a collision course with Jordan. "Hang on. Jordan's in front of me," Jet says. "Give Jordan a wedgie, tell him to get out of the way," Cord snaps. "We got a race going here." Jet says he's not moving until Jordan does. Of course, even though they're a foot apart in meatspace, the third person view of neither avatar shows the other, let alone being visible in the first-person helmet-cam view. "Hey, direct him out of the way," Cord says, banging on the divider separating him from Dan. Dan bangs back and says something blur-worthy. Cord leans around the divider and threatens, "I'll get one of these Star Wars guys to take you out, man!" Which is funny except for how Cord says it totally straight-faced. Fortunately for Dan, the commercials come before Cord can issue Order 66. But don't they see what's happening? The failure of the Galactic Republic had its roots in disputes over trade routes -- people getting in each other's way over large sums of money, just like here! Of course, that was all ginned up from behind the scenes by then-Senator Palpatine, who had his own shadowy motives but okay I'll stop now.
When we come back, all the spinning is making Jordan dizzy, and he asks if there's another way. "No Jordan, obviously not!" Dan yells down the headset. Jordan says he's going to throw up. Cord relays this to Jet. "Yeah, I know," Jet says, closer to Jordan than Cord is to Dan. "I think Jordan's fixing to start spinning around again." "Start fixing to spin around again," Dan confirms. Cord asks if there's no way around, which there isn't, especially given the narrowness of this virtual corridor. "I don't care who's in front of you," Cord presses. "Can you take one step forward?" Jet does, and his avatar inches into the green circle. With that, level two commences for the Cowboys. Dan warns Jordan that it's taking a while. Cord asks Jet for a panorama, and soon finds the hallway to go down from where Jet is now, which means the two Js can finally give each other a little personal space. At last, Dan is satisfied that he has enough of the clue transcribed, and they get up to go, Dan getting a little turnabout on Cord by twanging, "Slide to the left! Faster! No, not that way, the other way, the other way, the other way!" The brothers meet up and are escorted out, Jordan reading the lengthy clue Dan transcribed, which is sending them to Tonga. Phil tells us that's one of the first tiki bars in the country, and it's the location of their next clue. Sure, the clue text on the screen could have just told them that, but the wordy set-up and description of their next destination was of course part of the challenge. Even though it was a blatant disregard of physics in the Star Wars universe, where words don't spiral around you in space but crawl slowly upwards and away.
Jet reaches the goal at level two, and there's the spinning text. Cord is flummoxed. "I hope I'm not supposed to read that," he says.
Brent and Caite arrive at ILM, and are glad to see that there are still cabs there. They should be. "I'm the director," Brent decrees as soon as they read the clue. They get escorted across campus while the brothers get in their cab to Tonga, warning their cabbie, "They're right behind us." Well, sort of.
Cord, however, still can't catch up to the text. Caite is in her motion-capture suit, and Brent is telling her he'll give her directions. "Where's the slo-mo on this thing?" Cord wonders, looking under the desk. Caite's avatar is, of course, in a skin-tight knit outfit with a utility belt because someone figured she'd look better as a bounty hunter or something and besides Clone Trooper armor doesn't accommodate boobs. Brent directs her to the starting point. Jet makes an excellent point to Cord: "If the other two can figure it out, surely we can figure it out." "I'd like to think so," Cord agrees. Dan talks about how it's them and the Cowboys, head-to head," And we got just a little bit of a lead on them." Cord is getting fragments of a clue that read "on a hill far away" and "Soldiers something." "They die?" Jet asks, bored. Even at this extremity, that's about as close as they ever get to sniping at each other. Despite himself, Brent manages to direct Caite to the level one goal, mostly because of Caite standing still and silent in wide-eyed confusion while he sorts himself out. Cord is stuck on the clue's opening: "A long time ago on a hill far, far away." "There's a whole paragraph you're supposed to get," he explains to Jet. As Caite approaches him, Jet simply says, "Oh, sweet." Remember that thing I said I'd tell you about when it was happening? It's happening.
The brothers are dropped off at the hotel that houses Tonga in its basement. On the way through the lobby, Jordan reads from the clue that they're supposed to find a trunk and take it to the next destination. The place is dead, except of course for the live band, but there's a stack of three steamer trunks next to the lagoon. Yes, there's a lagoon in there. "But where are we going?" Jordan wonders. Then they happen to look at the decal on the lid which reads, "The Great American Music Hall." Must be going there. They heft the trunk, one on each end, and head out. On their way, they meet a young woman in a Columbia sweatshirt who claims to be familiar with the area, but she's never heard of the Great American Music Hall, so she ducks out of the shot. Well, she was rather less Columbia University than Space Shuttle Columbia, wasn't she?
At long last, Cord has finally figured out the secret to being able to read the clue: "How dizzy you ready to get?" he asks Jet. In a post-race interview, he berates himself, "Oh, you idiot." And seriously, for as strong as a team as they've been, with such a functional and mutually supportive relationship, there's just no excuse for that at this point in the game. It would be one thing if they hadn't both been aware of Jordan's spinning around, but they were, which makes this hang-up on their part just mystifying. I'd go so far as to call it avatarded. Jet commences turning. And Caite reaches the goal as well, and it takes Brent a lot less time to figure out the turning thing than it did Cord. Way to be outsmarted by the models, guys. Yeah, that thing? It happened.
Meanwhile, the brothers enter the hotel's convenience store to ask for directions to the Great American Music Hall, and are told it's about a ten- to fifteen- minute walk. It's about ten blocks, going by Google Maps. They're on their way. What, they don't want to sit in the back of a cab with a steamer trunk?