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Let's hope Nat and Kat really enjoy the trip they won last week, because an overnight wait for a train to Stockholm grinds their lead to dust (although they have the consolation of sharing a compartment with Brook and Claire, so they can smell each other's footwear). From there, it's on to St. Petersburg, where a Detour requires them to identify either three Russian piano compositions in a roomful of pianos or a clip from an Eisenstein film from a pile of celluloid. The musical task proves so frustrating that three of the four teams who picked it switch to the film, leaving Chad and Stephanie there alone, where she totally saves his whiny ass. Then, for the Road Block, racers have to dress up like Russian babushkas to plant and fertilize potatoes with manure. Jill and Thomas win the leg, while Mallory gets lost on the babushka task. Thus the big race at the back of the pack is between Gary/Mallory and Chad/Stephanie. But Nick and Vicki, who pulled a rare double-switch at the Detour, come in a distant last -- only to learn it's a non-elimination leg. What's it going to take with those two?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"This is Narvik, on the west coast of Norway," Phil announces. It may be a "quaint seaside town" now, but was first settled during the Stone Age, possibly by some of the same people we saw in last week's episode. Speaking of the Stone Age, apparently the Norwegian military helped the British bomb the German Navy back there during WWII at Ankenes Marina, which more recently and more importantly became the fifth Pit Stop in a race around the world.
Nat and Kat, who won the last leg, will be leaving at 8:26 PM, even though it looks like the middle of the day. That happens in the northern latitudes in June. Makes it a bitch to put your kids to bed. Anyway, Nat reads from the clue that they'll be going to St. Petersburg, Russia, which Phil says will happen via car, train, and plane, although they're only covering about 1,200 miles. Upon landing, they'll need to get to Vasilievsky Island and find the Rostral Columns, which Phil says are a monument to Russia's two largest rivers. Do those really need monuments? Were St. Petersburg residents likely to forget them? Whatever the case, the Columns are the site of the clue box.
As they jog back to the car they drove here, Nat and Kat marvel about how light it is outside even though "it's so late at night" (again, the timestamp on the screen reminds us it's 8:28 PM, so it's not that late at night for anyone who isn't a morning-radio DJ). As Kat drives them to the train station, we hear them talk about how they are used to succeeding in a male-dominated environment, so they think that mojo will translate to making them the first all-female team to win. After 16 seasons, that's certainly overdue. They reach the train station, which -- oops -- opens at 6:00 AM the morning. Oh, come on. They ate a sheep's head for this? They do succeed in getting a security guard to open the door and check a schedule for them, which is how they learn the train will be leaving at 10:26 tomorrow morning. "It looks like probably everyone's going to be on the same train," Kat narrates. And after a quick shot of Narvik's nighttime sky -- which in summer actually just looks more like what we in more civilized latitudes like 45 degrees north know as sunset -- it's 10:26 AM, and all the other teams are indeed at the station. So we never find out how far apart the teams actually were at the end of the last leg. I hate that. It's just about the only objective information we get about how well teams are actually doing in relation to each other.
Mallory tells us she's never been on a train before, which is not entirely surprising. All the other teams board, Thomas naturally not passing up his chance to let Jill know that of course he's slept on a train before. By the end of the season he's going to have her convinced that this is actually his second or third Amazing Race. After a brief check-in with all the other teams, just to remind us of who they all are (and by the way, there are seven teams, a fact which I normally have a smoother excuse to work in before now), the train leaves the station. An Amazing Cameraman gets to visit the driver up front, and Mallory talks about enjoying this travel time with her dad while they don't have to be racing. I'm sure Gary enjoys it too; it might give his eardrums a chance to heal a bit. Team QVC and Team @ are sharing a compartment, and we learn two important things: the doctors enjoy the company of positive people like the home shopping hosts; and of the four women in the two remaining all-female teams, Brook's shoes smell the worst.
After the train pulls into Stockholm in what looks like the 28 Days Later hours of the early morning, everyone races for taxis to the airport. Team @ gets theirs first, and their driver even burns a little rubber peeling away from the curb. So that's 0.05% of their lead back. Nick & Vicki seem to get the second cab, which zooms past Chad and Stephanie. Then off go Jill & Thomas, Brook & Claire, and Michael & Kevin, leaving Chad standing there frustrated. Stephanie leads Chad over to an intersection while he bitches at her for making them be the last ones to get a cab. Stephanie's not hearing that, and there's no reason she should -- in the earlier shot of the teams running down the platform, she was right there with everyone. "Everything's my fault," she says sarcastically as they wait for a taxi to go by in the abandoned street. That does seem to be Chad's primary coping mechanism. And besides, Gary and Mallory also don't have a tax -- oh, wait, now they do. When Chad and Stephanie finally get a cab, he sits in it seething about being in last place. Stephanie tells Chad that blaming her for this is "shady." "Shady?" Chad sneers. Well, you can't say "shitty" on TV.
On to Arlanda Airport, where everyone gets on the same flight anyway. Now that the crisis is over, Chad confesses to us, "I was a little frustrated that we were last again." Stephanie clarifies, "Whenever he's pissed and frustrated, it's just Steph's fault. If he feels like that then we've got a really long road ahead of us." Or a really short road, with Philimination at the end of it.
The Amazing Red Line zooms across the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg, but never mind all the historical magnificence that the b-roll wants to show us; we've got seven teams scrambling out of the airport in another mad dash for taxis. Brook and Claire get an early lead, Brook singing, "We're in Russia, and we're Russian through traffic!" Which makes her the first person in history to make a variation on that joke. Michael lectures Kevin, "This is a city full of history and culture." Kevin rolls his eyes, admitting, "I'm worried about the clue box." Yes, because it might point them toward some history and culture. Chad and Stephanie are far enough in front now for Chad to enjoy the architecture rather than act like a big ragewad. Gary compares it to a postcard, and Thomas professes to Jill, "They call this the Venice of the North." Since there's no "fail" sound effect dropped in here, I'll have to assume that's correct. Better yet, he doesn't get patronizing enough to explain to Jill what Venice is. In Nick and Vicki's cab, he makes a succinct comparison between St. Petersburg and their Vegas hometown: "I like how they keep all their buildings instead of blowing them up." Well, why do you think there's no St. Petersburg Hotel and Casino on the Strip? They'd have to keep it. Also getting into the atmosphere of the city, Nat and Kat have temporarily rechristened themselves "Natasha" and "Katya." Which is certainly more fun than watching them stress out about being in last place.
Brook and Claire are the first team to find the clue box in the park around the Rostral Columns, and they jump over the chain and onto the grass to run for it without winding up in a gulag. It's a Detour, the choice being "Classical Music" or "Classical Cinema." Phil says that some of Russia's greatest composers and filmmakers lived in St. Petersburg, hence this Detour that actually makes sense. For Classical Music, the teams will go to a "historic palace" (just sitting there in the middle of the city, because it's St. Petersburg and they don't blow their buildings up), and find a room where three gramophones are playing three different piano pieces by three different Russian composers. That's the easy part. Then they'll have to go into a cavernous ballroom where a small army of pianists are all playing something different, and find the three musicians playing the same pieces heard on the gramophones. Those pieces being Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade," and Tchaikovsky's "Troika," which I think we can all agree are three of our favorites. The racers will then have to swipe a piece of sheet music from the stacks on each of the correct pianos (lest you think this is too easy, the wrong pianos also have sheet music on them) and stick it in a folder -- in the right order, no less. The "maestro" standing over the gramophones (who looks about 28) will give them their clue if they get it right. Let's hope he's a patient man.
For "Classical Cinema," the teams head to a film studio, specifically a soundstage that, according to Phil, was "the very first place that a movie was screened in Russia." Then they'll have to dig through a giant pile of film clips -- seriously, it's like several of those piles of film in Inglourious Basterds -- to find any piece of the clip playing in an endless loop on the giant screen in the soundstage (which happens to be from Sergei Eisenstein's October, also known as Ten Days that Shook the World). Then they'll show it to a guy in a director's chair dressed up in a 1920's tweed suit, and "the director" will give them their clue. I'm sure CBS will be inundated with complaints about their showing pro-Bolshevik propaganda during the family hour, or they would be if anyone who'd complain about it knew that's what it was.
Brook and Claire decide on that one, and head back to their cab to ask their driver to take them to Lenfilm Studio while Michael and Kevin arrive at the clue box. "That classical music sounds so gnarly," Brook remarks. Kevin somehow decides that his experience making videos will come in handy for "Classic Cinema." Chad and Stephanie decide on Classical Music, as do Gary and Mallory. The other three teams all arrive at the Rostral Columns at roughly the same time. Jill and Thomas will be doing cinema, Nick and Vicki music, and Team @ (currently in last place) cinema as well.
Unfortunately for Brook and Claire, their driver doesn't know where Lenfilm is (philistine), so Michael and Kevin are the first team to get there and find their way onto Soundstage 4. YouTube auteur Kevin gets taken down a notch or two when he takes in the scene: "I've never studied that kind of film." Yes, his directing experience doesn't really apply to the kind that requires you to spend hours punching those little holes in the film. In fact, it's Michael who has to tell Kevin how to hold the clips up to the light so they can see what's on them. Oy. One hopes Kevin is able to see the images on the film for what they are rather than looking for series of ones and zeroes.
Jill and Thomas arrive and join the search. Brook and Claire's driver, however, is still searching for the studio itself. Man, nobody who gets a lead in this leg gets to enjoy it for very long.
Chad and Stephanie get to the palace where the music Detour is being held and quickly find the three gramophones. They bend over to listen to each of them in turn and think they've got it, until they head into the ballroom and find a score of grand pianists collectively making a noise like a hailstorm in a Steinway factory -- and then another ten in the room. Chad and Stephanie start putting their ears on piano lids like they're doing a high-speed remake of Immortal Beloved. The other three teams doing this Detour arrive and are almost immediately equally overwhelmed. But at least they're at a Detour, as opposed to Brook and Claire, who still aren't.
But after the ads their driver gets directions, so they're soon on their way again. Back to the piano hall, where we get to hear snatches of the three pieces (complete with subtitles reminding us which is which, like anyone who doesn't already know them will ever use that information again) and racers rushing around. "Yeah, that's number one," Chad says. He and Stephanie gather a couple of more sheets and submit them for the maestro's approval, and are promptly rewarded with a decisive no. They wisely decide to give the records another listen. Back in the hall, Vicki has correctly identified the piano playing the third piece, but Nick confidently says, "This is definitely not it. Nowhere near it." Idiot. In an interview, Gary uses words and grammar to describe how frustrating it was, while Mallory spastically imitates piano playing as it might be done by a hateful orangutan.
Over at the soundstage, Eisenstein's work has apparently inspired the Amazing Editors to some busy splitscreen montages and dramatic camera angles of their own. Michael remarks that some of the clips are so small, and Kevin agrees, "I could have one and not even know it." Pretty sure Eisenstein didn't shoot in 8 mm, though. Jill asks the director to check one she found, which he does with his magnifying glass before shaking his head. Thomas interviews that the clip was of wartime images and large white Russian words on a black field (it being a silent film, that'll happen), and soon he's found a clip who's first frame is a title card with Cyrillic lettering. He shows it to the director, and just like that, Jill and Thomas have won the Detour, and decisively so. They're pretty happy to get their clue, which in this case is in the form of a film canister (which, if you're under a certain age or are simply Kevin, looks a lot like a large, hollow DVD) with a photo of St. Petersburg's Palace Square in place of the label.
Brook and Claire arrive just as Jill and Thomas are leaving, Thomas telling them, "Down there on the right." Their cabbie recognizes Palace Square from the photo, so they're soon on their way. "That was really, really good!" Jill happily tells Thomas. Meanwhile, Brook and Claire have joined the search and are wondering how Jill and Thomas got it so quickly. Knowing what you're looking for helps.
Stephanie's confident that she's found composition number one (which she has) and so are Mallory and Team @ (which they haven't) and Vicki (which she has, but Nick insists she hasn't, meaning she'd be better off at this task if he were waiting out on the sidewalk). Chad and Stephanie get another nyet. Team @ nails down number two (Road Block spoiler) and Gary and Mallory submit their portfolio and get shot down. So do Nick and Vicki. So do Nat and Kat, who aren't even trusting their ears any more. Chad makes the suggestion to Stephanie that they switch, and she thinks they should stick with it and give it another try. "You need to not get frustrated," she tells him. Yeah, good luck with that. He's one of those guys who looks angry even when he's not.
Over at Lenfilm, the Amazing Editors are really outdoing themselves, juxtaposing Eisenstein's images of men lifting weapons with racers lifting film clips, and shots of factory wheels with the reels on the film projector (disclosure: I wrote a paper about Eisenstein's Strike in film studies class when I was a college freshman, which is why you're finding me so pretentiously irritating right now). Brook gets a nyet -- no kiss for the director. "Unfortunately, no," he tells Kevin in subtitled Russian. Claire gets a no, as does Kevin again. But then Brook finds another clip whose first frame has a title card -- like the one Thomas found -- and she seems to know it's right even before she brings it over to the director, although I could be wrong because she's not talking about it the whole way over to him. Either way, they're now in second place. That was a quick recovery. Kevin and Michael are starting to get frustrated until Kevin finally finds a similar clip, putting them in third. He actually should have found this easier than working on YouTube, where you have to habitually identify clips from one random frame instead of a whole series of them.
Jill and Thomas, unsurprisingly, are the first to find the clue box at Palace Square. The clue tells them to get to the town of Alexandrovskaya, follow a "marked road" (which "marking" appears to consist of an Amazing Arrow randomly nailed to a light post) to a "neighborhood store," outside of which is the clue box. And they're off!
Back at the palace, Mallory is giving Gary a hard time for not helping more. He asks what she wants her to do, and she says, "I wanted you to have a decent ear, but...." Helpful. Like if there's something wrong with Gary's ears it's anyone's fault but Mallory's. Nick and Vicki give it another try and are shot down, as is Mallory, who is getting increasingly frustrated. When Gary proposes switching tasks, she quickly agrees, and they head out past Nick and Vicki. Soon after, both the bikers and Team @ decide to skip out, hoping to trick Chad and Stephanie into thinking they finished. When they come out, a successfully psyched-out Chad asks Stephanie what she wants to do. She still wants to stay, so he goes along. But I think it's only because she reminds him that he said if they started something they'd finish it, and as much as he might want to argue with her, he's not about to disagree with himself.
Jill and Thomas are approaching Alexandrovskaya, but see no sign of either one of the town's two major landmarks, Marked Road and Neighborhood Store. Back in St. Petersburg, Brook and Claire have just arrived at Palace Square and have opened the clue sending them there. And Gary and Mallory arrive at Soundstage 4, after the other four teams have already left. The place wasn't exactly a meticulously curated archive to begin with, but nobody's spent any time straightening things up, to say the least. "Jesus, please help us." Mallory says. "Say a prayer, Dad." Anybody else she wants to bark orders at?
Michael and Kevin find the Palace Square clue in third place, and Nat/Kat and Nick/Vicki have just found the film studio. "I thought this one would be the faster one than the music," Kat observes idly, as though watching at home.
Speaking of the music task, Chad and Stephanie now appear to be reduced to a trial and error approach. There's a shot of a wall clock showing 4:30, which makes no damn sense, and they get another nyet. Frustrated, Chad refers to their team as a chicken with its head cut off, but that really only applies to him. She insists she's trying to stay positive. "I'm doing what you would do, I'm trying to be on your team." Well, the first thing isn't true, and the second thing is a tragic mistake on her part.
Jill and Thomas pull up and get out at what might be either a "neighborhood store" or a "palatial museum," except for the fact it's clearly the latter. Thomas finds a guy to try to ask directions from: "We need a marked sign, showing us where to drive to," he slowly says/mimes. At least he doesn't yell. I can't believe it took this long to get to a country where most people don't speak English (it's even the official language in Ghana, for the love of Kwame Nkrumah), but even if this local did, what are the chances he will have noticed a new Amazing Arrow on a random light pole somewhere in town? Brook and Claire, meanwhile, have found the marked road. "This is in the sticks," Brook observes, even though it looks like it's only about fifteen miles outside of town (I'm estimating; apparently Google Maps doesn't do driving directions in Russia, even if it will get you from Japan to China if you're prepared for step 43). But they soon find Alexandrovskaya's world-famous Neighborhood Store, outside of which is stationed a pair of older Russian women in headscarves and shapeless dresses, with a table full of both laid out in front of them. When they open the clue, the Road Block question reads, "Who's ready for a Russian Drag Race?" Clearly that question should not be taken literally.
Phil educates us, "In the Russian country side, many Russian women -- known as babushkas -- do much of the farm work." I always thought that term referred to the headscarves they wore, but I guess my only source for that is being in Fiddler on the Roof in high school, back when there was still such a thing as a Soviet Union. Phil lies that the racers "will have to do a proper day's work in the fields. But first, they must become babushkas." So yes, they'll have to put on the babushka outfits, then plant a row of fifty potatoes, fertilizing them with a wheelbarrow full of cow manure. Which is a proper hour's work in the fields, max. Brook's doing this, and she dances into a babushka dress, singing "Babushka!" She adds, "I think it really accentuates my curves," which is being generous to both, and goes off to find her sack of potatoes. As per the directions in the clue, she finds 14th Path 4/1 (thanks to a sign with some Roman lettering on it), where there's a burlap sack of spuds with an attached tag reading, "Take me to the wheelbarrows on Duck's End." Brook goes wandering off in search of either Duck's End or wheelbarrows, and after running away from a barking dog (that's behind a fence, honestly) she soon finds both. The wheelbarrows have tags reading, "Fill me with manure [which coincidentally is also the first line of the Word templates I type these recaps in]. Take me and your potatoes to the marked field down the 14th path." Brook wheels right over to the giant pile with the shovels sticking out of it and starts shoveling it into her wheelbarrow. She says, among other things, "Claire's not going to like the smell of me." You know, Brook, if you breathe through your mouth the smell isn't as bad, but then you'd have to stop talking.
Michael and Kevin are the team to find Neighborhood Store, and Kevin decides to do this, thinking it'll be their chance to get ahead, although he regrets it when he learns it involves getting babushkaed. Claire asks Michael how proud he is. Kevin soon finds the potatoes and the wheelbarrows and starts shoveling poo, while Brook wanders the neighborhood in search of the marked field, contending with unhelpful neighbors and yet more barking dogs. And thus is Kevin the first to find his potato field. "Hello, beautiful ladies," he lies to the waiting babushkas. "I have your poop and your potatoes." In subtitled Russian, the matron gives him directions which can't be as helpful as the physical demonstration, given that Kevin probably can't read the subtitles on the screen: dig a hole, get some manure, put in the potato, and cover it with dirt. Kevin's glad to be learning the Russian words for "potato" and "dirt." And, even more encouragingly, "very good."
Back at the film studio, Gary's pretty much memorized the entire clip, although he seems to be complaining about it rather than realizing that this will help him find its twin among the piles. "Ooh, naked lady on that one," Nat says of one clip, draping it around her neck for later or something. "Hopefully Chad and Stephanie are still struggling with the damn pianos," Nick mumbles. Indeed they are, which Stephanie trying to rush Chad along, or at least get him to make a decision. "I feel like we should have left a long time ago," he says. Oh, good, the time-traveling solution. It's always helpful to propose that. He adds with a childish pout, "I feel like we're done." Well, then, perhaps you will be.
After the ads, Stephanie urges him, "Let's be more productive. We can't quit." They give it another try, and seem to feel more positive about their latest guess, but when Stephanie wants him to come listen to one with her, he refuses and insists on trying a guess of his own. And when that doesn't work, he gets so frustrated that he's just about ready to quit. Chad interviews that this was one of the top five or ten hardest things he's had to do in his life -- not the task itself, but letting Stephanie take charge. "Chad's not used to taking a back seat," Stephanie says. Chad agrees with that, "Sitting back and letting someone take the lead, especially my girlfriend." Especially his girlfriend? What the fuck is that? And honestly, what the hell is the point of being with someone smarter than you (as both Chad and I are doing) if you're never going to let her take the wheel? Might as well date an idiot, then (as Nick and Vicki are doing). Stephanie's with me on this: "God forbid!" she eye-rolls.
Back in the hall, she again tells Chad she wants to "do this," by which I think she means run her guess by the maestro, and when they do, the maestro tells them yes, so they're finally done. And in fourth place, no less. When they get a record (which, if you're under a certain age, is like a giant CD) with a photo of Palace Square on it, Chad even recognizes it from earlier, which is his main contribution to the team this leg. In an interview, Chad promises, "I'm going to try very hard to remember these lessons." She slaps him on the thigh and says, "Don't worry, I'll make sure you do." She'd better. And yes, she did bail on a Detour back in Sweden, but at least she made a decision and stuck to it rather than standing there whining about it and blaming her partner. They're all happy and in love again by the time they make it to the cab, because Chad is perfectly nice to be around when things go well. Just like the man of all of our dreams.
Back at the studio, Nat finds the right clip, so they're on their way. Nick graciously comments on how lucky they are. Well, they're lucky not to have Nick on their team, without whom Vicki might have successfully completed the other Detour by now.
Meanwhile, in Alexandrovskaya, Jill and Thomas have finally found Neighborhood Store on Marked Road, and Jill will be doing the Road Block. She's soon suited up and schlepping her potatoes.
At Kevin's field, he says this is tiring work, but one of the babushkas comments to another in subtitled Russian, "He'd be a good farm hand, yes? We don't have enough of such worker. Such strong workers." Yeah, I think I'd rather find myself in a bar fight with Kevin than with any one of those babushkas, even before we see Kevin trip on the hem of his skirt. Brook belatedly finds the field. Kevin's babushka matron shows him how to spit on his hands, I guess to prevent blisters. She cheers him on, and Kevin totally gets into it. "I love you! she says. Kevin interviews, "I think I fell in love a little bit." Over at the neighboring field, Brook is screaming about having "stepped in pew!" There are high hedgerows between the fields, so Kevin can't see her, but he can sure as hell hear her.
Hell, Chad and Stephanie can probably hear her. They're still in fourth when they get the clue in Palace Square sending them to Alexandrovskaya, and Team @ is still in fifth when they do the same. At Lenfilm, Nick gets shot down again, but Mallory gets a da, and in keeping with the cinematic setting makes a total Oscar-winner face. They wish Nick and Vicki luck on their way out. Nick and Vicki decide to go back to the piano. "Were both not quitters," Vicki interviews, "so we always finish what we started." Except they just quit twice. "Can't deal with this crap any more," Nick says, probably making a mental note to flip a double-bird at the Albert Einstein poster he sees.
Jill fills up her wheelbarrow, and Kevin plants his last potato, cheered on and kissed by the babushka matron. Another babushka up on the porch gestures at herself with forlorn hope, like, "what about me?" Sorry, no love for Babushka Number Four. Kevin runs past Brook, encouraging her as she's down to her last ten spuds, and when he passes Jill on the street she tells him, "Looking good!" Kevin arrives back at Neighborhood Store in first place so they can open the clue, sending them to St. Isaac's Cathedral, which Phil says took 40 years to build and is still the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in St. Petersburg. Oh, and it's this leg's Pit Stop. "The last team to check in here may be eliminated," Phil warns. May it really?
Jill gets started planting potatoes just as Brook finishes. Brook hugs her babushka (but doesn't kiss her, meaning the kiss count is stagnating at seven) and gets her clue. "Good girl," they call after her as she dashes off. Jill's also doing well, and one of the babushkas calls her a "professional" in English. Jill takes this as graciously as she can manage, while the babushkas tell each other, "These skinny girls can do everything." Of course the only reason Jill's even doing this Road Block is because as a Notre Dame grad, Thomas has spent so much time planting potatoes in Russia with babushkas that he's totally over it.
Back at Neighborhood Store, Brook runs right past a flummoxed Claire, saying, "Oh, my God, you don't even know." Hee. Claire's starting to know, once she's in the cab with her poo-smelling teammate. They both agree that Brook will be getting the first shower.
Jill finishes and runs off, so she's in a close third and Thomas is really pleased with her. And she did it without him yelling at her from the sidelines the whole time, too. Meanwhile, Brook and Claire's cabbie has to stop for gas; too bad for them there weren't any pumps at Neighborhood Store. Think they could impose on him to just get a few liters and go?
In middle-of-pack news, Chad and Stephanie have had to stop for directions, so Nat and Kat get to Neighborhood Store . Nat's going to be doing the Russian drag race. "Go, babushka, go!" Kat calls as Nat runs past with her potatoes. Nat soon finds the poo pile, which has been properly miked since the last racer's visit so we can hear all the wet squelching noises of her shoveling. Stephanie will also be taking on the Road Block. She soon finds the potatoes, but finding the wheelbarrows at Duck's End proves a little trickier. She goes up to some local and asks her over her back gate where Duck's End is, while Nat sneaks right behind her with her wheelbarrow, sporting a sneaky cringe-smile.
"Maaan," Mallory whines upon learning that they have to go to Alexandrovskaya. I assume that reaction isn't so much because she knows what a haul that is as that it's a mouthful.
Nick and Vicki are back at the music palace, listening to one piece at a time on each gramophone and then going into the hall while Vicki hums the tune back to herself so it stays in her head. Nick also appears to be following what could be a winning strategy, i.e. staying out of the way. They get one and two pretty easily -- or, rather, Vicki does -- and he interviews that he kept it together. "I took a little piece of Ghana and I promised to myself and to Vicki that I would never blow up like that again." Brief flashback to that shining moment, and in the present day, he's telling her, "I trust you, so which guy?" That's nice, but if he'd trusted her earlier they'd be in Alexandrovskaya by now. Vicki interviews that the race as a learning experience, and sure enough, she gets it right, at which point I learn that they actually are capable of meeting challenges like this if given a whole lot of time. Soon they're in the cab, both glad they didn't quit. Or, as an uncharitable viewer might point out, that they only quit twice.
Michael and Kevin are the first to get dropped off outside St. Isaac's Cathedral, and they run up to it looking for Phil. Jill and Thomas are also arriving, and Michael observes that there's no on one the front portico, so Kevin figures the Pit Stop mat is off to the side somewhere. He leads them in a chase around the building while Michael points out, "There's a park across the street, Kevin." "It's not at the park," Kevin says. It's totally at the park. Phil is standing to a Russian in a baffling uniform that includes a tricolor sash and tricorn hat. And both of them, and the mat, and the Pit Stop sign, are, in their entirety, in the park. Jill and Thomas are also still looking. Michael again suggests, "Maybe across the street?" "No, no, no," Kevin insists. Jill and Thomas spot the Pit Stop -- across the street, in the park, and make it there in first place. For some reason, Phil doesn't look thrilled to see them as the local welcomes them to St. Petersburg. "It's gorgeous," Jill says. Thomas doesn't say anything, because he already knew that. Phil tells them they're team number one, and have won a trip to Sao Paolo, Brazil. "Jill absolutely killed the leg," Thomas says generously, especially considering that although she certainly aced the Road Block, he was the one who won the Detour. "For me to know that I can rely on her... makes us just that much more confident about us winning the entire thing." I'd feel better about this little redemption arc if he hadn't started talking louder when she wanted to say something.
Michael again asks Kevin to go across the street, but Kevin's still insisting it's at the cathedral. "We've circled the whole cathedral," Michael points out reasonably. And so it is that Brook and Claire pull up in what should have been their third-place cab -- with its full tank of gas -- and run right across the street to the park. "Let's go see," Michael all but begs Kevin. Brook calls back to Claire to sprint, saying it's the one time (right), and Kevin is still saying Phil's not there when Michael sees that Phil is there. By now the damage is done; the second-place team is Brook and Claire, coming around the back. "We always sneak from behind," Brook smirks, making it sound dirty either accidentally or on purpose. Laughing, Phil tells them they're team number two. It may not be as close as all that, because they're gone by the time Michael and Kevin run up, Michael saying, "I told you, Kevin." "Good job, dad," Kevin says graciously, although a "sorry I didn't listen to you" probably would have been called for as well. I fear this was as close as they'll ever get to winning a leg. They're very happy to be team number three, especially considering they could have been first if Kevin didn't keep thinking of his dad as deadweight.
Nat is planting potatoes amid a chorus of "da"'s. Stephanie is still looking for Duck's End and finding nothing but a lot of the same dogs that plagued Brook earlier. Gary and Mallory arrive at Neighborhood Store, and she's taking this one, and is soon searching for Duck's End herself. She runs into Stephanie and they search together briefly before splitting up, so Stephanie finds Duck's End and is shoveling shit while Mallory is still looking for it. If they knew they were looking for a big manure pile, they could follow the smell, but since they don't, perhaps they're unconsciously avoiding it.
Back in St. Petersburg, Nick and Vicki open up their last-place clue to Alexandrovskaya, and Mallory keeps asking uncomprehending locals for Duck's End, staring desperately around herself with her tongue sticking out like a Peanuts character.
Back from the ads, she's still dashing about asking everyone she sees for directions, reduced to quacking like a duck to try to convey the idea of "Duck's End." "I was a complete fool," she interviews. She finds some guys on the other side of a fence and asks them for directions, and one of them is happy to... physically lift her over. "Thinking I had found Duck's End, however, I had just found a new friend, apparently," Mallory recounts. He and a couple of his friends invite her in for some vodka, in a language Mallory identifies as "Swedish or Russian, whatever he was talking." Mallory speaks the universal language of frustration.
Nat is da, da, done. She goes running back to the store, encountering Mallory on the street and telling her, "Wrong way, Mal." Team @ is off to the Pit Stop in fourth place. At the shitpile, Stephanie confesses, "This is so bad of me, but I'm about to toss it in to someone has to reach in there and get it." And with that, she tosses the shovel to the top of the pile, out of arm's reach. Ooh, judges' ruling on whether that's good for an interference penalty? I'll just tell you now that it's not, but I think it's pretty gray. Or perhaps brown. As Stephanie interviews to a smirking Chad, "I knew that someone was going to have to struggle to get the shovel. That being Mallory." That being said, Mallory finds the sign, bellowing either "Thank you, Jesus!" or "Thank you! Jesus!" And sure enough, she has to step onto the pile to reach the shovel as Stephanie interviews, "Poor Mallory, she was probably covered in poop, she's so little." Well, at least she didn't sink very deep. Stephanie even lapses into an impression of Mallory that's so good it's not immediately clear where her interview voice leaves off and Mallory's in real time takes over. Mallory even briefly lost a shoe in the pile. "That was a special moment," she laughs after the fact. Ew. Well at least now she can lighten her backpack by one pair of socks.
Stephanie is planting potatoes, although she forgets the manure the first time. "I've got cow poop all over me," Mallory says as she scampers down the road with her wheelbarrow. "They go through a lot of trouble to have French fries," Stephanie remarks. Actually, Stephanie, I think they're going to a lot of trouble to have vodka, which I suspect you'll sympathize with after a few more years of shoveling the crap that comes from Chad. When Mallory finally arrives at the adjoining field, Stephanie says, "I hope Mallory has kind of a blonde moment." That is not a vain hope. Mallory is having a blonde life.
Nick and Vicki are out in the suburbs now, and she's looking on the bright side: "I'm glad it's not dark out and we're still racing around...We're not giving up, that's for sure." Nick looks like he's thinking, Speak for yourself.
Stephanie finishes the Road Block, and runs off thanking the babushkas in Russian. Mallory, left behind, says, "I've got a lot of manure. It's kind of been the theme of this leg of the race." Chad watches Stephanie run toward him up the dusty road I her babushka dress and cracks, "I'm gonna have to take that home and have you clean the house in that." That's lovely. Lay off the Mad Men, Chad, it's 2010. They're off to the Pit Stop in fifth pace. Mallory finishes up and gets her clue in sixth. Riding back in the cab, she holds out her filthy hands and says, "Lord, have mercy, this is cow poop." The cabbie looks at the camera like, Did I hear that right? And if so, don't touch anything. Mallory tells us, "I would chew my nails off right now at this point with manure under them not to be eliminated." And then she bugs her eyes out at us just to show us she means it. Would she then pray to Jesus with that mouth?
At St. Isaac's -- or rather, the park across the street -- Nat and Kat jog up to the mat, the latter clicking her heels. Phil tells them they're team number four.
Nick and Vicki arrive at Neighborhood Store late in the afternoon, and Nick's all over "Russian Drag Race" because he takes the clue literally. Until, that is, he is handed the dress. "This is how I'm going out, like this?" he says as he puts it on. Nick soon finds his potatoes, but getting directions to Duck's End is a little tricky. Although one guy does says, "America, friendship," and clasps his hands together. Don't worry, tovarische, Nick isn't armed. Nobody else has directions for Nick, but they're happy to pose for pictures with him, because they don't know any better.
If there's such a thing as a nail-biter for fifth place, we're about to see one. Gary/Mallory get dropped off, and Chad spots them from their cab, directing the driver to pull over at the park. Both teams run for it, but fifth pace goes to Chad and Stephanie, closely followed by Gary and Mallory. They're teams number five and six, respectively, and couldn't be happier about it. Of course Mallory probably doesn't yet know of Stephanie sabotaged her. Or should I say sapootaged?
Nick has found the field, and he says, "I never thought I'd be planting potatoes in Russia in a woman's dress." Only one babushka is outside with him. He finishes and gets his clue, politely shaking the babushka's hand. "Run, babushka, run!" Vicki calls as she sees him returning to her outside Neighborhood Store. "Warning, the last team may be eliminated," Vicki reads from the clue. In the cab on the way back, the daytime light is failing, and Nick looks defeated as Vicki says they did their best and are proud of each other. "It was worth every second of it," she says. That's good, because they spent a lot more seconds racing than everyone else did.
They finally reach the Pit Stop mat in the evening twilight. Phil funereally informs them, "I'm sorry to tell you you're the last team to arrive," which is the first sign that it's a non-elimination leg. He adds, "I'm very sorry to tell you that.........you gotta run another leg, 'cause you guys are still in the race." Not as sorry as I am. Vicki whoops and hugs Nick as Phil tells them it's a non-elimination leg. "Luck was not our side for some reason," Vicki says. "Til now," Nick points out. Actually, Nick wasn't on their side for part of the leg. They interview that they're not ready to go home yet. "We're gonna come out on top anyways," Vicki says. Well, they made it to the halfway point, which is better than I thought they'd do, so you probably shouldn't listen to me when I predict that they'll be the first team ever to fail a Speed Bump.
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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