Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Souk It
By M. Giant | Season 17 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.14.2010
uck to keep going. Meanwhile, Jill and Thomas pull over to ask some guy in the street, and he points them "upstairs." He gets in his car to lead them there. "Thank goodness for the nice people in Oman," Jill says. Too bad Thomas isn't one of them.Nick and Vicki get to the stack of giant books and pick Water Table. "We got to there quick," Nick congratulates them. Up ahead, Brook comments that "if you veer off somewhere in the wrong direction, you're done." Except she's talking about her and Claire, not Gary and Mallory. Nick knows they made up time, and now, as a bonus, he has a water truck ahead of him to follow to the well. Assuming its tank is empty, that is. "I really wonder how far behind we are now," Brook says. Claire just groans extravagantly, either because she's also stressed about their ranking or because she's finally running out of patience with Brook's pathological need to fill every moment of silence.
Kat's rappelling down, her helmet at a jaunty angle on one side of her head. "I think I'll enjoy the view when I get to the bottom," she says, which she does. She interviews that she didn't know much about Oman a few days ago, "And it's absolutely taken my breath away." Well, now we all know more about it, don't we?
Jill and Thomas may or may not have been led to the right house, but as they stop, Thomas gets out to ask their guide in the car up ahead. Meanwhile, Chad and Stephanie are in some residential neighborhood, asking a local for directions. "I just hope Jill and Thomas are having as hard a time as we are," Stephanie says. On the contrary; the person helping Jill and Thomas just happens to be the cousin of the person they're delivering to. Meanwhile, Chad and Stephanie get back into their truck to follow someone else. In a distracting development, the visor-cam in the truck has been knocked out of focus by the truck's vibration, so it's hard to see anything clearly. Which must be how Stephanie sees Chad.
Jill and Thomas are at the right house by now, and Thomas gets to work attaching the truck's hose to the house's intake pipe. Driving by, Chad and Stephanie see them earning their clue as soon as Thomas gets the water flowing. Stephanie is pissed off at seeing their lead get stolen. But it's not over yet, because the next clue is not sending them to the Pit Stop. Instead, they have to drive themselves to Muttrah Souq in Muscat and search for a store with the catchy name of "Ghalib Bakheet Salem Bait Kalshat Al-Mahari." Phil says the Muttrah Souq is "a renowned market in Muscat," and apparently GBSBKA-M within it is where they'll find a vendor who will hand them a dish of smoldering frankincense. Then they'll need to search the market for "the famous Ali Baba." As famous as he is, he's also fictional and dead, so that might be a difficult search. Even so, he's apparently waiting in a different shop to trade the frankincense for their next clue. Jill and Thomas get back in the truck to ride back to their car, so I guess they had to wait for the truck to get emptied after all. At least I hope they did. In other news, I'm already tired of typing the word "frankincense."
Chad and Stephanie are led on foot to the right house. They go back to retrieve their driver, hook it up, start the pump, and get their clue. Alas, Stephanie does not get a clue reading "don't marry Chad." I'm working on it, though.
Nick and Vicki spot the sign to Fanja, which I guess is where they're going. "Let's pump some water and get this ____ over with," Nick says with the kind of infectious joy that makes him such a pleasure to watch. Brook and Claire have fallen behind, but they're relieved to see that same sign, to say the least. At the well, Nick and Vicki get their water started, and are spotted by Team QVC from the road above. Their truck is soon full, and Vicki reports, "Babe, I'm soaking wet." "Who cares?" he charms. They're on their way, as Brook and Claire are yelling over the noise of the pump filling their truck. Brook uses the word ASAP, which Claire translates for us, and then water splashes the camera lens. They quickly head out, close behind Nick and Vicki.
Back at Jebel Shams, Kat is still searching through the lamps for rings. "A little bit of a needle in a haystack," she says. And there are four fewer needles than there were this morning. In worse news for Kat, Gary and Mallory have finally met up with their safety driver at the base of the mountain. "Hello, nice to see you," he says archly. Mallory apologizes for the delay: "We have been driving for almost nine hours." Dear God, I hope she's exaggerating; I could walk out my door now and be at Mount Rushmore in that amount of time. I also hope that the safety drivers get paid by the hour.
Jill and Thomas are back in their car, and they meet Chad and Stephanie coming back to the well. And aren't happy about it, because apparently both teams think they're on The Amazing Timed Obstacle Course. Chad and Stephanie get back in their own car, keen to catch up. "We definitely don't like being behind 'em," Chad says. Well, I don't always like gravity, either, but what are you going to do?
Kat is still searching, and while riding up the mountain in the back of their car, Gary's hope dies hard; he thinks there will still be someone there when they arrive. "We're gonna tackle the challenges like there's someone right behind us," he says. Which there is: a tall, shadowy figure with a New Zealand accent, wearing a hooded cloak and a man-necklace. But in their favor, Kat seems to be losing track of which lamps she's looked in already. And we go to the last commercial with what seems like an awful lot of leg left.
Back from the ads, Kat finally finds a lamp with a ring in it and gets her clue. On the way back down, their vehicle passes Gary and Mallory's on its way up. "Mal, we're still in this thing!" Gary says excitedly. When they get to the clue box, he tells her to do the Road Block. "It's gonna be a fun one." And probably the last one.
Jill and Thomas arrive at the Muttrah Souq, and are immediately overwhelmed at the number of shops and kiosks inside. Plus Chad and Stephanie are still breathing down their necks. Thomas finds Ghalib Bakheet Salem Bait Kalshat Al-Mahari Stores (Beauty Items & Perfumes) and they get their frankincense from a man who tells them, "Take this to Ali Baba in the souq." They start searching all over again. Chad and Stephanie get their frankincense soon after.
"I wish my dad could see it, "Mallory says as she rappels down the cliff. "Where are my magical lanterns?" she dorks as she gets unhooked from the rope, probably because she's hoping one of them can turn the clock back nine hours.
Brook and Claire seem to have passed Nick and Vicki somewhere along the way, because we see them finding a neighbor who agrees to take them to the correct address. But they're not far ahead, because Nick and Vicki are soon doing the same thing.
Mallory finds a few lanterns and digs through some, but then moves around the ledge onto what looks like a whole big field of them and stands in mute, frozen shock for a moment while the camera zooms out dramatically. You know, I think they have time for a few more takes of that.
Nat and Kat have already reached the stack of big books clue in fifth place and are doing Water Table like everyone else. Brook and Claire get their hose hooked up to their house and their pump started, and start dancing and chanting, "Water, water, water!" like loons or Mallory. They head back, going right by "the punk rockers" right around the corner .Who are also finished soon after. "We still have time to get Claire and Brook," Nick says as they ride back in the truck. Take what victories you can, guys.
After an increasingly desperate search, Mallory finally discovers a ringed lamp up against a big rock, so they're done with the Road Block at last. "Finding that ring was hard," she pants as they run up the path back to their car. And yikes, the sun's almost behind one of the peaks already? Maybe she wasn't exaggerating about how long they drove af