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The racers take trains to Bavaria, Germany, with about an eight-hour difference between the first-place Border Patrol agents and last-place Team Kentucky. But most of the trailing teams end up together anyway, and catch up with Art and JJ at the German restaurant that opens at 8:30 in the morning. Once inside, they get gnomes bearing clues for the Detour, which is a choice between a complicated quest to the fairy-tale village of Oberammergau or styling some championship beards. Most lead teams opt for the facial sculpture, while Bopper and Mark have to yodel to complete their Speed Bump, with what is, fortunately for them, a very forgiving band. After using some of JJ's own hairspray to finish the Detour, he and Art are back in the lead and en route to Sleeping Beauty's castle in the village. Team Big Brother and Kerri and Stacy, meanwhile, find themselves lost in the snow on the way to Oberammergau, and end up getting passed up by Team Kentucky before finding the trail. Thus Mark and Bopper are the first team to find the "witch's" cottage, where they have to glue the hunks of gingerbread they gathered along the way onto gingerbread houses. The palace turns out to be a way station to the destination, a hockey and curling arena. But both Other Rachel & Dave and Nary & Jamie go to the wrong castle and wait through a whole tour of it before realizing they're in the wrong place, and Kerri and Stacy and Bopper and Mark make a similar mistake, although the latter teams realize it faster. Meanwhile, Ralph and Vanessa fall to bickering, while Brendon and Rachel spend some quality time in last place and avoid a meltdown for once.
At the ice arena, the Roadblock requires racers to participate in a form of ice-bound shuffleboard with their gnome. Art and JJ hold onto their lead and win their third leg in a row, meeting Phil in a cow barn whose humility fails to rub off on them. Joey "Fitness" and Danny come in second, with Vanessa and Ralph patching things up in time to come in third. Other Rachel and Dave come in fourth, and Brendon and Rachel fifth, although Brendon totally wipes out at the mat. Bopper and Mark, after also falling to last during the castle fiasco and exceeding Bopper's seemingly inexhaustible lung capacity, pass the two all-female teams at the Roadblock and make it in as the sixth-place team. Kerri finishes the Roadblock before Nary does, but she and Stacy predictably get lost on the way to the Pit Stop. They're Philiminated, but I still think a team made up of two Stacys would have done a lot better.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Over some shots of lovely Turin, Italy, Phil tells us that the city hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics. Which is probably not news to anyone but myself, who had a one-year-old at the time and thus was completely unplugged from any form of external stimuli that wasn't 24. "And in the heart of the city: Piazza Castella." I don't know why that has to be a sentence fragment every damn week for twenty seasons. But it's the start of the fifth leg in a race around the world, so let's keep this moving.
We're reminded that Art and JJ won the leg (which is going to be a macro soon, at this rate), and thus they get to start this one first. At 8:57 AM, to be precise. Remember that. The clue tells them, "Make your way to the oldest state in Germany: Bavaria." They both seem pretty pleased about this, as Phil tells us that the teams will have to travel by train to Ehrwald, Austria. From there, they'll drive across the border into Bavaria and to the Gustof Zum Rassen restaurant. There's a banquet table all laid out before a large party of Travelocity gnomes, and even worse, a yodeling polka band kicking up a hell of a racket. The bottom of each gnome will have the clue printed on the bottom -- along with a large Travelocity logo, of course.
Before the leg, Art and JJ congratulate themselves on "dominating" two legs in a row, and JJ attributes this in part to their being friends. "There's a difference between two dudes running the race that work together than a husband and wife... Art's an idiot most of the time, and I'm gonna let him know." Unlike the couples on this race. We see them locate and board the train as JJ says that their goal is to win the leg. "Looks like we're gonna be traveling all day today," Art says as their train heads across country. So that means only one thing: plenty of time for the other teams to catch up.
Thanks to Art and JJ winning the Fast Forward in the leg, Other Rachel and Dave are trailing significantly, leaving the Pit Stop at 11:33 AM. They're also happy to be Bavaria-bound. Joey "Fitness" and Danny, who are wearing knitted caps that look like the faces of cartoon characters, start the leg at 12:11 PM. The goofy hats do make both of them look less toolish, at least until Joey "Fitness" opens his mouth to explain that his hat, which looks like a panda with its tongue sticking out, is "flirty." In the back seat, Danny shrugs at who Joey "Fitness" thinks he's trying to flirt with. Anything and everything, I'm sure. At the Porta Nuova Station in Turin (way to be on the ball there, subtitles -- this is only the second time we've been here tonight), Other Rachel and Dave are already on the train when they see Team Jersey walking past on the platform outside. They're not happy to see them. But then, is anyone, ever?
Vanessa and Ralph are leaving in fourth place, at 12:27 PM. Ralph, who doesn't look a day over 35, tells us that he's been married not once, not twice, but thrice. "None of them successful." Which is probably why he's here with Vanessa, who says she's been married once and is now divorced. She interviews that their past relationships have given them a greater tendency to tell each other what they want. "I think it's gonna help us. But it's also a big problem of ours." Both at the same time? As example, we see them in the car as Vanessa asks if he's sure they're at the train station. "I just saw a fricking train!" Ralph snaps. See? Communication!
Nary and Jamie are starting in fifth place, at 12:56 PM, and Brendon and Rachel are off at 1:18 PM. I believe she's wearing an entire green sequined dress over her winter clothes today, which is an even more off-the-wall look than normal. Anything to take focus from her Bedazzled beret, I suppose. After Brendon reads the clue, Rachel's a little slow on the uptake as to where to search for the gnome: "He's in Germany?" In a pre-leg interview, Brendon happily tells us how horrible the last leg was for them, as if we didn't see it for ourselves. But they've since worked it out and decided that they want to win a million dollars but also enjoy themselves. Good luck with that. Rachel promises to remember that Brendon is her "Bukie Bear." Oh, this is already off to a great start. I'm sure they're never going to have another fight like that again, until the one.
The divorcees, Team Undercover, and Team Big Brother all make it to the train station and get on the same train before Kerri and Stacy even open their first clue -- at 3:58 PM. Yeeowch. They tell us in a pre-leg interview about how they're all energized and ready to go, saying that being away from their families has been getting them down. Is that why they've consistently been in the back of the pack? Is it their families who do most of their navigating back home? Stacy adds that her husband is a basketball pro and she has two kids, and she wants them to know that "You don't have to be some great athlete to be a champion." Which makes me wonder if that's a message she normally has to communicate by herself? "Mamma mia, we made it to the train stacione," Karri says from the backseat in a terrible Italian accent. So clearly she's no help.
thing you know, it's dark and Bopper and Mark are leaving the Pit Stop in eighth and last place, at 5:54 PM. So not only are they almost nine hours behind Art and JJ, they're almost two hours behind Kerri and Stacy. And only an hour and fifteen minutes of that is from their later flight, so they added more than 40 minutes to their deficit once they arrived in Italy. They're also more than four and a half hours behind Brendon and Rachel, who had not one but two meltdowns in the leg. So unless that second flight they caught into Turin was delayed, they would have come in last anyway. Still, after last week's non-elimination and a gift in an unspecified amount from Art and JJ, they insist that they're, "Down but not out." Mark adds that they need the money more than any other team. Bopper gets on a train for the first time in his life, and while he and Mark begin their ride, Bopper says he's positive they'll catch up with at least some of the other teams. They certainly will if the race planners have anything to say about it.
So then the Amazing Red, Yellow and Blue Dotted Lines are shown heading east along the southern foothills of the Swiss Alps and then cutting north to Ehrwald, via Innsbruck, which Phil says is a ten-hour train ride. At 4:30 AM, a train pulls into Innsbruck and Kerri and Stacy disembark. They walk through the train station and find what looks like either the brightly colored aftermath of a yuppie massacre or a bunch of other teams sleeping on the floor. Bopper and Mark show up later, and some of the other racers joke that they were waiting for them. Like they had a choice, but Team Kentucky doesn't care; they're just happy to see them all. And so soon, too.
At 6:30 AM, Art and JJ inform us that they spent the night at the Ehrwald train station, and now they're running to the fleet of parked cars waiting outside to drive themselves get to the specified restaurant -- which opens at 8:30 AM. So maybe those cars were waiting outside when the Border Patrol agents arrived in Ehrwald and maybe they weren't, but either way it's not like they were going to be allowed to begin their first task a full day before everyone else. They still seem determined to win, though. As always.
The train carrying Other Rachel and Dave and Joey "Fitness" and Danny pulls into Ehrwald later, when it's still dark but not by much. Both teams hop into their cars and get going. "It'll be fun to meet up with Art and JJ again," Rachel says. As the sun comes up, Art and JJ find the restaurant, and commence the wait for the 8:30 opening time. Joey "Fitness" and Danny show up , followed by Other Rachel and Dave. Greetings all around, and they all do a pretty convincing job of seeming happy to see each other.
At 8:30, the doors open, and that damn polka band strikes right up, including a yodeling chick with a 60-year-old voice coming out of a 20-year-old face. JJ finds the table full of gnomes right away, which isn't hard, and they read the clue on the bottom. Looks like a Detour: "Fairy Tale" or "Champion Male." Now here's Phil, walking through falling snow with the picturesque town in the background, telling us about how important German writers are in the world of fairy tales, and also about the country's history of successful showings at something called the "World Beard Championships." Now that sounds interesting. Is that where people compete to find out who can most convincingly claim that their closeted homosexual partner of the opposite sex is a tiger in the sack? We'll come to that in a minute.
First, Phil explains that for "Fairy Tale," the teams will have to follow a trail of gingerbread fragments through some woods, collecting it in a basket as they go until they arrive at the "fairy tale-inspired village of Oberammergau," where a woman in a witch's costume and makeup is stirring a cauldron. Then they'll have to use the gingerbread they collected to shingle the roof of a half-finished miniature gingerbread house to get their clue from the witch. Who has a really lame cackle, if you ask me. Phil barely spares her an eyebrow. I think she's not so much a local performer as a production assistant who lost a coin toss.
"Champion Male" is not what it sounds like -- it's just going to another tavern, where a bunch of guys with big beards are waiting for the racers to show up and style their facial hair into the over-the-top designs they displayed at the World Beard Championships, as shown in the photograph of each fully-styled contestant that will be supplied to the team that chooses him or her (just making sure you were paying attention there). They'll have access to a whole table full of hair products and blow dryers and rollers and stuff to use, "Until no hair is out of place." There's one guy there whose white beard and mustache is already shaped like the top of the wrought-iron gates of Stately Wayne Manor. He is apparently the defending world champion, who will decide whether each team's work matches the photo well enough to earn them their clue. All three lead teams decide to style beards. And when I say, "defending world champion," I may just be using the word "defending" literally.
There's some spectacular mountain scenery, and the last train carrying the five remaining teams arrives in Ehrwald in full daylight. After the mad scramble for the cars waiting outside, Bopper reminds Mark that they still have a Speed Bump ahead. Ralph marvels at the scenery to Vanessa. In the cousins' car, Stacy says their strategy today is to try to stay with the pack, because otherwise they tend to get lost. "I can just about navigate myself to the mall," Kerri says from the backseat. Yes, we get it, Kerri, you're the useless one.
Other Rachel and Dave are the first team to find the beard-styling venue, where the hirsute Teutonic dudes are all waiting in a line. The musical local color at this location is being supplied by a woman playing some kind of zither, which is an instrument one doesn't often see outside of A-to-Z books. Other Rachel and Dave introduce themselves to the beard champion, and then pick out a guy with a longer white beard to work on. Once their choice is made, they open the photo they're going to have to use as a guide, which shows the same guy sporting wide, horizontal moustaches like the whiskers of some exotic moron from another world. They guide him to a chair and Other Rachel gets to work. "You want a Mohawk as well?" Dave asks. They give him a gelled-up faux-hawk anyway without waiting for an answer. Fortunately he's got a jolly reputation to uphold, so he just sits there smiling happily through his beard. But I guess anyone who's allowed himself to be repeatedly photographed looking like the Lord Mayor of Emerald City can't be too particular.
Joey "Fitness" and Danny "Aaaay" themselves on into the beard-bar and pick the guy with the longest beard, thinking that'll be easiest to work with. But then they get a load of the photo they're supposed to make him look like, which shows the beard divided into fat curls in front, the mustache into wagon wheels flanking his cheeks with the tops almost level with his eyes, and the rest of the beard splayed out into two long, horizontal spikes that extend a good two feet out on either side. Good luck with that, guys. And good luck getting on an elevator looking like that, Hans. Danny says it feels a little weird to be messing with another man's beard, but it's for a million dollars. Joey "Fitness" says that with all the hair gel they use on a regular basis, they should do just fine at this task. "Kind of like what I do at home," Danny agrees. Meanwhile, the other beardies waiting patiently for racers to do them up are already downing beers. Can it even be nine-thirty in the morning at this point? Dude, Bavaria rules!
Art and JJ show up and pick a guy with a shorter beard, who according to his "after" photo is supposed to end up with a less extreme version of the facial architecture that Team Jersey is working on. JJ describes this activity as "weird" and "funky," because he and Art aren't experiencing any of these tasks to the fullest unless they're complaining about them.
Kerri and Stacy's strategy of staying with the pack has clearly not worked out, because Stacy's now just driving through town in search of Gustof Zum Rassen while Kerri sits in the back seat trying to figure out how a map works and succeeding only in getting them completely turned around. Stacy gets frustrated enough with her cousin to trigger a commercial break, but after that they throw a U-ey and Kerri says, "If we go straight to the place I'm gonna feel very empowered right now." Too late for that, I think.
At Chez Shave-Already, Dave is explaining to us that they chose their guy because he's jovial and Santa-looking. Indeed, their victim is continually sporting a wide, open-mouthed smile that suggests to me that he's actually been downing beers since they changed trains at Innsbruck. Meanwhile, Art is telling us that JJ, with his backpack full of hair products, knows exactly what to do. Wait, what? I've seen JJ's hair and it might as well be a coat of paint. What's the point of having short hair, especially while traveling, if you need to fuck with it? Team Jersey is still trying to get their guy's side-spikes right. "Taking this guy out to the club after," Danny says, probably because they'll have better luck if their wingman has whiskers that can blind unsuspecting women. More beers are served to the bearders who are still waiting, because maybe the other racers should have gotten here sooner if they didn't want their subject getting up to pee every ten minutes.
Bopper and Mark are arriving at the restaurant, where the polka band is in full swing. The Speed Bump sign with their picture on it is there, too, and their envelope tells them to "participate in the traditional alpine art of yodeling." Cut to Phil standing to the Speed Bump sign, on the other side of which is a dude in lederhosen who yodels at length while Phil looks increasingly uncomfortable. He's the guy who's going to teach Mark and Bopper to yodel, and it looks like he's going to do it using his best cross-eyed sitcom-dad face. He'll give them their clue when he's satisfied with their performance, but I'm sure we can look forward to the usual low standards when it comes to making racers participate in musical performances. Bopper and Mark go behind a screen to change into checked shirts and lederhosen of their own.
Vanessa and Ralph make it to the restaurant in fourth place and opt for beard styling. "I'm gonna have to do that to you," Vanessa teases, tweaking Ralph's fashionable stubble in a way that suggests she has no idea what she's in for.
Close-up of the yodeler yodeling while pointing one eye at the camera, and then Bopper and Mark are in their costumes. They've decided to have fun with it, and we see the male and female yodelers each teaching one of them the song, one line at a time. They do a run-through with the lead yodeler guiding them through the whole song with his arm around Bopper. He's also hogging the mic so we couldn't hear Team Kentucky yodeling if we wanted to. Which, to be honest, we probably don't. Afterward, the yodeler says ruefully, "That's American way of yodeling." The fail-gong sounds, but I've got one name for you, Hans: Jewel.
JJ says he's not ashamed of who he is, and that one of his abilities is that, "I can craft a man's facial hair really nice." That'll come in handy at his day job. Danny again invites their victim for beer after they're done. "You are in Bavaria. You must drink beer," he says to them. The other bearders waiting on the sidelines are already several rounds in, looks like. I guess if your sport is bearding, you have to get your beers in you before you're all done up into a state that one stray drop can ruin. Art and JJ call for a check of their guy, Felix, and the champion gives them a thumbs-up, so they're the first to finish.
They get their clue and read it outside: "Find the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's castle." All the way back to Orlando? No, Phil says that's Neuchschwanstein Castle, which looks like quite an impressive structure both inside and out, towering high on a mountaintop. Phil says it was once the home of King Ludwig II, and in his bedroom they'll find the clue. One hopes for the former Queen's sake that it's not the only clue that was ever found in there. Art and JJ get directions from a local, who sends them to the village of Hohenschwangau. "First place again is right in our fingertips," JJ says once he's back behind the wheel. I don't know, there's a lot of leg left. But then, after messing with all that hair product, their fingertips are probably pretty sticky.
Bopper and Mark "finish" the Speed Bump, which has once again turned out to be less of a challenge involving skill than just a way to kill some time, judging by how well they just yodeled. They don't even seem to have gotten any better after the task either, according to a post-leg interview clip in which they "show off" their "new" "skills."
Team Big Brother and Team Undercover show up at the Gustof Zum Rassen restaurant , in fifth and sixth place respectively, while Bopper and Mark are changing back into their own clothes. Jamie wants to do Champion Male, but when Brendon asks Rachel if she can style a beard, she says, "I don't even know what a beard is." Sure you don't, lady. The cousins have also arrived, in seventh place, and opt for the gingerbread as well. Bopper and Mark get out of there, once again in eighth and last place, but they're happy to have that Speed Bump behind them. "We went through the Speed Bump like a yodel-ay-hee-hoo," Bopper crows in their backseat as they pull out. Yes, like yodel-ay-hee-hoo through a goose.
Other Rachel and Dave get a check on their work, and the beard champion, after a thoughtful pause, says, "Okay." He said that like it's the German word for "good enough, under the circumstances, I suppose." Other Rachel lies that he looks sexy, and they're out of there in second place, while Team Jersey seems frustrated at how their guy's side-spikes are drooping at a 30-degree angle. The beard champ: "No, no, no." One wonders how long these two have been getting away with 30-degree angles in another arena.
It's snowing hard when Vanessa and Ralph get to the bearding-house in fourth place. "I've never seen this much snow in my life," says the San Antonio girl. Here in Minneapolis, I try and fail at not snickering knowingly. Inside, Vanessa takes one look at the photo like a doctor doing triage and gets right to work partitioning and curling their guy's beard. Ralph offers to try to mirror her work on the other side, but she wants to make sure it's even. "I'm sorry, I know, you've never done this before," she says understandingly. Wait, how many beards has she done this to?
Riding in the car, Rachel asks Brendon out of nowhere, "What ever happened to going to Bolivia?" Brendon corrects that they're in Bavaria. Between this and her earlier beard-blank, I'm starting to wonder if her multiple tantrums from last week triggered some sort of stroke that wiped out all of her b-words save "Brendon" and "Bukie." I'm sure none of us will rest easy until the time we hear her call Vanessa a beeyotch.
In the cousins' car nearby, Kerri annoys Stacy with misquoted holiday song lyrics, and possibly her very existence. You know how sometimes the race brings people closer together? I'm thinking that might not be the case with Kerri and Stacy. Stacy's playing it cool, but she seems like she'll be ready for a break from her cousin after they're done with the race. Or sooner, if possible. Both of these two teams pull into the parking lot for the gingerbread task and go venture out unto the snow to find a big wooden chest at the trailhead with a big red-and-yellow flag on the top and several baskets inside. And then they wander off together in the wrong direction. While they're trudging aimlessly through the snow, Bopper and Mark show up and walk right to it. They're the first team to retrieve a basket, whereupon they hit the trail and have to start picking up snow-covered gingerbread chunks as they walk. So they went from last to sixth just that quickly.
Joey "Fitness" and Danny: still struggling with their long-bearded model, while Vanessa and Ralph seem to be having success already. Of course the Jersey guys aren't used to working with the kind of sheer volume that Vanessa is, with her Kardashian-like mane.
At some point, Kerri suggests going a different direction, and the cousins and Team Big Brother finally find the chest full of baskets after Bopper and Mark are far ahead. Rachel hollers about the hunks of gingerbread she's spotting on the ground, which either just came out of the oven or are being discreetly kept snow-free by some diligent production assistant. "Be quiet, babe," Brendon says. I think he's saying she should be more discreet when there could be other teams around, but it's good advice for her in general. Kerri comments on the Hansel and Gretelness of it all, but of course Hansel and Gretel didn't gather a trail of bread, they left one. So unless this trail ends with the racers being reunited with their father, who then divorces their greedy stepmom, Kerri has this backwards.
Nary and Jamie show up at the beard place, much to the chagrin of the still-stuck Jersey guys. At this point every team is either at or done with a Detour, and they were the second team here, so their frustration is understandable. You know what, just crack a raw egg in Spiky's beard and comb that shit out until it turns to glue. I've heard that works. Nary and Jamie pick a guy with a long beard that looks like a bolt of raw steel wool, and he shows them a picture of himself in full regalia, which hides the entire bottom half of his head behind a giant asterisk of hair. Have fun with that.
Joey "Fitness" and Danny call the champion back over to judge their work and he all but sighs, "Okay," like a harried parent tired of his child's nagging. They don't care about the tonsorial travesty they just perpetrated, they're just happy to receive the clue that puts them in third place. Nary and Jamie are busy moussing up their guy's moustache at the same time and rather enjoying themselves. Vanessa's trying to put some finishing touches on the guy she and Ralph (mostly she) are working on, to the point where he repeatedly tells her to back away so they can get an answer. The judge rubs their model's bald head and gives them their clue. "Taking forever on my hair finally paid off," Vanessa sings as they leave happily. I'm sure she means it paid off in a way above and beyond landing her thrice-married boyfriend.
Then we're looking down into the valley and at the village of Oberammergau, where the witch is showing off her asthmatic cackle over her cauldron. Bopper and Mark walk into the courtyard where she's at "work" and see the complete gingerbread house they'll use as a model for completing their own. Bopper pauses to exchange cackles with the witch before he and Mark get to work on one of the half-finished houses, using the gingerbread fragments they collected and the frosting tube that's been provided.
Team Big Brother and the cousins show up shortly thereafter, and Rachel whines about how they always pick the hardest ones. Because you make everything more difficult than it has to be, Rachel, that's why. Brendon tells her to stay positive and she says she's trying. Which she sucks at, but somehow it doesn't veer into a relationship-threatening fight this time. Wearing fur hats in their post-leg interview, Rachel claims that it's harder than it looks. Which is always a sign of a well-chosen task.
Kerri is using a fork to chisel pieces so they'll fit on the house, and Bopper is taking frequent breaks to cackle back at the witch. I think he's trying a method-acting approach to gingerbread house construction.
Art and JJ are on the road to Neuschwanstein Castle, which they spot from a distance over the mountains. They have to park their car a fair distance downhill from the actual structure, so they decide to take a covered, horse-drawn carriage up to the building so as not to have to hoof it up the long, wet, slippery roadway to the gates. Meanwhile, Other Rachel and Dave have taken a wrong turn somewhere, and they react about as well as always. Other Rachel tells Dave not to get mad at her, since he got the same directions she did, but he points out that he wasn't paying attention. Not exactly an ironclad defense, that.
Vanessa and Ralph are the team to spot Neuschwanstein Castle standing tall and gray in the distance. They also see a different castle on a neighboring mountaintop, a squatter and more pedestrian one of built of tan stone, but the divorcees agree (correctly) that the gray one looks "more fairy tale-ish." Team Jersey is also on its way. The two teams both arrive at the parking lot, and again debate on which castle before agreeing on the right one.
Then there's the question of how to get up there. Ralph points out the paved footpath and Joey "Fitness" and Danny head right up it while Vanessa protests, "We can't hike that, are you guys high?" She points out a carriage like the one Art and JJ took, but Ralph insists they follow Team Jersey, because their lead is expanding. Vanessa caves, but vows, "If we're going the wrong way I'm gonna kick your ass." Soon they're heading up on foot, as Ralph asks her to walk faster and make an effort. She says she is making an effort, "to not kill you right now." So while this may have been the right direction, it was clearly the wrong way. Ralph acts like she's (unreasonably) pissed off about being in the cold instead of (slightly more reasonably) being on foot, and she tells him to shut up for five seconds. Five...f--"Don't tell me to shut up," Ralph says. "Son of a bitch!" Vanessa snaps. Hard to believe none of his marriages worked out.
Nary and Jamie are busy asterisking their guy's face, and they ask if he does this all the time. That would be a no. Soon they're done, and they have their clue to Sleeping Beauty's castle in fifth place, and the guy they just did up works his jaw for the camera so his long beard-spikes waggle up and down. A-ttractive.
Mark and Bopper are almost done with one side of their gingerbread roof while Mark flirts with the witch, even though he later describes her as, "Uglier than a mud rail fence." Rachel is taking the witch's cackling personally -- like she does everything else that happens in the world -- and the cousins tell us that their hands are numb from working in the cold. Stacy says she wants to be the first ones out of there. Sure, there's a first time for everything.
Art and JJ hop out of the carriage outside Neuschwanstein Castle and, after taking in the impressive view, walk up some more steps and head inside to the imposing, ornate halls. JJ leads Art as high as they can go, where they find a big bedroom with a canopy bed and an old-school clue box standing in a roped-off alcove. From this, they get a clue telling them to go to Füssen ("That's just up the street," JJ says knowledgeably), but the name of the specific location they're going to has, in JJ's words, "seventy-seven consonants in a row." Phil confirms that they now need to drive themselves to an "eishockey und curling rink" to find their clue. Off they go, still toting their gnome. I know what curling is, but what's the translation of "eishockey?"
The teams at the gingerbread task are still hard at work, but Kerri and Stacy are indeed the first team to call the witch over to check their work, promising it will attract children for her dinner. The witch nods approvingly and produces their clue, causing them to jump up and down and hug each other. But Kerri can't even do that right, bashing her face into Stacy's in the process. They're off in search of the castle in sixth place. "That's okay, they done a good job," Bopper says. Brendon isn't quite so philosophical about leaving after a team they arrived with.
Walking down the hill from the castle, Art and JJ meat Team Jersey, and then the divorcees. Vanessa's now carrying her jacket, but at some point she gets tired of Ralph's pushing and throws it at him. It's a sign of their combined maturity that at one point it's actually lying in the road while they argue over who's going to carry it. Ralph ends up toting it and asks her if there's anything else, "Princess?" Vanessa suggests some class and dignity. Which she's clearly not carrying either. "And look more like a juiced-up hothead," she adds. "Congratulations, you just made YouTube." Dude, what the hell? The other two remaining couples are getting along relatively well despite their setbacks, so these two suddenly come apart over an uphill walk? Is there some sort of Conservation of Bickering principle I'm not aware of?
They're still at it after the ads, as Ralph tells her to stop telling him to shut up, and she agrees to stop if she does. That's some Middle East stalemate shit, right there. After the leg, Ralph says he enjoyed watching her run up the hill. "The little devil inside me was laughing because I knew her legs were on fire." Aww, how sweet.
Team Jersey gains the main entrance, and while they walk through, Danny asks, "Sleeping Beauty, didn't she hang her hair down?" Wrong fairy tale, bro. Vanessa and Ralph continue digging at each other all the way into the castle, but when she finds the clue in the (now much more crowded) bedroom, he tells her "Awesome, babe." But she isn't interested in making up, even when he asks for a truce as they leave. "Whatever, I'm done," he grumps. "I could care less at this point." "Couldn't care less," Vanessa corrects. All is forgiven, Vanessa.
Bopper and Mark are the team to finish their gingerbread house, so after getting a clue and a hug from the witch, they're currently in seventh place. Have fun storming the castle! Brendon and Rachel are in last place and they know it. Rachel's about to start crying, again, and Brendon tells her to keep it together. "I am trying," She near-sobs like a toddler at the fabric store. "There's no crying," Brendon tells her, which is the best new rule he's ever made. Like, in his entire life. Rachel asks, "Can we please get judged?" What the hell have been doing the past two years? Oh, she's talking to the witch. Soon they have their clue, but they're still in last place.
Other Rachel and Dave show up at the castle parking lot, but somehow Dave decides that they need to go up to Hohenschwangau Castle, which is the wrong one. That's the squat, tan castle, which is also accessible from the same parking lot. They get up there and see a signboard showing that the tour begins at 12:50. That right there should be a red flag, given how racers never have to wait for anything at these places, but they decide they're going to wait. The good news is that it's already 12:47, so at least they aren't going to be standing around waiting to get into the wrong place for more than a few minutes.
Nary and Jamie are the team to arrive at the parking lot, and they also pick the wrong castle to climb to, even as Jamie says, "I hope this is the right one." They catch up with Other Rachel and Dave waiting outside for their tour, and both teams go into the wrong castle together and begin the wasting some serious time. Which they had to buy tickets for. And which they have to stay with the group for. Seriously, this doesn't seem a little out of procedure to any of these people?
Art and JJ find a clue box outside the ice arena and open a clue that asks, "Who's ready to put it on ice?" JJ says he's taking this Roadblock, and Phil says this is going to let them put their gnome to work, using it in a game called Eisstock-schiessen." It's basically a form of shuffleboard played on ice, and Phil demonstrates how the goal is to slide their gnome about half the length of the rink, to a circular target painted on the ice. The goal is to have the gnome come to a stop in the target's center white circle, which is hardly bigger than the base of the gnome itself. If they can manage that, they'll earn them their clue from the eisstock pro who will supervise their efforts. I can't help noticing that the eisstock pros don't seem to have uniforms. Anyway, JJ starts sliding gnomes toward the target, with Art crouching behind the target on the ice and calling out encouragement.
The teams who are at the wrong castle are led with the tour group to Ludwig's bedroom, but of course there's no clue to be found. The tour guide tells them, "If you are looking for the real bedroom of Ludwig II, it's up here at Neuschwanstein." Something that would have been good to know earlier. They rush out of there, obviously. They should count they're blessings that they were working their way through a castle and not an IKEA.
The mistake just gets that much more common as Kerri and Stacy also park at the shared castle lot and head up to Hohenschangau. As do Bopper and Mark! Kerri and Stacy at least don't pay for a whole tour before finding out from another visitor that they're at the wrong place. Brendon and Rachel, meanwhile, are heading up to the correct castle, so their last-place position didn't last long. And Bopper and Mark wander the grounds until they spot the other castle across the valley and realize that's where they're supposed to be. Country boys can survive, depending on the country.
At the ice arena, JJ is getting frustrated, what with being JJ and all, but on the fourth attempt we see, the gnome stoops halfway inside the bull's-eye. Turns out that's good enough to get a clue. They're still in first place and headed to the Pit Stop, which this week is a 200-year-old dairy farm called Lanhannes arm, complete with cows. Phil and the mat aren't in some airy pasture, but crammed into a cow barn in the narrow aisle between the smelly-looking stalls. Phil says the last team to check in there may be eliminated, but I'm sure it'll be far from the first time elimination has occurred inside this building.
Joey Fitness and Danny get to the arena, and soon Danny is sliding his gnome repeatedly across the ice, thinking that getting it into the larger blue circle is good enough, until he's told otherwise after succeeding in doing so. "Never thought we'd be curling gnomes today," he says. Then what did you expect, bro?
At Neuschwanstein Castle, Kerri is hurrying Stacy up the hill while, by contrast, Mark tells Bopper to slow down before he does himself an injury. The teams who went through the tour of the other castle show up at the right one, quickly find the bedroom and the clue, and are out of there in fourth and fifth place, respectively. Brendon and Rachel find it in sixth place, which sucks for them because they only got to see one castle today..
Up ahead, Danny gets part of his gnome into the bull's-eye, completing the task, and does a slide across the ice on his own ass with surprising grace. They're headed to the Pit /Stop in second place. Vanessa and Ralph arrive at the Roadblock, and Ralph takes this one. While Ralph takes off his coat, Vanessa says, "I'm mad at you but I love you. How's that?" Ralph just says, "I have a challenge to do right now," but Vanessa insists on a kiss. Sucks to be Ralph, right? Even better, he's getting pretty close to the target after just a couple of slides.
In the cow barn, Phil and a farmer wearing lederhosen under his tweed jacket are awaiting the first team. The door slides open for the camera, the cows all look our way, and in one of the least dramatic entrances ever, Art and JJ jog up the narrow aisle to the mat, gnome in Art's hand. The farmer welcomes them to Bavaria, and Phil tells them, "Once again you are team number one." They've won a trip to a resort in Thailand that looks a lot like the one in The Hangover Part II, which is from another repetitive travel series starring a charismatic guy named Phil. This Phil tells them it's their third win in a row, like they haven't been counting, and with a straight face he asks them to withdraw from the race to give other teams a chance. They laugh that they'll take him up on it if he writes the check right now. Which I'm sure they would. JJ Dwights that they won again, "because we dominate." He also says they now have a one-in-seven shot of winning the million dollars, which is actually the most humble thing I've heard him say.
At the ice arena, Ralph's latest slide stops a hair short of the bull's-eye. Ralph asks the pro if he can bump it into the target with another gnome, and since that's allowed, that's just what he does. They're headed to the Pit Stop in third place. And Joey Fitness and Danny arrive in second.
Kerri and Stacy, currently in seventh place, make it to the right castle and the right bedroom and find the clue sending them to the ice arena in town. Bopper makes it to the castle gates, but just barely -- he's thoroughly winded, and has to rest by leaning on a wall. Then there's another staircase to the entrance, inside of which he crouches down, panting like he's trying to breathe on Mars. He prays for another wind and gets one, and soon he and Mark are heading back up the stairs, Mark still telling him to take his time. They get the clue in last place, figuring they're out but still determined to finish. And maybe Art and JJ will buy them some Thai food afterwards.
Nary and Jamie get to the ice arena in fourth place. "It's gonna be curling," Jamie says authoritatively before the clue is even fully open, and tells us that Nary will do it. Soon they're positioned at opposite ends of the lane as Jamie tells Nary that she's good at targets, so they can do this quickly. Not with the first one, though. Brendon and Rachel arrive at the roadblock in fifth place, and Brendon takes it, then Other Rachel and Dave show up and Other Rachel agrees to try. Soon Brendon and Nary are in side-by-side lanes, and Jamie repeats that Nary's great at targets. She's going to blow their cover with talk like that. Other Rachel's first shot is aimed perfectly, but it overshoots. Still, I don't think she's going to be there long.
Vanessa and Ralph jump onto the mat in third place. Phil asks diplomatically about their toughest moment of the day, and Vanessa admits, "We got into a little bit of a spat." She says she can be mad at Ralph and still love him. And in a post-leg interview, Vanessa says they're really good at letting things go. "But if this all starts again, I'll just kill him." That'll be hard to let go of.
Nary is still failing, but Other Rachel pulls off a smooth bump-shot that earns her and Dave their clue to the Pit Stop in fourth place. "It's like a bar game, you had to be good at it," Dave says. What the hell's that supposed to mean? Brendon gets it , so he and Rachel are in fifth as they take off. Which takes a toll on Jamie's nerves as she watches another of Nary's gnomes slide past the bull's-eye.
Kerri and Stacy arrive outside at the arena, and Stacy hands it to Kerri. Bopper and Mark arrive, still in last but not by much, and Jamie is getting frustrated enough to display some more creative cursing: "Mother of pearls!" Team Kentucky decides that Mark will do the Roadblock, on account of how Bopper is still almost dead. Soon Kerri and Mark are sliding along with Nary. "We were the first here and everybody's kind of caught up," Jamie confides to us from behind Nary's target. I'm going to throw up." Her frustration is getting cute, though. It's surprising how entertaining it can be to watch frustrated people try not to swear. In fact, it's one of the biggest unexpected benefits to having kids. Meanwhile, Other Rachel and Dave make it to the mat as team number four.At the arena, Mark slides a gnome almost fully into the bull's-eye, so he and Bopper just leapt ahead by two slots and are now headed to the Pit Stop in fifth place. Brendon and Rachel are already there, and while jumping on the mat, Brendon slips and falls flat on his ass, nearly taking out Phil in the process. "Holy manure!" Rachel brays. Still, fifth place is fifth place. And Nary and Kerri are still failing, all the way to the last commercial break.
Coming back. Kerri's on her 69th slide and Nary's on her 180th. Yikes. Even worse for Nary, Kerri is the to finish, so the cousins both came and went in seventh place. Jamie is trying to keep Nary from blaming herself... for some reason. "It's just us and the gnomes, "Jamie tells us, then calls across the ice to Nary that they can still beat the cousins to the Pit Stop. If it were any other team she was talking about beating, that would sound like cockeyed optimism. But since it's Stacy and the world's worst navigator, Jamie might be onto something. Finally Nary gets one just barely touching the border of the bull's-eye, but the pro nods, either because it's good enough or because he's tired of their faces, so they're finally headed to the Pit Stop in last place. Time for a quick hug before running back to their car.
Kerri and Stacy have stopped another motorist for directions. At least he speaks English. But Nary remembers passing the farm on the way to the arena, so they already know where they're going. As opposed to the cousins, in whose car Kerri asks Stacy, "Was it this right?" Stacy just loses it on her, yelling, "Karri! When someone is giving us directions, could you actually fucking listen to him?" Kerri says she's giving as much as she can give. "You gotta give too!" Stacy doesn't even seem to know to respond to that. As Rachel was once told by a fellow Big Brother contestant, they don't seem to share the same reality.
Bopper and Mark rush into the cow barn and are checked in as team number six. They congratulate themselves on coming back and never giving up, even in the face of severe respiratory distress.
So now it's down to just the two female teams, racing to not be last to the mat. But the pair to show up are Nary and Jamie, who are pretty happy to be team number seven. Then the barn door slides open one last time, and Kerri and Stacy show up in last place. "And I'm sorry to tell you that you've both been eliminated from the race," Phil says, wasting little time. Stacy tightly blames it on their navigating. In other words, you suck, Kerri. Stacy says she wanted to make their families happy, and shows a picture of her two kids that she brought along. With tears running down her face, she says their kids can learn a lot from their mom and Auntie Kerri by how hard they worked. Well, their mom, at least. "Who knew that two Southern, pink-lipstick-wearing girls like us would make it this far? We're still awesome." Stacy kisses and hugs her cousin, whom she probably never wants to see again.
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.