Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Run It Up the Pole and See Who Salutes
By M. Giant | Season 21 | Episode 11 | Aired on 12.09.2012
Team Austin gets dropped off in front of the U.N. They run in through the open gates, and Lexi's all excited to see a clue box there indicating a challenge, as though it's their first instead of their last. Trey opens the clue, which is for another Roadblock. As is usually the case with double-Roadblock legs, the member of each team who didn't do the other one has to do this one, which means Lexi. Who is still excited. "Who has a way with words?" she reads from the clue.
We cut to a space further inside the grounds, and the moment we spot the flags stretched out on racks and printed with phrases like "Do Svidaniya" and "Au Revoir" and "Apegezicht" printed on them, you and I both know within one frame what's going on. But let's let Phil explain it anyway: "This Roadblock -- and final challenge -- requires teams to identify the way they heard 'hello' and 'goodbye' in the nine U.N. countries they visited during the race." This is accompanied by a montage of black-and-white flashbacks to nine different greeters greeting teams at the end of most of this season's legs, along with the overly helpful subtitles we've all been noticing all along. "Now they must join the correct hello and goodbye with the flags of the countries they're from." We're shown what this task will look like when it's completed, with the nine flags fluttering on poles overhead, and each hello and goodbye flag hoisted up to hang beneath each country's flag. What Phil doesn't mention is that one of those nine countries is the United States, which means even Gary and Will would be able to get those greetings right on the first try. After a racer has gotten them all correct, they'll get to raise the U.N. flag, which will bring their final clue -- currently attached high on the lanyard -- down to where they can reach it, as Phil demonstrates.
Lexi is led to the courtyard by one of the task's judges, saying, "This is a little overwhelming." She decides to start with France last, and finds "Bon Jour." While she attaches it to the upper spot of the moving rack at the bottom of the pole flying the French flag, Trey tells us this is going to be hard. "We took great notes of the places we went and all that kinda stuff, but we did not write down what the greeters said to us...I'm glad Lexi's doing it. She's a smart girl, I think she can figure it out." But before attaching Au Revoir to the French flag, she goes back another leg to Spain and heaves on the rope to raise the flag-rack she's loaded with "Hola" and "Adios" to just under the Spanish flag. As she does so, a graphic marked "Lexi's Flags" appears on the bottom of the screen, along with a row of all eight flags of the foreign countries visited this season, in order. We flash back to the headless greeter waving "Hola" and "Adios" -- even more than we already have been in our nightmares, that is -- and Lexi is rewarded with a triumphant "ding!" on the soundtrack and the Spanish flag on her graphic getting highlighted in green to indicate a correctly completed flag. The task judge also tells her she's got that one right, so at least they're not going to have to get them all correct before getting any feedback. Otherwise they still might be there today. As it is, Lexi warns Trey that this is going to be time-consuming, and he calls back not get frustrated. You know, I'm the anal-retentive loser who would always try to frantically transcribe the subtitles as they went by, because the progress bar on my DVR would always cover them up when I tried to pause. I swear I spent ten minutes with "Zdravstvujtye" alone. So I actually expended some time on these greetings, which probably helped them stick in my mind a lot more. I didn't have to stand there and listen to them fly past in real time, out of breath and amped up on adrenalin at the end of a leg, and I would find this task challenging after several flags. For the racers, this is going to be fiendishly difficult. I approve.
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