Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | 48 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Zip It, Bingo
By M. Giant | Season 23 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.06.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The race runs its second leg in Chile, but not all of it in Iquique. Ten teams leave in the middle of the night to visit a floating museum, which of course doesn't open until 7:15 AM. That gives Marie plenty of time to get on everyone's nerves with her bossiness, but since she and Tim have an Express Pass to wave in everyone's faces she more or less gets away with it. In the morning, the teams have to board the ship and then research a quote by a famous Chilean sea captain to get their next clue. That sends them to a Detour at a salt mine in which they have to either break up salt boulders with hammers and spikes or fill tubs of water with enough salt to allow them to float on their backs while reading a newspaper. Neither of these is physically unchallenging, because the salt for the tubs comes in 25-kg bags and the salt for the other half of the Detour is in the form of boulders to be smashed with hammers and spikes.
Then it's a 1000-mile bus ride to the capital city of Santiago. There's some bus terminal intrigue in which half the teams get on a 1:30 PM bus, while most of the other half gets on a 2:00 PM bus. Rowan & Shane, a.k.a. Team Bingo, pull what they think is a fast one, waiting for a later bus that they think will get them there sooner, only to learn that the later bus will also get them there later. So they really just ended up pulling a really slow one. And this after getting lost on the way to the Detour, too.
When the lead teams show up in Santiago the following afternoon, they find a Roadblock that requires them to shine a customer's shoes, then Tetris all the pieces of the self-contained shoeshine stand into their proper places and roll the whole assembly six blocks to get their next clue. This proves more challenging than most teams expected, so most of them end up being required to repack correctly. Meanwhile, on the second bus, Tim & Marie form an alliance with the baseball wives because Tim knows Nicky's husband and Nicky & Kim want the Express Pass. Former football players Chester & Ephraim finish the Roadblock in first place, just ahead of Afghanimals Leo & Jamal, and race them to the Pit Stop at a nature reserve outside town. It's close, especially when Leo has some trouble paying their cabdriver and they have to go back. That puts Team NFL in first place for this leg, and the Afghanimals in second, though they end up bickering on the mat as bitterly as if it were last. Brandon & Adam, who started the leg in tenth but spent the first half of it in the lead, come in third, followed by ER docs Nicole & Travis in fourth and Jason & Amy in fifth.
The second bus arrives after dark, hours later, but the plaza is still busy as they take on the Roadblock. And when Team Bingo catches up with them after all despite taking the third and last bus. Rowan still manages to blow it by temporarily usurping the job and commandeering the gear (and probably ruining the night) of a random shoeshine guy who has nothing to do with the race. Okies Tim & Danny end up in sixth place, with blondes Ally & Ashley in seventh.
Meanwhile, Nicky left her rug at the shoeshine station and has to go back for it, especially since Marie refuses to give her the Express Pass because she doesn't see what's in it for her. After a mortifying scene at the Roadblock checkpoint, Rowan finds a marked shoeshine stand while Nicky is finding her rug, but she still manages to beat him to the final clue while he struggles with packing. Tim & Marie check in as team number eight while Team Bingo and the baseball wives race for last. Ultimately, Nicky & Kim come in ninth, and Team Bingo is Philiminated, deservedly so. Ain't no "Free" space in The Amazing Race.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Iquique, Chile is known as the City of Eternal Sunshine," Phil narrates, apparently unaware of all the haze and Independence Day-style clouds dominating the b-roll shots of the city. I wonder what spotless mind shot that. "Located on the edge of the Atacama Desert and the Pacific Ocean," Phil adds, "this urban oasis is renowned for its beautiful neoclassical buildings, including Teatro Municipal De Iquique." Oh, now he's bringing the Spanish name for last week's Pit Stop. He's standing outside it as he says, "This is now the start of the second leg in a race around the world."
Because Tim and Marie won the previous leg, they're also the first to start this one. The bad news for them is that they have to do it at 2:52 AM. The first clue tells them to get to the deck of the Museo Corbeto Esmeralda. That's actually an old sailing ship (or replica thereof) docked in the harbor, and the clue adds that the Officer of the Day there will post their next clue. In other words, everyone will effectively be starting the leg at the same time in the morning anyway. In their pre-leg interview, Marie says that everyone thought they would self-destruct right away because they can't stop bickering (and here's a flashback of it happening from last week, before they even got to LAX). As we see them getting directions from some passerby who's just wandering the streets of northern Chile at three in the morning, as you do, Tim adds that they still have both Express Passes and they can always use one of them to dangle in front of other teams to try to extract favors from them. Hard to imagine how that could backfire.
Nicole and Travis, the ER docs, are leaving in second place at 3:02 AM. They probably would have been in first place had they not ignored the part of their clue that told them to make their way on foot to the Pit Stop, but Nicole says that the opportunity for both Express Passes is gone, so it's time to move on. In other words, they both know it's her fault.
Rowan and Shane a.k.a. Team Bingo learn at 3:08 AM that their allowance for this leg is $589. An amount that large can only mean lots of ground transportation, so it looks like they'll be staying in Chile or at least in South America They interview that they're "blue collar actors," which Rowan defines as, "You won't see us on the red carpet. You might see us laying it, though." And that's about all they're going to lay. Meanwhile, Tim & Marie get to the ship and find, believe it or not, a fancy calligraphied sign informing them that the museum opens at 7:15 AM. By which time everyone is sure to be there, for a full ten-team bunch. And they know it, too.