Episode Report Card M. Giant: B- | 50 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Lis-Bon Voyage
By M. Giant | Season 23 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.13.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The nine remaining teams are asked to fly from Santiago all the way to Lisbon, Portugal, which entails a lot of airport intrigue. And for once the term "airport intrigue" isn't an overstatement. Chester & Ephraim get screwed at first by a travel agent who mistakenly books them on a flight a day after everyone else, but as other teams book passage on flights that land at or before noon, Team NFL goes with an itinerary with two connections, which means they're screwed if there's a delay. Which there is, and which they are. Also, the Afghanimals try to draw the Okies into their alliance (and a flight through London) with the Blondes, but the Okies think better of it when they find themselves being grilled by Marie. And then the baseball wives, or "Bunnies," manage to jump ahead of Tim & Marie for standby seats during the transfer in Sao Paolo. And you can imagine how much Marie is pissed off by another team acting like Marie.
When the first three teams (Nicole & Travis, Jason & Amy, and Nicky & Kim) land in Lisbon at last, they have to hop a streetcar to a rooftop clue that's in the form of a painting directing them to a horse-drawn coach museum. That gives them the Detour options of either completing a life-sized human figure puzzle using ceramic tiles, or plotting a the total distance of Magellan's complicated intercontinental course on a giant outdoor map. Nicole & Travis and Jason & Amy work together to complete that pretty efficiently.
Brandon & Adam and Tim & Danny are the net to reach Lisbon, while Nicky & Kim are working on the tile puzzle. Meanwhile, the lead teams proceed to a Roadblock where one teammate has to fire a ballista at some shields 150 feet away before getting the clue to the Pit Stop. Jason nails that on his first try, so this leg seems his and Amy's to lose. Which they do, amid confusion over the road signs on the approach, so Nicole & Travis make it to the mat first for the second time -- and this time it counts. Jason & Amy end up in second place.
Then the Blondes and the Afghanimals land in Lisbon, noisily as usual. And then so does everyone else -- except Chester & Ephraim, who are stranded again, this time in London. Meanwhile, Nicky & Kim come in third, and the blondes and Afghanimals completely faceplant at the map Detour, to the obvious disdain of the guy in the Magellan costume. Tim & Danny arrive in fourth place while the "race spouses" switch to the tile task, and Brandon & Adam end up in fifth. When Tim & Marie arrive at the tile Detour, Jamal lies to them about how long it takes, in order to fool them into wasting their Express Pass. The hell of it is, it almost works, as the exes get flustered and break a bunch of tiles.
But after completing the ballista Detour, the Afghanimals and the blondes make it to the Pit Stop in tandem, in sixth and seventh. Then when Tim & Marie make it to the mat with their Express Pass still in hand, Phil tells them they're the last team to arrive -- except one.
Because when Chester & Ephraim finally land in Lisbon that night, they're met at the airport by Phil, who for the first time ever Philiminates a team right there in the terminal. So instead of a cab, they'll be catching a flight right to Sequesterville. That has to be the most spectacular drop from first to last ever.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"The country of Chile narrowly stretches over 3,100 miles between the Pacific Ocean and the majestic Andes mountains," Phil narrates over some video of both geographical features, as though I don't make fun of Chile's land-orexia every time they go there. "And this popular mountain retreat is now the start of the third leg in a race around the world," he says while lurking in the darkness of the nature preserve, sometime before or after he Philiminated Rowan & Shane at the end of the second leg. But that was then and this is now, specifically at 6:27 PM, when last week's winners, Chester & Ephraim, begin the leg. And yes, it is dark again. They read a clue telling them to fly to Lisbon, Portugal.
"Teams will now fly to Lisbon, Portugal," we are informed by an unusually tight-lipped Phil. "When they land, they must make their way to Martim Moniz Square and ride a tram to the top of the hill, where they'll receive their next clue." Team NFL gets into a cab, where they talk about how they're used to other people booking everything for them when they traveled with the team, so all they ever had to do was show up. But now, Chester says, "We're on our own, and I'm okay with that." Because it's not like anything could go wrong when they're setting up their own air travel, right?
The second-place team, Afghanimals Leo & Jamal, are surprisingly far behind, leaving the mat at 6:39 PM. This despite the fact that they were the first to arrive at the Pit Stop at the end of the previous leg, which means it took them at least 13 minutes to walk back to their cabdriver, pay the man, and return to Phil. This, in turn, means there were at least 14 minutes of arguing between them, and undoubtedly much more. Fortunately for us, they appear to be over it as they learn they're flying to Lisbon. Unfortunately for us, as they talk about getting to use their Portuguese, they're still noisy as hell. I mean honestly, who ululates like that inside a taxi?
Brandon & Adam are taking off from the mat at 6:58 PM. That's about all they're doing right now.
Chester & Ephraim arrive at Cocha Travel Agency, which is not only still open after 7 PM but quite generously staffed, from the looks of things. An agent taps her keyboard and pulls up a flight scheduled to land in Lisbon at 7 AM. That's less than eight hours away, accounting for the four-hour time difference, unless it's 7 in the morning after tomorrow. Better double check your dates, Team NFL.