Episode Report Card 30 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Get Our Groove On
By M. Giant | Season 23 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.27.2013
We left last week with Nicole insisting on exchanging the location of the Pit Stop for Marie's extra Express Pass, and we come back to Marie accepting the deal, though she's pretty crabby about it. Also, as expected, the Pit Stop is actually a Pit Keep Going is at the end of a non-elimination leg, so even though the baseball wives arrive last, they're still in it. Kind of an anticlimactic resolution to that cliffhanger, if you ask me.
So then everyone travels to Gdansk, Poland, where they have to start by finding Solidarity Square near the shipyard. Three teams (Tim & Marie, Leo & Jamal, and Ally & Ashley) take the "shipyard" part of the clue too literally and fall far behind the other five teams. Okies Tim & Danny end up in the lead, but when they find themselves at a polka-dancing Detour that requires Danny to wear a dress, he's deeply demoralized as they plummet in the rankings. They end up getting passed by Jason & Amy, then Travis & Nicole. Meanwhile, baseball wives Nicky & Kim hustle for tips posing as statues and actually finish the Detour in first place. But then they blow it on their way to the U-Turn. Yes, the U-Turn: we haz it.
And most teams decline to use it, at least at first. Tim & Marie, after getting to the Detour late, decide to bag it and use their remaining Express Pass rather than risk getting U-Turned themselves. They briefly consider U-Turning Travis & Nicole, but then chicken out and head to the Roadblock, no longer in the back of the pack. In fact, they catch up with lead team Jason & Amy at Poland's longest apartment building (seriously, this place is ridonkulous), where they have to visit multiple apartments in search of a specific kind of donut. Travis actually finds the correct apartment first, and per an agreement forged in the building, he shares the info with Marie and Amy. And thus Tim and Marie end up at the mat just ahead of Jason & Amy, who barely beat Nicole & Travis. But Nicole & Travis now have the only Express Pass in the game, so there's that.
Brandon & Adam, who had a pretty good leg last week, aren't as lucky this time around. On their way to the polka task, they stumble on the statue task and decide to try that instead for a while, then give it up as a bad job. By the time they finish their polka, they're in dead last -- and they find out that they've been U-Turned by the Afghanimals (who had been U-Turned by Tim & Danny). The baseball wives come in fourth, Tim & Danny a close fifth, Leo & Jamal sixth (despite being U-turned), and the blondes seventh, before the Hairballs finally make it to the mat in last place. And thus they become the second team this season to go from first place in one leg to Philimination in the next. This is either an extra-tricky season or people need to get their acts together.