Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | 53 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Opposites Repel
By M. Giant | Season 24 | Episode 2 | Aired on 03.02.2014
Mark & Mallory are the first team to get dropped off at the Guangzhou Cultural Center, for all the good it does them. As they get out and Mark starts detaching their car, he tells the driver that they'll need to go back. "But let's deliver this and then let's just see, Mallory says, like anything's going to change. He beings the car inside what looks a lot like a large bandshell, taking the time to high-five the kids and showing off the car's operation while Margie & Luke are rolling up outside. Mark gets their next clue for the Detour, and then we cut to Phil standing over a customer in a spa as he says, "This Detour gives teams the opportunity to play an ancient game, or experience an ancient Chinese remedy." The game is "Featherball," which looks a lot like hacky sack except that instead of a hacky, groups of four of five people stand in a circle kicking a kind of shuttlecock. Which seems rather easier. Each team will have to join a circle and kick their featherball ten times without missing in order to complete the task. The other Detour, "China Cup," is demonstrated by the therapist who's inside the spa with Phil. She sticks a small burning torch into a glass jar to fill it with smoke and heat, then slaps it down on the bare back of her customer to create suction, and neat rows of hickey marks. Phil says it's used to "stimulate blood flow and remove toxins," but it just looks to me as though the patient has been attacked by a giant squid with OCD. Any racer choosing this Detour would have to endure it rather than perform it, but nobody's doing it anyway so it doesn't matter. Let's just move on to the Featherball task then, shall we?
Or actually, let's not yet, because Mark is still insisting on returning for his backpack, even as Mallory points out that Margie & Luke have arrived. "Did you see his backpack?" Mallory asks Margie, who rather shortly says she didn't. Luke delivers their car, and Mark returns to their driver asking to be taken back. But Mallory wants to do the Detour first, hoping that someone else will bring his backpack for him. Because there's nothing but precedent for that. Luke & Margie decide on Featherball, and Mark is frustratedly trying to get Mallory on track for returning his backpack, saying there's nothing else they can do. "No, we could have left it," Mallory says, saying she has his passport, which is all they need to continue racing. Mark mentions his medicine too. "What is the medicine that you need that bad?" she demands, showing touching empathy for her partner's problem. It's his nausea medication, and anyone who watched TAR 20 knows he needs it. Actually she has that with her too, almost as if she were planning on jettisoning what she saw as Mark's non-essential possessions (obviously I don't actually think that). But Mark isn't willing to ditch his clothes, so Mallory angrily gives in, saying it's going to cost them the whole race. All they can agree on is that they're wasting time now, and as Margie & Luke head to the Detour, they realize this puts them in first place.