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
The country singers are the last team to start the leg, at 9:19 AM. Caroline says she's been hoping to meet a spiritual master, for whatever reason. They get directions and hugs from a local as they interview almost defensively that they're going to flirt. "We flirt with everybody," Jennifer says. "We flirt with each other." Caroline agrees, "We flirt with life." Whatever that means.
The cowboys are still on foot, and after finally showing their clue to a cab driver to check distance and directions, they're soon inside the taxi, regretting their slow start. They don't know the half of it yet.
The Afghanimals and Team Kentucky get off the crowded train near their destination, Jamal hollering his usual shtick about needing to get his pregnant wife to the hospital. Let's just hope nobody understands him. Brendon and Rachel see them arriving at the plaza as they're still trying to get a cab out of there, causing Brendon to bitch about "everybody" catching up to them. As he gets the ink stamped on his forehead, Mark cracks, "Might not show up on me." It does show up on him. As Brendon and Rachel depart in a taxi, he's still complaining about everyone catching up, which is an exaggeration, but soon we're seeing the stamp being pressed onto the foreheads of the Globetrotters, Joey & Meghan, and Jessica & John. Jess reads from the clue, "Watch out, there will be many children present. Be careful not to run into them." You can tell these are All-Stars because they have to be told that.
Dave & Connor are the first to arrive by taxi outside what looks like a big mall whose English name appears to be Edaytown. Inside, they have to search for the indoor play park, which predictably is waist-deep in children and shoulder-deep in general sensory overload. The sights include large groups of small kids, many of whom are lined up and dressed in miniature cop uniforms or chef's whites or what have you, like they're getting prepared for their eventual careers early. Connor spots the clue box, and as he retrieves the first envelope from it, we cut to Phil standing in front of a kiddie racetrack there next to a guy in a red-and-white parade uniform. Phil tells us, "The region around Guangzhou is the world's capital of toymaking," and then tosses a pair of play balls in our faces as though we're not already smarting from the collapse of our manufacturing sector.
For the Roadblock, the teams will have to put together one of those miniature motorized electric car that a little kid can get in and drive, and when it's completed, with the lights working and all, the guy Phil refers to as the toy soldier will give them their next clue. Dave thinks the line of kids dressed like airline pilots with rolling luggage is some kind of clue and starts following them, but fortunately Connor finds the area where the boxed car kits are stacked up before they can wander too far in the direction of wherever kids dressed like airline pilots go in China. Dave picks one of the large boxes, and interviews that as the father of five and grandchild of seven, with lots of experience putting stuff like this together, he was confident that he could get them out of there quickly. But then he discovered that the box contained not only numerous small parts, but instructions that were only in Chinese. So this might not go as quickly as he thought. On the other hand, this means all the other teams will have to learn to read Chinese too, right? Actually, it looks like there are also exploded diagrams in the instructions, so there shouldn't be too many exploded heads.