Episode Report Card M. Giant: B+ | 45 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Up the Creek
By M. Giant | Season 24 | Episode 3 | Aired on 03.09.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The nine remaining teams all leave the Pit Stop less than a half hour apart. That, plus the fact that there are only to flights to their next destination and one of them arrives three hours later, makes for a pretty tense race to the Guangzhou airport. The six teams on the first flight are Dave & Connor, Luke & Margie, Jet & Cord, Flight Time & Big Easy, Caroline & Jennifer, and finally Leo & Jamal. Which is a pretty bitter pill for Brendon & Rachel after starting the leg first and getting stuck in traffic. That leaves them in the back of the pack with Joey & Meghan and Jessica & John, who for some reason form a three-way losers' alliance even though one of those teams is almost certainly doomed.
When the lead teams arrive in Borneo, they travel through the rainforest to rappel down Kianson Falls with a Travelocity gnome in tow. Cord misses the clue the first time around, and Big Easy's very size disqualifies him from the Roadblock. And Rachel disqualifies her shorts from rappelling with her because of their sequins, and goes down the waterfall in her underwear. Other than that, however, it's a pretty uneventful Roadblock.
Before teams even get to the Detour, they have to build a bamboo raft and ride it down rapids to either deliver a load of supplies to a village or enter the jungle and take some target practice with a blowgun. Margie & Luke's knot-tying skills let them down, but Dave & Connor's navigational skills are even worse, leading them far downstream of the delivery task so they have to schlep their crate of supplies overland. And when the cowboys ask Leo & Jamal for directions, the Afghanimals decide to prove themselves reformed and tell the truth. Not that it helps them when they're capsized and the cowboys sail on by shortly after. Meanwhile, the country singers and the Globetrotters do the blowgun challenge, all of them efficiently save Caroline.
Dave & Connor recover well enough from their Detour blunder to win their first leg they've ever won while not injured. The cowboys and the Afghanimals come in second and third, while Margie & Luke survive communication problems and the disintegration of their raft to come in fourth, eventually followed by the Globetrotters and the country singers.
As for the three teams on the second flight, Joey & Meghan again find themselves on foot after releasing their cab in the middle of nowhere. Jessica & John prove terrible at building a raft, but better at operating it than Brendon & Rachel are with theirs, as Team Big Brother can't stop crashing the thing. Jessica is also much handier with a blowgun than John is, but they check in as team number seven. Despite their struggles with both their raft and the blowgun, Brendon & Rachel manage to be team number eight, and Rachel somehow avoids a meltdown. Finally, Team YouTube comes in last. And this time there's no replay button.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"This is Guangzhou," Phil says, "China's first port city used for foreign trade." Yes, this is the third week in a row we've seen it, Phil. After some traffic footage that would be pretty terrifying even if it weren't sped up, Phil is coming to us from last week's Pit Stop, the park at Shamian Island. Brendon & Rachel won the previous leg (boo), so they will be starting this one off at 6:22 PM. How many of those "Brenchel's Back" t-shirts did they pack, anyway? Because that seems to be all they're wearing. The clue is telling them to fly to Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, which Phil calls "the land below the wind." He also pronounces its actual name a lot better than Rachel did. After landing in Kota Kinabalu, they will have to trek through the rainforest to Kionsom Waterfall. Don't worry, there are roads. Rachel also reads from the clue that only two flights are available, and there is limited seating. Well, considering the first seven teams seemed to arrive almost simultaneously last week, this could be tight. Rachel interviews that she and Brendon always want to be in the top three. That's a brilliant strategy. Too bad most teams are too stupid to come up with it. In the taxi to the airport, Brendon reads from the clue, "First flight: six teams only." Rachel color-commentates that she and Brendon need to be on it, because there's a three-hour lag between that and the second flight, which "could break a team." I can't see it helping.
Margie & Luke take off at 6:23, and Margie confesses that during their first leg, both of them were talking but neither of them was listening. Hey, at least Luke has an excuse. Margie is hopeful that they can be more supportive and learn from their mistakes. "We'll wait and see," Luke signs. That's encouraging.
The country singers, Caroline & Jennifer, are leaving at 6:24, freely admitting that the Express Pass kept them in the game last leg. Well, that and their performance at the Detour. Caroline claims that they're planning to surprise everyone with a "slow sneak attack." So everything that happened to them last week…they meant to do that?
Dave & Connor are leaving in a relatively distant fourth place, at 6:26, two full minutes behind the country singers. Dave and the Amazing Editors remind us how Dave's second leg ended back in TAR22, so he's glad to be starting the third leg injury-free this time. Soon they're crammed into the back of a taxi with their backpacks. Flight Time & Big Easy open their clue at 6:27 and run for a cab in fifth place. Then it's the cowboys, making their sixth-place start at 6:28 PM. They're pretty happy about the second Express Pass being out of play, making them the only team who will be in possession of one for the whole rest of the race. As for their own Express Pass, they're so efficient at most tasks anyway that skipping one won't make much difference. But it'll come in handy the first time they get U-Turned.