Buda The Little Pest Outta Da Taxi, Finito!

Actually, I do have a life, but the most interesting parts of it do not for blogging excitement make.

However, last night’s TAR episode showed all kinds of karma queued up for our least favorite racing team, Victoria and her sidekick.

Miss Alli pops out the mini-recap in near-record time:

From Checkpoint Charlie to a morning date with bungee destiny, the teams literally get off to a flying start. After that, there is airport maneuvering resulting in the very satisfying foiling of Jonathan, who thinks that haranguing the airport staff is a good way to get the plane to come back for you. In Hungary, the teams experiment with tiny, unfriendly little cars, and then wind up at a castle where they have to choose between cannons and catapults. And no, Victoria, you may not use both, if you know what I mean, which I’m quite confident that you do. Lori and Bolo experience problems, and then more problems, and ultimately wind up missing the last train of the day, apparently putting them completely out of contention for the leg and guaranteeing their imminent Philimination. But then…”To Be Continued.” Yeah, we don’t know. Along the line, one of the great recap prophecies is fulfilled as a contestant is finally thrown out of a cab for bad behavior, and other contestants begin to let their frustration with Jonathan and Victoria out of the bag. Well, at least that’s good news.

And yes, that was Jonathan and Victoria getting booted out of the taxi by his multi-lingual driver, who waved his hands in disgust and hollered “Finito!” to indicate that he was done with them messing up his nice taxi with their presence.

There was a schedule change last night for the episode, but fortunately TiVo picked up on it. We were planning on being out, but ended up staying in owing to various issues of traffic and the lack of a time machine. So I ended up watching the episode earlier than planned, which ended with a first-time-ever “To Be Continued,” complete with a scary-movie music cue indicating “Doom, Interrupted.”

Lori and Bolo, when last seen, were re-enacting everybody’s favorite Scared Big-Eyed Kitties In the Rain painting, trying to sleep on two park benches pulled together while lightning flashed ominously. Everyone else was at an Internet cafe where they were supposed to log on to AOL (WTF? RUKM?) to get their next clue. The cafe is open from 10:00pm to 10:00am, a fake opening hours bunching strategery if ever we saw one. And, the fact that they bothered to make it open all night long and late into the morning is probably significant, since the producers no doubt expected at least one team to miss the last train back to Budapest from the citadel in Eger, where the cannonbal/catapult task was done.

Actually, it was a trebuchet task, but I digress.

Online fandom speculates that it’s possible this is a non-elimination leg, or possibly one of the rumored “uber-legs” where there are two Roadblocks, two Detours, and no pit stop elimination in between. They were given a lot of money – $408.00 in US funds – for just having to get by air to Budapest, train and taxi around to Eger and back to the capital for a supposed Pit Stop. Remember, air is paid for on special credit cards.

Or it may be that the next new episode (next week’s is a clip show/extra footage one) will show all the Pit Stop arrivals at the beginning, an Elimination, then a bunch of Pit Stop departures, truncated Detours and Roadblocks, and then a bunch more Pit Stop arrivals.

Which, when you think of it, sounds SO horrible and boring, that I bet that the “Uber-Leg” theory with no mid-leg Pit Stop is the right one.

At least, I hope so, because Lori and Bolo add value (who doesn’t love wacky wrasslers who look good with their shirts off) and can be counted on to bring the unpredictabilty factor, as shown by their dependence on the navigational aid otherwise known as “random strangers in shops and on the street.”

The clue stipulated that teams had to return to Buda (or is it Pest?) by train, so taking a taxi or driving the horrible little Trabi back to town is out of the question. Poor them, I hope there’s not a moment where someone walks up to them in the middle of the night and says “You’re eliminated, why don’t you go to the hotel over there for the night.”