Recap for you, St. Germain
This was a day where city navigation seemed to be the primary difficulty. The first ‘challenge’ was finding the “Garden Bridge”, which for some reason was not straightforward. Brent & Caite found a woman who just looked it up for them on her phone, and she handed them off to a taxi. Cowboys wandered a bit but eventually found their way. The brothers, clearly showing signs of Killer Fatigue, spent two hours in a fruitless search, and finally decided to go back and wait for the detectives to start, following a strategy of not finishing last in hopes that the Speed Bump would give them the edge.
Even then, the detectives weren’t of much use - they thought they could locate it merely by walking up to a high point and looking around(?!) for it. This led to the investigation of two “suspicious” jackets left hanging on a sign, no part of which looked like a clue box in the middle of a bridge. Finally they found out through the taxi’s translation service and took separate cabs. We got treated to Jordan throwing a fit when he didn’t think their cabbie understood the words “FOLLOW THAT CAB!” because he wasn’t saying it loud enough.
The Garden Bridge clue sent them to a Roadblock at a temple. One hitch was that taxis were not allowed. The cowboys asked their (former) taxi driver if there was a “boat? or train?” to take them there, and ended up being directed to the metro. Everyone else took the bus, but there was probably not a huge difference. Probably the most amusing part of this episode: when the cowboys showed up, they were trying to see if Brent & Caite were there yet. This led to them literally walking within a foot of Brent, who was seated outside waiting, without seeing him even while pointing out their packs. (Brent slyly tried to hide himself a little bit as they passed, and shared a chuckle with the camera).
The statue counting wasn’t particularly complicated, except that some people didn’t think to count all the statues, which included two large ones in the room itself, not in the ‘display’ area that was filled with small ones. The cowboys did (in fact, they used . Incorrect guesses led to an enforced ten-minute wait. Despite Brent’s appraisal of her intelligence and a statement that “this will prove she has something upstairs”, Caite was shown having the most trouble with counting big numbers. Detectives had their Speed Bump here - it was nothing more than throwing coins into a small window into a pot (part of a tradition at the temple, so they didn’t even have to leave to do it). Since the no-taxi rule left them tied with the brothers to get there, they didn’t lose too much ground on this task.
The final task was a Detour in a market area. Task A was make pork dumplings and deliver them somewhere else, Task B was to locate a chop (jade block stamp several inches high) with their name on it in a shop full of about a thousand or so. Curiously, everyone went for the searching task. Jet & Cord arrived first, but hadn’t found theirs by the time the models arrived. In the shop, Brent started complaining that he needed to pee, while Caite was wholly unsympathetic. Finally, after he’d already stopped searching and just hopped around, she relented and they took a break. The cowboys said even they had started to feel sorry for him, and in fact found Brent’s stamp while he was gone, and put it back in place. They were still searching even when Brent & Caite returned. Jet (I think it was) found his stamp, but pocketed it and whispered to Cord that he had his. Then he commented quietly to the camera that he didn’t want to give the other team any ‘extra motivation’. There seemed to be some competitiveness showing in getting to the top spot for the final (which may explain why they chose the search task). However, Brent & Caite managed to get out first, with the cowboys just a bit behind them.
The brothers and detectives were, of course, several hours behind (and since the front teams had never seen them all day, they knew they probably weren’t too close). In the stamp shop, Michael tried to peek under the glass shelves with a flashlight to find the stamps, but as it was translucent this did not aid them. Though they had a legitimate chance here, once the brothers left first they sort of felt their luck had run out. Dan & Jordan forced the girl who gave them directions to walk to the cabbie and tell him where they were going (a smart, if somewhat forward, move). Despite the editing, and both teams arriving after dark, the detectives looked to be several minutes behind, and they were eliminated.
One other cowboy detail that came out in some of the conversations. Several years back (2004?), Cord had his skull crushed by a horse’s hoof. Jet’s support helped him through that incident, and it was what led to their close friendship.
Next episode
San Francisco for the finale. Looks to be something involving carrying a heavy chest, probably up a hill, and either scaling or rapelling on Coit Tower. I would have liked to see an Alcatraz escape worked in somehow, but it doesn’t look like it.