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Glee Amazing Race: Tenth Leg - Roadblock
Team How Did This Happen
Quinn and Emma arrive at the center and Emma takes a deep, centering breath. Whatever lies ahead, she's going to have to face. That's okay. She's done so amazingly over the course of the race, she's very proud of herself, and she knows that she can handle... many things, if not anything. She retrieves the full clue from in front of the building, reads it, and considers matters. "Okay," she says slowly. She thinks she'll be good.
Quinn studies the full clue and starts giving Emma helpful advice: don't be afraid to come back to re-read the story! Be sure about her order before she starts building the totem, so she doesn't have to reposition anything! Cheat! Look off other people's poles! Cheat, dammit!
Emma shoots Quinn a look as she heads in to read the story. Cheating is bad.
Quinn doesn't have time for this idealism. They are one Pit Stop check-in away from being one of the three teams who'll make it onto the final mat. If you have to and it won't give you a penalty, you cheat!
Team Inevitable Family Team
"Are you sure you're okay?" Burt frets all the way to the center.
"I'm fine," Kurt says morosely. He pulls up his pant leg and checks his shin: bruises are already developing, but nothing worse than that. He's not even scratched. He was so excited about being the fourth-place team with a tragic elimination! People love those teams! People mourn those teams! And now, what, he's some kid whose father was terrified about him during a moment of his seeming death?
Wait, that might play well.
Kurt considers it.
No, he wanted the airlift.
They park, get out, and read the full clue. "Okay," Burt says thoughtfully. He's already mapping out strategies about how far to push his memory and whether it's good to hunt for specific blocks or take them as he finds them. "I think I can do pretty well on this."
"Yeah," Kurt says. "You'll probably come in first."
Quinn shoots him a dark look. He misses it. Probably for the best; it was particularly evil. He might have gotten ideas. In all likelihood he would have handed Quinn a machete and started insulting her hair.
Team PTA
Strength, memory, and arranging 'players' in order: normally, you'd think this task was tailor-made for Shannon Beiste. But normally, she doesn't have to urp, pull over to the side of the road, and throw up again from her lingering seasickness.
"Well, the good news is that I have to take the Roadblock," Carole says weakly as they approach the center. This is actually turning out fairly fortunately for them, given that they seemed to have made a mistake at the time of their last Roadblock decision.
"I don't think I like boats," The Panther says weakly as they park and walk up to the clue box. Carole reads, nods, and runs off, and Shannon's left to join Quinn and Kurt on the sidelines.
"You look awful," Quinn notes with some mild concern. She likes the woman. She wants her to lose horribly and thus secure Quinn's place in the finals, but she still likes her.
"You look awful," Kurt agrees. "Did you do the boat one?"
Shannon nods, holds her stomach again, and sits down. Eventually her inner ear will stop protesting.
Team Dudebro
"I don't think I like Alaska," Finn decides as they pull into the parking lot. It's in the mid-sixties and the sun is only slightly shaded by clouds, but that water was cold. He'd like a return to India's heat until he's safely in a shower and hotel room. And worst of all: thanks to the numbers, he's going to be forced to do this Roadblock. Hopefully it's something that'll warm him up. "I wish you could do this one," he grumbles as they get out.
Puck looks at him groggily. He's about as green as their coach at this point. Perhaps that's not the best plan.
Finn makes his way into the center and tries to memorize the story. The words fly out of his mind as soon as he reads them, so he instead just focuses on the animals involved and goes out to hunt for those blocks. He can check on the specific order once he has them in place.
Puck, meanwhile, heads over to join the three others on the sidelines. "You look awful, too," Kurt notes. Shannon sees a kindred spirit in Puck and smiles weakly at him; he returns the expression.
"Boats suck," Puck declares. "I was hurling, Finn fell in...."
"What?" Kurt asks as Quinn laughs quietly behind her hand. (Suffer, Hudson!) "Finn fell in? Is he okay?"
Puck shrugs. "Yeah. Fell in, they pulled him out, he got to sit under a blanket while I did all the work. He's fine. Just wants a hot shower or whatever."
Kurt frowns more deeply. "Was it dramatic?"
"...I guess so?" Puck says.
"More or less dramatic than being trapped in a rocky ravine with a boulder pinning your leg?" Kurt asks very, very seriously. Quinn and Shannon both look at him with confusion until he tugs up that pant leg again to show where his shin is developing a dark bruise. The women both boggle, as does Puck.
"You fell into a canyon?" Quinn marvels. "Like that James Franco movie?"
"Thank you!" Kurt says with relief. He was topical!
Team PTA
Carole has been thoroughly enjoying her trip around the world, as it has effectively turned into the longest, best honeymoon ever. Sure, she occasionally has to shovel cow manure or walk a mile through pounding Indian thunderstorms, but the payback for that is a tour of some of the world's finest hotels with her new husband. This has been fun. She's hardly noticed any of the downsides.
Now she is hearing some of those downsides, though, and has to ask, "Wait. You fell in the water? With all those sharks?"
Finn looks a little pale, still. "Um. I didn't see sharks. Or killer whales. I mostly saw... cold." Can you see cold? He's pretty sure he saw cold.
"Take care of yourself," Burt says with concern. "We already nearly had a really bad accident with Kurt; I don't want you guys getting hurt."
"Wait, what happened to Kurt?" Finn and Carole both ask.
In the background, Emma tries picking up a carving and is pleased to find that it's no heavier than the industrial-sized cleaner jugs that she regularly buys at Costco. Granted, she can't exactly speed through that shopping experience either, but at least she's able to lift the things. So, while the Hudmel trio stops to discuss Finn and Kurt's near-death experiences, Emma Pillsbury chugs right along. Her steady approach makes up for her tiny little arms.
All Teams
Unsurprisingly, Burt and Finn are the first ones to have a full pile of carvings ready to stack. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, Burt has seven carvings, as specified, while Finn has... twelve.
"It says seven!" Puck yells at him.
"I'm trying to figure out which to use!" Finn yells back as he turns them over and squints uncertainly at the pile. That looks kind of like a raccoon. He doesn't think he's supposed to have a raccoon... right? With a sigh, he heads back into the building to re-read the story. Again.
Carole follows not too far after them. She's been slowed by her constant fretting over Finn whenever he's near, as well as her fretting over Kurt whenever she swings by the totem-building area and sees him on the sidelines. She occasionally checks on Shannon's seasickness, too. (Puck sarcastically announces that he's fine, don't worry about him.) She and Burt are both confident with their first carving and place it on the ground. That's pretty easy. And it's not too hard to lift up the second one and place it on top of the first one, sliding it into place until the grooves catch and it's nice and stable. Lifting twenty pounds? Pfft, she carried Finn around when he was far heavier than that.
Of course, she realizes as she settles on her third carving, she wasn't lifting her son straight up into the air and trying to put him on an increasingly tall tower. Also, that was a long time ago. Also, she wasn't jetlagged.
Off to the side, Emma keeps debating between possible orders. And then, despite her very best intentions... she looks over at Burt and Carole's decisions and compares them to her own. Quinn seems to be affecting her. No. No! She's not cheating, Emma tells herself. She's... verifying. Like they did on the flags task. That wasn't cheating. Quinn just used the wrong word, by saying cheating instead of verifying. That's all she's doing. She's verifying her chances.
When her chances are successfully verified, she lugs the first carving into place and starts verifying the heck out of the second.
And then there is Finn.
Oh, poor Finn. He's cold. He's still wet. He's tired. He wanted sympathy from his mom, only for his mom to split her sympathy with something about Kurt. And yeah, it sucks that Kurt fell down and got bruised and all, but in his irrational, petty state he just wants his mom to focus entirely on him. He's actually kind of annoyed at the timing. (Don't worry, Finn; Kurt's annoyed right back at you. And Puck and Beiste are annoyed that no one really seems to care how nauseated they still feel.)
It's not like his memory would be the best to begin with, and now he has all those additional stressors on top of his already iffy mental state. All his physical advantages on this task—strength, stamina, and height—don't do any good if he can't put the thing together properly to begin with. He decides to just go for broke and starts piling carvings on top of each other in what he assumes is the right order. "Incorrect," he hears from a worker, and sighs and starts again.
(What Finn doesn't notice: the word "incorrect" gives Quinn, Emma, Kurt, and Burt momentary pale-faced flashbacks to the velcro flags task. If he were really mean, he could poke them with a stick pretty easily.)
Burt strikes the best balance between strength and memory among the contestants, and so he's out first. He checks once on Finn to make sure he's keeping warm enough, encourages him, and then reads and processes his next clue with Kurt (who is thoroughly fretted over before they depart).
Emma eyes his completed totem and verifies the heck out of it.
She's still not cheating.
She's verifying.
(Quinn sees her doing so and gives her a thumbs-up.)
Carole also just starts copying the completed totem, and she's able to move more quickly than Emma. They finish second and third respectively, get their clues, and head out.
"Copy that!" Puck tells Finn when the latter returns from yet another story check. Finn, tired and unhappy, realizes the answer is in front of him and starts tearing apart his work. He's able to duplicate that pole faster than any other team could have done, but they're still in last place as they leave. Puck wants them to stay in the game. Finn mostly wants to get to the Pit Stop ASAP so he can get into a hot shower.
Pit Stop
"There aren't exactly top-end resorts around Ketchikan," Holly admits with a shrug. "What can we say? We knew we were sending them here and that we had to follow Kurt's contract, but he's kind of pathetic a lot of the time. We figured he'd go out in India. Or in the leg with giant bloody slabs of cow."
(Kurt, watching this episode when it airs: "You're pathetic. Shut up. Your stupid Umbrella performance warped our stage and we had to lay down a whole new one.")
"So the teams must make their way to the main tourism port in Ketchikan and find me on the upper deck of one of the luxury cruise ships that regularly stop in the area. The tickets to allow them on-board are included in their final clues, as well as the instructions telling them that they must make their way on foot from the Totem Center to the dock."
("Oh god," say Shannon and Puck. "More boats.")
For placement's sake: the distance to be traveled isn't very far. Maybe half a mile altogether; they can see where the ships are from where they're standing. It's not a lot of time to allow for shuffling... unless they just flat-out run the thing. Sprinting could be a very big deal here.
Voting time! Even though the teams left in a certain order, that doesn't mean it's the order in which they'll stay. Particularly for legs in which they have to walk somewhere on foot or drive themselves, teams can bleed a lot of time just making it to the Pit Stop. And so for each leg, challenge order isn't the ultimate determinant of who's gone; you still get to vote for the final cut.
You also get to vote for who wins.
Luck plays a huge role in this game, so if you vote for a top-flying team to get the boot? It is not only possible but I will totally write it. Teams have put gasoline into diesel engines and have gotten detained by local police; there are lots of options for tripping near the finish line.
[Poll #1760686]
Quinn and Emma arrive at the center and Emma takes a deep, centering breath. Whatever lies ahead, she's going to have to face. That's okay. She's done so amazingly over the course of the race, she's very proud of herself, and she knows that she can handle... many things, if not anything. She retrieves the full clue from in front of the building, reads it, and considers matters. "Okay," she says slowly. She thinks she'll be good.
Quinn studies the full clue and starts giving Emma helpful advice: don't be afraid to come back to re-read the story! Be sure about her order before she starts building the totem, so she doesn't have to reposition anything! Cheat! Look off other people's poles! Cheat, dammit!
Emma shoots Quinn a look as she heads in to read the story. Cheating is bad.
Quinn doesn't have time for this idealism. They are one Pit Stop check-in away from being one of the three teams who'll make it onto the final mat. If you have to and it won't give you a penalty, you cheat!
Team Inevitable Family Team
"Are you sure you're okay?" Burt frets all the way to the center.
"I'm fine," Kurt says morosely. He pulls up his pant leg and checks his shin: bruises are already developing, but nothing worse than that. He's not even scratched. He was so excited about being the fourth-place team with a tragic elimination! People love those teams! People mourn those teams! And now, what, he's some kid whose father was terrified about him during a moment of his seeming death?
Wait, that might play well.
Kurt considers it.
No, he wanted the airlift.
They park, get out, and read the full clue. "Okay," Burt says thoughtfully. He's already mapping out strategies about how far to push his memory and whether it's good to hunt for specific blocks or take them as he finds them. "I think I can do pretty well on this."
"Yeah," Kurt says. "You'll probably come in first."
Quinn shoots him a dark look. He misses it. Probably for the best; it was particularly evil. He might have gotten ideas. In all likelihood he would have handed Quinn a machete and started insulting her hair.
Team PTA
Strength, memory, and arranging 'players' in order: normally, you'd think this task was tailor-made for Shannon Beiste. But normally, she doesn't have to urp, pull over to the side of the road, and throw up again from her lingering seasickness.
"Well, the good news is that I have to take the Roadblock," Carole says weakly as they approach the center. This is actually turning out fairly fortunately for them, given that they seemed to have made a mistake at the time of their last Roadblock decision.
"I don't think I like boats," The Panther says weakly as they park and walk up to the clue box. Carole reads, nods, and runs off, and Shannon's left to join Quinn and Kurt on the sidelines.
"You look awful," Quinn notes with some mild concern. She likes the woman. She wants her to lose horribly and thus secure Quinn's place in the finals, but she still likes her.
"You look awful," Kurt agrees. "Did you do the boat one?"
Shannon nods, holds her stomach again, and sits down. Eventually her inner ear will stop protesting.
Team Dudebro
"I don't think I like Alaska," Finn decides as they pull into the parking lot. It's in the mid-sixties and the sun is only slightly shaded by clouds, but that water was cold. He'd like a return to India's heat until he's safely in a shower and hotel room. And worst of all: thanks to the numbers, he's going to be forced to do this Roadblock. Hopefully it's something that'll warm him up. "I wish you could do this one," he grumbles as they get out.
Puck looks at him groggily. He's about as green as their coach at this point. Perhaps that's not the best plan.
Finn makes his way into the center and tries to memorize the story. The words fly out of his mind as soon as he reads them, so he instead just focuses on the animals involved and goes out to hunt for those blocks. He can check on the specific order once he has them in place.
Puck, meanwhile, heads over to join the three others on the sidelines. "You look awful, too," Kurt notes. Shannon sees a kindred spirit in Puck and smiles weakly at him; he returns the expression.
"Boats suck," Puck declares. "I was hurling, Finn fell in...."
"What?" Kurt asks as Quinn laughs quietly behind her hand. (Suffer, Hudson!) "Finn fell in? Is he okay?"
Puck shrugs. "Yeah. Fell in, they pulled him out, he got to sit under a blanket while I did all the work. He's fine. Just wants a hot shower or whatever."
Kurt frowns more deeply. "Was it dramatic?"
"...I guess so?" Puck says.
"More or less dramatic than being trapped in a rocky ravine with a boulder pinning your leg?" Kurt asks very, very seriously. Quinn and Shannon both look at him with confusion until he tugs up that pant leg again to show where his shin is developing a dark bruise. The women both boggle, as does Puck.
"You fell into a canyon?" Quinn marvels. "Like that James Franco movie?"
"Thank you!" Kurt says with relief. He was topical!
Team PTA
Carole has been thoroughly enjoying her trip around the world, as it has effectively turned into the longest, best honeymoon ever. Sure, she occasionally has to shovel cow manure or walk a mile through pounding Indian thunderstorms, but the payback for that is a tour of some of the world's finest hotels with her new husband. This has been fun. She's hardly noticed any of the downsides.
Now she is hearing some of those downsides, though, and has to ask, "Wait. You fell in the water? With all those sharks?"
Finn looks a little pale, still. "Um. I didn't see sharks. Or killer whales. I mostly saw... cold." Can you see cold? He's pretty sure he saw cold.
"Take care of yourself," Burt says with concern. "We already nearly had a really bad accident with Kurt; I don't want you guys getting hurt."
"Wait, what happened to Kurt?" Finn and Carole both ask.
In the background, Emma tries picking up a carving and is pleased to find that it's no heavier than the industrial-sized cleaner jugs that she regularly buys at Costco. Granted, she can't exactly speed through that shopping experience either, but at least she's able to lift the things. So, while the Hudmel trio stops to discuss Finn and Kurt's near-death experiences, Emma Pillsbury chugs right along. Her steady approach makes up for her tiny little arms.
All Teams
Unsurprisingly, Burt and Finn are the first ones to have a full pile of carvings ready to stack. Perhaps also unsurprisingly, Burt has seven carvings, as specified, while Finn has... twelve.
"It says seven!" Puck yells at him.
"I'm trying to figure out which to use!" Finn yells back as he turns them over and squints uncertainly at the pile. That looks kind of like a raccoon. He doesn't think he's supposed to have a raccoon... right? With a sigh, he heads back into the building to re-read the story. Again.
Carole follows not too far after them. She's been slowed by her constant fretting over Finn whenever he's near, as well as her fretting over Kurt whenever she swings by the totem-building area and sees him on the sidelines. She occasionally checks on Shannon's seasickness, too. (Puck sarcastically announces that he's fine, don't worry about him.) She and Burt are both confident with their first carving and place it on the ground. That's pretty easy. And it's not too hard to lift up the second one and place it on top of the first one, sliding it into place until the grooves catch and it's nice and stable. Lifting twenty pounds? Pfft, she carried Finn around when he was far heavier than that.
Of course, she realizes as she settles on her third carving, she wasn't lifting her son straight up into the air and trying to put him on an increasingly tall tower. Also, that was a long time ago. Also, she wasn't jetlagged.
Off to the side, Emma keeps debating between possible orders. And then, despite her very best intentions... she looks over at Burt and Carole's decisions and compares them to her own. Quinn seems to be affecting her. No. No! She's not cheating, Emma tells herself. She's... verifying. Like they did on the flags task. That wasn't cheating. Quinn just used the wrong word, by saying cheating instead of verifying. That's all she's doing. She's verifying her chances.
When her chances are successfully verified, she lugs the first carving into place and starts verifying the heck out of the second.
And then there is Finn.
Oh, poor Finn. He's cold. He's still wet. He's tired. He wanted sympathy from his mom, only for his mom to split her sympathy with something about Kurt. And yeah, it sucks that Kurt fell down and got bruised and all, but in his irrational, petty state he just wants his mom to focus entirely on him. He's actually kind of annoyed at the timing. (Don't worry, Finn; Kurt's annoyed right back at you. And Puck and Beiste are annoyed that no one really seems to care how nauseated they still feel.)
It's not like his memory would be the best to begin with, and now he has all those additional stressors on top of his already iffy mental state. All his physical advantages on this task—strength, stamina, and height—don't do any good if he can't put the thing together properly to begin with. He decides to just go for broke and starts piling carvings on top of each other in what he assumes is the right order. "Incorrect," he hears from a worker, and sighs and starts again.
(What Finn doesn't notice: the word "incorrect" gives Quinn, Emma, Kurt, and Burt momentary pale-faced flashbacks to the velcro flags task. If he were really mean, he could poke them with a stick pretty easily.)
Burt strikes the best balance between strength and memory among the contestants, and so he's out first. He checks once on Finn to make sure he's keeping warm enough, encourages him, and then reads and processes his next clue with Kurt (who is thoroughly fretted over before they depart).
Emma eyes his completed totem and verifies the heck out of it.
She's still not cheating.
She's verifying.
(Quinn sees her doing so and gives her a thumbs-up.)
Carole also just starts copying the completed totem, and she's able to move more quickly than Emma. They finish second and third respectively, get their clues, and head out.
"Copy that!" Puck tells Finn when the latter returns from yet another story check. Finn, tired and unhappy, realizes the answer is in front of him and starts tearing apart his work. He's able to duplicate that pole faster than any other team could have done, but they're still in last place as they leave. Puck wants them to stay in the game. Finn mostly wants to get to the Pit Stop ASAP so he can get into a hot shower.
Pit Stop
"There aren't exactly top-end resorts around Ketchikan," Holly admits with a shrug. "What can we say? We knew we were sending them here and that we had to follow Kurt's contract, but he's kind of pathetic a lot of the time. We figured he'd go out in India. Or in the leg with giant bloody slabs of cow."
(Kurt, watching this episode when it airs: "You're pathetic. Shut up. Your stupid Umbrella performance warped our stage and we had to lay down a whole new one.")
"So the teams must make their way to the main tourism port in Ketchikan and find me on the upper deck of one of the luxury cruise ships that regularly stop in the area. The tickets to allow them on-board are included in their final clues, as well as the instructions telling them that they must make their way on foot from the Totem Center to the dock."
("Oh god," say Shannon and Puck. "More boats.")
For placement's sake: the distance to be traveled isn't very far. Maybe half a mile altogether; they can see where the ships are from where they're standing. It's not a lot of time to allow for shuffling... unless they just flat-out run the thing. Sprinting could be a very big deal here.
Voting time! Even though the teams left in a certain order, that doesn't mean it's the order in which they'll stay. Particularly for legs in which they have to walk somewhere on foot or drive themselves, teams can bleed a lot of time just making it to the Pit Stop. And so for each leg, challenge order isn't the ultimate determinant of who's gone; you still get to vote for the final cut.
You also get to vote for who wins.
Luck plays a huge role in this game, so if you vote for a top-flying team to get the boot? It is not only possible but I will totally write it. Teams have put gasoline into diesel engines and have gotten detained by local police; there are lots of options for tripping near the finish line.
[Poll #1760686]
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Kurt's been foiled again!
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(Not a bad catching up, just a small incident. The type of incident that requires 24 hours of bed rest and absolutely no chance of finishing the race. And an airlift in a teeny tiny helicopter, because it's more cost-effective than having an ambulance in Ketchikan.)
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transparently a Kurtsieno subject
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HDTH Their legs are shorter than the other teams, but neither of them is seasick or injured. Quinn and Emma set off at a steady jog. They're starting a little behind, so they don't have ambitions to win this leg, but Quinn points out that they'll need a good lead to keep ahead of Dudebro if the boys take the trip at a sprint. As it turns out, they manage to overtake Carole and Shannon.
PTA The ladies know their limits, and they pace themselves to a brisk walk for most of way. Of course, when Quinn and Emma wave cheerfully as they jog past, Carole and Shannon decide they'd better pick up the pace a little. A jog might be dicey (or, more accurately, chunky), but they ramp their walk up from brisk to fast and get there not too far behind HDTH.
Dudebro Like PTA, lingering seasickness is going to mean that sprinting isn't really an option for the boys. On a good day, Finn and Puck could sprint their way into the finale three; they're both in great athletic shape and can't really get lost on the way, since they can actually see their target. But as things stand, that seems less viable for them today, and they just can't quite make up the time. (Though, man, assuming both boys are in the next "season" of Survivor? I'm kinda looking forward to seeing them face another boat-based challenge. They'll both be traumatized. It will be hilarious. I'm mean.)
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*begs on knees*
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<---(see bribe)
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A gay luxury cruise.
Thank you. A million times, thank you.
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Which is to say, I love Kurt and Holly's continued antagonism.
And Puck and Beiste? I can feel your pain. I'm fine with little boats (and ferries!), but the one cruise I took (to Ketchikan actually!) made me miserable. Stupid cruise boats.
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My poor Dudebros are doomed.
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THDTH: A mile run! Quinn does these in under six minutes on days that end in y. On the other hand, this is not an athletic track, and most importantly, trying to drag Emma along at that speed would land her a manslaugher charge when the woman-who-never-sweats-willingly dies. So she starts a cadence count and they set off at a moderate jog.. With Quinn running circles around Emma and giving critique on her running technique. "Elbows in! Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth..." Effectively, the viewers get to watch someone get bullied into exercise by the worlds most attractive personal trainer. It is good tv.
PTA also jog until they catch up with Burt and Kurt, at which point they decide "who are we kidding" and keep them company for the rest of the trip.
Dudebros would normally rule this. A footrace! But neither of them are in any condition to run anywhere, so last place.