Previously on Hay, Dude, This Is Heavy: Meghan couldn’t do this anymore. Gary was seen through Matt’s eyes. Er, ear. Dan AAAARRRGHH RRAAARRRR *sniffle sniffle* *I love you, man*. Flight Time and Big Easy finished first, and Gary and Matt were non-eliminated, much to the relief of many of us. But who will be eliminated … next?

Credits. Hey, I wonder where Canaan is right now. Probably telling Mika that if she doesn’t play this particular hole of mini-golf, he’ll never forgive her, and she’s saying she’s too scared to confront the giant clown face, so once again, they are both dweebs. Just a guess. Also, I really miss Zev and Justin.

Stockholm, Sweden! By the way: To those of you who noticed that I lost track of WHAT COUNTRY we were in last week, I apologize yet again, and can only tell you that I tend to orient myself by the opening segment, which means that unless there are powerful visual clues reminding me that we have changed countries in the middle of the episode, this is a mistake that is very, very easy for me to make. This means that it is very possible that I will place the entire remainder of this episode in Sweden. Again, I am sorry; I am ridiculous. I will try to make sure that if I use the word “Netherlands” in this recap, it is only in a situation in which it applies.

Phil reminds us yet again about Sweden’s connection to Nobel Prizes and blowing shit up (which probably required them to embrace socialized medicine in re: lost fingers), and also ABBA. Never has one country been praised for such an actually impressive list of accomplishments while also kind of being laughed at. (”Thanks for praising other people, blowing stuff up, and ‘Fernando,’ there, Sven.”) And, of course, Sweden is also the home of the Field Of Many Hay Bales where the teams checked in last time. We watch Flight Time and Big Easy investigate the vacation they won from Travelocity (under the watchful eye of their gnome, whom I am still calling Louisiana Shorty), and then it’s time to get moving.

2:23 AM. Flight Time and Big Easy. The clue tells them to take a ferry across the Baltic Sea to Tallinn, Estonia. (Which is not in Sweden! Yo, brain! Listen up!) When they get there, they will have to use a set of keys to open a door to Mustpeade, which is supposedly a “secret lair.” I think somebody doesn’t understand the word “secret.” Or, really, “lair.” I believe that in the classic book Secret Societies For Dummies, it says, “Don’t put your secret lair on an American reality show.” As they leave, Flight Time says that all the remaining teams are deserving, so who knows, really? Big Easy, on the other hand, hopes to get some separation from Sam and Dan, whom he calls “a tough team.” They find a cab driver who can lead them to the ferry.

When they find the spot where the boat will depart, it turns out that the first ferry to Tallinn isn’t until 5:45 in the afternoon — that’s roughly 15 and a half hours from when they left the pit stop. Ouch. “So much for our lead,” Big Easy says. Not to mention “so much for not spending quite a bit of time kicking back in the parking lot.”

4:12 AM. Spiky and Perky. Hmm. Almost two hours — I guess Big Easy got luckier than I thought finding his flag. Perky says in an interview that she and Spiky had some communication issues in the next leg (consisting, she does not mention, of her haranguing and him passive-aggressively ignoring her, to my eye), but they’re hoping that this leg will go better. They stop a taxi and get him to write down directions for them. I hope they paid him something, otherwise that’s a little bit … questionable, courtesy-wise, to flag down a taxi and then finagle free directions. That guy is working, you know? Lars The Cab Driver has to make a living, too.

4:37 AM. Brian and Ericka. Brian says they’re not worried about not having won a leg yet, and he points out that Ericka didn’t win any preliminaries when she was Miss America. You know, on a show full of self-directed completely irrelevant pep talks, that’s still a notably irrelevant one. They get a taxi they can follow as well.

5:04 AM. Sam and Dan. Sam interviews that the last leg “put [their] bickering into perspective,” by which he means that it seems to have demonstrated to Dan that being a hectoring jackass isn’t necessarily the most productive way of encouraging a teammate. I was really hoping they’d work some foreshadowing into this interview, like, “The race so far has really been a blur.” No dice.

When Brian and Ericka reach the ferry terminal, they are amused to see Flight Time and Big Easy’s shoes sitting outside their car. Spiky and Perky pull up next. Spiky is also amused by the Globetrotters sleeping in their car, but neither of the arriving teams is excited about the fact that the boat isn’t leaving for another twelve hours.

6:29 AM. Gary and Matt. Gary nonsensically says that he was afraid, coming into the race, that Matt would think less of him upon seeing his flaws. I say “nonsensically,” of course, because Gary is awesome and everyone knows it, and there is no reason anyone would think less of him — which I think is what Matt thinks, also. I imagine Matt being like, “Whatever, World’s Best Dad, I’ll try to forgive you for not running like a seventeen-year-old, which I do not do either, really.”

When Sam and Dan arrive at the ferry terminal, the GTs note their arrival. Big Easy interviews that Sam and Dan’s behavior during the last Roadblock — or the part of it he was there for, presumably — wasn’t really ideal. Both teams, it seems, wish to beat each other. These are the seeds of conflict! Or winning! Gary and Matt show up as well. They, too, are not pleased to hear about the departure time.

And then it’s 5:45, and everybody is gearing up for sixteen hours on the boat. Gary and Matt are hopeful that this has saved their bacon as far as the fact that they were an hour and a half behind the team in front of them as of the beginning of the leg, and now they’re caught up — though they still have their Speed Bump to contend with. Matt tells us that he put on his black headband, just to be extra-tough. Aw.

The next day, we are in Tallin, Estonia. In the Netherlands! Wait, no. In Estonia, actually. All the teams are pressed against the glass exit doors like iguanas trying to get out of a terrarium, and then they’re all running off the boat down a very, very long gangway. Big Easy interviews that he was teasing everybody about the long run and how much it wasn’t bothering him. I can see how that guy would drive you a little bit crazy on a long race, the same way North Carolina will drive you crazy during a long basketball season.

Outside, all the teams look for taxis to Mustpeade.

Spiky and Perky are the first to the building, followed closely by Sam and Dan. It turns out you have to just try all your keys to get in the door, but if there’s more than one team there at the door, you’re allowed to go in together. In fact, it would be difficult to keep someone from coming in behind you, probably. Brian and Ericka don’t quite make it to enter at the same time as these lead teams, who eagerly pull the door shut behind them.

Inside, Spiky and Perky and Sam and Dan read about this week’s Roadblock. In it, the Roadblocker heads down some stairs to where the brotherhood whose lair this is is having a loud feast of sorts. Again with the loose interpretation of secrecy! Anyway, when you get down there, you pick a candelabra with a number hanging from it. You find the room with that number. There you will be handed a scroll, and if you hold that scroll up to your lighted candle, you’ll be able to read the words “Pik Herman Tower Garden.” Sam and Spiky take the task.

Down in the cellar, they both pick their candelabras.

Outside, Brian and Ericka are still trying the door when Gary and Matt get there and find the clue for their Speed Bump. Their task requires them to find a Saunabuss (which is indeed a bus with a sauna in it, which is the kind of thing you might see featured on the Swedish version of Bridezillas, it occurs to me), where they must take a five-minute sauna. First, of course, they have to find it.

Ericka works on the door, and Flight Time and Big Easy show up. When she gets it, these two teams go in together. Ericka and Flight Time take it.

Gary and Matt, with a little help from the friendly locals, find the Saunabuss. Inside, they strip down and get in their towels, then they go into the sauna, where Gary strikes up a conversation about his Finnish heritage in Northern Minnesota. So Gary may be from Montana right now, but he’s Minnesotan originally. I knew I could trust that guy. It’s interesting that the northern Minnesota connection to the Finns came up, because it is totally true that up on the Iron Range, there is a lot (lot lot) of Finnish blood. I once listened to two Minnesota state legislators — one hardcore Democrat and one hardcore Republican — banter in Finnish. True story!

Flight Time is first to find his room with the scroll. Because there’s a little red crayon-like thing with the blank scroll, Flight Time thinks that he has to rub the crayon on the paper to make the message appear. “I proceeded to start scribblin’ and colorin’ like I was in kindergarten,” he says in an interview.

Spiky finds his room, too. He immediately figures out that he needs to hold the message up to the light. For he is Spiky, and what he lacks in personality, he makes up for in efficiency. I have to say, the casting of Spiky and Perky kind of confuses me. There are lots of blondes in the world, and while I have nothing against them and they’re probably absolutely lovely people, they are bad television. Her mildly high-strung tendency to get frustrated at tasks doesn’t make up for the fact that they basically never speak about anything other than what they’re doing at this very moment. It’s hard for me to imagine what their interviews were like and who thought, “We have got to get these people on our show right away.”

Back in the Saunabuss, Gary is having a great time chit-chatting with the locals. Matt is particularly fond of the very pretty blonde sitting next to him in her towel. Gary sings a little song about the sauna, even, which I’m sure mortifies Matt rather a lot. My parents are fairly whimsical, but I am confident that in the event we ever found ourselves in the potentially mortifying situation of taking a sauna with strangers, they could refrain from singing.

Ericka also figures out quickly that she needs to hold it up to the light. Flight Time? Still scribbling. Sam holds his up to the light, but has trouble reading it.

Spiky is the first to get the words — “Pik Hermann Tower Garden” — off the scroll, and he runs for the door. Ericka gets it next. So those two teams are off.

Matt and Gary are finally done with their sauna, so they can start the Roadblock. Matt starts trying keys in the door. They get the door open, and Matt takes the Roadblock. When he gets downstairs, though, it turns out that he’s never heard of a candelabra, and doesn’t know what that word is. I would make fun of him more if I weren’t perfectly confident that Matt has run into many, many words in his life that I haven’t run into in mine, and I can’t claim that knowing what a candelabra is has ever been of much use to me. I found it interesting that some observers were so hard on him for not knowing that word, which basically would have no reason to come up in the life of a 22-year-old farm kid. I mean, seriously. Vocabulary is a good thing, but it’s pretty easy for me to believe that it simply never came up, and as I said, I’m pretty confident he could unload some vocabulary relevant to his existence that wouldn’t mean anything to me.

Brian and Ericka and Spiky and Perky get directions to the tower garden.

Sam finally sees the letters in the clue, but he thinks the word “tower” is something like “tuver” and proceeds to pronounce it that way for quite a while, which is very entertaining to me. I’m not sure not recognizing the word “candelabra” is any more embarrassing than not recognizing the word “tower.” Flight Time. fortunately, was scribbling on the side of his scroll that doesn’t have the writing on it, so when he turns it over and holds it up to the light, he can see the words. So now, it’s just Matt, who’s downstairs asking the guys whether any of them is, by any chance, a candelabra (pronounced “CAN-dell-a-bruh”). Eek.

After a set of commercials, it occurs to Matt the it sounds like the word “candelabra” has something to do with a candle, so he figures it out and gets looking for room 88.

Spiky and Perky and Brian and Ericka find the clue box in the tower garden — which is next to, and not part of, the tower. The clue leads them to the Detour, which offers two choices of fun things to do in a bog. (Estonia is very bog-heavy, apparently.) The first option, Serve, involves playing volleyball in thigh-deep mud against two locals until they score five points. The second, Sling, involves shooting tiny vegetables at a target with a slingshot, and when you hit it, a table of cabbages collapses (?) and you get your clue. Don’t drink and design detours, is the lesson here.

Spiky and Perky take Serve on the basis that they’ve both played before. There’s a little moment where both they and Brian and Ericka are going for the same taxi, and Brian tells Spiky to have that guy call for another cab. Ericka becomes irate that he gave away “their” taxi, but it’s not clear to me that they were ever going to get that taxi anyway. Of course, in the taxi, Spiky and Perky tell the driver to definitely not call another taxi for Brian and Ericka. This is what passes for Spiky/Perky intrigue.

Matt holds his secret scroll up to the candle, but because he can just barely see the words, he reaches the same conclusion as Flight Time and starts rubbing with the crayon.

Brian and Ericka get another cab, and Ericka teases him more about giving away the taxi.

Sam and Dan are looking for what they’re calling “Pik Hermann Too Ver-Garden.” Flight Time and Big Easy are right behind.

Matt finally gets the words to show up on his scroll, but he only sees the first three — “Pik Hermann Tower.” He doesn’t see the word “Garden” at the bottom, and if this is really his clue we’re looking at, I can’t blame him, because it looks like that word is well separated from the others. He and Gary leave, but they’re not pointed in quite the right direction just yet, owing to the problem reading the clue.

Sam and Dan get to the clue box at the tower garden, followed closely by the Globetrotters. They both want the volleyball, but they’re going to the same place anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Sam and Dan beg a lady in a taxi to give up the taxi so they can have it, but nothing doing. They ask the driver to call another cab. When another cab shows up almost immediately behind the one they’re talking to, they decide that must be the one that was called for them. They’re all, “He was calling for us!” Which strikes me as completely absurd, because how is that cab, which looks nothing like the first one, going to get there fifteen seconds after they asked the driver to call? But they’re never going to miss an opportunity to be pissed at the GTs, so Sam and Dan believe they’re entitled to this cab, while the cabbie is perfectly okay to take all four of them, since they all want to go to the same place, and isn’t willing to kick the GTs out on Sam and Dan’s say-so, it appears. Note that Flight Time reached the cab first and talked to the cabbie first, and the GTs nevertheless make no attempt to kick Sam and Dan out of the cab; they just stand their ground about not getting kicked out of it themselves.

Sam interviews that the GTs “aren’t doing anything for themselves; they’re literally just following us.” Are they? Because I haven’t seen that at all. I’ve seen them getting to this taxi before you, however, and you getting there after them, which isn’t how “following” is defined in my version of standard English. Furthermore, this “following” argument is always so dumb, because it only applies to moving between destinations where you are right together, and if you are right together, then you are … right together. If you don’t want them to follow you, then get ahead of them. Note that the GTs are not currently following Spiky and Perky, you dig?

Gary and Matt are at the tower, but they’re not figuring out where the clue box is, because they don’t have “garden.”

Perky notices in the cab that the clue gives permission to do the Detour in your underwear. She’s like, “Ew, I’m not doing it in my underwear.” Might want to consider why they’re offering that option, there, Perky. Brian posits in his and Ericka’s cab that it might be something at a nudist colony. Ericka tells him that if that’s the case, he’ll be lending her some of his underwear, because all she has on is a thong. Hee. “I’ll be going in the underwear for fun,” he declares. “For fun, I”ll be going in the underwear.” And she giggles. I still think they’re delightful.

In the Sam/Dan/Globetrotter taxi, there’s some talk about Sam’s absolute conviction that it took five seconds for the driver they asked to arrange another taxi and for that taxi to arrive, meaning that this is their cab, dammit. Sam then interviews that the GTs have been the ones they’ve been wanting out of the race all along. “It’s frustrating to see them doing so well,” he says. Well, at least that’s honest. See also: North Carolina.

Gary and Matt are at the tower, but they’re still off the mark, because they’re looking for the tower itself and trying to figure out how to get up into it. “We’re gettin’ way behind,” Gary remarks regretfully. “Yeah,” Matt agrees quietly.

More commercials.

When we return, Gary and Matt finally spot the clue box and get the clue sending them to the bog. They hail a cab, thinking they’ll do the slingshot option. “We’re doin’ terrible today; we’re off our game big time,” says Gary in the cab on the way. Aw. I think that’s quite true. I think what’s happening to Gary and Matt today is mostly about small mistakes building up. It’s taking them just a little bit longer to do things than it would need to take if they were going to make up ground, which they had to since they got to Mustpeade fairly late in the sequence and had to go do their Speed Bump.

Matt and Gary’s cab driver calls Spiky and Perky’s cab driver. Matt claims that their driver is telling the other guy to go slow, but Spiky and Perky’s driver tells them that Matt and Gary’s driver wanted directions, but smugly brags that he said he was too busy. You don’t think Spiky and Perky’s driver could be trying to increase his tip, do you? Perky nevertheless buys it, completely.

Spiky and Perky arrive at the bog. They find an arrow that leads them through the swamp on a little walkway, and then we cut to Estonians playing volleyball in the mud, accompanied by wacky piano noodling. Volleyball is silly! They select the team they consider weakest, but when they get in the mud and discover it is at least knee deep, they’re still a bit surprised. “I don’t know if this is mud,” Perky remarks uncomfortably. Heh. They start scoring points pretty quickly. It looks like mud volleyball doesn’t require a huge amount of skill; it’s kind of an excuse to get muddy.

In the GT/brothers cab, Flight Time and Big Easy are putting their jerseys on, the better to compete with.

Elsewhere, Gary says somewhat grimly that they’re never going to give up, because after all, on the race, “anything can happen.” And they would need it to, it seems.

Spiky and Perky continue playing volleyball.

Brian and Ericka are approaching the bog at the same time as the GT/brothers taxi. These three teams do not have Spiky and Perky’s good luck finding the marked path to the Detour options (which are basically right in the same place).

Sam and Dan, the GTs, and Brian and Ericka continue to wander.

Spiky and Perky score their final point, and their clue tells them to run to the pit stop, which is at the top of a nearby wooden tower. Phil claims that the tower rises “high above” the bog, but it looks like it rises perhaps … 20 feet? I don’t know that I’d call it a “tower” so much as “two flights of stairs with a flat area on top.” Spiky and Perky run for it. Welcome, Spiky and Perky, you are team number one … again. And you have won a “red cedar sauna.” You can kind of see this moment where they’re like, “Uhhhhh.” Because what are normal twentysomethings going to do with their own sauna? Aren’t they probably renters? This is a nice prize, but not one of the most practical the show has ever provided. I predict that sauna will never actually be delivered.

Sam and Dan, Brian and Ericka, and Flight Time and Big Easy are all walking around in a group looking for some kind of marked path. It sounds like the first person to call out upon spotting it is Big Easy, and then they’re all running along the path.

And somewhere, still in their cab, Gary and Matt are trying to stay positive.

Now, because Sam and Dan and Flight Time and Big Easy get to the Detour ahead of Brian and Ericka and both choose the volleyball, Brian and Ericka are sort of screwed, because there are only two courts, so only two teams can do volleyball at a time. For that reason, as they explain, they sort of had to do the slingshot if they wanted to have any chance at all of not finishing behind these teams. (They presumably don’t know for positively sure where Gary and Matt are, though they may have a decent guess.)

For Sam’s part, when they get to volleyball, he’s just happy to see “some hottie Estonian guys.” I hear you, Sam.

Now, we get to the most embarrassing and difficult discuss portion of this episode: What Are They Blurring? As Sam and Dan walk across the bog, Dan’s crotch, in particular, is blurred. Dan is wearing stretchy gray underwear that does not look to be particularly tight. So it would seem that there are three options here for what it is that has led them to believe that Dan has to be blurred. One would be peepage, one would be flopping, and one would be that volleyball is more exciting to Dan than you might expect. These are the only things I can think of, because I don’t think his cotton briefs are sheer enough for the problem to be actual visibility. Even wet, I would think there’s not much to see when he’s standing still, and they’re not even wet yet, are they? There’s a following moment, featuring Dan, from the reverse angle, in which he is not blurred, and you can see that it’s not that the underwear is tight, particularly.

I realize this is way too much thinking about this, but it was totally what everyone I know was talking about after this episode: The Mystery Of Dan’s Blurry Junk.

Brian and Ericka start taking shots at the target with the slingshot and their little vegetables. This whole thing, incidentally, is very weird.

And then we cut over to Sam, and now SAM is blurred. And Sam appears to be wearing cargo shorts. Isn’t that a pocket in the side? How is Sam getting blurred while wearing cargo shorts? I would not think they would be flimsy enough to make your everything visible to the naked (har) eye. Moreover, now Sam and Dan are both being blurred while standing still, and since shots seem to be being chosen selectively for the need for blurring, this would seem to eliminate flopping as the reason. And the cargo shorts seem to suggest it’s not peepage.

Is it excitement? Because I always feel bad for dudes, in a way, because they tell me this business is unpredictable, so I would totally believe that somebody’s body might betray him in some bizarre moment, the way some people sweat uncontrollably or shake or whatever.

But … BOTH of them? They BOTH require blurring? I just find this entire sequence utterly bizarre. It could be that wet cargo shorts are the equivalent of a wet T-shirt, I guess, but then why are we going back and forth between blurred and unblurred shots? I realize I’m always way too fascinated with production mysteries.

Flight Time and Big Easy and Sam and Dan start playing unpredictable mud volleyball. Over and over, someone has gone to the trouble of tastefully blurring their netherlands. (THERE IT IS.)

Elsewhere, in the cab, Gary says that they don’t know where any of the other teams are, and their only hope is to catch up at the Detour.

Commercials.

When we return, Flight Time and Big Easy and Sam and Dan are still playing volleyball. The blurring of Sam and Dan continues.

Brian and Ericka keep it up with the slingshots.

Flight Time and Big Easy and Sam and Dan finish the volleyball close together and are leaving for the very nearby pit stop. The GTs are a bit ahead, but they turn in the wrong direction, and when they figure it out, they turn around and run, and now they’re behind Sam and Dan. Now, Flight Time and Big Easy are faster than Sam and Dan, pretty clearly; the trouble is to pass them on this narrow little walkway with wet feet and so forth. Flight Time slips once, then pops back up (but not the way Sam and Dan apparently were earlier — hiyo!). Then, as Flight Time is making a probably unwise move to try to pass them, Sam flails his arm out — not to knock him down, I don’t think, as much as to discourage him — and Flight Time trips again, taking Dan down with him. Flight Time shouldn’t have tried to pass without room, but Sam definitely threw the arm, also. I don’t think anybody intended for anybody to get injured, though.

Sam and Dan get to the pit stop first, so they are team number two, and Flight Time and Big Easy are team number three. There’s some talk back and forth, where Dan says he was pushed, and Big Easy says it’s perfectly okay with him if they want to play more physical (always the kind of comment I don’t like). This seems like kind of a nothing fight to me; they’re just wound up from the end of the leg. I think Big Easy, who wasn’t even in that confrontation, saw the arm fly and doesn’t like those guys anyway and is overwound, while Sam and Dan are insecure about this other team and have been saying so for a while. It’s also interesting that Dan is the one defending himself, but Sam is the one whose arm I saw fly. I think one thing that’s happening here is that Sam doesn’t want to get into the fact that he threw more of an elbow, and Dan’s the one who went down.

At any rate, this hardly looks like a blood feud to me, but neither of them is covering themselves in glory.

Gary and Matt reach the bog. Brian and Ericka are still working on the slingshot. Brian finally knocks it down, and they venture out into the bog to get their clue. I would note this about Ericka: Since her very bad leg in which she admitted she acted like a jerk, I haven’t seen her make a peep of complaint about anything. She goes into bogs, she does Roadblocks, and she seems to have actually meant it when she said she wasn’t proud of her behavior the day she was snapping at him and so forth. She seems to have gone right back to having a lot of fun, and I respect that. They don’t know for sure that they’re not last, but they’re very happy to hear they aren’t.

Gary and Matt. As they complete the Detour, they both voice over about what a great experience they had together, how hard they worked, and how much they learned about each other. “Just the experiences we shared on this thing and the things we’ve done, I mean … ” Matt is clearly very happy. In fact, they both look happy in their post-boot interview. I’m not sure a kid and his dad ever think they are the most likely to win, but this is a pretty good showing, and they got to spend a lot of one-on-one time together. I am a big advocate of making sure you spend grown-up time with your parents as an adult, so I can totally believe this would be a lot of fun. For all that people make jokes about living at home, the fact that I lived with my parents for a couple of tide-over periods during my adult life was actually pretty cool, and that’s the kind of thing I always hope people get out of this kind of thing, is the experience of learning that you actually like your family and would hang out with them even if you weren’t related to them. Their relationship also has just a really healthy vibe to me, really generous and good-hearted, and I think it’s safe to say that they’re a lot more similar to each other than the people who cast them set them up to be. In a lot of ways, that’s the same guy translated through two different bodies and ages and backgrounds.

Next week: Flight Time sings, and Sam and Dan snag a cab from Brian and Ericka. Oh, cab-stealing. You are such a boring source of conflict.