Well hello there treasure hunters, I suppose you’re looking for lpatrick’s golden recaps. Well, I’m sorry to tell you that this week you will just have to do without the gold, but I will try to make this pyrite recap as shiny and sparkly as possible, so as to hold your attention, and perhaps even to fool you into thinking that it’s gold.
Last week… well, I don’t know what happened last week, the recap they showed tonight was a blur, but lpatrick has a gold recap that you can read if you want to know what did happen. Anyway, we are now down to four teams, the Ex-CIA, the Air Force, the Geniuses (or Genii), and the Southie boys.
This week, the four teams arrive back from France, and they are all happy to get back onto American soil. Not only do they get to be back on American soil, they also get to stay a night at the Waldorf hotel, at which point Mark of the Ex-CIA team gets drinking quite a bit, while the rest of his team tries to urge him to stop drinking. Francis of the Genius team tells us that he sees the Waldorf on postcards that rich people send him, but that if he wins the treasure then he’s buying it. I have to say, I don’t know how much money they’re making, but somehow I doubt he’ll have enough money to purchase the Waldorf when this is all over.
In their first clue, they are given a coil with Susan B. Anthony on it, and told to go to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. After an ask.com search, the teams find that this is located at Bronx Community College. The Southies are the first team to find the Hall of Fame, and they find a statue of Susan B. Anthony, but they can’t figure out what the clue is. There is no clue on or around the statue. Once the other teams get there they realize that Susan (we’re on a first name basis, her and I) is looking directly at a key box. The key box contains keys to the Gould Library, which is also on the campus.
When they arrive in the Gould library, they get a phone call from
Phil the host telling them that the next clue is hidden in a painting, and that art imitates life. After much milling around, the Geniuses discover a work of art that is called “Today”. The picture is a painted picture of the scene they seem to be standing in. They notice that behind them there is a light switch just as there is in the picture, so they flick it on, and it projects a picture of a ship. They find another painting with that ship in it that has a plaque next to it that directs them to go to the Land Title Building in Philadelphia. As the boys run off to their car, one of them says that he never runs this fast unless he’s running for sex or food. I’m wondering what circumstance would possibly lead to someone running that fast for sex, but I decide to put that thought aside and continue with the recap.
As the Geniuses head out, the rest of the teams realize they are leaving, so run to the truck and ask them for help. The geniuses speed off instead of helping, and the other teams are appalled that the Geniuses won’t give away information that would help their opponents in this race. Francis of Geniusdom is excited that they will be going to his hometown of Philly, which of course means that we’re bound to see the Geniuses get lost later this hour. For now, though, they arrive at the right place, and one of the team members is required to go to the 22nd floor to suite 2226 to find the clue. Once Charles of Geniusdom is on his way up, the remaining Genii find out that Charles will have to go find a plague on the ledge outside.
As the Southies arrive, they have a shouting match, something which I must assume is not a rare sight in past episodes. When the Ex-CIAs get there, they send Todd up, and he is a little worried when he finds out that he will have to battle his fear of heights. Other teams get into the room with ease, using their credit card number, but Todd does not have his credit card on him, and so he doesn’t know what to do. Should he go back down and get it? Or should he just wait, and do nothing? Seriously, these are the two options he gives us. I don’t know what happened to the option of calling down to your team and finding out what their credit card number is. Todd ultimately chose to stand around and do nothing. I’m sure Freud would have a field day with this behavior, and anyone out there who is fat, old and bald would probably agree with me. Meanwhile, Charles is doing well on the ledge (I must point out that Charles is doing well, but I’m in a panic. I heights, but the thought of standing on a tiny ledge has me absolutely terrified. He finds the plaque by leaning over the edge and reading it upside down. The plaque says “Founders Hall Girard”. Francis knows immediately that it is Girard Ave. and not a person named Girard as he assumes other teams will think.
Air Force is pretty close behind getting the plaque quickly, and then we see Francis being confident again, while the other two genii realize that Francis is clueless, and that they are lost in Francis’ hometown. Gerard Avenue is apparently a big street, and they don’t know where this Founder’s Hall could be. I suppose they have decided that looking it up on their laptop would be resigning themselves to the fact that they may not be genii after all? Meanwhile, the Air Force team is not afraid to admit fallibility, as they check Ask.com to find that it’s not simply on Gerard Avenue, but that it’s at Girard College! One would think that a specific location on Girard Avenue might have come in handy, but not the genii, they’re too smart!
As Todd of the Ex-CIA team leans over the ledge to read the plaque, we see him start to sway a little, and suddenly we watch him fall to his doom. Ok, not really, but that was what I kept seeing in my head. The Southies decide that they are too cool to use their laptops as well, so they go to a man on the street with a laptop and ask him where Girard College is, and he seems to know exactly where it is, even to the point of telling them that it’s on the 2100 block of Girard Ave.
Team Air Force is the first to arrive at Founder’s Hall, and they learn that they must search the rooms to find the seven letter word in order to open their “cryptex”. Team Air Force finds some shipping records in the basement, and they assume that the code will be the name of one of the ships. The Southies are the second team to arrive, and they get out of the car and get in a shoving match followed by a chorus of "shut ups". Eventually a near fist fight breaks out, but one of the boys stops it before it starts. Just because the fist fight is avoided does not mean that these boys are ready to work together, as they start to walk in separate directions to avoid each other, each one refusing to apologize. The Southies give up on their fighting once they realize that the Ex-CIAs and the Geniuses have both just arrived at Founders Hall, and one of them declares that when the race is over they can all fight each other.
The Air Force was right in grabbing the shipping records, as they discover there was a ship named Liberty. They try “liberty” and the cryptex pops open revealing the last clue “Library of Congress”. The Southies try a different method. Instead of actually searching, they decide to try random Philadelphia words, and one of those words was liberty, because of the Liberty Bell. The Southies lucked out, and managed to make it to the finals, and all their members are still 100% intact. As the geniuses find a picture, Francis decides to touch it, and realizes that there is a secret door behind there, which includes a model of the ship Liberty. Will the geniuses find the word before the Ex-CIAs though?
We are led to believe that both teams found it at almost the same time, but in the end, the geniuses are the last team to finish in the final three, while the Ex-CIAs are out of the competition.
Well, there you have it, I’m sorry once again to those who came looking for gold and found only pyrite, but I hope that this pyrite will hold you over until next week when lpatrick returns with her Midas-touch recaps.
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