"I Survived a Japanese Game Show" - July 1, 2008 episode

The second episode started off with a modified "stupid American" bit, this time with the mama-san coming in to tell them she was making breakfast, and most of them got all excited until they found out she was not making eggs and bacon and pancakes but rather, a Japanese breakfast. OK, I get that they had no preparation and had no clue they'd be going to Japan so couldn't learn about the food, but they already knew the food wasn't the same - should it really have been that much of a shock that her idea of "breakfast" and an American's idea of breakfast wasn't going to be the same thing? Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the shaved fish on top was bonito flakes. I love them - they don't have a lot of taste, but they're a pretty cool garnish. I'm hoping every episode isn't going to start with a culture shock bit.

The Green Monkey team was dismayed to find out that one of their teammates, Ben, had been taken to the hospital and was too sick to continue. Instead, former Yellow Penguin Darcy, ousted from the previous week, was returning to the game, but this time, she was going to be a Green Monkey.

The team challenge was a human crane game. As with the midway game where you use a claw to try to grab a particular item, three team members had two controls each to move a fourth team member left and right, forward and backward, and up and down. The person who was the claw part was dangled with arm pieces that looked like claws, and the goal was to pick up the giant panda plush (put in amid balloons) and deposit as many of them as possible into the chute.

The Yellow Penguins went first, with one of the guys as the human crane. This turned out to be a good move because arm strength was required to grab and hold the pandas. The team did very well and managed to retrieve 10 pandas.

The Green Monkeys went next, and they had a different strategy, somehow figuring that a lighter person being the crane was a good idea, so they picked Meaghan. She ended up doing very poorly, flipping out while being hung, screaming at her teammates to move her this way and that but with very confusing instructions, and she wasn't strong enough to hold onto the pandas, so she ended up dropping quite a few of them. The Green Monkeys managed to only retrieve 1 panda.

As their reward, the Yellow Penguins got a day at a popular Japanese spa, complete with massage. They also put their feet in a pool swimming with fish, and they were told that they were doctor fish who ate the dead skin cells off their feet. I think that could be interesting if I could get over the tickling sensation as well as trying to remember they're not actually piranha who are trying to kill me.

The losing Green Monkeys were taken to a pachinko parlor to work. The place was very much like a casino, but much, much louder because of all the little metal balls going everywhere. The different members were given tasks like cleaning the balls, serving drinks (a job from which Meaghan was relieved because she couldn't resist the temptation to play a pachinko machine) and handing out advertising leaflets in the pouring rain outside.

As the losing team, the Green Monkeys also had to put up two people for the elimination round. Initially, the rest of the team (Mary, Meaghan and Darcy) wanted to put up Donnell and Olga because they were the loudest ones in the group. Yes, that was as asinine a reason as it sounds - let's put up the only guy on the team and have the potential to lose him when that's pretty much going to sink the team for the rest of the challenges. However, Donnell managed to talk to Mary and Meaghan and get across that taking out the only male in the team was a bad idea, and Mary and Meaghan decided to put up Olga and Darcy instead. When Olga learned that Donnell had gotten himself off the chopping block but had left her on, she was hurt because she and Donnell had bonded. With Darcy and Olga wanting to put up Mary and Meaghan, it ended up being up to Donnell to decide which two women were in the elimination round, and he ultimately picked Darcy and Olga, which crushed Olga.

The goal in the elimination round was to deliver packages that must be inserted into the correct slot, but to get to the slot, they had to fight their way through the strong wind generated by a huge fan, and their opponent had a whole host of objects (panda plush, filled trash bags, blow-up pool toys, pillows, etc.) that could be thrown to try to impede their path. Olga went first, and with Darcy's good aim at throwing obstacles in her path, Olga managed to deliver 5 packages. When it was Darcy's turn, she did a better job of fighting the strong wind, and Olga wasn't very successful at throwing objects to slow her down, so Darcy ended up delivering 6 packages and winning the challenge. Donnell was concerned because he had expressed outright to Olga that she'd beat Darcy, a comment Darcy didn't take kindly to, so now, Darcy was the one coming back to his team.


The preview for next week's episode has a task that looks like a combination of David Letterman's velcro suit and human tetris. Looks like fun.