#ExcessBaggage recap (Mon 20/02/12)

Excess Baggage – Mon-Thu 6:30pm, GO!.
http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/excessbaggage/

At last the teams are back on dry land and in civilization. So many nasty things they could have picked up in Tasmania, like incest. Luckily none of them are related. PHEW! At least the Hunter Valley won’t hold any temptations for them. Kate tells us that next week is the halfway point (she hopes), so this week really counts as next week one team is leaving. A personal plea is offered to Darryn & Lisa by Kate/the producers urging them to get it together so they’re not the first ones out.

Everyone arrives and is greeted with this week’s Spirit Challenge from Trainer Christian – they have to put together bicycles and then ride them around a track to then collect some grapes and crush them (barefoot – ew) and fill 8 bottles with juice. It’s a bit of a challenge as the bikes are not easily assembled. Stupid technology encroaching on the simple things in life. Only the first three teams across the line score any points so all teams will need to be on form. Ajay rushes to a camera crew to advise them that putting the bike together will be hard for her, as recently she put a bike together herself and “rode around with the handlebars upside down for a week”. She’s such a little trooper – an anecdote for every situation!

Surprisingly the Red Team (Darryn & Lisa) are working well together without yelling. Darryn’s weekend abduction by aliens has really paid off for Lisa. Not everyone has recent bike riding experience, so for some it was as much fun as falling off a log. Gears proved to be difficult for the mechanically-minded Brant… all he could find was a bell. What a ding ding!

Ajay proclaims herself to be the “Wicked Witch Of The West”. Dipper wears his helmet on back to front. K-Fed can’t work out the valve on the tyres. Hilarity ensues. Ben & Gabby are straight into collecting their grapes ready for crushing. Darryn & Lisa arrive, and Darryn doesn’t mess around in racing ahead. There’s a lot made of the colours of the label on the bottles… which means one thing for sure: Ajay is gonna pick up the wrong box of bottles.

There’s grapes and tinea and crushing and juice and attitude and everything. There’s a lot of encouragement masked as frustration. In the end, the Orange Team (Dipper & Lana) take the win, with the Green Team (Gabby & Ben) second. Third was up for grabs for quite a while, but the Grey Team (Brant & John) slide in ahead of the Purple Team (Ajay & Matt) – who notice that the Orange Team were filling the wrong bottles so go straight to the stewards in protest. For a shy retiring flower like Ajay she can really yell.

This is deja vu for Dipper & Lana after last week being pipped by one point overall last week after a protest to the Spirit Challenge in Tasmania. The Red Team is just ahead of the Blue Team to finish the challenge, and then Christian reviews the results. An official ruling is pending. Nerves are frayed. Only three teams used the correct coloured bottles, so the results change to become: 1st – Grey; 2nd – Red; & 3rd – Blue. A turn up! Amazeballs all round. “The rules are the rules,” emphasises Christian, before reminding the team the sky is blue and the earth is flat.

Challenge done, it’s off to an ad break, and the pre-sizzle tells us Kate “drops a bombshell” on Ajay. Only figuratively sadly, though Ajay is then seen weeping and tells anyone who’ll listen that “this is my worst nightmare”. Dr Joanna starts after the break a discussion about alcohol and what’s good/helpful/too much. Dipper then shares his love of binge drinking as a cultural response to football. We all learn that a bottle of wine has about the same calories as a Big Mac – or a facsimile therein. We also learn that a six pack of label-free beer has the same calories as half a pizza. It’s these important lessons that Dr Joanna wants to share… that alcohol can be enjoyed with a meal, but restraint should be shown or else any good work done in battling the bulge as far as food is concerned is thrown out the window when alcohol parties down your way.

SURPRISE! Kate’s here! Time for the Breakthrough Challenge – an aerobatic plane flight for: Dipper & Lana and Ajay & Matt. So THIS is Ajay’s worst nightmare. Ajay goes to pieces as it’s a real concern for her. She can hardly ride in Business Class with comfort, let alone in a little war plane. “I had to be sedated for years,” she explains. Then she adds, “To even get on a plane.” Slightly disappointing finish, but still enjoyable. The ride back to the hotel is punctuated with Matt trying to talk Ajay through the flight experience and Ajay shutting down. The producers should have done this more often. At the hotel Darryn morphs into “slightly madder” Max and chauffeurs a few of his fellow contestants to their rooms on a golf cart, managing to only nearly kill them.

Matt & Ajay continue to debrief at the hotel, and there’s not a lot of joy from Ajay. She’s seriously stressed, though conflicted as the cameras are now on her all the time and that’s a great thing as far as she’s concerned. God help us all.