Episode 9: "This is a mad, mad, mad, mad road race and I`m mad all over with competitiveness!"
- Linda Belcher (Part 1 of a 2 part episode)
After Salsaobe returns from their first tribal council in their bedroom, there is a sense of awkward silence but in a confessional, Vinny says that at tribal he felt torn trying to decide if he should or should not tell the truth to everyone out loud how the team is really run and his mind told him to be explicit louder and louder until he couldn`t hold it and let out the energy. He also says he still has things to say while he still feels his new sense of power on him. Vinny angrily tells Peter, Lois and Roberta he voted for Donna and says it`s his way of saying "screw you for leaving me on the outs over and over again on my alliance". Lois tells Vinny this isn`t true and he really was in the alliance and Peggy suddenly buts in and says speaking of alliances, she wants to talk to her about it. Roberta tells her to shut up and in a confessional says that with both her parents out of the game now, she feels winning that grand prize of 5 million dollars just got harder. Roberta refuses to make eye contact or even speak to Peggy as Peggy tells off Lois for just using her for her own game. Homer and Peter also start to argue over their votes at tribal which turns into a fist fight forcing Marge to step in as Vinny yells to everyone left it Lois`s original alliance he`s going rouge and plans to keep it that way for as long as he`s competing and Peggy tells Lois to back off from her as well as her husband Peter.
In Niagara Jades room, the whole team is awake leaning against the wall listening to the conflict and whispering to themselves what they think is going on. While they do, Louise and Bart high five each other. In a confessional Louise says that getting Team Salsaobe, her team's biggest rivals, to be shattered just like that is a dream come true in this game since it will make winning easier for her team and as a side bonus might help out her family on Misty Emerald a bit. She says all she has to do is secure team leader position, make it to the merge and just zip line all the way to the end.
The next morning, all of Team Salsaobe eats their breakfast separately while giving their teammates hostile looks. Peter shoves Meg aside hard as she walks by and Marge grits her teeth at Peter, making him startled by the hostility. Over at Misty Emeralds table, Bob says Team Salsaobes mood is as dark as the clouds he sees in the sky outside with Hank commenting it looks like a hurricane could strike. Calvin comes up from the basement as the flying house lands and awkwardly asks the other 2 teams if Team Salsaobe is having a staring contest since all 7 members keep looking at each other without blinking and intimidating them. When Lisa explains it`s just over trust issues, Calvin says he has an announcement to make and that trust may be critical today for it. He first congratulates the 18 remaining players on all surviving at least 1 tribal council. He then says the reward challenge is upon them and the start of the challenge is at the teams' bedroom windows.
All 3 teams hurry upstairs to their windows in their room and when they open it and look out, they see a stairwell mounted against the house leading to a maze down below. Calvin runs upstairs and tells the 3 teams they`re looking at their next challenge. He tells the teams the challenge is to climb down the stairs into the maze and find a way to the exit. 1st team to get out wins reward. He adds that upon completing the reward challenge, the 3 teams will immediately jump into the immunity challenge. The immunity challenge is to use one of the 3 minivans awaiting the teams at the end of the maze to drive to the finish line where the house will be awaiting the contestants using only a map for directions, with the last team showing up going to tribal council and voting out someone. Also, the first team to complete the maze will get to pick comfort or advantage. Before the challenge begins, Calvin adds he has a question to ask all the teams: hand or foot? Teams Salsaobe and Niagara Jade both say hand and all the members on each team get handcuffed together and Misty Emerald says foot and the team is footcuffed together. Calvin explains this is to make the maze a harder task to complete and once teams get to the end of the maze, he will await them there to unlock them. He starts the challenge before going downstairs and 3 teams climb out their windows, go down the staircase and enter the maze.
In the maze, Linda complains about why her team picked foot cuffs as they really hinder the team. Her anger slowly turns to nervousness as the team starts to feel they got lost in the maze until the green team gets back to the start of the maze where the stairs and house are now gone. At Salsaobe, Homer and Peter simultaneously complain about each other, the weather, the tight handcuffs, how hungry they are and how they hate each other which really irritates their 5 team members. Team Niagara Jade overhears the arguing and decide to take advantage of it by following Team Salsaobe as quiet as they can. They spot Salsaobe and follow them from a distance with Tammy comparing this is like copying someone on a school test, only they`ll be lead to the exit by Salsaobe. The red team stops and Los stands atop Peter to see ahead of the maze and almost falls down when she spots it not too far away. After she gets down, Salsaobe sprints for the exit with Lois shouting directions. Niagara Jade appears and tries to run past them but Teddy trips and the team falls down into a pile giving Salsaobe the advantage they need to stay in first.
Team Salsaobe gets to the end of the maze first and Calvin arrives in his golf cart where he un-cuffs the team. He tells Salsaobe they won the reward challenge for getting out of the maze first and asks the excited team if they will take comfort or advantage. Before anyone can react, Homer says out loud the team will take comfort which bugs his team mates. However, Calvin tells the team they get to race in a fancier car as an intern pulls up in a new limo. The whole team gets excited as Calvin tosses Homer the keys and the team races inside. In a confessional, Lois says she`s surprised by how a reward that fancy helped her teams conflict diminish but Roberta walks up and says that the conflicts are still not forgotten however. Roberta turns out to be right when Peggy decides to drive so she won`t have to be with her team directly while her team looks around the limo in excitement and start to relax and enjoy themselves. Peggy finds a map with directions in the glove compartment and drives off.
Back at the maze, while Team Misty Emerald is arguing over what path to take, Niagara Jade makes it out of the reward challenge and are freed. Calvin directs them to a minivan and tells them to hurry as Team Salsaobe already is in the lead. Teddy gets into the driver's seat and Tammy starts to complain how cramped the car feels while Bobby struggles to buckle up. The car leaves and Misty Emerald is the only team still doing the maze. Hank looks up at the sky and says he has a bad feeling about the weather today as a slight wind picks up while Linda tells her team they need to move at a steady pace. The team moves one step at a time together with Linda yelling which direction to move. After a few stumbles and a wrong turn, Team Misty Emerald finally gets out of the maze. As Calvin unlocks the 4 members, he tells the team that Niagara Jade left about 17 minutes ago. Worried, the team sprints into their minivan and Linda drives the team off fast. Once they are gone, the flying house appears overhead and Calvin uses a grappling hook to get up. The house then rockets off. Calvin goes down to his basement ready to have some fun.
In Salsaobes limo, the team starts to play some rock and roll music on the radio and after Vinny smells alcohol and finds a stash of alcoholic beverages in a mini fridge, most of the team starts to have a drink as well. Marge gives a toast to Homer while having a glass of water and tells the team it`s for Homer making a good choice for once in his life. Most of the team joins in while Peter gets jealous of Homers newfound popularity. Peggy notices it starts to drizzle and as she turns on the windshield wipers tells herself she hopes it won`t rain too hard.
In Niagara Jades car, Tammy keeps complaining how the car is cramped and smells funny. Teddy gets so irritated by Tammy's complaining, he turns on a radio playing Christmas music very loud to drown out Tammy`s voice. Lisa looks at the sky and sees a huge and loud thunderbolt in the sky and yells at Teddy over the music if he thinks it`s safe to drive in this weather. Teddy, who thinks that Lisa is now complaining as well, convinces his team to start singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of their lungs. Lisa feels frustrated by this and covers her ears.
Over at Misty Emerald, Bob looks out the window and asks Linda if she thinks the weather was good enough for a race today as Gene starts to feel anxious. Linda tells Bob Calvin wouldn`t leave anyone in danger. Over at the house in the basement, a radio broadcast announces that a very huge power storm is coming and driving in it would be like suicide. However, Calvin is too busy multitasking by eating a sandwich, having a massage in a massage chair, reading a story off on one of his computers and online gambling on his other computer to even notice the emergency broadcast. An intern tries to call Calvin via. Cellphone but Calvin is too busy trying to decide what move to make in a card game to notice.
Team Salsaobe is shown next driving by a seaside cliff with Vinny noticing how rough the water is while Homer, Peter and Lois are drunk on beer and annoying Roberta and Marge. Vinny tells Peter that his instincts are feeling bad with the weather but Peter hands Vinny a beer and tells him to just drink and relax.
In Misty Emeralds car, Linda`s road rage makes the car go dangerously fast. Hank and Gene try to convince Linda to slow down but Linda tells the team she isn`t coming in last again and won`t go back to tribal ever. Hank tries to grab the steering wheel but Linda slaps his hand away and Bob starts to get irked when it starts to rain. In a confessional, Hank says it boggles his mind that he is the guy on the outs with his team yet he is a better asset to it that Linda. He says he thinks there's a bleak future for the team coming up.
The rain and wind strongly pick up as Team Niagara Jade gets to a fork in the road. At this point, the car no longer is playing music since the radio lost its signal. Teddy asks Bobby, who`s in the passenger's seat, to check the map and see what direction the team needs to go. Bobby holds the map at the wrong angle without knowing and tells Teddy to go on the uphill left path, which is the wrong way.
At Salsaobe, Peggy starts to get worried how alarmingly strong the wind is getting and Marge joins her in the passenger seat so she won`t have to listen to the loud music playing in the back since it was giving her a headache. In the back, Lois sees an opportunity with Marge not around and Homer too drunk to fully understand anything clearly. She quietly talks to Peter and Roberta about rebooting their old alliance, only this time they do it without Peggy. Roberta and Peter agree with the plan and Lois says in a confessional that things are going back to her way again. While the Scorpions song "Rock you like a hurricane" plays on the limos stereo, the limo shakes from the wind several times that knocks some of the team mates off their seats. Vinny, who`s drunk, looks at his bottle of beer that has a white Labrador retriever as a mascot on the label. Suddenly in Vinny semi-sharp mind, the logo moves and the dog slowly turns into Brian Griffin. The Brian Griffin on the bottle warns Vinny that a disaster is coming very fast upon him and his team. However, Vinny just tosses the beer bottle aside and sluggishly tells Homer he`s too tired to read anything now. Another gust of wind really rocks the limo hard and Marge is nearly knocked into the back of the limo.
At the same time, Lisa tells Teddy she thinks he took a wrong turn at the fork in the road as the road they`re on now looks like no ones used it for a long time. Bobby insists this is the right road and Louise snatches the map from him to look at it as the teams' minivan gets to the top of a very tall cliff side on the road. Louise and Lisa check the map where Lisa discovers that the team did make a wrong turn at the fork in the road to the whole teams' annoyance. Teddy hits the breaks to start making a U-turn but the road is so wet the car starts hydro panning out of control. Bobby grabs and pulls the emergency break but that fails to work since the car is too out of control. Everyone suddenly starts to scream when the minivan dangerously looks like it will drive off the cliff at any moment.
Meanwhile, Team Misty Emerald gets to the fork in the road and Linda drives down the correct path. Hank keeps telling Linda to slow down and Linda keeps murmuring something about not wanting to come in last place again. Gene whispers to Hank he`s strongly starting to have second thoughts about voting off Connie instead of his mom and Hank sees a window of opportunity open to him.
At the top of the hill, Niagara Jades car spins out of control in circles and slides downhill fast. In panic, Bart says that his lifelong dream was to give Principal Skinner a wet willie and Tammy says she never liked anyone on her team because they dress weird while Teddy admits he regrets never meeting Santa Claus as a kid and that Tammy became his teammate.
At Salsaobe, Peggy slows down the limo as they near a pond that`s overflowing when Peter says he thinks he can hear loud screaming. Suddenly, Niagara Jades car slides down from the nearby hill and hits Salsaobes limo hard. The limo spins out of control and lands hard into the nearby pond half submerged while Niagara Jades car still spins out of control on the road. In Niagara Jades car, Bob squints and tells Linda he thinks he spotted some lights up ahead and thinks it would be better if Linda slows down. When Linda refuses, Bob kicks her foot off the accelerator. Out of nowhere, Misty Emeralds car gets hit by Niagara Jades car and the green team barley has time to scream before their car hits the side of a rocky cliff that has a lot of shrubs and a tree near it. In Niagara Jades car, Lisa says that they hit 2 cars as Teddy tries to regain control of his teams' car. The car suddenly tumbles and literally spins out of control like a tumbleweed in the desert and falls down a hole off the road that looks like it could be a few feet deep or possibly 100`s of feet deep. Meg can be heard screaming, "Hit the brakes!" before the car vanishes from view.
The episode ends with a view of Salsaobes limo half in-half out of the water, the hole Niagara Jades minivan went down in, Misty Emeralds car submerged in the side of the cliff and Calvin Fishoeder loudly cheering he won a lot of money online gambling as the house lands near the finish line. The screen then fades to black with the words To be continued showing up onscreen before a question mark pops next to it and the screen completely fades to nothing.
Captions shown during the credits:
The fate of Team Salsaobe will be revealed in the next episode.
The fate of Team Misty Emerald will be seen in the next episode.
The fate of Team Niagara Jade will be shown in the next episode.
The amount of money Calvin Fishoeder won through online gambling won`t ever be revealed.