Mike rides the cable car down, and now the spectacular view includes his dad. "This is the treat of a lifetime," Mel is saying. In an interview, Mel describes the view from his perspective: "You're looking down over a fairyland, a land that couldn't possibly be true. Alps, all in fall colors, and the green valleys, sweeping away in every direction. It was wonderful." Why doesn't this show cast more writers, anyway? Mike arrives at the bottom, saying there's hope. "We're still in this," he says.

And now we rejoin Linda, on her foot trek down the mountain. She comes to a fork in the road, and turns right, having not seen that left-pointing arrow. Cue the power-line percussion of Boy Did She Just Fuck Up. Once she's past, Cara successfully navigates the arrow, and Mark jogs along an unknown distance behind her. "I love running. It's pretty simple," he says as he makes the turn. For some people. Like Jen and Christie, who seem able to handle it as well.

Mel is still enjoying the view of Bavaria from above, and asks his instructor out for a beer afterwards. Mel, just because he's pressed up against you in a harness doesn't mean he likes you that way. "I could stay up here all day, if I had a sandwich," he says. He's spotted from below by Steve and Jaime at the waiting area. "This makes me angry," she says. When Mel lands, Mike runs up and they hug. "I bet the house on that," Mel says. They've leapt from last to fifth -- literally. As they take off, Mike tells Steve and Jaime that everyone else is running down. "It's a footrace, great," Jaime snots, right in front of Steve. "Man, I can see us going back to last real quick," Steve says. And while driving Mel to the next task, Mike says, "If you'd gone on that walk, you may never have come back. They may have just found your bones, you know, in the hinterlands of Germany, like, years later." See what I mean about casting writers?

Tammy and Victor are still in the lead when they arrive and open the clue box to reveal a Detour. Phil says it's "two tasks in which success depends on precision." Uh, okay. "Balancing Dolly" requires each member to get on a Segway and ride it over a two-mile obstacle course. Since the "obstacles" consist of things like speed bumps and maybe a wide seesaw or two, it doesn't look too challenging. "Teams who are able to master the controls quickly may find themselves scooting ahead." In "Austrian Folly," teams have to go into a party tent and throw pies at a target. "What they don't know," Phil says, "is that the target is their partner's face." They'll take turns pieing each other until one with cherry filling comes up, whereupon they'll collect the next clue from the bandleader. Who, by the way, doesn't look too occupied with actually leading the band. And it's not really clear how precision comes into it. "Teams that don't move quick enough could find themselves getting creamed," Phil warns. The show should also hire writers to draft the task descriptions, I'm thinking.