The Quest episode 7: "Verlox Attacks"

Previously on “The Quest”: the traitor ended up being someone Ansgar knew, who had fought by his side and then got kicked out of the castle for stealing. He’s planted “fire orbs” around the castle, which have to be located by watching footage from a “falcon”. Lina is the first one to find an orb, followed by Bonnie, Shondo, and Patrick. The remaining three must line up swords with circles on them to allow a beam of light to hit a map, telling them where Verlox is coming from. Andrew overcomes his ADD and wins the Fates’ challenge. Adria loses the narrow vote and is banished. While drinking with Ansgar, the paladins are interrupted by Verlox himself. (click for more)

Verlox looks like Tim Curry’s character in “Legend”. So a devil, with horns and a buff chest, and then a skirt. Or possibly stilts, and then a CGI smoke skirt to cover them. Verlox puts his hand on the column he’s standing next to, and cracks and fire appear. Sweet. It looks like he’s broken the whole castle. Ansgar shoves everyone to save the Queen. Some soldiers battle while Crio, the Queen, Ansgar, and the paladins run away. In the moat by the tunnels they’re going to run through, the vizier meets them. He says he’s helping them, and gives the Queen an amulet to “protect” her. Please. I kind of want him to NOT be evil, just because they’re making it so obvious.

Lots of walking through tunnels, and then Ansgar says they should stay in the tunnels until daylight. The paladins whisper about the amulet and how Verlox is impressive-looking. Yeah, I want the vizier to be a good guy and then the traitor is really, like, Ansgar. Or Crio, that would be awesome. I’m really jaded.

Suddenly there are guards there to lead the way. They end up in the woods somewhere. Ansgar says he’s taking them south, to where “the front” is supposed to be. Because clearly Verlox isn’t there. Crio protests about the quest, and Ansgar points out that no one has the Sunspear and the quest is over. Crio argues about how being brave is believing in things and he’ll continue the quest without Ansgar. OK, maybe he’s not evil. Still. Ansgar relents and says there are some signal towers nearby. He’ll take the paladins to them, while the guards and Crio take the Queen somewhere to get a horse. Lots of marching and running and hiding in the grass from soldiers. Also more running. Poor Bonnie.

The signal towers look like the watchtowers from the first challenge. Conveniently there are some arrows around, so Andrew and Lina pick teams. They shake out boys vs. girls. The towers have keys to the flag code. So one person is on the watchtower with the code, and two people putting up flags. Shondo interviews that the women will win this one. Don’t be sexist, Shondo. “Colors and patterns and the order that they go in” aren’t automatically feminine traits. There are two different messages, one for each team. I don’t think they are the same.

Bonnie and Patrick are in the watchtower with bullhorns. So you have to have a verbal description of the flags, which are really similar. Lina says the girls are on a roll. Andrew doesn’t know a hexagon has six sides and not five. Bonnie says to get a pentagon, and the girls put up something that does not have five sides. Come on guys. You know how you always are like “When are we going to use this in real life?” RIGHT THE FUCK NOW ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. You will use it to not screw this up and have people like me make fun of you. So the girls have something wrong, because Bonnie I guess can’t see how many sides this thing has from where she is. And Lina and Leticia don’t know what a pentagon is. The girls think they’re done, so they raise the flags. Wrong. They switch out another flag but not the “pentagon”. The boys finish but they aren’t right either. The girls now don’t even have their wrong octagon up there. Ansgar mutters about this taking too long. Hee. Eventually Patrick gets Andrew to come up to the tower. This way Andrew, who’s seen the flags, can look at the code, and Patrick can look at the flags. The girls haven’t switched though. The girls try again and are wrong again. Finally the guys finish. Ansgar tells them to help the girls fix their message, which is awesome. They all run over there. Bonnie realizes she should have said “five sides” instead of “pentagon”. Oops. Lina takes responsibility as team leader. Andrew and Shondo quickly nominate Patrick to get a badge. Then it is time for more running in the woods.

Ansgar tells them to build a shelter in the woods while he goes off somewhere. He says “there may come a day when we need it” which is a really weird thing to say. Of course this goes way, way better than shelter building goes on Survivor, even if the shelter looks like a pile of sticks. Ansgar is proud, and says this will be their fallback if they need it. So are they really going to use it later? Or did they need to waste time to set something up?

Much hiking later, they find Crio and the Queen and some real tents. The boys crow about winning. Andrew says there are no grudges or alliances left. The girls are worried. They reassure Lina it wasn’t dumb to make an all-female team. Bonnie feels responsible because of the pentagon. She says puzzles are her thing. Leticia is concerned, because the person she’s closest to is Lina, who might be in the vote with her. Lina has Leticia but she also has Andrew. Leticia thinks she can beat Bonnie in a vote but not Lina.

At night everyone hangs out and discusses how the vizier is always nearby, which is dumb because if any of them don’t think he’s evil they’re stupid. Leticia says seeing Verlox puts everything in perspective. Crio collects them for the Fates’ Challenge. Didn’t they run away? Aren’t they far away from the castle and therefore the Fates’ temple? Either they moved the set, or Ansgar had them running in circles all day long. No one questions this. Crio doesn’t have anything to say about what anyone failed at. He just tells the girls to come with him. The girls climb trees and sit in hunter’s blinds. Well, they lean on trees anyway. They will watch one of Verlox’s patrols walk by underneath them and then later they’ll have to remember as much as possible. I like that the Fates’ Challenges are now related to the storyline. A bunch of soldiers go by, and then they stop under the trees to make it easier. When the paladins come down from the trees they get chased by some mounted soldiers for a minute. Back at camp each one answers the questions on the scroll. Bonnie says if she had to guess, she guessed high. Each one comes into the tent alone to read their scroll to Ansgar. Some people have different numbers.

Everyone goes back to the Fates, where Crio reveals Bonnie got 7 correct answers, while Lina and Leticia only had 6 each. Bonnie describes the challenge for the guys. Leticia is strong physically, but Lina is sly. According to Shondo. Andrew thinks Lina is the best asset to help him. Bonnie thinks they’ve made decisions from the heart and the final six are strong, so they must be doing something right.

No one votes for Leticia, which is bullshit. After she voted for Christian because even Christian should have someone supporting him! Andrew should have voted for her since he was last and knew she would lose. Leticia knows and doesn’t even look at the rest of them.

The rest of the paladins go back at camp, where Shondo shrugs off how no one stood behind Leticia. Lina is determined to win. She thanks everyone, and Andrew reassures her she earned it. Shondo is the only one left who hasn’t been up for a vote. He wants to always keep his fate in his hands. Ansgar and the Queen walk up. She’s upset another paladin is gone. There’s a weird noise, and everyone climbs a hill and freaks out and then the episode ends.

Next time: spoiler, it’s a dragon.