Recap: Love in the Wild – The Finale!

She tells Ben it looks like something you fill holes and cracks with.

NBC clarifies

The teams hike to a spot where they find a puzzle about as hard as any you’d find in a pediatrician’s office. It’s a tablet covered in strange symbols that matches a decoder key at the top of their MAP directly translating these symbols to letters. As Kenina work together to sound it out they probably should have stop after finding out the first word is “Fold”.

Amiright? Or did I read too many MAD Magazines as a kid?

Again with the editing: Juggs and Cockney seem to be flying through the decoder challenge. The teams next need to lash two kayaks together, building a catamaran used to retrieve both a statue from a seacave and a crate from the open ocean. Ken refuses to listen to Yanina and unties all her knots and reties them. Lol. She’s very irritated but frankly, her knots might just suck.

“I made bows!”

Before the next commercial break we are treated to a teaser of Jenny jumping up and down and cheering as we see both couples slogging up the beach to the finish line. I’m putting it down right now (where is the timestamp!?) that they are nowhere near each other, but maybe Jenny is just jumping up and down from the Adderall.

Kelly Ripa really set the bar high for middle-aged enthusiasm

The commercial break gave the producers enough time to tell Ken to pull it in since he’s the best shot they have at a Love Story. Ken apologizes and says he should listen more to Yanina. Yanina is tight lipped with delight. I think they actually do work pretty well together and Yanina is a little bit yappy so if he misses the times she is right amid the constant stream of advice, well, that’s men and women for you. Either way, they are off to find their statue.

Theme of the episode: Built for Two

Cocky Juggs arrive at the beach at some undetermined point later and we see a fast montage of Kenina retrieving the statue and then Cocky Juggs whipping their boat together and retrieving theirs too. Juggs makes a point to say “rather quickly” about a million times in describing how they are achieving each stage of the challenge. Now they are paddling down a river and out to the open ocean. Cockney demonstrates some of his coaching prowess to keep himself and Juggs in sync. If telling someone how to paddle was the only challenge, they might have had a shot.

But probably not

They both head out into the open ocean. The wind and rough water is giving both teams fits and the crates are far out with the finish line even farther off. Cockney says that Kenina isn’t too far ahead and this is their chance to catch up. I am not convinced of the veracity of this statement. We do see that Yanina is tired; of paddling, of ken, of the pretense that this is love, mmm hmmm mmm mmm, so this is love. Ken keeps encouraging her as they approach the crates and we see a shot of the two boats almost near each other in the water.

Oh no! So close!