Destination X Five and Six - (Spoilers)

If you’ve read my previous posts on Destination X you’ll know that I thought that I had a handle on the show and its mechanics – as I said this time last week ‘unless there’s some new rule or rule change that we haven’t foreseen in a upcoming show, nobody forces you to make the specific location choices that decide whether you stay or go. Let’s be clear on that. Thus far your fate has been in your own hands, and no amount of ‘treachery’ can change that.’ Well, it just shows how much I know, for in this week’s episodes five and six, that swerve is exactly what we got.

In episode five there was overwhelming evidence that the destination was Italy. But was it Milan or Venice? – we saw clues for both. In one challenge, which to be honest was more Jeux Sans Frontieres than Race Across the World- the contestants were required to hold trays with wine glasses. Drop them and you’re out. Each was asked questions. Get them right and you can give glasses to an opponent of your choice. Get them wrong and they go on your tray. Somehow it seemed natural that good old Economics Ashvin dropped his before even being given any more glasses. He’s come across as a really nice chap, but frankly never looked likely to find his name engraved on the winner’s trophy. Winner of the challenge, Pilot Josh earned, amongst other things, the power to move someone else’s X 250 km away from the destination.

For the first time we didn’t learn the identity of the ejected contestant at the end of the episode. But we saw that Pilot Josh saw Marathon Nick as his biggest competition and moved his X. So it came as a bit of a surprise when, at the start of episode 6 it was Economics Ash who was ejected. Had he placed his X on the Shetlands, or something? Well, the point of the episode was to allow the contestants to snipe and plot, so they were all allowed out in Venice to see some scenery and play a few games. To be honest it was a bit of a nothingy episode – or would have been had we not got to meet the hitherto unseen star of the show, Jackie P. It means she doesn’t get to join Mrs. Mainwaring/Mrs. Wolowitz/ Charlie Brown’s teacher as one of the great unseens of the world of telly, but there we are. Battle lines were drawn, but nobody went anywhere and nobody got ejected, so all in all there was an unmistakable feeling that this was all padding that might have been forced on the show by one of the original 10 travellers deciding to leave the bus long before the end of episode 1.

I’ll be honest, I’m not totally sure that I like the swerves that happened this week. When you get right down to it I don’t want the winner to just win because they were the winners of a couple of silly games along the way. But I’m still watching and I’ll doubtless have more to say about the show this time next week.