It's been implied in several episodes, plus there were some webisodes titled "Kevin's Loan" which centered around his needing to get money to pay off a bookie.

Plus: who the hell knew they were toting a basketball all over the planet?

Ron & Christina took the wrong form of transport at first, but managed to correct themselves before they reached the next clue. That's what avoided the penalty. It's like the teams who realize they're supposed to walk somewhere instead of taking a taxi, so they go back to the previous step to make the walk. The…

sarCCastro, yes, they got it in the first episode for reaching the first phony Pit Stop first.

The difference that I see is the intent behind the camera glances.

"Is it just me, or did that last shot look like it probably cost half this episode's budget?"

Here's a weird thought that just occurred to me: is it at all possible that this is one of the things that Ralph is doing on purpose to get people to think he's stupider than he is? He's said previously that he's cultivating a dumbed-down image of himself, not that the confessionals make him look all that smarter.…

Not by much, it isn't.

alurin, I do agree with you that the courtroom stuff had me scratching my head, but I was also under the impression that the storyline is going to pick up again somewhere. As noted in the review, there's a serialization going on even if each story can be pretty much encapsulated within the episode. So I was willing to…

Ash Ally, I'm not sure if you looked up the character's bio or the actor's, but at one point a couple of weeks ago he said he was 37.

Yeah, Manny was awesome, especially as we watched him slide into "bartender" mode.

Well…early in the race the last time around, we knew the Cowboys were going far because CBS actually went to the expense of having some music scored for them. This time around they're just amortizing the costs.

haysoos, I think the problem here is that you misspelled

I gave Luke the pass for the Chekhov thing for the reasons noted above, but the fact remains that there's a certain level of entitlement going on there, in addition to a willingness to find prejudices that aren't necessarily there. It's not always because he's deaf; it's often because he's just being a jerk.

Jerry
Has there ever been an episode before where people's anger at Jerry was actually justified?

It probably wasn't tough getting permission to use the clips specifically, but you can bet that the licensing fees were huge. Likewise for the use of the Imperial March in the Darth Vader spot. No way that was a cheap commercial to make, despite its low-tech appeal.

Yeh, we got those 14.4K modems and thought we were just BLAZING along, didn't we?

Indeed. Both JD and his father appear to be gone.

It's his own doing. Chiklis was the co-executive producer on the pilot.

CC, I had the feeling that that was actually the show's meta-moment. In my head the group hug/lesson learned scene was meant to be awkward for a couple of reasons, one of them being that it's such a trope.