Canada’s Greatest Know It All Episode Two: Something Over-Educated This Way Comes

The second episode aired on Monday and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it, but mostly enjoyed spending the commercials tweeting, texting, facebooking, and neglecting my family. Hannah rewarded my self-involvement with studious dismissal. The show came on, she saw me, and said “that looks like you, mommy!” Then she went back to playing with her puzzles and then said she had to go potty. It’s hard not to take that sort of thing as an editorial comment.

The two challenges were the race car challenge – which was as fun as it looked – and the CSI challenge – which was much more fun than it looked. The CSI challenge was epic. It’s too bad but because the challenge was so complicated there were many details that didn’t make the cut. Each show takes three days of shooting, and roughly 100 hours of footage, so it’s extremely difficult for the episode to show all the parts that I found fascinating (um, like why I was fingerprinting a mop outside, but I digress.) Somehow they did manage to include me calling Owen bossy. Did I say that? After the show on Monday I was mortified and despite the late hour called him at home to apologize. He wasn’t home but the Colonel answered. I told her what I said, and she thought it was hilarious. Her sanguine reaction to my insult made me feel much better.

The elimination challenge was actually grueling. Neither Abe nor Doug wanted to be there, and both knew their victory meant a good and smart person was going home. Doug did have one of the best one-liners of the show, which sadly did not make the final edit but I can imagine that it might not have been appropriate for a family friendly show. The elimination challenge was called AKA: there was a large grid of words hanging from the ceiling, and many more words painted on large discs that were arrayed on the floor. One competitor would chose a word from the hanging grid, and the other competitor had to find the corresponding synonym from all the possible matches on the floor. Abe chose courgette for Doug, who walked straight out to zucchini, handed the disc to Daniel, and with a determined glower turned smartly around and started walking back to his spot. Daniel said “Doug, how did you know that a courgette was a zucchini?” Without missing a beat or breaking his stride, Doug replied “because I have one in my pants.”

A word on Abe – we were heartbroken how that worked out. Abe is one of the nicest, most capable, and fascinating people I’ve ever known. Abe didn’t show off, didn’t compete for attention, and didn’t ever, ever do something to put another competitor down. And it wasn’t because he was trying to be nice, it really seemed like it would never occur to Abe to try to improve his position by lowering someone else. He didn’t gossip, didn’t plot, and told stories of his life and community that were breathtakingly honest, proud and loving. He fixed things when people weren’t looking. He smiled at every challenge. He was teaching me Inuktitut, so when he left I could give him a big hug and say aqqaaaaaa……….