Fill a cup with tears

Task stats

Points

17

Disquals

0

• Gilmário grabs some onions from the kitchen, and makes small cuts in them to try to tear up; it takes a while, but eventually Gilmário starts to tear up. Unfortunately, he doesn’t produce enough of a tear to catch in the spoon. Nuno suggests sad music, and plays some instrumental music from Titanic. Gilmário waves the chopped onions near his eyes to try to elicit some tears, and requests that Nuno play a specific song: A Minha Velha ['My Old Mother'] by Paulo Flores, and he sings along with it. Gilmário sheds one tear, and comes second.
• Despite being an actress – and the one some of the contestants declared would be the best at this task – Jessica admits that she has difficulty crying. She sources some onions from the kitchen to assist her. She peels an onion and waves it close to her eyes. She also has Nuno read some sad poetry to her, but neither method works. She decides to try sad music instead, and Nuno provides her with instrumental music from Titanic. Desperate, Jessica pokes at the chopped onions with her fingers before rubbing her eyes; when that doesn’t work, she has Nuno hold a chopped onion near his eyes to see if he’ll tear up. Jessica sheds no tears, and comes fourth.
• Rita decides that she may be able to just manufacture tears instead of crying for real. After some chaotic searching in the kitchen searching for water and salt, Rita returns to Nuno with some what appears to be powdered saline, which she mixes with water to create tears. She then drips the solution onto her face before immediately scraping the drops off and depositing them into the cup. In the studio, Rita argues that the task did not specify that the tears had to be real; Vasco counters with the chemical definition of ‘tear’, which includes enzymes and lipids, neither of which were present in Rita’s saline solution. Vasco compliments her thinking, but declares that real tears must take precedence in this task, and awards her joint third place.
• After briefly trying sad music, Inês grabs some onions from the kitchen and starts chopping. This causes Nuno to begin tearing up, so Inês focuses her efforts on getting Nuno to cry, going so far as to rub the onion directly on his face. After gathering a few tears from both herself and Nuno, Inês shoves her face into the chopped onions in an attempt to create more tears. Inês sheds 17 tears (with Nuno’s help), and wins the task.
• Toy slices a lemon and squeezes the juice directly into his eye. He catches something in the cup – whether this is a tear or just lemon juice is unclear. He then realises that the tears do not need to be his own, and goes to get a bottle of white wine. He explains to Nuno that while red wines are made with tannins – the peel of the grape – white wines are made with the grape’s ‘tears’ - i.e. the first time the grape is pressed and separated from the peel; the term for the resulting mix is ‘grape must’, but Toy insists it’s called ‘tear’. Toy fills the entire cup with white wine, before tasting it and declaring that the wine was made from the ‘tears’ of the Fernao Pires grapes [endemic to Portugal]. [Note: ‘lagrima’ is the Portuguese word for ‘tear’, and ‘Lagrima’ is also a variety of white wine; again, endemic to Portugal, and presumably the one Toy uses. Toy took the more complicated route to justify using wine for the task!] In the studio, Nuno backs up Toy’s logic, reading a passage that refers to ‘tear’ as an alternate term for grape must. Vasco compliments his thinking, but declares that real tears must take precedence in this task, and awards him joint third place.