The Amazing Race -- All-Purpose Thread

I hardly remember any of that. Not saying it wasn't said, and couldn't have sounded terrible, or couldn't have been taken wrongly. But it wasn't, by me, at least. That was their name, and that's how I took it, and just let it go at that.

What I remember most is the youngest kids, who had an amazing experience with the parents, got eliminated, and were told by their dad at end to keep their heads up, and they did. You could almost see them grow before your eyes. Ditto the 15-year-old boy on another team who couldn't ever do any of the driving, which was left to the mom and the sister, but he virtually carried them through an assortment of adventuresome roadblocks and detours and did everything on faith as they all did the race in memory of the dad, who'd recently passed away. I liked the sibling winners that season, and remember being impressed with the Dad/daughters team, which was resilient and earned people's respect even though they began as underdogs. Etc. It was a good season.

 

Riley and Maddison were screwed from the first second with their cab driver not being able to find the park.

But also, Will knowing how small the baby is in a King Cake was a huge factor.

Kinda sad that this is the last TAR we'll have for awhile, but a solid final leg in NOLA. The final task was a bit lackluster. I was hoping for some epic memory challenge involving the floats.

Also, Will, I have never seen someone complain so much about eating a couple of beignets. COME ON BOY.

Final pool:
Pool update:
WolvEagle - Riley | Maddison - 104
Huggy - Will | James - 101
TigerVols - Hung | Chee - 79
*MTM - Gary | DeAngelo - 50
*Inky_Wretch - Aparna | Eswar - 31
*Iron_Chet - Michelle | Victoria - 27
*Wenders - Alana | Leo - 27
*nietsroob17 - Kaylynn | Haley - 22
*WriteThinking - Jerry | Frank - 10
*bumpy mcgee - Kellie | LaVonne - 4
*Nathan | Cody - 1

Even though Huggy's team won, congrats @WolvEagle for winning the pool!!!

Now I want cake. And some beignets.

 

I'm sure Will would have given you his.

I really enjoyed this finale. The bridge-jumping was crazy, and very TAR-esque.

I thought the world map-making might be harder for everybody than it was, and was a little surprised by how well and easily the teams seemed to complete the task. It made me wonder if some stuff just wasn't shown, but if not, kudos to the teams for knowing and retaining well the globe's geographical look in its entirety.

I predicted a couple weeks ago that Will and James would win, and I thought their finish-line moment(s) was really great, positive and very moving, even. I actually got tears in my eyes, and said, "That was a nice moment." You could tell it all meant a lot to them, and not just for the million dollars. Well done.

We will sorely miss "The Amazing Race" in our house, and we all said as much as the final credits rolled.

 

I finally won the pool! That was a pretty cool final episode with three likeable teams, but I knew as soon as Riley and Maddison got a dumb cab driver they weren't going to win the $1 million.

I'm really going to miss TAR, and can't wait to see it again, whenever it will return.

Thanks again, Wenders, for running the pool.

 

I've watched less than a handful of episodes over the years. For somebody who didn't watch regularly, the show moved too fast and I couldn't get a line on who the competitors were.

But got into it this time because of being stuck at home and because of the volleyball players. I guess the McKibbens are the sons of Owen McKibben, who I knew a little bit back in the 80s. I got into the volleyball scene back then (as a sports writer, not a player). He was always just a notch below the top guys -- Kiraly, Stoklos, Smith, Dodd, Hovland -- on the level of Obradovich, always there, never wins. And McKibben went to USC, as did TAR competitors.

Anyway, I saw about the last five or six shows. As was mentioned above, I thought it wasn't fair that they all started even for the next show. You couldn't build up a lead. The McKibbens were far ahead in the two shows before the final, but they couldn't parlay that into a future advantage.

Seemed one glitch, not the fault of the competitors, determined their fate. Stick shift cars in France killed off a couple of teams. And choosing a cabbie who didn't know where Louis Armstrong Park was killed off the McKibbens. The football player sealed his own fate by being obstinate and not reading the clues closely, especially on making the tiles. I didn't like the alliances. The match the music with the country task was ridiculous. IIRC, the football players got 3 of 4 right on their first attempt, but were just told it was wrong and they got completely off track. That was too hard and nobody would have gotten it without the alliance, unless they happened to guess right.

Do any of these shows ever end with two teams racing for the final podium, their fate on the line, like the end of the Olympic Marathon? That would be exciting.

All in all, it was pretty fun and interesting to watch on one of the rare nights of the week in which there wasn't a football game.

 

This was probably one of the more anti-climatic finales of TAR. There have been seasons where they were absolutely neck-and-neck the whole time and you didn't know who won until you saw a team running towards the mat.

This show can definitely be unfair in some aspects. One mistake that is not the fault at all of the Racers - getting stuck with the wrong cab driver, getting a bum car, being towards the back of the airplane - can be the difference between first and last. Usually, the final task before the race to the finish line is much, much harder. There have been ones involving flags, currency, items encountered on the Race, giant puzzles, but usually it draws on all of the experiences everyone had on the Race and all of the countries they went to to see how teams remember things in a moment of absolute pressure and panic. Many teams have started taking very detailed notes on the Race to use during these challenges. The music challenge was the closest thing to this, and the subreddit pointed out that it was a huge missed opportunity to not have that be the final challenge, with an amazing NOLA jazz band playing the songs.

If you're interested, all the seasons going back to the beginning are on Amazon Prime and Hulu.

 

Hat tip, @Wenders for running this thread again!

 

I too appreciate your efforts to do the pool each season @Wenders. It may be a couple years before we an do this again, so best wishes to all.

 

Good interview with the producers. They didn't like teams sharing information either.

Amazing Race 33 status, Amazing Race 32 alliances: an interview with TAR’s producers – reality blurred

“I’m going to be really honest with you,” Doganieri told me. “I think we’re going to have to put a rule on that in the future.”

“It does take the thrill out of it a little bit for me because these are not group challenges for 11 teams to participate in [as] a group. Others might disagree with what I’m saying, because it does create a different sort of drama, it does create a different sort of tension, where you’re seeing people start to work together as a team because maybe they don’t like what somebody did in a previous challenge—oh, they U-Turned me so we’re out to get them.”

 

We've always seen things like that, but never to the extent that we saw it this season. We've seen teams share hints to what they're doing wrong, or helping with directions. But we've never seen so many teams who just straight up shared what the answer was, especially so late in the Race. It's one thing if there's a handful of teams on leg 2 going, "we're never going to get this if we don't help each other" and the final 3 of 4 essentially ganging up on the final team.

This does appear to be a Race where the teams were much closer after the end (and maybe it's because they had to sit on the results for 18 months) than previous seasons. Several Racers have shared pictures on Twitter of their get-togethers. Leo and Alana got married and most of the cast was invited. Even though Will & James were pitted against Leo & Alana, there's pics of them all huggy together.

 

I thought it was a good interview/article, too. Was disappointed, though, that there are apparently no plans for another U.S.-based season. They spoke about how viewers love the international travel. But don't they think the same could be done with the U.S., and TAR viewers would probably like it just as much?

It's the concept, positive outlook and general principles -- not just the fact that the travels have been overseas -- that give the show its strength and character, and that tend to draw like-minded, similarly-interested viewers.

 

Wonder if Will and James got married in the interim? Do you know?