North to Alaska and an on-target finish

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 23, Episodes 11 and 12

Indonesia/Tokyo/Alaska – Nice teams can finish first.

In the season’s finale, Amy and Jason, the dating New Englanders 

Jason and Amy

who would help other teams (well, she would) won it all and took home $1 million for their efforts.

They were a strong team, for sure, having finished second on six different legs, but they were lucky, as well, Amy acing a tricky challenge in Alaska that proved pivotal.

Airborne in a small plane at 60 mph and 100 feet above the earth, she dropped a bag of flour and hit a target on the ground.

It was a fly-over that proved difficult for Marie (of the dueling exes Tim and Marie) and almost impossible for Nicole (of ER docs Nicole and Travis).

Landing in Alaska

Having floured the target, Amy and Jason zipped through a death-defying ice-climbing challenge, a kayak ride and a memory test that asked them to assemble totem poles displaying the names of the currency of each of the countries they had visited.

“I memorized every thing but this,” Amy said, recalling her preparation for the all-semester exam that usually comes at the end of the race.

Nonetheless, she and Jason seemed to have little trouble with the poles and got to the finish line well ahead of the remaining two teams. They kissed. They gushed. They didn’t, however, set a wedding date. Come on Race editors; seal the deal.

Tim and Marie came in behind them, taking second. Early in the season, they had been the team everyone loved to hate, but by the end they seemed, at least to this writer, to be, well, fun.

Tim and Marie

Tim took to the task of explaining Marie to the world, much as if she were a force of nature.

Playing her devil’s part with a wink, she cheerfully admitted that they had agreed to a 60/40 split, the bigger portion going to her. It was, I think, the first time any Race contestants had talked about that sort of thing.

And Marie would not contemplate any reunion with her former beau, though she allowed in the end that “in some weird friend kind of way, of course we love each other.”

The ER docs finished a distant third after an almost creepy display of a relationship under strain. The married couple had started the season well, declaring that they would take the high road and

Nicole and Travis

show the world that the race could be won fairly and squarely.

Then, in episode 10, Nicole desperately went low road on one challenge but, perhaps more ominously, Travis’s tendency to criticize, even bully, his spouse became apparent.

In Episode 11 in Tokyo, the first hour of the two-hour finale, Travis carped as Nicole and Amy struggled with a large-scale model building challenge. (“Come on Nicole, it’s not rocket science.”)

Once in Alaska, Travis wouldn’t let up, even failing to compliment Nicole after she had climbed an ice wall using just one ax.

Speaking of Episode 11, at the end of the racers’ brief stay in Japan, the Afghanimals, Leo and Jamal, were eliminated, in part because Leo took forever on the model-building task and also because the other teams didn’t much like them.

Earlier, they did bring their high spirits to the human-bowling challenge, a bit of Japanese game show hijinks that might be seen as advancing stereotypes.

Human Bowlng

And so Episode 23 is over, 35,000 miles after it all began, having saved the best scenery until the end, some of the shots of Alaska being spectacular. After a few months, it will be up and running again with an All-Star reunion season. Be still my heart. That’s amazing.

Overheard:

Jamal: We’re know they’re going to gang up and aim for Leo and I.

Tim (to the game show host): She broke my heart.

Host: It is American love story.

Marie: It is American horror story

Jamal: He’s a puzzle type of guy. This is the roadblock made for Leo.

Travis (to Nicole): What are you doing?

Order of Finish Episode 11:

1) Marie and Tim

2) Amy and Jason

3) Nicole and Travis

4) Leo and Jamal

Order of finish Episode 12

1) Amy and Jason

2) Marie and Tim

3) Nicole and Travis

Overview:

Last week's first-ever Amazing Pool reader poll (see above, right) was about as successful as the rollout of healthcare.gov. But the small sample did show strong support for Amy and Jason, the eventual winners, and (go figure) Leo and Jamal, the biggest losers. There was no support for Nicole and Travis, the eventual third-place finishers. 

The ER doctors' fall from grace is somewhat perplexing, as they had had a very strong run through the first eight episodes. But in Episode 9, they finished next to last, a sign of things to come. Amy and Jason did the opposite finishing first, second and first over the last three episodes.

Pool winners:

Amy and Jason's win meant $100 for Cindy and Jim and the honor of picking last in next season's pool. Tim and Marie's second place finish won $50 for Team Boston. Allison Chanler picked up $30 for backing Nicole and Travis in the pool. Earlier, Team Showers had garnered $20 as the first team eliminated from the pool.

Egging them on to the finale

By Jim Memmott

FOR STARTERS, RACE FANS, TAKE THE POLL TO YOUR RIGHT

Amazing Race, Season 23, Episode 10

Bandung, Indonesia – The contestants in this episode ate King cobra (“Tastes like chicken,” said Travis, the ER doc). They hard-boiled eggs in water heated by a volcano and searched for clipping shears in a maze or painted their faces as if they were brides.

Hard-boiled egg recipe

And, at the end of the leg, when the Afghanimals, Leo and Jamal were the last team to arrive at the pit stop, host Phil Koeghan let us all know that it was a non-elimination episode.

Yes, there will be four teams going into next week’s two-hour finale. Surprise? Not really. There usually are four teams left for the finale, one to be eliminated in the first hour.

The point of this leg was not to get rid of any team, but to let us get to know the teams better in advance of  the ultimate race.

So here’s the remaining teams, their strengths, their weaknesses and their karma:

Jason and Amy

Amy and Jason: Winners on this episode, they took first place for the first time, having finished second five times. “We are the best losers,” Jason says.

Maybe not. They get along well with each other; they’re unflappable in tough situations; they’re physically fit. On this episode, they had no trouble eating cobra and the face-painting challenge played to Amy’s strengths as a former beauty queen.

In addition to this, they are simply the most likeable couple remaining. Which may be their weakness. In the previous episode, Amy helped Nicole (the other doc) when she really didn’t have to. It’s easy to see her give another team a helping hand in the finale and have that team never return the favor.

Marie and Tim: They took a surprising second

Tim and Marie

in the episode, having lost what seems like 10 hours as they wandered around looking for the King Cobra House (is that a chain of eateries?)

They gained it back when Marie, not a good cook by her own admission, successfully hard-boiled eggs. (It was a little harder than it sounds.)

M and T have bickered throughout the season, that being their role as dueling exes. It’s hard to know if that’s a strength, a weakness or just their way of communicating.

But they have been set up as this season’s villains, which, I guess, would mean they shouldn’t emerge as champions. But, who knows, to me, at least Tim seems sneaky smart and Marie may be more self-aware, even brighter, than the persona she’s created.

Travis and Nicole: They took third on the episode, Travis losing time by rushing the egg boil on his

Nicole and Travis

first try (Jason had that problem, too). Both had difficulty with the face painting.

The ER docs have had the strongest season, but they seem to have lost their momentum. They’re smart; they are students of the Amazing Race. However, they may not be the united team they once seemed to be.

He continues to criticize her, and she continues to let him get away with it. (He was once her supervisor; things haven’t changed.) His certainty – he decided that 8 to 10 minutes would be long enough to boil an egg – could prove disastrous. Then again, it worked early on.

Jamal and Leo – The Afghanimals, cousins and best pals, have energized the season, stealing every scene they’re in.

Leo and Jamal

They’re cheerful. They joke around. They also seem a little impulsive and somewhat disorganized. They were the only team to take on the search for the clipping shears hidden in the tea-bush maze. Those kind of challenges are always nightmares, but it might have been easier if they had a clearer system of searching.

Their default position is to lie. Which might be a strength, though lately no one is trusting them. They’re also a little vain, as proven on this episode when they ran from the face-painting challenge rather than shave their beards.

Predictions:

For what it’s worth, I’ll say that the Afghanimals will finish first, if for no other reason than it would make for better theater, and I like the first to worst to first theme they laid out at the end of the episode.

Amy and Jason are the team I’d like to win. Virtue and kindness deserves a reward.

Overheard:

Tim: Marie is the toughest girl I know, but there are some food issues.

Travis: Luckily Nicole does eat; she’s not a salad-eating woman.

Leo: I called it. I said we were going to eat snake.

Tim: Marie lacks a little thing called patience… (There’s) no doubt in my mind she comes back with soft-boiled eggs.

Marie: I am 29 years old and I have not boiled an egg before.

Nicole: My husband looks like the sexist drag queen ever.

Marie (to Tim): Travis can’t do makeup; Jay can’t do make up. You’re so metro; you’ll be fine.

Tim: Travis looks like Dennis Rodman.

Order of Finish:

1) Amy and Jason

2) Marie and Tim

3) Nicole and Travis

4) Leo and Jamal

Overall:

If the Amazing Race were a horse race, it could be argued that Amy and Jason have the best form going into the finale. In the last four episodes, they’ve finished second twice, third once and first once, for a total of eight points.

Using this scoring method, where it’s best to have fewer points, Leo and Jamal are second best, accumulating 10 points with two first-place finishes and two fourth-places finishes. Nicole and Travis and Marie and Tim each have 11 points on the last four legs.

On the season, Nicole and Travis are way ahead, having accumulated 24 points. To their credit, many of these were picked up early on against a crowded field.

Butting heads in Indonesia

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 23, Episode 9

Abu Dhabi/Bandung, Indonesia – So you’re rushed to an Emergency Room in Atlanta, bleeding from a head wound. 

Butting heads

The ER physician, let's call him Travis, tells you he’s going to do the stiches the right way.

But first, he emphasizes that he wants to set a good example for his children. He bemoans other doctors who take short cuts, who fib, who don’t follow the rules. He goes on and on, talking, talking. You keep bleeding.

Trust me; it could happen. And in a way, minus the blood and the worry, it did in a morality play disguised as an Amazing Race episode that took the five remaining teams to Bandung, Indonesia.

While there they had to get rams to butt heads, a surprisingly easy task. (It’s in their nature. It’s why they have those horns).

Song Bird

After that they could either make birds sing (again, it’s in their nature, piece of cake) or they could feed an elephant (not all that hard once you get the food to them.)

Finally, they had to put together an eight-note bamboo instrument and play an octave to the satisfaction of a very young music student. Which is where Travis (could be the ER doctor mentioned above) and his wife Nicole ran into trouble.

They had begun the episode announcing to the world that they would not compromise their principles to win, that they wouldn’t be like the Afghanimals, Leo and Jamal, who so irritated them by telling a lie in an earlier episode.

“Our faith is why we’re here,” Travis said. “… People can see you don’t have to resort to lying or cheating.”

As soon as those words came out of his mouth, Race watchers around the world must have screamed, “OMG, they’re going to cheat.”

Nicole and Travis

And so it was that Nicole, terribly frustrated by the instrument-assembling task, cheated. Yes – don’t tell the kids – she cheated.

Sneaking up behind Leo the Afghanimal, she tried to see what his perfectly assembled eight-noter looked like.

Shocked, shocked, and encouraged by Jamal, Leo smashed his instrument and left for the pit stop, rejoicing with Jamal that the Docs who had U-turned them last week were going down.

Or were they? Cue the cavalry.

Jason and Amy

The far-too-kind Amy, on her way to a second place finish with boyfriend Jason, rode to the rescue, pretty much assembling Nicole’s instrument, making it possible for the Docs to finish fourth and survive.

But even after they had escaped with their lives, Travis lectured Nicole. “Look in the mirror and you’ve got to fix it,” he told his spouse, throwing her under the bus again and again.

Gone and probably quickly forgotten are Ally and Ashley of the LA Kings Ice Crew.

Why? Well, they lost valuable time on the elephant feeding challenge by going to the zoo and not the market first. Once at the market, they should have persuaded a cabby to transport their bamboo stalks, but they didn’t. They even quarreled.

Snack time

And so they were eliminated, taking poolsters Drew and Emily with them. Though when Ally and Ashley watch the race film they’ve got to wonder what would have happened if Amy hadn’t saved Nicole.

Second place went to the Bickersons, feuding exes Tim and Marie. At the start of the episode she said it was a fact that she was just about always right. And true to form, she gloated even

when Tim did something right in acing the octave challenge. “I made you do it, and I was right,” Marie declared. You go, girl.

The winners on the leg? Thought you’d never ask.

The Afghanimals danced their way to first place, basking in self-generated applause at every opportunity. Love us, love us, they demanded. Which is OK. The guys are fun.

Overheard:

Jason: What kind of people live in Indonesia? Are they like Chinese people, or are they like Indians?

Marie (to Tim): You have made more mistakes than me. That’s just how it is.

Travis: I believe the energy from that crowd really got me out of my shell.

Tim:  I was in chorus in high school, which I don’t like to admit.

Jamal (To Leo): Destroy our instrument.

Nicole: It is important that our children see we set a good example for them.

Ashley: We set the bar pretty high for ice crews all over the NHL.

Marie (next episode): I’m not eating a snake.

Order of Finish:

1) Leo and Jamal

2) Tim and Marie

3) Jason and Amy

4) Nicole and Travis

5) Ally and Ashley

Overall:

  

Of the remaining teams, Nicole and Travis have finished first three times, Jamal and Leo twice and Marie and Tim twice. Amy and Jason have never won a leg, though they have finished second six times.

Payback time in the desert

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 23, Episode 8

Abu Dhabi – There was sand, lots of sand. There were camels, pretty camels. There was the world’s longest man-made rapids  (yes, right there in the desert). And there was revenge, strange revenge.

First, the revenge. We’re not talking Hamlet or House of Cards. Think junior high cafeteria.

At one table there’s Nicole and Travis, honor students, Quidditch team captains, co-valedictorians. At another table, there’s Leo and Jamal, wise guys, class clowns, Afghanimals.

Wouldn’t you know it, about 100 years ago the Animals fibbed about U-Turning the hippies, Brandon and Adam.

It was totally unnecessary and totally inconsequential, but it irked Nicole and Travis. “The fact that they would just look us in our face and just lie to us,” Nicole said, still steamed.

Nicole and Travis

Thus they took revenge in this episode by U-Turning the Animals, forcing them to do an extra challenge. Take that you goof balls.

Think again, nerds. The Animals still finished fourth, and, lessons unlearned, told at least one other unnecessary lie on their way to the finish. (To Nicky and Kim, the baseball wives, to no consequence whatsoever.)

Nerds or not, Nicole and Travis, married ER doctors, finished first, each getting a Ford of his her/choice, as long as it has eco-boost (which is?)

Jason and Amy, dating New Englanders, were right behind them, finishing second for the fifth time. Along the way, she revealed that she was both Miss Rhode Island USA and Miss Rhode Island Teen USA, a bit of background that would serve her well in the “Beauty Contest” Detour.

Amy Diaz Miss Rhode Island USA

Maybe not. The contest involved selecting and spiffing up the cutest camel, one of those Amazing Race challenges that seemed odd, subjective and, finally, not that hard.

Though one camel did kick Tim, the acid-tongued Marie’s race partner. He took the shot in good humor: “I just got kicked in the shin by a camel. Scratch it off my bucket list and move on.”

Marie and Tim came in third, along the way U-Turning baseball wives Nicky and Kim. Marie said she was punishing the wives for what she called “that little stunt at the airport.”

Nicky and Kim

Upon further review, however, the game film from Episode 3 shows that what Marie remembers as a “little stunt” was just the wives standing their ground and keeping a reservation they had gotten fair and square.

“I think Tim and Marie U-Turned us because they’re mean,” Kim concluded, getting at the truth.

Even if they hadn’t been hit with a U-Turn, Nicky and Kim probably would still have finished last and been eliminated, which they were. (Gone, too, are their Pool sponsors, Team Bushnell.)

The wives declared themselves Ninjas, casting off the Bunnies label, but the rebranding didn't work.  Their dune buggy got stuck in the sand. And they had to complete a surprisingly difficult (if you couldn’t swim) Speed Bump, as penance for finishing last in the previous non-elimination leg.

Ashley and Ally, the LA Ice Crew members, survived, though at times they seemed to be flirting

Ally and Ashley

with elimination, at one point getting lost because one of them can’t drive and the other can’t read maps. (Switch seats!)

They may still be flirting with the Afghanimals, as well, as host Phil Keoghan suggested at the end of the episode. 

That romance could finish soon, however, as the form sheet tells us that Ashley and Ally are the remaining team most likely to fail. They’ve never finished higher than fifth in any episode and have the worst record of any of the five remaining teams.

But wouldn’t it be nice if they rallied and showed up the kids at the Quidditch table? Stay tuned.

Overheard:

Tim (to Marie): I’ll drive. Promise you’re not going to yell at me.

Nicky: We’re not Bunnies, we’re Ninjas.

Ashley: All those years at Pismo Dunes paid off.

Amy: When you go left four times, you’re back to where you started.

Ally: I’m really good on hair and makeup.

Jason: Hopefully, Phil is there waiting for us with a cold beer.

Nicky: I don’t like being a Ninja.

Kim: Maybe we can go back to being Bunnies.

Order of Finish:

1) Nicole and Travis

2) Jason and Amy

3) Tim and Marie

4) Leo and Jamal

5) Ally and Ashley

6) Nicky and Kim

Overall:

 (The lower the number of points from each episode, the better. First place earns one point, seventh gets seven, etc.)

1) Nicole and Travis (17 points)

2) Amy and Jason (28 points)

3) Jamal and Leo (33 points)

4) Marie and Tim (34 points)

5) Ally and Ashley (51 points)