No sweat, science prevailed in a season to remember

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 25, Episode 12

Manila/Los Angeles – Now that the dust has settled, here's a quick look back on a terrific season that got better and better as time went on. Some thoughts.

The ending: Ok, it was a surprise. Science trumped athleticism, smarts won out. Women in lab coats rule.

Let's drink to science

Amy DeJong and Maya Warren, two Ph.D candidates in food science at the University of Wisconsin, won this season’s final leg, a victory worth $1 million to them and $100 to their backers in the pool, Team Showers.

Close readers will remember my asking after Episode 9, “Why are the Sweet Scientists, Amy and Maya, still in the competition?”

I had reason to wonder. The Scientists were off camera a lot, and when they were on, they just squeezed by. And they seemed, for the most part, more lucky than good.

And they got lucky big time when host Phil Keoghan appeared to change the rules at the 11^th hour, allowing a four-team finale for the first time, he said, in the history of the world.

The winners: Amy and Maya

Thus the brainiacs weren’t eliminated, and they hung in long enough in the last hour to get to the memory challenge, one that required contestants to wander in a maze of cargo containers in search of clues to the places visited on the race.

This played to Amy’s strengths, and she whipped through the challenge, leaving Misti of Team Dentistry and Bethany of the Surfers, in her wake.

 But let’s give the Scientists credit for more than smarts. Maya proved to be brave and athletic (she allowed that she had done triathalons) and Amy did as well as she needed to do, all the time limping on a bum ankle. Besides, they passed the character test, playing fair, never quarreling, never whining.

Misti and Jim

Open wide: The Dentists, Jim and Misti Ramon, finished second after a very strong season that included five first places.

Jim was the only racer who came close to being a villain, a role that is usually essential to the drama. But as time when on he just seemed like the goofy uncle who continually puts his foot in his mouth. Even in the last episode he boasted about going in the right direction, when, of course, he was going in the wrong direction. You had to love him.

Adam and Bethany 

Fan favorites: I’m willing to bet that 73 percent of the people watching the finale were rooting for the surfers, Adam Dirks and Bethany Hamilton.

In part, that has to be out of admiration for Bethany, who despite having only one arm, took on just about every challenge. But Adam, too, was likeable and athletic. Beyond all of that, they seemed to love each other. They were a couple who never, ever, quarreled.

The grapplers: To me, at least, the pro wrestlers, Brooke Adams and Robbie Strauss, were vital to the season. In the last episode, they got lost in LA-LA Land, and thus were too far behind when the grim reaper Phil appeared and gave them the heave ho midway through the finale.

Brooke and Robbie

I hated to see them go, as they had done so much to enliven the season. Yes, they were boastful, but boastful in that self-aware manner that’s part of the wrestler routine.

Beyond that, they were funny. The Amazing Race is not usually full of laughs. This year it had a lot.

Looking Ahead: The promo for Season 26 revealed that all the teams will be made up of dating couples. Five of the pairs will be on blind dates. It sounds a little cheesy, but a change might not hurt.

Speaking of changes. The switch to Friday night this last season hurt the Race’s ratings, though the finale won the time slot with 6.59 million viewers. I’m not sure what CBS wants from the show, but I certainly hope it continues beyond another season.

Whatever. We’re off for a little while, but we will return.

Overheard:

Kym: Bethany is a beast.

Maya: Why don’t you love us?

Brooke: I’d love a million dollars more than you.

Brooke: Depends. If it’s a smart challenge, Rob and I are going to be eliminated.

Robbie: We’re going to be rich. It’s pretty much a sure thing. We’ve won numerous wrestling titles. We’re going to win a million dollars.

Jim: I know (that) where we’re going we’re the only ones knowing where we’re going.

Jim: We’re in completely the frigging wrong direction.

Firefighter to Bethany: Are you Bethany Hamilton? My daughter’s a big fan.

Stunt trainer to Maya: You’re jumping out of this building to kick some alien ass, and you are here to save the world… Will you call me when you get the million?

Bethany: We’ve surfed in way gnarlier waters.

Jim: I can swim enough not to drown... I swim to survive

Robbie: The professional wrestlers are signing off from the Amazing Race… You might love us, you might hate, you’re never going to forget the pro wrestlers.

Bethany: Why does the weight of the race come down to me? Adam is the memory guy.

Misti: I had my knickers in a twist from the beginning.

Phil: Eight countries, 20 cities and more than 26,000 miles, you have won the Amazng Race.

Maya: Are you serious?

Adam: Bethany continually just surpasses all my expectations. Money is nice, but to know our love is intact and our relationship is stronger, I wouldn’t trade it for a million dollars.

Order of finish:

1) Amy and Maya

2) Jim and Misti

3) Adam and Bethany

4) Brooke and Robbie

The Race readies to make history, or not

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 25, Episode 11

Manila – The Amazing Race is about to have a new kind of ending. Or is it?

Adam, Amy, coconuts

At the end of Episode 11, a terrific hour that featured the usual jawdroppers – taking the wrong jeepney, forgetting to read the clue, and Amy’s near collapse from heat prostration – host Phil Keoghan trumpeted the Friday finale by saying:

“For the first time in Amazing Race history, four teams will be racing to the finish line.”

Really? In a way, four teams have quite often started the finale, but one is usually eliminated after an hour, whereupon Phil designates the second hour as the last episode.

I guess Friday’s finale will be different in that it’s only an hour long and a team can get the heave-ho at any moment. That sounds pretty arbitrary, though, as always my faith is in Phil to do the right thing.

Phil Keoghan at the beach

No matter what happens, I’ll be sorry to see the curtain go down on what has been an unusually wholesome but captivating season that proved the Race can go on without the usual cast of divas and demons. I’m not sure I want that to happen every time out, but, at least this time it worked.

Yes, Jim of the Dentists, is full of himself and certainly over-confident. This time around he kept boasting about his brains after he hopped on a jeepney that was going the wrong way. Later, like just about everyone else, to be fair, he missed some directions that were hiding in very plain sight.

But it’s hard to hate Jim, if only because he’s balanced by the kind-hearted Misti, his wife, his race partner and a fellow dentist.

Brooke and Robbie

The Wrestlers, Brooke and Robbie, who survived a Speed Bump to win this episode, are all bluster and blarney, but everything they say seems to be punctuated with a wink. They make their living mouthing off, and they know how to do it.

Besides, they are better Racers than they seemed at first, perhaps Brooke even more than Robbie. She aced the basketball challenge, and she generally leads rather than follows. It seemed appropriate that she carried Robbie on her back to the finish line. She has all season.

Adam and Bethany, the surfers, have been impressive throughout. They never quarrel (even when he can’t find a clue that’s in his backpack); they never complain; and they are exceptionally athletic.

Finally, the Scientists, Amy and Maya, are, I concede, good theater. And

Amy and Maya

certainly Amy, the less peppy of the two, deserves high marks for not quitting despite nearly fainting from the heat and the exertion caused by carrying about a ton of coconut product around a crowded market.

The Scientists should be the first team dropped in the finale, but I think I’ve said something like that before. They could, like the Beekman boys, the surprise winners of Season 21, come out of nowhere and win. It would be an historic win, for sure, even if it has sort of happened before.

Overheard:

Maya: The story of David and Goliath, we’re it.

Robbie: Brooke is a loose cannon, and I become a loose cannon also.

Jim (to Misti): Pain is temporary; just keep pushing through it.

Maya: I don’t want to see (Amy) pass out in a hospital in the Philippines and we can’t finish the race.

Brooke: Everyone move; oh, I’m having a baby,

Robbie: Do we look like people you want to be up against when a million dollars is on the line? I mean, (the Dentists) clean teeth for a living. The Candy Girls, have they even been in a gym? The surfers?  They are athletes, but they’re just spaced out gnarly kawabunga.

Order of finish:

1) Brooke and Robbie

2) Adam and Bethany

3) Jim and Misti

4) Amy and Maya

Sort of a thrilla in Manilla

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 25, Episode 10

Singapore/Manila.

I know, I know. No one was sent packing in last Friday’s smelly, sweaty non-elimination leg. Why bother summing things up?

Robbie and Brooke 

Well, even though it didn’t really count, the episode which played out in the Philippines was a lot of fun and down-right exciting at the end, one of the best legs of the season.

And it nicely set up this Friday’s penultimate showdown, a contest that has to see one of four teams dropped.

So what happened?

The Dentists, Jim and Misti, edged out the Soul Surfers, Adam and Bethany, for first place. And yes, Jim was smug, talking about getting their fifth first place, the thumb on his ringed fingers.

Misti and Jim

Will the man never learn to dial it back?

Earlier he and Misti faced yet another one of those all-too-familiar put-it-back-together challenges that are driving me nuts  

Whatever. This time it wasn’t rearranging furniture; it was Zen and the art of attaching a sidecar to a motocycle.

“Between kids' toys and tools, putting things together is kind of natural,” Jim said, totally forgetting he hasn’t been able to assemble anything on the race.

Shocker, he didn't connect a shock and kept getting the thumbs down sign from the judge.

It was only a bit of good luck in the subsequent finding-the-clue-in-a-manure-soaked-rice-paddy challenge that got the dentists back on track.

Pause for a mea culpa: I called last week for a return to some disgusting tests of character, but the rice paddy caper defied all laws of sanitation and sanity. Really, Amazing Race directors, have you no shame?

Adam and Bethany

The exciting finish for first and second place was echoed by a nail-biter for third and fourth with the Sweet Scientists, Amy and Maya, hopping on the mat just ahead of the Wrestlers, Brooke and Robbie. (For ending last, the grapplers will face an extra challenge next time up.)

As always, Brooke and Robbie were given the most airtime. And why not? They were on fire with the quotes, many reflecting their strange tendency to define themselves by their role in life.

‘You’re talking about two people who really aren’t the smartest in the whole group,” Brooke noted early on. “We’re directionally challenged… We’re kind of confused as to what continent we’re in most of the time.”

That aside, what are they? Well, they’re wrestlers. And because they’re wrestlers, they are strong and invincible and, in Brooke’s terms, “vicious.” Just have to be.

Amy and Maya

But, of course, they’re not the only team that’s occupationally defined. The Sweet Scientists are, well, sweet scientists. They make ice cream, or something. That’s what they do. That’s who they are. They may have lives outside the lab, but so far they haven’t been described.

And, by the way, I was a little harsh on the scientists last week by asking why there were still on the Amazing Race. I believe now that they had earned survival fair and square. I wish Maya weren’t quite so upbeat, but that says more about me than them.

Speaking of upbeat. I’m beginning to think that Misti is one of the kindest people ever to compete on the Amazing Race. She never yells at her husband/partner, Jim, though she has every right to. Beyond that, she seemed genuinely affected by the child poverty in Manila.

The odds are that Jim and Misti will make it to the finals, as will Bethany and Adam, who had another good outing. (Really, they are a great team). The third spot is up for grabs. For the sake of their one-liners, I’d like to see Brooke and Robbie make it, but I wouldn’t feel bad if the Scientists beat them out. We’ll see tomorrow, or Saturday, or whenever people actually watch The Amazing Race.

Overheard

Brooke: Our confidence is a little low in booking flights.

Jim: Legs 10 and 11 we break everyone else’s spirit.

Maya: We look like peewees.

Robbie: It kind of smells like dirty tube socks.

Jim: First person to finish eats that rooster for lunch

Bethany: We did not want to get anywhere near Phillipine water.

Brooke: It was tough; it’s supposed to be. It’s the Amazing Race.

Robbie (on fish): I know they’re dead, but they’re happy the way I’m throwing them into this bucket.

Jim: I missed the giant glaring defect staring at me.

Robbie: We’re the pro wrestlers; we’re never in the lead.

Brooke: I’m awesome with animals…Rob’s just not an animal person.

Robbie: Oh my god, what did that thing eat? There was a lot more than mud and clues in that water.

Adam: That stuff is gnarly.

Order of finish:

1) Jim and Misti

2) Amy and Maya

3) Adam and Bethany

4) Brooke and Robbie

Science rules, or at least keeps on racing

By Jim Memmott

Amazing Race, Season 25, Episode 9

Malta/Singapore – Four teams and three episodes remain. The question everyone is asking going into tonight’s leg is: “Why are the Sweet Scientists,

Amy and Maya, still in competition?”

Alli and Kym make waves

Backtrack: Last week, in a shocker, the brassy and high-perfoming bicyclists, Kym and Alli, were eliminated.

All their previously good showings were for naught, as they lost a ton of time trying to do a Fast Forward.

It required them to surf two minutes on a water slide from hell. It sent them spilling often, streaking Alli’s mascara. Eventually, they abandoned the effort, but were unable to catch up, dooming themselves and their Pool sponsors, Jim and Cindy.

The surfers, Adam and Bethany, mastered the Fast Forward, a challenge that if conquered allows the contestants to skip ahead to the finish line, which they did, winning the episode. Hello. They’re professional surfers. What did you

Bethany and Adam drink up

expect?

So, a bad choice by the cyclists let the Sweet Scientists survive, as Amy and Maya finished fourth in a five-team race? Once again they squeaked through, once again I’m baffled.

But wait a minute. Maybe the Scientists are actually good. Sure Amy screamed her way all through the torture challenge, a combination of deep tissue massage and fire-cup therapy.

Massaging Amy

Pardon the interruption : Was that really a test of anything other than endurance? I mean, I would much rather see Racers have to eat some local worms or grovel with something grotesque than get a, good grief, massage.

Then again, the Racers, at least some of them had to do hire-wire walk 600 feet in the air. I could barely watch, especially when the dentist, Dr. Jim, slipped and hung horizontal for a while.

Pardon that last digression; I was making a point about the Sweet Scients. Which is: Amy is, well, unpredictable, with her bum ankle and her low tolerance for pain. But Maya is all energy and all bravery. So, who knows, maybe they’ve earned their spot.

If so, look for Brooke, a professional wrestler and Robbie’s partner, to be baffled, as she was when contemplating the aerial challenge.

Brooke about to go high wire

“If I fall and (Maya) doesn’t, I’m going to be embarrassed,” Brooke mused. “She makes ice cream for a living. And I hit girls in the face for a living.”

I know, logic and compassion aren't her strengths, but I think Brooke is great. Yes, she irritates about half of the free world, but she’s a zinger machine.

It would be totally weird if she and the Robster were to win, but I do want them to last until the end for the sake of ratings alone.

Ratings? Don't ask. The move from Sunday to Friday hasn’t helped the Race. It’s averaging 5.87 million viewers, down 35 percent from last season. But it seems to be doing OK in its timeslot, losing out to Dateline, but not by that much.

Dixie dudes

I do worry about the show’s future, but Christine Memmott of the pool’s Team Boston answering a casting call for a future Race with a friend, so it looks like another season is in the works.

Good luck to Christine, who recently ran into a guy in the Boston suburbs who used the phrase “take a Dixie,” the regionalism famously offered up by Boston firefighter and Race contest Scott Strazzullo in episode three. See, he wasn't so strange. 

Overheard:

Robbie: We always look good.

Maya: I have no fear of heights, (but I’ve) never been 600 feet up in the air.

Bethany (on doing the Fast Forward): We could be committing race suicide.

Brooke: I could just not be beat out by a scientist. How could a  scientist beat out a wrestler?

Adam: Kawabunga.

Amy: I don’t want to be here any more.

Brooke: You’re taking my tan off.

Robbie: What are they going to do, throw ice cream at us?

Order of finish:

1) Adam and Bethany

2) Brooke and Robbie

3) Jim and Misti

4) Amy and Maya

5) Alli and Kym