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