The Race is over, let's look back

Amazing Race, Season 30, Episodes 11 and 12

Hong Kong/San Francisco – It’s been a week or so since #TeamBigBrother took home the $1 million, plenty of time to gather our thoughts about what host Phil Keoghan called the “most competitive season” ever of Amazing Race.

Cody and Jessica, winners Season 30

Phil says things like that, assuming, I guess, that no one out there is going to say, “What about Season Seven, that was pretty gosh-darn competitive?”

Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong. Certainly, most of the duos this season were competitors in their pre-race lives, winning everything from hot-dog eating contests to NBA championships.

But none of the racers seemed like win-at-any-cost competitors. 
And I don’t think the season had a true villain, though I know some people gave that title to Jessica of #TeamBigBrother.

Whatever, the season was a success, with the ratings significantly up from Season 29, even with a drop during the two weeks that the

Iceland from the air

Race aired opposite the Winter Olympics.

Once again, the scenery was stunning – we’ll always have Iceland – and the challenges were challenging. My favorites were surprisingly low tech – fishing by hand for frogs, tying up some hairy crabs.

This was the first season ever for head-to-head contests in which a member of one team squared off against a member of another team. That gave us the sight of Henry of #TeamYale trying, again and again to win a French-fry-carting race. (I guess that qualified as low tech, too.)

Henry and Evan  #TeamYale

Another first – changing partners – seemed pointless, as the teams were quickly reconstituted and the Race went on as it always does. If the Race is renewed, as it should be, I’d drop that gimmick.

As the season went on, some crowd favorites bit the dust, including Alex and Conor of #TeamIndy, who were eliminated in the next-to-last leg in Hong Kong, missing out on the finale. Nonetheless, the show’s producers should slip Conor a bonus for all his one-liners. The kid can quip.

In the finale, #TeamBigBrother was followed by #TeamYale and

Kristi and Jen, #TeamExtreme

then #TeamExtreme. (In the pool, TeamBushnell finished first, followed by Allison Chanler and then TeamBeltway.)

The $1-million win was especially surprising because it was Jessica who mastered the last challenge in San Francisco, assembling the pieces of a wooden plane to reflect the legs of the race.

During the Race, Jessica had let Cody do most of the work on most of the challenges, so it seemed likely that she would fail when out there on her own. But she had done her homework, and she kept her cool, and there she was, a winner. (Purists will note that Henry of #TeamYale could have won, as he had all the pieces in place and then doubted himself.)

And here's an update: Cody and Jessica are now engaged. He popped the question on Feb. 13. She accepted. All is well.

So far there’s no word – at least I haven’t seen any – on whether or not Amazing Race will return for a 31^st season. Given its strong pre-Olympics showing I would argue that it has earned a renewal. Are you listening CBS?

A sadder update: Julia Walker, of the English Department at SUNY Geneseo and an original member of the Amazing Race pool, died on Feb. 25. She was a devoted fan of the Race, relishing in its occasional absurdity.

Overheard (Episode 11):

Evan: Getting to the end, some people are going to push and shove.

Conor: The crabs were vicious killers.

Jessica: This challenge sucks, and I hate it.

Henry: I wouldn’t say I have a lot of aggression.

Conor: Henry’s honest, Evan’s not.

Order of finish (Episode 11):

1) Evan and Henry #TeamYale

2) Cody and Jessica #TeamBigBrother

3) Kristi and Jen #TeamExtreme

4) Alex and Conor #TeamIndyCar

Overheard (Episode 12):

Cody: I want the win more than the money.

Jessica: I want the money.

Evan (to Henry): I need you to communicate to me because I feel like I’m strategizing alone.

Jessica: Oh my god, I turned around, and (Cody) just pulled a propeller out of his butt.

Order of finish:

1) Cody and Jessica #TeamBigBrother

2) Evan and Henry #TeamYale

3) Kristi and Jen #TeamExtreme

Elephant math, scorpion snacking, Amazing Race races toward the end

Amazing Race, Season 30, Episodes 9 and 10

Bahrain and Thailand – For reasons only CBS can understand, the Amazing Race has been on steroids, a two-hour telecast last week followed by this week’s two-hour telecast, which set up next week’s two-hour finale.

So many detours, so many road blocks, so many quips, so many tears.

Did I say tears? Long story short, Lucas of #TeamOceanRescue turned to mush at the end of Episode 9. Because he lost his passport, he and Brittany were eliminated, taking the pool’s Team Franny with them.

“I feel like I let my family down, I let my friends down,” Lucas wailed, “and most of all I let Brittany down.” Which he did. But Brittany

was all forgiveness, mostly because she was going home with an engagement ring after a nine-year wait for Lucas to pop the question.

“I got him,” she told host Phil Keoghan. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

Ok, Ok. So what have learned, what do we know going into the deciding episode?

First of all, the performance of #TeamYale, Evan and Henry, would lead one to question the value of an Ivy League education.

Faced with a challenge that tested their math skills – something about measuring the various parts of an elephant and then calculating its weight – the Yalies were stumped, continually getting the wrong answer. Earlier, their brains didn’t help them in finding some clues in a sea of bottles.

On top of this, the other remaining duos, led by Jessica of #TeamBigBrother, have gone all mean-middle-schoolers on Evan and Henry, making fun of them, not sitting with them in airports. “Evan totally wears the pants in that relationship,” Jessica said,

perhaps not revealing her inner feminist.

Jessica? Feminist? By her admission, she’s letting Cody do all the work. He carried the timber; he milked the camel;  he captured the frogs; he ate the scorpion. She gushed and complained, thought a female camel had testicles, and professed her love for her partner. He doesn’t seem to mind, but you have to suspect that sometime in the finale she’s going to have to pull her own weight or else.

Which brings us to #TeamExtreme. Mathematically, Kristi and Jen would have to be the favorites, as they have never finished lower than third on any leg. But, they, too, seem like an unbalanced duo with Jen simply being the better racer. Jen did the elephant math.

Conor Daly and his mom, Beth Boles

Kristi had trouble with a memory challenge in an earlier episode. I see problems.

Alex and Conor, #TeamIndyCar are trending strong. They won both of this week’s episodes and they seem to be smart, resilient and well-matched. 

Beyond that, Conor’s a jokester supreme, coming up with more one-liners than the rest of the racers combined. I declare them finale favorites.

Overheard:

Cody: If we can make them (#TeamYale) as uncomfortable as possible, I’m fine with that.

Brittany: At this point in race, it’s either be smart or be eliminated.

Lucas: I give her the passports because I forget stuff all the time.

Conor: First rule of the Amazing Race club is to always have your travel documents, aka, passports, with you.

Jessica: (Cody’s) a beast; he’s a competition animal. He lives for this stuff.

Henry: I’m just expressing a specific concern.

Evan: Well, I don’t know what specific concern you’re expressing.

Conor: This is not how I planned to spend the day, hunkering underneath a large animal of the desert squeezing its nipple.

Jen: I was really excited to have, like, face time with animals.

Brittany: Most importantly, I still have my ring, safe and sound.

Conor: Daddy’s got a brand new frog.

Jen: Suffice to say that we may have beaten Yale at math.

Conor: Alex, Alex, please eat them (the scorpions) before they kill me.

Jessica: I contributed like nothing to this leg of the race.

Cody: We want Yale gone.

Order of finish Episode 9:

1) Alex and Conor #TeamIndyCar

2) Kristi and Jen #TeamExtreme

3) Evan and Henry #TeamYale

4) Cody and Jessica #TeamBigBrother

5) Lucas and Brittany #TeamOceanRescue

Order of finish Episode 10:

1) Alex and Conor #TeamIndyCar

2) Cody and Jessica #TeamBigBrother

3) Kristi and Jen #TeamExtreme

4) Evan and Henry #TeamYale