The Amazing Race

There aren't any single teenage mothers among the cast for The Amazing Race, but this show is about challenges, not gimmicks.

Its 17th season premieres on Sunday, September 26 and CBS has announced that the following 11 teams will compete on the upcoming edition...

Brook Roberts
Age: 27
Hometown: San Diego, CA
Occupation: Home Shopping Host
Claire Champlin
Age: 30
Hometown: Reno, NV
Occupation: Home Shopping Host
Relationship: Home Shopping Hosts

Nick DeCarlo
Age: 26
Hometown: Henderson, NV
Occupation: Bartender
Vicki Casciola
Age: 26
Hometown: Henderson, NV
Occupation: Hair Stylist
Relationship: Dating

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On the finale of The Amazing Race last night, the long shot came home to win, but luck certainly had nothing to do with Dan and Jordan being victorious. 

Even though they were the second favorite on my pre-race predictions behind Jet and Cord, I downgraded them to being half as likely to win the race with just three teams left.  My rationale was based more on the strength of their competition – Jet and Cord and Brent and Caite – than anything negative about Dan and Jordan.

Perhaps I was a little too influenced by the melt down that Dan had in the cab last week while trailing Louie and Michael.  In my defense, it was an all-time classic melt down, but really that was the only poor reaction or bad decision the brothers had made in quite some time.  Beyond that, they’ve been nothing but a strong team for many weeks now and certainly deserved to win.

What was most impressive about their performance this week was that they took advantage of one smart move and ran the rest of the leg mistake free, even with the cowboys breathing down their neck the entire time.  Despite their earlier, almost race-long dominance, the same cannot be said for the cowboys, specifically Cord.  How he did not figure out that Jet spinning with the words would help him read it after Jordan’s spinning stalled them a few minutes earlier we’ll never know.

As disappointing as Cord’s struggles with the virtual reality clue was Jet’s decision not to walk through or shove aside Jordan when he was spinning to allow Dan to read the clue.  I have no problem with teams playing the game with integrity and not stepping over people to win one million dollars, but as the saying goes: once bitten, twice shy. 

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And then there were three.

Last night The Amazing Race field was whittled from four down to the final three that will race for the one million dollar prize and Louie and Michael were the odd team out.  Although they were saddled with a two hour deficit on Dan and Jordan and a Speed Bump for finishing last the previous leg, neither factor did them in (well, at least not directly).  Their inability to handle concentration challenges gave Dan and Jordan enough time to squeak ahead of the detectives. 

I say that neither factors directly led to their demise because the two hour deficit that Louie and Michael had to overcome was as a result of Michael struggling with the puzzle last week.  Ultimately it did not matter because Dan and Jordan burned that entire lead getting nowhere with the Garden Bridge clue to start the leg. 

Imagine if they started just moments behind Dan and Jordan?  The brothers might still be in Shanghai looking for the bridge.  After all, it was Michael who figured out how to get there, not Dan or Jordan.

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As I watched this week’s episode of The Amazing Race, “I Feel Like I’m In, Like, Sicily,” the same thought kept popping into my head:

I don’t want any of these teams to lose.

Ok, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration; I’d be fine with Caite and Brent going home.  They’re a tad annoying, not too bright and do not really bring a lot to the table, at least not compared to the other three teams.  However, on the scale of 1) how awful most couples are on the race and 2) how annoying most of the teams that seem to make the finals are, Brent and Caite are angels.

How entertaining is Brent and Caite’s competition?  My man-crush on Jet and Cord is well documented, but who’s going to argue with the assertion that they are two of the nicest people in the world?  We can say this now with conviction because they’ve literally traveled the world and we’ve been able to watch them.  They’ve certainly pass the “ugly American” test in every country that a number of former teams have failed, badly.  

Dan and Jordan remain the best story on the show.  It has been very warming to watch Jordan fulfilling a life-long dream of running The Amazing Race and his older brother Dan doing everything in his power to help Jordan in that quest.  The brothers have had so many great moments of genuine emotion throughout the show including this week’s tear jerking hug from Dan for his struggling brother.  Oh, did I mention that Jordan might be one of the funniest racers ever?  He’s certainly been the most quoted racer for our reviews.

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This week’s episode of The Amazing Race certainly was not one of the most dynamic legs we’ve ever seen, but it was definitely one of the angriest.

Check out some of the quotes from this week:

Brent: Ladies get their way.  Bitches don’t.
Carol : They U-Turned us because you’re prettier than she is”
Brandi: She’s on You Tube for a reason.
Carol: Get a good long shot of that bitchy mug

Well!  Certainly sounds like somebody is pissing off some players on the race. 

As it turns out, this was a battle that had been brewing since the very beginning of the race when Carol and Brandi insulted Caite for her colossal public embarrassment during the Miss Teen USA pageant in 2007.  Brent and Caite (rightly) took umbrage with the humiliation from Carol and Brandi and have had a vendetta against them ever since.

From the beginning Caite has talked frequently about how much she wanted to U-Turn “the lesbians” as Carol and Brandi have been labeled on the race and this week they finally had the chance to do it.  The first time there was a U-Turn, Michael and Louie nailed Steve and Allie before Brent and Caite even had a chance to exact revenge.  Not that they would have been able to, anyway – that was back during their arguing days when they floundered in the back of the pack with Jordan and Jeff.

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Dan called this week’s leg of The Amazing Race the most difficult the racers had faced so far, but what made it challenging, specifically Dan and Jordan and Steve and Allie, were the tough decisions they needed to make during the leg.

Michael said it best when he reiterated an age old The Amazing Race adage that a cab can be the difference between winning and losing a million dollars.  Typically the statement pertains to the cab drivers and how fast they drive, what route they take, etc.  This week the cabs were a vital component to the episode, but only with respect to how the teams managed their cab rides.

From the start of the episode, cabs played a crucial role in determining a team’s fate.  In the normal sense of how cabs impact the race, Dan and Jordan lucked into the best cab driver in Malaysia whose speedy driving took them from fifth place leaving the airport to the first team to the Detour clue box. 

What made the episode interesting, however, was the decision Dan and Jordan made next.  They did not ask/pay to have their cab driver stick around and drive them to the Detour choice destination and the difficulties simply compounded from there. 

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When Steve and Allie check into first to the Pit Stop for the seventh leg of The Amazing Race, Phil asks them if they noticed that the theme of the leg has been the number seven.  What he really should have asked them is if they’ve noticed the theme was carelessness.

We normally hear the foreboding clash sound that CBS likes to use to indicate when a team has made an error once, maybe twice, an episode.  This week?  A whopping five of the biggest and most preventable blunders in The Amazing Race history!

(I certainly have to qualify my claim with preventable because there have been plenty of worse blunders on the race that topped what the Detour-botching racers did this week.  But, in terms of being preventable?  I’m not sure the Ox Trot mistakes can be topped).

At this point, when CBS emphasizes that, for the Ox Trot challenge, the exact number of coconuts must be transported to receive a clue, we are not surprised when one boneheaded team leaves something behind.  This week, it happened three times.  That’s 50% of the racers!  How is this possible?

The task was anything but complicated – that’s why five of the six teams chose it.  Load a pile of coconuts into a cart and drive the cart via ox to the beach to receive your next clue.  All of the coconuts must make it to the beach in order to receive your next clue.

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The fifth leg of The Amazing Race started with a small wrinkle.  Instead of a traditional 12-hour pit stop in the place they ended the previous leg, the teams were put on a bus for a traveling pit stop.  The bus’s destination?  No one knew.  Well, we, the viewers, knew - Les Monthairons, France - but the teams racing did not. 

Initially this seems like a really cool comment and gets some fun mat quotes such as we took a bus from “Hamburg to…here.  Wherever here is” from Jet and Cord, but ultimately doesn’t really add much to the leg.  I feel like they really could do more with this concept to give the leg a unique feel to it, but dropping them off in France is hardly that challenging.  At least not as challenging as it could be.

Say they pulled this stunt in Egypt?  Far fewer people are going to speak English in Egypt (at least I think so) and I’m sure they could find a very remote place to put them.  Have them complete a leg of the race in this remote corner of Egypt and then next leg tell them to fly to wherever.  The challenge will be that the teams didn’t come to Egypt on their own so they’ll have to find a way to get to some airport, not even knowing where the best one is. 

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Last week I asked that the race leave South America and I got my wish…sort of.  I added the caveat that I prefer Leg 4 not bring us back to Europe where it seems recent editions of the Race have spent plenty of time.  Certainly Europe is gorgeous (as Jeff said about Hamburg at the Pit Stop “you have a wonderful city, it is beautiful.”) and there are plenty of interesting places to go, but it just doesn’t have the exotic allure of less traveled places such as Africa, Asia and South America. 

Nevertheless, fun to see the teams head somewhere different.  I always love when plane flights are in an episode because they’re dynamic situations that allow for the racers to make up or lose ground on their competition.  Although Jet and Cord’s advantage for finishing first last leg is wiped out by the twelve hour delay before any flight to Germany departs because of flight scarcity, the teams get rearranged. 

Louie and Michael, who had the great line about South America, “this continent has not been good to us,” answer the bell on last week’s question (Can Louie and Michael get out of their own way to move up?) and rocket to the head of the race with Jet and Cord.  Much like the last leg was tailor made for Jet and Cord, this one was tailor made for Louie and Michael and they took advantage.  How awesome was it to watch Michael inhale the sauerkraut and then have Louie down the huge boot of beer?  One of my pre-race favorites, it was good to see them work well together and get ahead.

With Jet and Cord, I’ve repeatedly asked if anyone can stop them and the answer still is no.  Yes, I realize they slipped to fourth place this week, but that was because of some wrong decisions they made, not anyone else’s doing.  Going from the intersection to the statue, they left even with Louie and Michael, but took the metro instead of a cab and teams caught up to them.  For travel to the soccer portion of the detour, they chose a cab when the metro was faster.  If Jet and Cord switch their decisions, they’re still easily into second place.

My man crush on Jet and Cord continues to grow every week.  Michael and the bungee jump staff try to warn Jet that his hat is going to fall off on the bungee jump, but he calmly replies “no it won’t. “  While bouncing around after their jump, Michael exclaims “your hat didn’t fall off!” and Jet coolly answers “a cowboy’s hat never comes off!”  At the bar later in the episode, Jet and Cord are able to laugh with the locals who get a kick out of how much they don’t like beer.  It’s not often that you see people who are very comfortable about their identity, but not pretentious about it.  These guys are a lot of fun to root for. 

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Last week, Jet and Cord looked unbeatable.

This week? Let's just say our opinion hasn't changed much.

The entire leg seemed tailor-made for the cowboys, something Carol and Brandi complained about at the roadblock.  While it certainly isn't 100% fair, neither is life, Brandi.  Jet and Cord appropriately pointed out that they are not complaining (you get the sense these two have complained about something maybe once in their life) about how unfair it is that Carol and Brandi speak Spanish, but they do not. 

Considering that the while race has been in Spanish-speaking countries so far, that’s a far bigger advantage than Jet and Cord running into a steer roping challenge on one leg.  Imagine, however, if the detour involved riding real horses instead of the practice one.  Jet and Cord might have been a half of a day ahead of the other teams.

Jet and Cord’s biggest advantage, however, is their calmness.  They never seem flustered or hyper and always approach everything methodically.  Upon arriving at the detour they correctly asserted that trying to find something in a field could take far longer than riding a horse.  The only other teams able to figure that out as quickly were Steve and Allie and Dan and Jordan and each team benefited from the realization.

Beyond decision-making, one of the most important traits on the race, historically, has been to have fun.  It’s been a while since The Amazing Race has cast a team of pure jokesters as it did in the beginning seasons.  The duos that are able to joke around with each other during the race and keep each other loose always do better than the teams who are uptight. 

How great was Cord’s ribbing of Jet for missing the steer on the first throw?  Even Jet’s self-effacing comment about how embarrassing that was funny.  Teams are frequently in too much of a hurry, but Jet and Cord took a moment after completing the Horse Power detour and winning their trophy to make light of the prize, look into the camera and thank their parents and the Lord as if they just won Olympic gold.  

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