Hera

Same. That one definitely sounded more fun to me than the meat one, so I was a little disappointed no one chose it. I guess it must have sounded like it would take way more time. Comments like that are why I'm going to miss Shelisa for the remainder of the race. She said what I was thinking. I agree with @Netfoot that there was almost certainly only one way those pieces could have fit together to form a circuit, so after the first trip around the track, everyone should have realized they didn't need to memorize the route, but use that time to think about the pieces and how they might fit together. I think this leg showed the benefit of this strategy already. Angie was seemed pretty ready to give up on that rally roadblock. If they hadn't built up so much good will with Amber—to the point where Amber was unwilling to leave the roadblock without helping Angie (and Leticia, but she seemed more adamant about helping Angie), then Angie and Danny may well have had to take the four hour penalty and have been eliminated. I didn't like that the alliance was able to box the firefighters and the girlfriends out of the meat detour, but that was more of an issue with how the task was constructed. However, in general, I don't mind alliances on The Amazing Race that much. I was less against the Mine Five than a lot of people. At least on this season, I can see how it benefits these particular teams to work together. Though if I were Danny and Angie, I'd be looking to drop Amber and Vinny soon, since they have the potential to run a couple of strong legs and leave the others in the dust. With the Mine Five, there were a couple of teams who would have been contenders to win even without the alliance, and so the result was that everyone ensured the survival of their strongest competition.

Same. He stressed me out even when he was saying supportive things to Amber. It just never seemed sincere to me—it was like he was making a concerted effort for the cameras. But then again, what do I know? After all, the world is bigger than your evil thoughts.

I was thinking this too, minus the love. For both teams, I had the feeling of wanting to like them, but being unable to. For Charla and Myrna, it was more a sense that I wouldn't get on with them if I ever actually met them. For Karishma and Kishori, I dislike how they seem to rely on other teams for help. The way they went up to Derek and Shelisa for help on the cooking task gave me flashbacks to James in Season 32 (the one with the much-hated Mine 5 alliance). I have a low tolerance for people who want help with something when they've barely taken any steps to figure it out on their own. Amber and Vinny were uncomfortable to watch. All the weaponized therapy speech: "I need you to X." "Well I need you to Y." Contrast that to Derek and Shelisa's snapping at each other, which doesn't have the same effect on me because 1) I find some of it genuinely funny and 2) it's pretty clear through it all that they do genuinely like each other.

My first impression is that this is a season where the field of competition is pretty weak. That doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a bad season, but it doesn't seem like anyone really crushed that leg, though the first two teams to the mat did well. It'll be interesting if this ends up being a season where there isn't a small group of teams who absolutely dominate the competition. I don't think we've had that in a while.

I came here to say the same thing. Any of the three teams could have won it. Rob and Corey might have been in it if they had been better about getting directions (and—let's face it—if Rob had completed the trapeze task a bit faster). Joel and Garrett could have won it if they had spotted their error on the kayak task sooner. John and Greg were a very strong team and deserved their win, but it was absolutely not a foregone conclusion for much of the leg. Count me among those who wished that the final task had been a bit more difficult. Lugging kayaks isn't riveting as a viewer, even if it does exhaust the teams. But the other tasks, plus the fact that it was a scramble rather than a pre-determined sequence made for an enjoyable leg nonetheless. Though, as others have noted, because the scramble tasks were set up in a straight line, pretty much everyone was going to end up doing Grunge second. I think part of Rob and Corey's strategy in choosing the order they did was to try to avoid the other teams at tasks. It's not a bad idea if you're worried about having to take turns or getting psyched out. And if John and Greg are your competition, getting psyched out is a legitimate concern, especially if you're at something physical like the trapeze task. It's always hard when you have a consistent front-running team like John and Greg on a season. If they win, it's anticlimactic, but if they lose, it potentially feels like the winners are somehow undeserving or won based on luck (either their good luck or the front-runners' bad luck). But that nitpick aside, this was an excellent season.

Yeah, their cocky talking head at the end of the episode seemed like a shift from the way they've been edited previously. But they're not wrong; they are the ones to beat. Yeah, although there's an argument that if Steve had done more of the earlier roadblocks, they might not have made it as far as they did. I laughed at Corey asking who wanted to teach him at the Riverdance roadblock and both the female instructors' hands shot up. I also laughed at the crowd at the pub booing people who messed up their quotes. That said, only Riverdance and self-navigation shook up the order. The swimming, hurling, and recitation were all first in, first out and quick enough that teams basically didn't see each other while they were doing the task, which is a little disappointing. I wonder how far apart the teams were in arriving on the mat.

This is where I land as well. Plus, the more you dither about whether or not to use it, the less advantage you get from using it. Like others pointed out, this task seemed similar to the lotus one, so I don't blame anyone for assuming it was going to be judged equally harshly. And skipping the roadblock here means that they'll have a choice about who does the final roadblock, assuming that Corey does the next one. Anna Leigh was probably at an advantage in that she hadn't done the lotus task, and so she didn't have any preconceived notions about how harsh the judging would be. I give her a ton of credit for finishing quickly enough that she and her dad were able to catch and pass the team who were allowed to skip the task entirely. I'm floored that neither she nor her dad seemed to know the difference between a subway and a bus, but I guess if you're used to driving everywhere (and I suspect they both are), all public transport may seem like the same thing to you. I suspect that both Rob/Corey and Steve/Anna Leigh are making unforced errors due to Killer Fatigue and the inability to get a comfortable lead on the other teams, leading to panicked rather than reasoned decision-making. This is a very evenly matched final four—well, three of the teams are evenly matched; I would give Greg/John the edge over everyone else, though not by enough that I think they're absolute shoo-ins to win.

I laughed at Chelsea's comment on the mat about how her kids were going to love watching the race, and the minute they see John/Greg and Corey/Rob, they'll know her team didn't win. I wouldn't want to go up against John/Greg or Corey/Rob because both teams have the deadly combination of being athletic and being smart (Corey and Rob's unforced error on this leg notwithstanding). There are some seasons where people can win by racing smarter than everyone, but this isn't one of them. I wanted to say that Todd/Ashlie are the weakest team left, but actually, their finishes look better than those of Joel/Garrett. I think the reason I don't rate them is because we haven't seen them be really good at anything. It also seems like she doesn't like him very much, which makes them kind of a bummer to watch. Joel and Garrett will sometimes power through a challenge on the strength of one or both of them having had some relevant experience, and they always seem to be having a good time doing it. The teams are due for an equalizer soon, so I don't think the finishes this leg are going to matter a whole lot going forward. It sounds like Corey and Rob have to use their Express Pass on the next leg if they're going to use it at all. It'll be interesting, because while I'm sure they're hungry for a first place finish, they also seem to be all about enjoying the experiences the race provides. If you use an Express Pass (and especially if you use it before starting a task), you necessarily have to give up one of the experiences the race provides. But maybe the next leg will have an obviously frustrating task that's a no-brainer to skip.

This is what I thought. They kept talking about their "eight hour head start" and I think even if it had worked out, they maybe would have gotten one or two hours ahead at most. It's not nothing, but it's not the eight hour leg up they were hoping for. The reaction to Steve and Anna Leigh from the other racers suggested to me that they're a well-liked team. As for Morgan and Lena, I both felt sorry for Lena when Morgan was yelling at her for falling down on the skiing task ("LENA! What are you doing?" Er… she didn't fall on purpose, so calm down), but I also found the reveal that Lena "has been skiing [her] whole life" very funny—though not skiing for over a decade is a rock solid excuse for being bad at that task, in my book. Yeah, their navigation issues are sending them spiraling. I was going to blame the U-Turn (and that may well have started them on this frazzled path), but there have been enough equalizers that that can't be a factor anymore. I think this is simply a team that can't handle the stress of racing at the back, which is where they end up thanks to their poor navigation skills. This makes them rush to try to make up time and so they think through what they're trying to do, which leads to unforced errors like trying for the Express Pass, even though it made no sense to do so. Finally, well done to Ashlie for understanding the hay task (she mentioned that judge was going to want to see that they used all the hay) and for disproving Robbin's prediction that she'd make her team switch tasks because it was hard work and Robbin wasn't sure Ashlie had it in her. It's particularly funny in retrospect because it seemed like Robbin and Chelsea ended up being one of the slowest teams to complete that task. I don't think their strategy of trying to grind through physical tasks is a good one on a season that's so stacked with athletic men.

I think stick shift drama is slowly going to become a thing of the past (at least in European legs). The EU voted to ban the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines by 2035. Electric cars, which don't need a manual transmission, are going to become way more common. Totally agree. I actually felt sorry for Anna Leigh. I know her personality has been a bit divisive on this forum, and while she's not my favorite racer, I think she's fine and her dad presumably knew that she was high-strung when he signed up to race for her. I appreciate that she seems up for anything and pulls her weight. I'm not sure the same can be said for her dad, who really sucked at two of the three roadblocks he's done so far and is apparently useless when they're driving themselves places. If their positions were reversed, and Anna Leigh basically said, "I will not be able to contribute to us getting to where we need to go," I don't believe he'd have been as understanding about it as he seemed to expect her to be. Speaking of navigation, while I generally sympathize with Lena over Morgan, I have to say that I felt for Morgan a little bit in this episode. Your life as a navigator is so much harder if the driver doesn't follow your instructions. Someone upthread suggested that Morgan could have tapped Lena on the shoulder to indicate which way to turn, which is an elegant solution that I never would have thought of. And apparently, neither did Morgan or Lena. This is what I thought of too when Chelsea announced her strategy. I don't really have a problem with converting a mental/concentration task into a physical one (or the reverse), if it's possible. It's not like she got out of there faster than Corey or Morgan because of it—although if she had, that might be an argument for her being especially smart to do it that way.

@Browncoat, according to Wikipedia, it was Season 31, Leg 8. I misremembered—there were actually two team U-Turned: the ones who received the most and the second most votes from the other teams.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, add learning to balance things on your head to the list of skills that you should master before going on the show, along with driving a manual transmission, learning to swim, and reading to map. Needing to balance things on your head doesn't happen as often as the other stuff, but it comes up surprisingly often and it's not a skill that will ever hurt a team to have mastered. This was a good leg for Andrea and Malaina—particularly Andrea. She managed to get through the roadblock relatively quickly and she spotted some of the details in the dress up detour quickly as well. This team has been improving pretty steadily, but I suspect they won't be U-Turn targets, which is right where I'd want to be at this point in the race. I didn't have much sympathy for Morgan in this instance. She was hovering over Lena as she sewed. Either offer to take over the sewing (since Morgan's puppet was already finished) or let Lena get on with it. The puppets were small enough that unless you were working together on them in a thoughtful and deliberate way (like Joel and Garrett did), grabbing the one your partner was working on or learning in to supervise your partner's technique like that was bound to end in tears. I remember this too, though the one I remember wasn't anonymous. Basically, before the start of the leg, all the teams all stood a row and Phil went down the line asking each team to vote for another team to receive the U-Turn. The one with the most votes was the one who got U-Turned. I assume this is the same, except that it's anonymous, so they won't do it in front of each other and the team who is ultimately U-Turned may not know from the outset of the leg that they're the ones who "won" the vote.

Based on the descriptions of the tasks, I definitely thought that delivery the mattresses sounded like the faster choice, but watching it unfold, it seemed like the fish stand was generally faster. I think if you could manage the mattresses in just two trips, then they might have been roughly even, but only Liam and Yeremi pulled that off, which says a lot about how hard it must have been: you needed the fitness of two young men who were recently in the military. I normally feel like the needle-in-the-haystack tasks would be the end of me on the race, but at least racers could be methodical about this one, unlike the one a couple seasons ago, where they had to turn over stones and had to put them back where they found them, unmarked. While some teams definitely caught a lucky break (which always happens on this type of task), I feel like the people who lost a lot of time on this one were probably not very strategic in how they searched. Morgan noted with some frustration that Lena kept returning to places she had already been. It seemed like the first five teams were all on top of each other at the mat, so I'm guessing they will all start the next leg within a few minutes of one another. I was surprised at how much I was rooting for Liam and Yeremi to survive. I'm glad they have a bit of a buffer between themselves and last place. They're not my favorite team (that's probably Rob and Corey), but they seem to have good attitudes. I hope Liam forgives himself for his past behavior towards his brother. As someone who went on a similar journey with my sister, all I can say is that sibling relationships can be really tough, especially before you both have developed an adult perspective.

I get that you never know how hard a task will be before you try it, but if I were Morgan or Lena, I'd be annoyed with myself for not using the Express Pass before even getting on the boat at the floating market. It seemed like one of them suggested doing just that, although it could have just been editing. You lose too much time getting on the boat, going round to the merchants, and then coming back. In all honesty, they might have been better off completing the market task and then skipping the detour altogether. Same. As good as it is for Yeremi and Liam, it sucks for Steve and Anna Leigh. They came in first, but don't get a prize. And those two teams handled the race pressure very differently. Greg/John stayed zen and pleasant. Jocelyn/Victor, not so much. Yes to all of this. And anyway, early leads can sometimes be misleading about actual racing ability long term. Jocelyn and Victor were lucky in the first two legs that the tasks rewarded their particular strengths. But on this leg, they came up against a task that neither one was naturally good at and they're now in a country where Victor has less of a linguistic edge. Plus, exhaustion is starting to creep in (I think they were one of the teams that didn't get a lot of sleep on the journey to and through Vietnam). These things were always going to happen to them eventually. We'll see if they can recover or if they're going to spiral downwards. I expect Greg and John to recover better than Jocelyn and Victor for no reason other than they performed well in the first two legs (and 8th out of 11 isn't really that bad) without having any particular advantage over the other teams (besides being young and fit). Although they are undeniably less strong than Rob and Corey who have performed well in all three legs so far and also without any particular advantages.

Me too. I don't think I would have minded bunched starts if they reflected arrival times (teams who arrive within X minutes of each other start together), but because the size of groups was pre-determined, you'd sometimes get the situation where teams who arrived at roughly the same time got separated by 15 minutes, just because one arrived in third and the other in fourth. I also liked what he said about her needing confidence: "She'll be the best in the room, and she doesn't see it." It struck me as a really nice way of phrasing it. I felt for Ashlie (really, everyone) on that roadblock. I think I could have worked out the need for bulbs, the way they needed to be arranged, and the bamboo ties. Even after watching everyone get through the task, I don't think I understood what the judge was looking for when it came to leaves. Same. He and Andrea/Malaina understood the assignment: do your best with the language (and accept that you're going to look a bit silly in the process) and rely on the kindness of strangers. Victor's language skills meant he and Jocelyn had a much more straightforward (and honestly, slightly less fun) time with the task. I'm curious about which side of the detour took longer on average. It seemed like the teams who did the market one were able to make up time (provided they didn't mess up) on the ones who did the pomelo one but the pomelo task was also busier and more direct competition (taking pomelos means that other teams can't use them). It also would have been like the lotus task in that later teams would have had to go further afield to find the stuff they needed. Fun fact I learned at a pub quiz (and which Wikipedia backs up): grapefruit was created as a cross between sweet orange and a pomelo. My team got it right only because we had someone on it who knew what pomelos were.

I just remembered that this season had started airing. I like the longer episode format, especially since there are more teams to get to know this season. Agree with everyone about the attractiveness of the younger members of the cast, though the show has a history of casting for attractiveness—there were a lot of models on the beloved early seasons as well. Same. But Iliana was right—getting to the other task and then getting dressed would take time as well, and probably longer than the 15 minutes or whatever that they had to wait for a massage slot to open. They couldn't have known for sure that the massage was the faster task, but it was, and so staying was absolutely the right move. But on a visceral level, I am 100% Elizabeth. Having to sit and wait when I know there's an option not to drives me nuts. Plus, she was a right about the demoralization aspect of seeing everyone else leave first. I think so too. They seem to have a close bond and are using the race to hang out with each other rather than to work through underlying issues. I don't generally root for the fit all-male teams (and I still might not end up rooting for them), but for whatever reason, they're more likeable to me than Liam and Yeremi or Marcus and Michael from last season. They also endeared themselves to me with this from their Parade interview: I am never clear on exactly what the teams are told, vs. the audience. I think sometimes they are told things we are not and vice versa.

Even more recently there was Season 32, whose winners had to wait two years before the finale for their season aired.

To be fair, Lorelai's life was heavily impacted by the guy she was with at 16, so that probably warped her perspective on how important teenage relationships generally end up being. She liked Dean because he was the kind of boyfriend she would have wanted for herself at that age: a nice, responsible boy who doesn't get in trouble, and who doesn't mistreat his girlfriend. Plus, as far as we're shown, there weren't any major relationships between Christopher and Max. As a friend of mine pointed out, it's not so surprising that she got so overinvested in Dean, since she was (in season 2/3) a 33/34 year old woman who had never had a healthy adult relationship.

An instant classic. My favorite bit of that epic sequence is when Emily is gleefully recounting her confrontation of Shira Huntzberger to a Lorelai and Rory (who are both shocked and delighted) and Richard is egging her on.

Same here, though I also would have been happy with an Emily/Molly win. I have nothing against Derek and Claire, it's just that I liked the other two teams better. But Molly and Emily screwed up the navigation and it cost them, and Luis and Michelle screwed up the attention to detail by not checking out the black keys on the final task. I really liked the tasks for this finale—all of them gave the opportunity for teams to pass each other, so Derek and Claire's win wasn't a foregone conclusion until they solved the final task. I also liked that the final task was properly difficult. The 11 second time limit was a brilliant touch. Without it, the task would have been like a lot of other forgettable and lacklustre final tasks, but the time limit took it from memory challenge to memory and strategic coordination challenge. It still wasn't quite as good as the final roadblock for Season 12 (honestly, I don't think they'll ever top that one for me), but I'll definitely remember this one and I think it probably was been possible for one of the lagging teams to make up time. Really, Emily and Molly did, just not enough to snag the win.

Neither do I. Everyone talked about how cold the water was as well, so I wouldn't begrudge any team who knew they were in last place deciding not to go back in at that point. And given how many volcano names Aubrey and David had misplaced on their board, I reckon they would have needed at least two more trips through the water before they passed, so I'm glad they didn't talk themselves into trying it "one more time". Aubrey was really lovely through both tasks. I think she may have realized early on that this was going to be her team's downfall and took the view that the whole thing was nice while it lasted. One thing I really like about this season is that all the teams have seemed really appreciative of the experience. Even Luis and Michelle, who have been shown talking about winning and the prize money the most of all the teams, have seemed genuinely excited about the locations and the challenges. And it's another reason I feel sorry for Emily, because addition to her bad knee messing with her ability to compete, I'm sure it's having a detrimental effect on her ability to enjoy the experience of the race (and create happy memories with her long-lost sister). That's what I thought as well, based on how they described the task in the voiceover. I always wonder what the instructions the racers are given actually say. Did the racers know that it would be matching names to years, or did they think they might have to write in years next to names? Mind you, the race doesn't often make teams remember long lists of numbers and names. I remember a few years ago there was a task where teams had to remember the names and heights of something like five mountains, but in the end, the heights were given and racers just had to remember the names that went with them.

As others have said, seeing the flag with the tour guide (or just around Andalusia) earlier primed everyone to pick the right one. It looked familiar even if they couldn't quite place it. It's like a multiple choice test—sometimes you recognize the right answer because you remember seeing it before, not necessarily because you know it's the right answer. Agreed. And teachers who want to set difficult multiple choice questions can do this as well—make the potential answers differ from each other in very subtly different ways so that you can't rely on a vague sense of familiarity to help you choose the right one. On the other hand, for purposes of the race, you need balance. If you make teams go back and forth too many times, that's boring. But if two flags are very similar and the others are not, then it's too easy to meta-game since you know the right answer will be one of the two. It was clear from Claire's reaction once the task was over just how bad her fear was, so it's hard to be mad at her for snapping at people during it, but man, poor Aubrey just wanted someone to distract herself with and commiserate with. I felt a bit bad for Aubrey and the person near the clues who had to help Claire over the railing. In terms of teams and leg placement, this has been a fairly high variance season. David and Aubrey mentioned that they were the only team left who hadn't won a leg yet. I'd be fine with any of the teams winning, especially now that Marcus and Michael are out—not because I disliked Marcus and Michael—they were fine, though they were probably my least favorite team remaining; though that's not saying much because I found all the teams this season pretty likeable except for the motivational speakers. But teams of athletic men have historically done well on the race, and it's nice to see a season that isn't so tilted towards that skill set.

It could be a liability thing. As others have noted, if the required food has an ingredient that someone is allergic to (or something like celiac where the food triggers an autoimmune reaction), then they literally can't do it and the show would end up discriminating against people with certain health conditions. And it might be that someone is allergic to something but doesn't find out because the first time they encounter the trigger is on the race. It could also be cultural sensitivity thing—these challenges are based on the premise that the unfamiliar food will be disgusting for the contestants and hard to eat, which is potentially offensive to people from the culture where the food comes from. I liked the Picasso task in principle, but agree with the people who have said that it was hard to see what the racers actually made. Initially I thought the plexiglass didn't have colors, but from some angles you could see that they did, and some of them were pretty vibrant. It just didn't come through the camera, I guess. I was surprised when the twins said in their interview that they tended to take wrong turns in cities, since it seemed that they were one of the stronger teams when it came to navigation. Maybe they are and the others are just even worse. Or maybe their navigational advantage only asserts itself on long distance trips.

Me too: "I hope Emily isn't doing this one…oh thank goodness, she's not!" I'm not sure how Luis passed that check only to have his cart immediately fall apart. It makes you wonder what was being checked. On the other hand, I kind of liked that a poorly built cart was its own punishment. Wow. I don't watch TAR Australia, but I agree that's incredibly unfair. As for Abby and Will, I suppose they can join the three teams who couldn't come back for the restart last season on a future Second Chances season. I liked this leg. I also feel like the field of racers is fairly evenly matched when it comes to skills. They all started at the same time, but the teams who had previously been the front-runners (the two sibling teams) are at the back of the pack. Granted, I don't think there was a ton of time separating any of the teams who finished ahead of Glenda and Lumumba, but that's really just more evidence that the teams are evenly matched this season. It's a nice change of pace. Usually by this point in the season, there are at least two teams who are basically locks for the final three, just based on where they've been finishing on each leg. This season, not so much.

Yeah, this baffled me as well. My wild guess is that the road they took out of the roadblock was fairly empty and then as they got into Petra, there was traffic that slowed the frontrunner teams down and the drivers took different routes to the clue box. I have a friend who grew up in Las Vegas and said she always wore thin long sleeves and pants to keep the sun off your skin. She's Irish/Polish whiter than white. Doesn't tan, just burns and peels. I grew up in the central valley of California and I do the same. In dry heat, it's not as uncomfortable as you might think since you don't get as sticky as you do in humid heat. I'm sorry Linton is gone, but I'm not sorry that Sharik won't be around anymore. She didn't seem to appreciate the experience at all. But it's hard because I don't know who I would like to see go next. Aubrey/David and Abby/Will seem to have had the least screentime of the remaining teams, though Mattie/Quinton weren't shown very much in this and the previous episode. I suppose the story this episode was about how the two sibling teams lost their places at the front of the pack.