I was at the finale party in NY last night and Victor actually called my bluff and wanted to challenge me to a tire changing contest. However, he did admit that they struggled driving a stick shift and that he had bruises all over his legs from being a bit uncoordinated – if you think back, the propeller Roadblock wasn’t exactly a whirling success.
In addition to the season 14 cast, we also had some past familiar faces at the party last night including former Racers Tom and Terry, Sarah and Terence, Kelly and Christy, Nate and Jennifer, and even Drew from Season 1 showed up. Really fantastic to see all those guys coming out to show their support for this group of globe trotters.
Seeing as this is my last blog entry for this season, I thought I would review some of my favorite moments from Season 14:
· Cannonball Cheese Wheels: If you ever hear the line "Watch out for the cheese," you know you have a great season on your hands.
· Big Brother Doesn't Always Know Best: While in Romania, Victor insisted they were going in the right direction. He was wrong. Turned out to be a game changer for the winners as Victor learned it’s a Team sport and not a dictatorship.
· Mat Meltdown: Who was to blame? Even several weeks following the infamous meltdown, we're still debating who was in the wrong.
· Most expensive potty break ever: Kisha and Jen work so hard as a team to battle back through a challenging leg and with a spot in the final three on the line, Jen makes a quick bathroom Pitstop.
· Last night’s Roadblock: Love the moment when all three teams are running neck-and-neck. Great finale episode last night.
As I’ve stated before, I really love when teams' relationships grow on the Race and I honestly feel like Tammy and Victor's matured right in front of us. They learned to feed off of each other, communicate with one another, and most importantly listen to each other. And I believe they’re probably walking away from the Race with a better relationship than when we started. I have a lot of respect for those guys.
As far as their strength in the game, they were like the NY Giants two season’s ago…they got hot down the stretch and everything started clicking for them. They ran one heck of a race in the final couple of legs. Don't get me wrong, we knew they were a strong team when we first saw them, but I think most of us thought their relationship may trip them up along the way.
Luke and Margie were definitely one of my favorite Teams we've ever had on the show. Their relationship is truly compelling and whether or not they were your favorites, you have to give both of them a ton of credit. Not sure they were on anyone's final three lists at the start of the season. Margie – or as I call her, “Bionic Woman” – is as competitive and strong willed a human being as I've ever been around. And Luke, who was probably the biggest Race fan ever, never let any obstacle get in his way and clearly never will.
Cara and Jaime definitely played a strong game. When we first saw this team we knew they were strong enough physically and mentally to make a serious run at the million dollars. They were also relentless in their pursuit of becoming the first all-female team to win the Race but came up just a bit short. I’m sure Cara was a great cheerleader on the field, but she is definitely an all-star off the field. She always maintained her cool throughout a very hectic race and was always supportive of her friend and teammate.
Just want to say thanks to everyone for tuning in this season and for coming out to support me on my Ride Across America. It’s been a crazy couple of months. I am going home now (via airplane) in a much wider and more comfortable seat to gear up for season 15.
And so the fourteenth season of The Amazing Race ended justly: With Tammy and Victor victorious, and second-place Jaime standing at the mat berating herself…but only because there wasn’t a cabbie in sight to pin the rap on.
Before I go further, I'd like to present a bit of a teaser: With the Race over, I'll be launching a new column on EW.com later this week that I'm very excited about. You want details, you say? Stick around until the end of the column, when all will be made clear. (But I will reveal this one hint now: It will not be a recurring photo gallery of all-time great nose flutists. The editors at EW.com rejected that one. They're such noseists.)
Now back to the Race…
Let's take stock of our final three. There was Tammy and Victor, who realized early on that they needed to break out of the bossy older sibling/kowtowing younger sibling roles that were causing such tension. And they found a simple solution: Simply pretend the problem was solved, allowing the bossy older brother to continue to be bossy while they both claim he is not. Next stop in the Race? Denialsburg. It's located right next to Shamestown.
Then there were Margie and Luke. We were set up this season to think of them as inspiring, but then Luke became a bit of a dick. This certainly set up a moral quandary in choosing who to root for. It was like finding out that a post-cancer Lance Armstrong is the one who keeps shortsheeting your bed.
And finally, we had Cara and her thoroughly unpleasant friend Jaime. As the finale started, Cara said that from the beginning, she's said, ''Don’t underestimate us.'' From the beginning Jaime, on the other hand, has been saying, ''SPEAK ENGLISH! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU IDIOTS?''
As the episode began, the Race finally exited China and made its way to the last stop: Hawaii, all the better to get the teams stripped down to their swimsuits! Aoooogah! But the Race is a bit like an old Bob Hope special: it tries to be naughty, but doesn't quite get what real naughtiness is. It's kind of cute in its naivete, actually, especially when compared to contemporary skankapaloozas like Rock of Love Bus. On the Race, producers think, ''We're in sunny climes, we've got a couple of cheerleaders, let's get these folks in some hot two-pieces! Yeah! And then…and then…and then we'll have them haul a dead pig around! Meeee-ow!'' Jeez, why not have them put on negligees and then embalm a corpse? While I'm sure that there is a small species of pork-carcass fetishists who dimmed the lights, lit some candles, and got out the lotion at the sight of these fine, fine ladies grimacing under the weight of a dead, fly-covered pig, the rest of us could have thought of far better ways to sex up the show.
The challenge was to truss a 145-pound pig on a pole, and then carry it 200 yards to a luau. Before carrying it, they had to prep it with, as Phil put it, ''real island flavoring.'' Is that anything like the real truth flavor? (Ronald, I miss you each and every day.) This did not sound as difficult as it looked, but I don't want to judge, having never hauled a dead pig 200 yards. Tammy could barely manage three steps without dropping the pole. Stressful for her, but quite an ignominious funeral for the pig.
The cheerleaders arrived at the challenge third after giving their cabbie a little thrill by changing into their swimsuits in the back of his minivan. For this cabbie, it must have seemed like a Penthouse letter in the making before it took a dark turn: ''Dear Penthouse: I never thought these letters were real, but the other day two cheerleaders got into my car and started changing into bikinis right in my rear-view mirror! It was so hot. And then one of them started yelling at me and didn't stop for the rest of the day. Now I can't get aroused unless I imagine that someone is going to hit me if I don't get a GPS.''
As much as Tammy struggled with the pig, Cara was struggling even more. And as you'd imagine, Jaime was not all that understanding. While Victor tried to encourage his sister with lines like, ''Do not doubt yourself!'', Jaime tried a different kind of pep talk, using such inspirational nuggets as ''You're fricking killing me!'', ''I don't understand what the problem is!'' and ''This is how you lose a million dollars!'' After a while, I'll bet Cara started feeling envious of the pig.
At this point, Margie and Luke were significantly ahead, having made good time with their pig and then prepped it for the luau in short order. (It was nice to see that the Race continued one of this season's traditions right up to the end: inviting locals to laugh at the contestants as they performed their task.) Before you knew it, the mother and son were off on their Jet-Ski in a challenge to find the next clue taped to one in a sea of buoys. Margie was driving, while Luke clutched onto her waist, and with the generic heavy-guitar music playing in the background as they zipped along the ocean, I felt like I was watching an excerpt from a really unsuccessful beach-cop pilot. ''He's got bad hearing, and an even worse attitude. And if you think he's tough, you should meet his mother. Mama Bear and Kid Cochlear, tonight at 9 on CBS!''
They breezed through the challenge, quickly finding the buoy with the next clue on it. (But not before things got a bit testy when Margie started snapping as Luke back-seat Jet-Skiied.) Behind them, the next two teams were neck and neck. It was hilarious watching Victor once again be unable to follow through on his promise to let Tammy do some work. As the driver, he insisted on also checking the buoys. Tammy kept saying that it would be easier if she checked, and he agreed…and then kept checking the buoys himself. Apparently he rationalized that she was busy enough with her very important delegated job of keeping his midsection warm by wrapping her arms around it.
With this challenge, Margie and Luke really elongated their lead. When they finished, they got a fast cab, while Tammy and Victor's got stuck behind a slow Jeep, and Jaime and Cara's cabbie got—for the thousandth time—lost. I've never bought into karma or cosmic forces, but now I'm a believer: There has to be something bigger than all of us that sends only crappy cabbies to the cheerleaders. When that voice crackled over the cabbie's radio, saying, ''You need to tell your people that I’m not their personal concierge,'' I wondered, Was that the voice of God? It would be wildly appropriate if, when confronting Jaime about her sins, the ultimate supreme being took the form of an angry taxi dispatcher.
The angry retort didn't stop Jaime from yelling at the driver. She kept saying, ''We're in a race for a million dollars, we don't have time for all this.'' It's too bad: Over 11 legs of the Race, she never once realized that while she's in a race for a million dollars, these drivers aren't. What the hell do they have to gain by breaking all speed laws for her?
Luke and Margie arrived at the final Roadblock long before anyone else. The task was, as per Amazing Race tradition, a memory game about all previous legs of the Race. In this instance, one teammate faced a pile of surfboards, 11 of which had a logo on them that referenced the legs; you had to find them all and then put them in chronological order. I've always found this tradition lacking in entertainment value. Maybe it's because I have a lousy memory. If I didn't, perhaps I'd have more fun playing along, or snickering at the errors of the players. But as it is, I'd rather see them face some ultimate time-consuming and frustrating challenge that pushes them to physical limits, rather than mental ones. Mental challenges are—by definition—not that visually compelling. And the fact that this one involved Victor and Luke dashing around in their underpants made it even less so.
Luke seemed to have this challenge tied up, as he was nearly done by the time Victor and Tammy arrived. But he could not close the deal, getting the last two legs wrong over and over again. Victor caught up to and then passed him; even Jaime caught up to him. The producers made it seem like Jaime was incompetent, as she didn't seem to grasp that most of the boards had random, unusable logos on them. And yet, suddenly she was missing only two, neck and neck with Luke. She went from clueless to ass-kicking without any explanation; it was as if the producers couldn't bear to include any scene that might reflect positively on them. I think if Jaime and Cara had finished first and were making their way to the finish line, Bertram Van Munster might have leaped out and tripped them.
With Luke wildly frustrated, and Jaime her usual frantic self, Margie suggested the two teams work together to finish the challenge. I suppose that's good strategy: Yes, you run the risk of giving the other team the info they might need to outrun you. But at that point, with both teams stymied, you're likely a dead man as it is, so adding extra competition is better than being eliminated right away.
In the end, Tammy and Victor handily won. They clearly finished the Race seamlessly, as they gave the producers no footage with which to manufacture even an iota of false suspense. Meanwhile, runners-up Jaime and Luke, once they realized they were done for, both beat themselves up, holding themselves responsible for the loss. Fortunately, both had partners to buck them up and deny all guilt. Luke's last moments with Margie were sweet; as much crap as we may have given her for being overly protective, she does seem like a great mom. As for Jaime, as much crap as we gave her for being rude and patronizing…well, her hair sure was red.
And so endeth the season.
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