I also thought that was ridiculous. The training section was a good idea. However, it was insane for the challenge to require 100% accuracy.

I've been to one of those ax throwing places before, and they also had ninja stars and knives. While the ax throwing learning curve was fast, having accuracy with throwing knives and ninja stars was really difficult.

Oof, Bernie and Carrigain were one of the worst teams I’ve ever selected. Good riddance.

Lack of teamwork led to their downfall.

I'll root for Alyssa and Josiah now, but I already "lost" this season haha

The lead team wasted their fast forward pass. Now everyone is out to get them and they don’t have that to fall back on.

That rice task seemed one of the easier ones too ... even weaker physical players were having no problems (even with the 25 lbs).

"Driver's Seat" seems a terrible thing to get. You'll make enemies of multiple teams although the handicap given them is nowhere near a U Turn. And it doesn't seem like you have the option to not do it, like you can with U Turns.

these 90 min episodes are doing nothing for me. They are just showing more of the tasks and not adding tasks. AU & CA TAR have more tasks in a leg and are more fun

Wow, that Double U-Turn was brutal for the Top 2 teams. Disappointing to see the mom and dad go.

And Jonathan is still an ass. He’s gonna explode on one of these legs on national television.

I really hate U-turns. I especially hated this one with the voting. Does TAR really need this element added?

I think a good added twist for a U-Turn is if you complete Task 1 in under X amount of minutes, you can skip Task 2. Give the U-Turned team a chance to block a U-Turn.

Not a fan of the "every one the lessor teams" gets to gang up and eliminate a stronger team. At least with an actual race U-Turn that's dependent on how you are racing in that leg. Unless one of the other teams just royally, completely screwed up they were going to eliminate one of the top teams, and they did.

Having had heat exhaustion before (and not having had it be televised), I'll go ahead Jonathan some slack.

That’s reasonable. However, I did find it inexcusable that he left his empty water bottle trash when he went to resume the leg. I hate littering.

I liked the mom and dad team that got eliminated up until the vote when she acted like a bitch.

That's the thing that made Amazing Race stand out from other shows at first. While there were alliances, your success was ultimately on you. Even with "normal" U Turns it wouldn't send you home unless you were at the back of the pack to begin. But this was awful, and I was no fan of either team that got U Turned. Since none of the challenges in the leg were ones that could cause separation in the standings, the U Turned teams were doomed. The only thing that gave it some suspense was which of the 2 teams would go home. If Jonathan and Anna didn't blow their Express Pass last leg even that tiny bit of suspense would've been gone.

They've done the U-Turn vote before, in the season with former Big Brother, Amazing Race, and Survivor contestants.

didn't like the setup of the fast forward, that only one team could go for it. I used to be that it was choice is others wanted to try and in this case if more people were swimming around the pool it would have been a bigger risk going for it. There seemed to be no reason to limit it to only one team to go for it.

I didn’t like that either. They should be encouraging more teams to risk it

Re: the April 9th episode - if Jeff and Pops didn’t run at the end of the metro station leg, I wonder if they would have survived on a technicality, since Nick & Mike were running too. I wonder if Nick and Mike would have received a time penalty.

But both teams ran so it didn’t matter.

Yes. That’s why that season not long ago where a group of teams packed up to complete detours and roadblocks as a group while also conspiring to impede non-alliance teams made it easily the worst season of the show.

Yeah that wasn’t ideal. I’m guessing they decided on the task first, and there’s no way they could have as many as 24 people sloshing around in that pool looking for the FF (16 racers snd 8 dive minders). And there’s zero chance they swam down the 200 foot hole so they would all have been in the fake city area not far from the surface.

there is a risk/reward factor. Once the first few go for it, maybe 2 or 3 teams, the risk isn't worth it for the other teams to go.

edit: the amount of teams that would go

Wow, Carson and Jack were lucky they still in the race after falling behind because they got lost on the road.Sorry to see the brothers out of the race not sure why they couldn't start on the next haystack or there a limit of haystack they coould dig.

The way I saw the rules was you had 3 haystacks to find the bracelet. Once they tore up all 3 without finding it there was nowhere else to go except sift through the debris (since it had to be in there somewhere). I've seen teams just "pass" on a challenge they just couldn't do and take a time penalty. After several hours in the field they had to have considered that. Whatever the penalty is, it wouldn't have been anywhere near the lead they had over Carson and Jack. Although I got the sense everyone was just assuming they were way out in front instead of being lost and in last place by a mile.

Usually the Alpha Male teams do well ... but the brothers consistently sucked all season And it sucks that team Lumberjack get eliminated the week before a wood carrying contest

I don’t think I remember a team blowing a challenge as bad as the brothers botched the haystack thing. They weren’t a very good team.

Jonathan taking the clue from Ana, after she was the one who found the haystack item.

She was excited she found it and was ready to rip open the clue, all while thanking the local farmer. Jonathan snatches the clue from her hand. I hate him.

Episode 10 reaction:

Josiah and Alyssa almost blew the Express Pass. In those situations, need to be extremely decisive. But I’m glad they made it. Josiah knows how to treat his girl right. Lots of positive affirmations.

On the flip side, Jonathan continues to be a dick to Ana. I’m glad the editors are airing it all out on national television. And you can see the verbal abuse take over at the pitstops when Ana “admits” fault saying she messed up a lot, when in fact, she is doing great.

Mark and Brett were never as formidable as a team as they should have been. Something was also missing there.

Ana is easy to root for, and she's really good in task, but Jonathan is such an asshole.