After a season that I’ve seen more than any other in Season 1, it was on to Season 2, which by contrast I hadn’t seen in about four years. My memories I had of it were pretty hazy (and inaccurate in some cases, as I was to find out), but I was looking forward to it after having heard it praised quite a bit by other fans.

I was… slightly disappointed.

I’m not saying that Season 2 is a bad season. I would, instead, list it as a perfectly average season. After the praise I had heard, I was just a little disappointed.

Note: This post freely spoils seasons 1 and 2 of TAR. Turn back now if you don’t want to see the spoilers!

The biggest issue with Season 2 is that it just lacks any truly amazing aspect to it. The cast, while often deep and interesting, doesn’t have any teams that I’d consider to be “great”. Very little about the racecourse stands out. On the flip side, it also lacks truly terrible elements. The result is, as I mentioned, a thoroughly average season, where very little really stands out or is particularly memorable to me. There’s a reason I didn’t remember much about it, even though it had been several years since I had watched it.

And yes, I know, the finish. The finish to the season is the most notable exception. But even the closest finish in TAR history can’t totally make up for a not-so-notable rest of the season.

Of course, this being TAR we’re talking about, Season 2 is undoubtedly still good TV and worth watching, in my opinion. It just doesn’t stand out like some other seasons.

The Bipolar Nature of the Season

I consider Season 2 to be fairly sharply divided into two different types of episodes: good, memorable episodes, and really forgettable ones. If the former lasted throughout the season, it would be a really great season. As it is, the latter take up most of the later portion of the season, which can dull its interest.

The first four episodes of the season are really good. I’ll talk about each one in depth during the comprehensive leg rankings, but all of these legs have (most of) the full cast still in and delivering, and a lot of interesting and memorable destinations and tasks. The two Australia legs similarly have a memorable set of destinations and tasks, and the teams especially deliver in episode 8. And of course, the final leg is a classic, with a lot of crazy stuff going on.

But in between, the season just isn’t all that memorable. Even with legs like the second New Zealand leg, which I enjoyed watching in the moment, there’s not a lot that stands out as memorable looking back – and most of them are mostly dull even when watching them. Thailand, New Zealand, Hawaii, and to a lesser extent Hong Kong just don’t work that well this season, which makes for a long stretch of unremarkable episodes. This is a key factor in dragging the season as a whole down to the “average” level. None of the legs are horrible – they just aren’t very good.

A Trendsetter

Even if not too much else stands out about the season, one thing that cannot be denied is that it was a strong trendsetter for the franchise. A lot of the quirks from Season 1 are removed here, with formatting instead looking like that of all the later seasons. No more localized Pit Stop mats. The little boxes with the destination name on them appear. Flag colors change to red and yellow. Phil greets every team at the Pit Stop. We also see the first appearance of the into format that will remain through Season 13.

More than that, though, this season sees the advent of many of the most common strategies in TAR. Joe & Bill being the strategic godfathers is bunk – it’s the teams of Season 2 that deserve the credit, as things are inevitably more competitive than in the first installment. Oswald & Danny famously introduce the strategy of recruiting a local’s assistance, and their helper is immortalized in the name given to this strategy, “Ferning”. Blake & Paige also first come up with the later-universal strategy of borrowing their cab driver’s cell phone for help. Shola & Doyin first demonstrate that not knowing how to drive a stick shift can be fatal. Tara & Wil learn firsthand that having a good social game and getting along with other teams can make a huge difference. (I know that they also came up with some common strategy, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was right now. I’ll update this post when/if I remember.)

On the whole, even though Season 1 was the genesis of the series, Season 2 sees a lot more of the common elements.

A Unique Route

Season 2 has a pretty quirky route, especially considering it’s only the second season. For one thing, this is a very southern-based route for the Race, only crossing into the Northern Hemisphere for 5 out of 13 legs. Teams also NEVER visit Europe during the season except for a few connecting flights in the third leg. Other than Family Edition, this is the ONLY season of TAR to have this happen!

One nice thing about early seasons is that, since a lot of countries have yet to be visited, the majority of visits to countries will be the first such visits in the TAR canon, and Season 2 especially is no exception. The only returning countries are two somewhat unusual choices, in South Africa and Thailand (and of course, South Africa only had a single stop in Season 1). We also get a solid introduction to the two inhabited continents that were skipped in Season 1, with long visits to Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand (two Pit Stops in each of those countries), as well as first-time visits to Namibia and Hong Kong.

At the same time, I think it’s somewhat interesting that four different countries (the three above, plus the U.S.) have two different legs ending in them, especially as that tends to be a common complaint about later seasons – and in all of those except Australia, the entire leg basically takes place in them. This results in only five new countries despite this being the second season – a mark that is eclipsed by several later seasons.

One other interesting attribute to the route that unfortunately also acts as a black mark against the season is that this probably has one of the easiest routes when language barrier is taken into account. During the first seven legs, the teams visit two different countries (Nambia and Hong Kong) in which the majority of people speak English, with Brazil, South Africa, and primarily Thailand being the language obstacles for the teams. And then, from the middle of leg 8 onwards… the teams are only racing in English-speaking countries! Australia followed by New Zealand followed by the U.S. makes for a second half of the race that is devoid of language barriers, and that’s not something that’s normally seen.

The Mark of Early Seasons – Focus on Travel

Possibly the biggest difference between early seasons and newer seasons of TAR is the focus of the episodes. Newer seasons have a lot of the focus on tasks – which, as we’ll no doubt go over when we get there, is not a change I am fond of. By contrast, the earlier seasons focus on travel – both in the editing and in the racecourse design itself.

Modern (as of post-S30) seasons tend to have much shorter routes than old ones, both in distance and in time. The past five seasons have all run shorter than 40,000 miles (two less than 30,000) and taken about 22-23 days to film. By contrast, Season 2, which is pretty typical for its time, ran over 50,000 miles in almost 30 days. Why?

Well, one key difference is that older seasons just have more legs where teams travel significant distances between locations – interspersed with the occasional single-city leg is the odd leg where teams will travel to several different locations over 100 miles apart from each other. Some legs are basically only travel, like leg 11 of this season or leg 9 of Season 1. And production doesn’t shy away from exceptionally lengthy journeys either – both episodes 3 and 11 had all teams take MORE THAN A DAY to get from the Pit Start to the first Route Marker.

Contrast this to later seasons where multiple legs take only a few hours and have no significant travel between locations – even multiple legs in the same city. It doesn’t take exceptionally long to get to that point, either. I’m sure logistically that just makes things much much easier for production.

It’s a bit sad, really, as the Race loses some of its epic feel, and some people like me significantly enjoy the travel aspect of the show. Fortunately we’re still a good while away from the totally neutered experience of some seasons where there’s almost no opportunity for teams to separate when going between countries.

A Multifaceted Cast

One good thing that a large portion of the cast of Season 2 shares is that many of the teams have complex personalities. There are different sides to many of the characters, and we get to see different sides come out during different portions of the Race. It lends this cast a very human feel, particularly with characters such as Wil. On the whole, Mary & Peach, Tara & Wil, Blake & Paige, and Oswald & Danny are particularly good examples of this cast’s complex nature.

The only issue with this is that it means that all of the teams have various flaws or annoyances in their characters. Since this can give the teams various moments when they’re not particularly pleasant to watch, most of the teams take appropriate hits in the team rankings. Tara & Wil are perhaps the biggest example of this – while they’re two of the most complex characters ever seen, they also have quite a few times when they’re legitimately uncomfortable to watch, thus sinking their ranking. The result is, for me, a group of teams that on the whole doesn’t rank all that highly. (It helps that the upsides aren’t quite as strong as teams in other seasons.)

The Ending

Any post about Season 2 would be remiss if it didn’t mention the closest finish in TAR history. The season ends on such a high note, with Chris & Alex and Tara & Wil trading the lead back and forth, Wil blowing it for his team but them getting back in front multiple times, and finally the only time when one team passes another one while running to the finish line. It’s so good that I can even forgive the fact that it inspired production to try and force such finishes in future seasons by continuing to shove numerous equalizers into the final 3 leg(s).

There’s been speculation that Tara deliberately threw it at the end of the race – the quote she gives earlier in the finale about wanting to lose rather than let Wil win serves as evidence for this theory. However, I don’t think that any such attitude on the part of Tara changed the outcome. When running through San Francisco, she seemed as frantic and determined to win as anybody else, and I think in the moment she truly did want to win. For the final footrace, she did have a defeatist attitude, thinking that there was no way she could beat out Chris & Alex, and that no doubt influenced her performance – but I don’t think she deliberately let her friends beat her and Wil to get the win. Even if she didn’t put forth her full effort, it looks to me that Chris & Alex would have been able to beat her regardless – production even tossed us the shot right beforehand of Tara using an inhaler to let us know that she had problems (probably asthma, but I don’t know if it could have been something else or not) that make her less suited for long-distance runs like the one she had to do.

So the final footrace is not colored for me by any suspicion of Tara throwing it. Instead, it remains one of the closest, most exciting finishes ever seen.

Final Four Parallels with Season 1

On the surface, some might look at the general descriptors for the final 4 teams and how they finished, and draw the conclusion that this was too similar to Season 1.

We have the easygoing best friends team going out in fourth place, and the season’s schemers finishing in a relatively distant third. At the front of the pack, the best friends who function extremely well as a team beat out the separated couple, who are in the process of imploding due to their differences.

However, when you look more closely at the personalities, this really falls apart. Kevin & Drew are a lot less cultured than Oswald & Danny, and are much more hotheaded, less calm personalities. Blake & Paige are pretty much the total opposites of Joe & Bill in every respect other than a tendency to scheme. Tara & Wil are far less suited for each other than Frank & Margarita, and have fallen apart much much more already, which also results in them functioning far worse. They lack a lot of the endearing qualities of Frank & Margarita as well.

The comparison that was brought to my attention by my fiance was that between the show’s first two winners: Rob & Brennan vs. Chris & Alex. On the surface the two teams seem very similar: two teams of fairly young, fit males who work well together and used the combination of their physical strength and strong teamwork to win. However, throughout the race, the two teams displayed rather different personalities. Chris & Alex are more of jocks, less refined than the lawyers, resulting in them in general being a bit less polite and more enthusiastic during their time on the show. Rob & Brennan are more of the quieter, intelligent type, which also makes them more relatable for people such as me. Witness the two teams’ contrasting reactions to winning: Rob & Brennan are mostly just exhausted and maybe a bit in shock from winning, and so just stand there and reply to Phil’s questions. Chris & Alex go absolutely crazy and Chris starts carrying Phil around. I’d say that’s a pretty good overall representation of the difference between the two teams. (Although it is interesting to note that Rob & Brennan tended to complain about their situation much more. Chris had a mini-tantrum upon arriving last at the leg 12 Pit Stop but other than that, they mostly just determinedly pushed on.)

Overall, I think Chris & Alex make for a slightly more fun team to watch, even though I like Rob & Brennan more as people.

Funny Finale Moments That I Can’t Really Fit in Any Other Section

There were a few fun little moments that Chris & Alex provided in the finale that I wanted to point out, but couldn’t really find any other section to do so in.

Firstly is the amusing manner in which they seemed to regard Alaska and Hawaii as separate countries, not in the US. At the end of leg 12 when on the way to the Pit Stop, after getting directions, one of them grumbles “Everything’s a mile and a half in this country.” Later on, they think that there’s a possibility of the Fairbanks airport having a direct flight to Oakland on the basis that it’s an international airport. They basically are used to always being in a foreign country, so they continue to talk like it. Not super huge, but a fun bit that you may not have noticed before.

The other funny moment from them can be seen in this one screen grab:

Summary

Things that I like about this season:

-Fast Forward in every leg. The more new TAR seasons come out, the more rare and precious this twist becomes in retrospect.

-Possibly the most exciting finale ever.

-The first four legs are fantastic.

-Australia.

-The Gutsy Grannies are something that from about Season 5 onward would never be even considered. I’m glad we got a chance to see one such team play out.

-A cast full of complex multidimensional teams.

-High focus on travel, especially in legs 2, 3, 6, 10, and 11.

-An overall extremely solid final 6.

-We got to see several scenes with the teams just unwinding while waiting for various things.

-Not a lot of the racecourse took place in urban areas – a lot of the land of the countries seen throughout, which is distinct and fun to watch if not often memorable.

Things that aren’t so good about this season:

-Downside of team complexity is that almost every team has some annoying trait. There are no great teams.

-Overly English-speaking route.

-Only one non-elimination leg was very good. As a whole those four legs have no impact on the rest of the season whatsoever.

-A lot of forgettable/unremarkable legs in the middle of the season.

-Tasks in general felt less inspired than in Season 1. Very few stand out.

-The storyline between Chris & Alex and Tara & Wil lasts through the entire season and is rather repetitive. Leg 6 is probably the last time it gets anything really substantially new, and even by then most of it is old. On the whole, this line is probably one of the least interesting ones going in the mid-season (if only due to its repetitive nature), and by extension made those two teams the ones I cared least about out of the final 6. And then they end up being the top two teams. I don’t mind this as much as some people do, but it’s still not especially great.

Leg Rankings

13) Leg 12: Auckland, New Zealand – Mokulau, US (Penultimate leg is the worst leg two seasons in a row. The Roadblock was a good showdown and teams jostling placements at the end was good. Other than that it was a boring leg. Searching for fake pineapples in a field just doesn’t quite cut it.)

12) Leg 5: Khomas Region, Nambia – Amphawa, Thailand (Yes, despite the Fern strategy’s genesis. The culture shock wasn’t nearly as effective as last season in India and the teams confusedly wandering Bangkok didn’t excite me. Bat cave Roadblock and bird cage Detour were boring. Watching teams burn cars in the wrong places was fun, the Pit Stop was kinda cool, and we had some fun moments during the tuk-tuk rides, but for the most part this was a surprisingly dull and unfun leg.)

11) Leg 6: Amphawa – Chiang Mai, Thailand (Gary & Dave’s initial cast assessment, the various teams’ shopping break, traveling on the train, and the rafting Detour were all good moments. Unfortunately, besides the rafting, the leg was extremely short, uneventful, and impossible to gain/lose ground on after the train ride equalized everybody. Elephant washing was too short and easy of a Roadblock. All excitement was sucked out of the end of the leg as Chris & Alex didn’t even bother to race to the mat, knowing it was non-elimination anyway.)

10) Leg 10: Coober Pedy, Australia – Mount Somers, New Zealand (I liked the initial travel on the giant trucks, and the scene in the town at the beginning of the morning with Chris & Alex and Tara & Wil. Unfortunately, despite traveling through some nice countryside and a fun little Roadblock, the New Zealand portion of the leg is rather unremarkable. Not an especially exciting or fun bungee jump. It’s also a meaningless NEL. But at least the significant driving allowed for some separation to form between the teams.)

9) Leg 9: Sydney – Coober Pedy, Australia (A very distinct and memorable leg for me, despite having poor design. Fast Forward was a fun little deal. We go from the rainy morning in Sydney as teams climb up the bridge to the superheated Australian Outback. Sadly neither Detour choice was that exciting, teams barely separated at all, and the Roadblock, despite being a neat culturally-relevant task, was way too quick of a challenge. Gary & Dave leaving is another big hit to it for me.)

8) Leg 7: Chiang Mai, Thailand – Hong Kong, Hong Kong (The bustling city scenes, wishing tree, construction yard, and floating junk make for a pretty diverse set of locales for such a small nation. I really like the Pit Stop. Fast Forward had some fun sprinkled in. Green and white star clue was creative. Mary & Peach’s storyline reaches its conclusion as Peach finally gives out. By now we’re definitely in the tier of solid or better legs.

7) Leg 1: Pahrump, US – Rio de Janiero, Brazil (A strong leg despite finishing in the middle of the pack. Starting line is epic. All teams are present and deliver. Fat Maria is a fun clue. Rappelling makes for a decent thrills challenge to start the season. We get a fitting introduction to Blake and Wil. Cyndi & Russell’s ferry adventures. The search for a boat to the opening Pit Stop is a fun little twist. Satisfactory first elimination.)

6) Leg 4: Stellenbosch, South Africa – Khomas Region, Namibia (Tense-ish early race to sign up for charters is good. Teams fly to literally the middle of nowhere and we see differing strategies come into play for getting transportation to the city. Then teams get to drive around in the desert, which is always fun for me. Roadblock wasn’t super special but a fun little thing. The Matterhorn sand dune was a cool destination. Teams arriving at the Pit Stop in the middle of the night after a long day of racing is always fun for me to watch for some reason.)

5) Leg 8: Hong Kong, Hong Kong – Sydney, Australia (Strong leg despite being a pointless non-elimination. Detour was kind of a fun little challenge. We get the full adventures of Oswald & Danny which still is pretty fun overall even if I had misremembered it as being better than it actually was. Real highlight is Sydney, though, between visiting the Opera House to start with and the Roadblock, which doubled as an enjoyable look at Australian culture and a source of frustration for teams with hotheaded partners. Pit Stop greeter is a standout.)

4) Leg 11: Mount Somers – Auckland, New Zealand (This could jump around quite a bit, as it’s fun to watch in the moment but not very memorable. This is mostly a travel leg, but it’s also the only time teams will ever get campers to drive around in, which is a unique experience. We see a lot of the country of New Zealand. Cave for the Detour is a cool location as well. Teams drive around for ages. Also, Tara & Wil’s story essentially reaches its final stage and we get possibly the best look into their relationship of any episode. As I said, nothing memorable, but enjoyable to watch all the way through.)

3) Leg 13: Mokulau – San Francisco, US (Full of drama and excitement all the way through. Tara & Wil lose their clue on the way to Alaska, and Tara then figures it out on her own for some really dramatic scenes. Camping in an igloo is cool. Wil singlehandedly salvages the Roadblock as a fun challenge. Basically everything in San Franciso is tense and exciting, leading up to the famous finish. A great end to the season.)

2) Leg 2: Rio de Janiero – Foz do Iguacu, Brazil (The Fast Forward showdown and associated scenes are fun if not the most dramatic. Shola & Doyin’s roller coaster ride is quite interesting to watch. Teams consider the metal detector challenge before ultimately giving up. The Gutsy Grannies are forced to live up to their moniker. Lots of different bus rides are taken, and multiple breakdowns make for an eventful journey. I really like the Foz do Iguacu destination, and even if most of the leg’s drama is done by this point, it’s a cool location to visit for a little while.)

1) Leg 3: Foz do Iguacu, Brazil – Stellenbosch, South Africa (The airport scramble is truly epic – the fact that it takes all day for anybody to leave Brazil is a true testament to the craziness. So many different flights. Normally, such an epic airport episode like this sucks most of the interest out of the leg since there’s little possibility of teams overtaking each other, but the stuff in South Africa makes up for it. Nelson Mandela’s cell is a good location. The Detour is two fairly quick tasks, but it’s still fun to watch. Mary & Peach have to fear for their lives when heading to the township. The Roadblock is fine and offers a lot of interesting opportunities for teams to interact with the locals. Peggy & Claire have a great reaction to their elimination. High quality leg overall.)

Team Rankings

11) Deidre & Hillary (Zero content other than their introduction and elimination. When the only characterization comes after they’re out of the race, it’s just not enough to make me at all interested.)

10) Hope & Norm (I like them, but they’re totally unmemorable.)

9) Cyndi & Russell (Not boring by any stretch of the imagination, but they don’t have any qualities or moments that really stand out from their time in the Race. It’s weird to think that they’re pretty high-visibility characters for the first couple of episodes.)

8) Shola & Doyin (Nice guys, but not super interesting personalities. This season’s equivalent to Nancy & Emily in that the main interest for their characters comes from what happens to them on the race. One of them gets his foot run over, they make up for it with the Fast Forward, but then can’t navigate or drive stick in the fourth leg to go home sadly early. I also take the side that them equating South Africa to Sierra Leone was a funny moment.)

7) Peggy & Claire (The Gutsy Grannies are truly legends… if not in a great way. One of the most legendarily incompetent teams ever – although really, “slow” is probably a better descriptor for them. Peggy was a bit of a Debbie Downer but Claire more than made up for it with her energy and enthusiasm. I love almost everything she does. As grandmothers, they’re pretty lovable, but with only two and a half episodes’ worth of content and a fair bit of patheticness displayed, I can’t justify ranking them too highly.)

6) Tara & Wil (On the one hand, Tara & Wil are one of the most complex teams ever seen on TAR. Their relationship is clearly not working, but sometimes it looks like Wil is the jerk and Tara the victim, and sometimes it looks like Tara’s the jerk and Wil the victim. Wil in particular is an extremely complex and human character, and his less brilliant moments can often prove amusing. On the other hand, the poor status of their relationship leads to some genuinely uncomfortable moments, which makes this team rather unpleasant to watch at times. The result, for me, is a middle-ground ranking.

5) Chris & Alex (Not the most dynamic, entertaining, or interesting team ever, but I generally enjoyed watching them. Alex reminds me of somebody I used to know, and they’re harmless jocks despite being jocks. The Boston accents are always fun to listen to. They provided enough fun little moments and in general were enjoyable, but it wouldn’t have killed me to see them go earlier.)

4) Mary & Peach (Another complex team from the final six, their older sister-spoiled younger sister dynamic felt very real and was interesting without ever getting super uncomfortable. Mary provided a steadily calm, rational counterbalance to Peach’s more emotional personality. They also have a good storyline, with Peach being forced to overcome her discomfort and relative weakness, getting better at it culminating in their leg 6 win, before ultimately giving out in Hong Kong. With more length in the race and a stronger presence, they could possibly have been top-tier characters.)

3) Blake & Paige (Even though they’re mostly remembered as the sweet siblings duo whom everybody wanted to win in the end, they were actually the conniving schemers and Joe & Bill’s spiritual successors. They come up with creative and/or crafty, not-always-ethical methods to get them an edge in the competition, and are probably the most creative team in the first two seasons. The big difference between them and Team Guido is that they actually had some self-awareness and tried to cultivate good relationships with the other teams. Later on in the season they’re less prominent and we mostly just see their sweet relationship, as well as their nice counterbalance to Tara & Wil’s craziness. The biggest reason they take a hit and get demoted to third for the season is that Blake can be pretty annoying and less than humble early on in the season, but their character development helps to atone for that.)

2) Oswald & Danny (This is a very difficult team to rank because they’re essentially on a different plane of existence from the other teams. They tended to simply enjoy themselves more and stress out less, causing them to be more polite to locals and gain appropriate advantages, while simultaneously weirding out the other teams. The inventors of Ferning. Ultimately, though, despite their high reputation among the online fanbase, I found that they just didn’t deliver too terribly much throughout the season. Plus they acted somewhat offputtingly spoiled at times (“Five star hotels are worth every penny”). This is a fairly weak second place for them. Definitely a unique team though.)

1) Gary & Dave (They get the number one spot because they (mostly Gary) consistently make me laugh, and lack the notable downsides of the other teams. I love Gary’s dry sense of humor and they rarely took anything seriously, instead making a big, often funny joke out of the race. Occasionally they did get serious and annoyed, which wasn’t so great, and their narration of their position in the race didn’t really ring true (despite their assessments of the other teams being spot-on), but those are pretty minor downsides for me compared to Tara & Wil’s nastiness or Blake’s sometimes-aggravating nature. They deliver more consistently than Oswald & Danny as well. I wouldn’t call them all-time greats, but they are still an excellent comic relief team and the one I enjoyed watching the most during this season.)

Conclusion

I’ve given this season some grief in this blog post, but I really do like the season as a whole. It’s a solid-quality season, and I can easily see it forming the dividing line in future rankings between good seasons and not-so-good seasons. It just lacks anything to propel it up to being a really good season.

Season rankings as a whole so far:

1) Season 1

2) Season 2

Up next will be my in-depth leg and team rankings for this season. After that, it’s on to Season 3, one of my personal favorites. I’m looking forward to journeying through it once again!

Until next time. Thanks for reading!