Note: This post will contain spoilers for the entirety of Season 30.

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In addition, I will freely reference and spoil events of any previous US seasons.

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Read on at your own risk.

So, a funny thing happened on the night of the finale, before I got a chance to watch it.

I dreamed that I accidentally stumbled across the TAR subreddit before watching the finale, and was specifically spoiled on the fact that Jess & Cody did NOT win the season.

My reaction in the dream had been “Yeah, well, that’s fine. I knew they weren’t going to win anyway.”

Yeah, I was pretty shocked by how the season ended. But you know what, that’s the way I like it. It’s a lot more fun to watch Jess & Cody win when I absolutely did not expect it than it would have been to watch Kristi & Jen win in an outcome that I would have seen from about Episode 3.

Let’s start off with a discussion of the legs/episodes themselves, shall we?

Leg 11

This is the second season in a row that has had the penultimate leg take place a night, in an urban location in the Far East.

Thankfully, that was the only real similarity to Season 29’s 11th leg, and indeed I found this leg to be pretty decent and enjoyable.

Detour was all right. The crabs one was pretty interesting and seemed to give all of the teams a rough time of it, which is always fun to see. Unfortunately, the restaurant one was relatively underwhelming. We saw the entertaining way to do such a task back in Season 14, and this was definitely watered down. Team members didn’t actually have to relay the full text of the order, just enough for their partners to pick it out from among the available options. Add in the fact that only incorrect orders had to be sent back and we ended up with a challenge that was significantly easier than the other option, which is always disappointing. The challenge wasn’t too fun to watch either.

The Roadblock was interesting, but as what I call a “needle in a sewing box” type challenge (essentially like a needle-in-a-haystack, but much easier) it didn’t really allow teams to make up or lose significant ground, so it was a good thing that they tossed in the memory task afterwards. YMMV on how well-designed the memory task was (I for one would have not made one of the correct signs green, but kept it red and yellow to keep the clue that it could be relevant), but I thought it was cool that they included another extra one, and it did provide some shuffling and dramatic tension, so I’m cool with it – even if it provided me an ultimately undesirable result. At any rate it was better than another Head to Head would have been.

Oh yeah, and there was a Speed Bump at the beginning, wasn’t there. Whatever.

Overall, a solid if unspectacular penultimate leg. Better than last season’s, at any rate.

Leg 12

I for one feel like dumping the teams in business class without them having to worry about flights at all is a lame way to begin the end of the season, but fortunately I don’t think it made a huge difference.

The first task at the Giants’ home stadium was all right. I’m still annoyed that they’ve had tasks that are at least somewhat relevant to the stadium at Nationals Park, Wrigley Field, and now AT&T Park, but when they went to Turner Field they just had to solve some lame geography puzzle in the parking lot. >:( But anyway, it was a fine task. Finding the right three baseballs would have taken a little bit, and an extra level of interest was added by the fact that nobody but Kristi & Jen thought to actually look up the number they were looking for beforehand.

The Roadblock after that was kinda cool and gave me flashbacks to Season 5. Sadly Cody did not attack it quite as hard as Colin had back in the day. It wasn’t a challenge to gain or lose a lot of ground, but it was the sort of challenge that was acceptable as long as the rest of the leg is good. I love how editors seemed to think they could get anybody to believe that Cody was going to die when he jumped down.

The fortune cookie factory seemed like a cool idea, but the actual challenge there was underwhelming. Too quick and uninteresting, and not enough chance to gain/lose ground.

And then… the final task. Ah, the final task. I heartily approve – I personally think this is the best final task seen on TAR since Season 25 (and before that, Season 21). A good final task will see multiple teams together, all struggling at the task, with the feeling that any of them could make it out first, and result in at least one change of position. Think the flags in Season 9, the memory tasks in Seasons 12 and 14, the Hello/Goodbyes in Season 21. If we don’t have something like this, then it tends to be fairly boring, as no significant changes result, and as a consequence it feels weak. A good example of this would be the currency names final task in Season 23 – it had a feeling of difficulty, but didn’t change positions at all. (On the other hand, last season’s with the Wrigley Field scoreboard was just a weak task all around.)

Does this mean that it wouldn’t have been a good task for me if Kristi & Jen had won? Not necessarily. But I probably wouldn’t have been as happy with it as I am.

Anyway, even though it seemed to make little overall difference, I still liked having the teams search around the aircraft carrier to find the pieces first. It was kind of cool, and added an extra surge of effort to the requirement for teams. As far as the putting the planes together itself… again, this is where the real difficulty came in the task. I know there were some quirks in the difficulty, like a couple of exceptionally obscure pictures (like the magnifying glass) and how the wings were supposed to go on, but ultimately, Jen approves of the challenge, despite having the most reason to not, and that’s all I need to wholeheartedly endorse it.

The rest of the final leg was a bit middling, but the great final challenge is, in my opinion, enough to boost it to being a solid leg overall.

The Results

Honestly, for me, the highlight of the two-hour episode was simply seeing vulnerability appear from Kristi & Jen. They were actually reduced from the superhuman status they seemed to have for most of the race to the level of mere mortals.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But after seeing them dominate for so long, at a certain point I just wanted to see them have a leg where they struggled, kind of like Eric & Jeremy did that one time in Season 9.

And I got that in leg 11. First they ended up choosing the objectively worse Detour choice and being slower than Jess & Cody at it, sending them to last place. Then Kristi struggled with the Roadblock – now, I didn’t particularly enjoy seeing her suffer at it. As somebody who used to play baseball, I know how it feels to hit something the wrong way with a bat, so I can sympathize to some degree. However, what was good about it was that it took her a long time to complete, cementing their place on the bottom.

I think it would have made a great conclusion to their legacy for the season to have been eliminated in fourth in a massive upset, but that’s fine. They squeaked back to third place and made it to the final leg, where they immediately resumed their dominance.

If they had just dominated and won the final leg, then the penultimate leg might have felt like too little, too late for me. But Jen also struggled at the final challenge, allowing the other teams to pass them. I’m happy with the way their storyline ended. Nobody sane is going to question that they are one of the most dominant teams ever, but they weren’t too dominant.

Of course, I’m probably not going to care at all about this aspect of the season when I eventually rewatch it. It’s one of those things that you see differently the first time than other times, I suppose. And the real reason I didn’t want to see Kristi & Jen actually win was the fact that, between their performance and their edit, stretching back to Episode 2 or 3, it would have been an extraordinarily telegraphed victory. Again, I probably wouldn’t have minded on a rewatch, but for now it would have been boring.

And you know something? Now that I’m finished discussing the Kristi & Jen aspect of the final episode’s results, I don’t have a lot to say about the rest. Sucked to see Alex & Conor go in the 11th leg, but now that it’s over I’m fine with it.

I suppose I should talk a bit about Jess & Cody’s win.

As I said before, I did not see that coming. Indeed, up until Jess got her plane approved I was convinced that their edit gave them zero chance to win. I could not see them winning with as negative of an edit as they’d gotten.

I was not rooting for Jess & Cody at any time, but I’m also okay with their victory. And I’m not sure there’s much more to say about that.

Season 30 Wrap-up

So how was the season as a whole?

It was fine. I enjoyed it. But I don’t think it’s going to go down as one of the greats.

Not too much really stood out about this season other than Kristi & Jen and, depending on your outlook, Jess & Cody. But there are a couple of aspects to discuss…

THE TWISTS

This season saw the introduction of two new, uncreatively-named twists: the Head to Head and the Partner Swap.

My general thoughts on both are: Decent concept, poor execution.

I do like the idea of teams competing directly against each other in challenges and the winner moving on. After all, they are ultimately racing against each other anyway. It does provide some degree of equalizing, but ultimately I don’t think it’s a big deal. And to their credit, producers did choose challenges for the two Head to Heads that seemed to not provide inherent advantages or disadvantages to anyone in particular.

However, putting it before the Pit Stop is a bad idea. I don’t think it should be the ultimate decider of finish order – and if a team that arrived at the Pit Stop early was eliminated by a Head to Head, the backlash would have been nasty. As it was, one of the last two teams was eliminated both times, so that was okay. But then it flipped around and left the Head to Head feeling largely irrelevant, at least to me.

My advice if producers want to keep the concept: Put it earlier in the leg, either before or after the first normal challenge. That way it can be meaningful and spice things up without singlehandedly deciding an elimination. Also, find more interesting tasks. Neither the frites race nor the ball game they played were especially compelling to watch.

As for the partner swap, again I think the idea is potentially interesting. I actually came up with the idea myself several years ago while watching the Season 16 Intersection (calling it an “Interchange”). But like the Intersection, the partner swap felt too underutilized to be truly meaningful. Teams swapped to raft to an island and do a single Detour – and then went to the Pit Stop where they reunited and immediately kept racing, without any apparent official position or anything.

I think they should have kept the teams swapped until midway through the next leg. Last team to arrive at the previous Pit Stop should have gotten a Speed Bump like normal. Also, I don’t really like the bit where teams just swap partners with one other team. I liked my idea more, where each racer becomes a free agent and can choose any partner without any effect on whom their partner chooses.

Ultimately, I predict that the Partner Swap will go the way of the Intersection – soon abandoned due to underutilization.

THE TEAMS

This was one of those curious seasons without any really unlikable teams, with the possible exception of April & Sarah. On the other hand, none of the teams really stand out to me as exceptionally likable either. They’re all a pleasant bunch, which can make them hard to compare to one another. I’ll do an immediate post-season team rankings in a bit, but it is very hard to do. I don’t have teams to put way below others because they’re annoying, but I also don’t have teams to put way above others. In the absence of this, a lot of these rankings are going to hinge on character depth, which was also not the strongest suit of the season. And indeed, because of this focus, a big influence on the rankings are going to come from the way that the final teams were edited compared to the earlier boots, which I’ll get into know.

A very interesting thing I noticed about this season is that it’s remarkably like Season 1, in that the same teams tended to be at the top of the standings throughout the entire season. I mean, this is only the third time in Race history that the top three teams at the beginning ended up being the final 3, after Seasons 1 and 20. Back as early as final nine or eight, it was apparent that Cody & Jessica, Kristi & Jen, Henry & Evan, and Alex & Conor were competing at a higher level than the other teams, and that never really deviated much aside from Lucas & Brittany’s two leg wins. It’s quite similar to the way Joe & Bill, Frank & Margarita, Rob & Brennan, and Kevin & Drew ran the table in Season 1. By the same token, both sets of four teams got the lion’s share of the editorial focus in their respective seasons. Many earlier boots, such as Joey & Tim, Eric & Daniel, and Trevor & Chris were underedited in favor of the eventual finalists. The only team in the bottom seven who really compared to the top four, in either performance or edit, was Lucas & Brittany, just like Nancy & Emily were the only comparators in Season 1. This fact is going to play a significant role in my rankings.

So here’s my team rankings for Season 30, written from the perspective of it just having aired. I’m sure it will change when I do a rewatch in a few years.

11. DESSIE & KAYLA

I actually had to go look up how Dessie’s name was spelled.

There are probably 5-10 other teams in Race history whom you could swap with this team and many people would be none the wiser. They fill the very old, tired archetype of “hot girls who want to prove that there’s more than their looks and actually turn out to not be very good at the race.” I was happy to see them out first.

10. APRIL & SARAH

I found their conflicts to be annoying rather than entertaining.

9. TREVOR & CHRIS

Their sense of humor did not speak to me, and there’s really nothing else they were given by editors.

8. ERIC & DANIEL

It is a bit painful for me to rank them this low, because I actually enjoyed them quite a bit and was disappointed to see them go. But they really didn’t get the content to rank higher. Such as the life of team rankings.

They were terrible at navigation but decent at certain tasks, which kept them alive until lack of rhythm did them in over two U-turned teams. Personality-wise, they tended to be upbeat and kept a sense of humor, which I always enjoy. I believe Daniel is now the official Pun Master of TAR.

But their personalities weren’t exactly super-amazing, and they didn’t really have enough happening to justify a higher ranking.

7. JOEY & TIM

What I liked about this team was that they were unusual amongst typical TAR teams in a couple of respects.

For one thing, their relationship was unusual. We’ve had total strangers, but these guys did know each other already. They just weren’t used to working together. As a result there was a bit of interest stemming from their having to learn how to play on the same team.

They also were less fit than most teams – I guess that’s what happens when you eat gigantic amounts of food on a regular basis? So they, especially Joey, had constitutions and stamina more like what I imagine I’d have if I went on the Race right now.

Those factors made them a bit more interesting, but unfortunately they didn’t have much to prop them up besides that.

6. CEDRIC & SHAWN

This was probably the team with the most depth in the first four episodes.

It started with their rollercoaster of a first leg. Started on the top, but then Shawn had massive trouble with the Roadblock due to inability to see the accent over one ‘e’. They get out of that in last place, and actually managed to gain significant ground going to the next destination. But then a penalty knocked them within minutes of elimination. Quite a first episode.

They bounded back in the next leg, and we heard a lot about how they were competitors and champions, and wouldn’t give up. But the third leg added a new aspect to their characters, as Cedric’s age and wear began to catch up to him during a grueling leg.

Really it was that leg – a leg where they were the only team to have a significant new character aspect shown – that propels them this high. Overall. I found them to be sufficiently enjoyable and the most interesting team in the early game, which gives them this ranking.

5. KRISTI & JEN

Kristi & Jen suffer from an overly one-dimensional edit.

Throughout the season, far too much of their content was something along the lines of “Wow, look how good Kristi & Jen are! Wow, Kristi & Jen have never finished below third because we’re not counting that weird Partner Swap thing as a finish! Wow, we’ve only had three all-female teams win before, and Kristi & Jen could be the next!”

It got old after a while. The same points that to me were uninteresting were hammered in over and over again, to the point where they dwarfed any other aspects of their characters. And, as I’ve mentioned earlier, a big aspect linked to this being my first viewing was that I was expecting to see them win in an overly predictable outcome.

Now, all of this is not to say that I found Kristi & Jen to be a negative presence. I actually did like them. They weren’t soulless game-bots, but instead definitely showed emotion and reactions to things. Kristi largely broke down at the Roadblock in Hong Kong from the pain. Jen got excited to milk camels. They both got excited at Lucas’s proposal.

And their struggles – both with navigation at the beginning of the Morocco leg, and with the penultimate leg and final task – will ensure that they will never come across as being TOO strong of a team.

I have a lot of respect for Kristi & Jen. Partner swap weirdness aside, they did finish third or better every leg of the race – a feat which not even reigning average-champions Eric & Jeremy matched – and put on one of the most dominant performances ever seen. While I did want to see them have some struggles, I still didn’t resent their successes, and I don’t think I’ll mind that aspect at all when I rewatch the season later on. They were very strong racers and a likable, non-annoying team.

They just didn’t have the strongest characters ever and their edit detracted somewhat from my viewing experience.

4. CODY & JESSICA

I will probably please few people with this ranking. Cody & Jess are the season’s team of controversy, and I know there was a lot of this in social media during the season.

Thankfully, I am not really involved in social media at all, so I can judge simply based on what they did in the race.

Overall, this is one of the best crossover teams for TAR. They weren’t almost unbearable to non-fans like Brendon & Rachel, they weren’t global superstars like Rob & Amber, and they hadn’t won a combined $2 million from CBS shows already like Ethan & Jenna.

I didn’t particularly love them – indeed, Jessica especially spoke in an unpleasant manner about the other teams at times, and I wasn’t a big fan of their general approach to things at the midway point – but they never exceptionally annoyed me either.

Later on we had an interesting aspect to the team where Cody was a very strong racer and pulling most of the team’s weight, while Jessica was not performing a lot. But yet at the end, Jessica was able to pull it out for the team at the final task. It was still a little bit like a mini-version of Flo & Zach or Brooke & Scott, but Jessica was much more useful than Flo and didn’t complain as much as Brooke, while Cody didn’t put on quite such an impressive performance as Zach or Scott. Overall though, this seems to be a successful archetype for teams, I guess.

I don’t have a lot else to say about them, and this is part of why ranking the teams is hard. I wasn’t rooting for their win at any time, but I wasn’t at all upset when it did happen. I guess that’s as good of a summary as any.

I wonder if people are going to rail on Cody for saying that he’d prefer to stay in the US over being a world traveler? That certainly brought some flak to a certain victorious Canadian team…

3. HENRY & EVAN

I may have simply put them higher than Jess & Cody because of Jess’s derogatory comments toward Evan.

Yes, Evan is a very commanding and I would say somewhat perfectionist personality. She has strong opinions and is confident in them, also being comfortable with expressing them strongly. In that respect she reminds me somewhat of my grandmother. It’s easy to see why she’s a top-rated debater.

On the other hand, from what we saw on the show, it’s hard to imagine Henry being a successful debater. He mostly would passively agree with Evan. Then again, they’re on the same team, not debating against each other. At any rate I didn’t have any problems with Evan’s attitude or their dynamic, although her comments that she talked to the animals the same way she did Henry were a bit… interesting. But I don’t think it’s a huge deal.

Moving on from that point, which I addressed because it caused a lot of controversy, I also don’t really have too much to say about them. Henry was much friendlier, and to me more likable, than Evan. They were decently interesting and strong racers but not especially so on either count.

It’s kind of funny that not only do they look a fair bit like Vanck & Ashton on first glance, but they also ended up being isolated from the other teams in a similar manner.

2. LUCAS & BRITTANY

I will always be a bit biased towards Lucas & Brittany from the fact that they got engaged on the exact same day as I did.

It is, perhaps, from this relationship, and its parallels to my own, that I find them to be an interesting team. For the first few episodes, they were very much background characters, with only the promise of an eventual proposal adding any interest to their story.

But they got more exposure and depth from about episodes 3-9. They also managed to step up their game enough to get a couple of leg wins, though overall they still seemed to tend to be among the later pack of teams. We got to see a lot of their personalities as well. Lucas seems to be pretty chill in general while Brittany is much more emotional. Nevertheless, on the whole she seems to have a kind, sweet personality that underwent more stress later on in the race. I think her general reaction to Lucas losing has passport and effectively eliminating them says a lot.

I don’t have a lot else to say about them, really. Brittany had a couple of played-up clashes with Jessica but I don’t see a need to discuss those in detail.

I just liked ’em.

1. CONOR & ALEX

Yeah, I gave it to these guys. So sue me. They were fun. For some reason I found Conor’s method of confessional-giving interesting. They tended to play their more unfortunate experiences for laughs. They were shown to have a multifaceted relationship as tensions sometimes appeared between them, but they never lasted all that long. I enjoyed them.

They probably had the most clear-cut strengths and weaknesses out of all the teams. They excelled at navigation and brute-force tasks. They struggled whenever details became an important factor. Leg 1 is a perfect example of this.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve written a ton already today, but I don’t have much else to say here. They were an enjoyable team, although not one of the all-time greats.

FINAL SEASON THOUGHTS

Things I didn’t like about this season:

-The new twists were poorly executed.

-Production made me think for ten episodes that Kristi & Jen would have an insanely telegraphed victory.

-Significant differences in team position at the beginning of new legs were almost non-existent. Only one case saw teams on separate flights, and they didn’t even have to fight directly for them. They just got to book them from smartphones at the Pit Stop. All other flights had all teams on them and at least two of those were arranged by production. ADDENDUM: Jen has posted on Reddit that most of the flights were one flight for all teams because of production interference, mostly for safety and logistics concerns. A bit annoying.

-Three random legs in the middle of the Race had no Roadblocks.

-Too many Detours were either badly unbalanced or had two uninteresting choices.

-Phil keeps referring to the teams by their hashtags instead of their real names.

-Lack of real standout teams or tasks.

Things I liked about the season:

-The early legs in particular had a lot of self-navigation. Great stuff to see.

-First visit ever to Bahrain.

-First two eliminations were good.

-An amazing final task which led to an overall satisfying finale. The finale is always such a hit-or-miss episode, and this time it was a hit.

-Crossover team from BB wasn’t unbearable.

-Lack of really unpleasant teams.

-Production tried a couple of small new things that I thought were pretty cool. There were a few more memory tasks inserted in legs besides the final leg. Also, several Roadblocks had the partner not just passively watching, but also subjected to some other situation like stocks or scorpions. I thought that was an interesting way to do things.

As I said at the beginning, it was a solid, enjoyable season, but not an especially great one.

I’m curious as to how it will be remembered several years down the road. I personally think that it will be one of the more obscure ones, other than perhaps Kristi & Jen. Sort of like Season 19 is today.

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At any rate, after almost 5000 words, time to finish this post. I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so if you’re reading this, I would love some feedback about what I’m doing well and not so well. Thanks!