Ask almost any fan to rank the first five seasons of The Amazing Race, and they’ll put Season 4 last. Especially next to the oft-beloved Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 5, it just doesn’t appeal to them as much.

Do I agree with this assessment? Well, yes. At least among the first four seasons, 4 is undeniably the weakest, and lukewarm reception to its initial airing almost caused The Amazing Race to be cancelled. However, after this most recent viewing, I also think that Season 4 really isn’t that bad – while it doesn’t reach as high as the other seasons I’ve covered so far, it’s still an enjoyable season in its own right. Let’s dig into what I would say is the first underrated season.

Note: This post will contain massive spoilers for Season 4, and may spoil prior seasons as well. Read at your own risk.

Two Amazing Character Arcs

Before I delve into everything else, I should go ahead and establish that there are two characters with stories that I think are absolutely amazing: Tian & Jaree and Steve & Dave. I won’t go into great detail here, but I think that Tian & Jaree’s storyline of behaving as adversaries until they finally learn to get along all the time is one of the best/most satisfying team storylines of all time. Steve & Dave’s improbable run to the fifth leg and eighth place may not sound too impressive, but when you view the season itself it becomes much much better and contributes to them being two of my favorite early boots of all time.

There will perhaps be an undue amount of negative commentary on this season throughout this post, so I figured I’d go ahead and highlight something that I love about it to start with.

The Three Main Sections

Any season of The Amazing Race can be aptly divided into three rough sections, corresponding to the beginning, middle, and end of the race. Each segment usually has its own atmosphere, and storylines can often advance and come into play as the season shifts between segments. But certain seasons can be more easily divided, and I think Season 4 is one of them – with the sections in this case derived largely from the continents that the teams are in.

This season starts off with five legs in Europe, and I think those five legs fit rather well together. The locales are similar enough that they can blend together a little bit, the general look is very similar when compared to what comes later, and most of these legs (leg 5 being the real exception) are decent but not particularly great legs. Of course, since this is where we have the most teams in play, the interplay of the large number of personalities present adds its own flavor to the mix for these episodes, as in all seasons. We also get some storylines that pretty much play out completely in Europe, such as Tian & Jaree’s discord or the legend of Steve & Dave. All in all, it’s a decent section of episodes, if nothing to get excited about.

The second section is Asia, however, is where this season is at its finest. This is where we see the teams struggle the most (as I’ll elaborate on soon), offers a complete contrast in environment to the European legs, and includes most of the best episodes of the season. In addition to some interesting routes, we also still have a solid selection of the cast in play, and I think this section is where most of the rest of the character development comes into play. I probably mostly put this section highest because of the challenge factor and overall selection of legs, which have some similarities but are overall difficult to discuss in summary like this.

Finally, there are the final three legs in Australia/the US, and I think that this ending to the season is by far the weakest part, consequentially lowering the overall season with it. I don’t think Australia is necessarily bad as a Race destination, but here it more or less falls flat – though that’s also partly due to meh leg design and the results playing out in a relatively uninteresting manner. The other problem with the ending is that we’re now just to the final three teams, which, as I’ll discuss more later, diminishes the overall interest for those who, like me, don’t care that much about any of these teams. (And with Jon & Al essentially knocked out early in the eleventh leg, most of the original viewership lost their favorite team, no doubt adding to this.) While I wouldn’t go so far as to call them terrible, I do think that the final three episodes are also the worst three of the season, causing it to overall end on an unsatisfying note.

Struggles of the Teams

This stands out to me as one of the most difficult racecourses that production has thrown the teams through. Time and time again, the teams are taken to their limit, or forced to do a demanding, standout task the likes of which aren’t normally seen on TAR, or thrust into situations that are crazily stressful even by TAR standards. From trudging through the snows of Italy in a hike that completely wore out several teams, to driving all through almost two days in leg 4, to the insane crowds and public transit system of Mumbai, to bull racing, to the incredibly exhausting leg 9, to swimming in below-freezing water in South Korea, this race was tough. In some of the columns that Al the clown later wrote, he would comment on how the other races didn’t look as hard as the one he had to go through, and after watching this season, I think he has a point. The final three teams all had to go through a lot to get to the end.

However, the difficulty of the racecourse wasn’t the only source of teams’ struggles this season; there was also a disproportionately large amount of mistakes made by the teams. Teams make a lot of decisions that they end up later regretting, or simply flat-out blunder about. Whether it be Millie & Chuck’s exhausted and disastrous final leg, Chip & Reichen’s early alienation of other teams, teams getting hopelessly lost, walking right past clues, or anything else, nobody ran a clean race. This is probably a big reason why there were no clear dominators or underdogs this season, as nobody was consistent (except possibly Steve & Dave), but would keep jumping from the top of the pack to the bottom and vice versa. (Undoubtedly the Fast Forwards, especially in the early legs, accentuated this.) Nobody won more than two legs this season except for David & Jeff who won four, but even they struggled on the racecourse in their other legs and finished the race in spectacularly disastrous fashion, resulting in them currently STILL holding the record for worst average placement for a team that won four legs.

Between the difficulty of the racecourse and the large number of mistakes made by teams, Season 4 contrasts sharply to the first three by having absolutely no clear frontrunners or underdogs, which leads to the next point…

Struggles of the Editors

In direct contrast to Season 3, where every team had a distinct identity and there were clear, very good storylines that ran throughout the season, Season 4 seemed to have something of an editors’ crisis. Aside from Tian & Jaree, maybe Steve & Dave, and the first three boots, none of the teams in this season really had a coherent story throughout their runs. A big reason for this is, no doubt, the inconsistencies in team positions. With nobody consistently on the top, nobody consistently on the bottom except Steve & Dave, and no long-lasting “alliances”, it had to have been pretty much impossible to spin a narrative based on what was happening during the Race. There was no Twin Hunt, no Teri & Ian-style underdogs – just the teams racing and doing their things, which rarely significantly overlapped with the other teams’ things.

This makes enough sense, but unfortunately I feel like the editors also dropped the ball to some degree with defining the teams as characters. While there are character traits shown, in most cases they’re presented in an inconsistent and rather disjointed fashion. Again, it partially comes down to the editors having trouble making a story of what happens to the teams. The experiences that a team has on the race are usually a major defining factor for that team as characters, so when nothing stays the same for more than a few legs, it can be hard to give a cohesive presentation to a team. Nevertheless, I think that better choices could have been made as far as what about a team was focused on when.

Take Steve & Josh, for example. In the first leg, they have a lot of content that mostly focuses around their relationships with the other teams – forging an early alliance with Steve & Dave, angering but then reconciling with Monica & Sheree, and becoming friends with Amanda & Chris and Millie & Chuck. But after the beginning of the second leg, none of this comes up again, with them getting only a little bit of Race-related content in the second and third episodes. Then in their final episode we suddenly get a new plotline, centering around their occasionally strained relationship. It comes up rather suddenly and awkwardly, doesn’t really mesh with the other content they’ve received, and is all but forgotten by their elimination later that episode anyway.

Reichen & Chip are another example of this, as their first few episodes have them butting heads with the other teams quite a bit, and making social decisions that come back to bite them and make them relatively unpopular. Yet by the time the race gets to India, these conflicts are no longer referenced, and there’s never a resolution to that plotline. For the rest of the race, they instead get some nice little moments interspersed with Chip being intense, and it doesn’t really fit together all that well or give them strong characters.

I don’t pretend to know how the editing could have been done better, but the fact remains that Season 4 has some weak storytelling, and that’s one of the biggest things going against it.

The Politics of The Line

Race “etiquette” is an interesting thing. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the official Race rules about how to act towards the other teams, how polite you should be, how neat and orderly things should be when everybody’s going to the same place, etc. Yet in the Race, especially in these early seasons, unspoken rules quickly form, and when people break those rules, it frequently leads to at least temporary unpopularity. Joe & Bill first showcase it for us in Season 1, especially when they deviate from the line at Foucalt’s Pendulum because everybody else is messing up, and become the outcasts for it. Blake & Paige in Season 2 also got on some racers’ bad sides early on, both with signing up at the ticket counter after Tara & Wil arrived at the location and with cutting across the brush to beat Mary & Peach to the leg 4 Pit Stop.

Season 4, however, has possibly the most to-do regarding Race etiquette, and in particular The Line. While it disappears by the time teams reach India, the European legs all feature teams disregarding or trying to circumvent the lines that form, and the teams that stand to lose thereby continually get angry about it:

-Leg 1: Steve & Josh forge an alliance with Steve & Dave by getting the last pair of first-flight tickets for them (in a move I’m somewhat surprised was allowed). Monica & Sheree, who otherwise would have gotten those tickets, are understandably very angry at this and go on a bit of a tirade against them. (However, Josh is able to brilliantly get back into their good graces later by helping them get the last set of tickets for the second bus, at no cost to himself.)

-Leg 2: Even though it ultimately didn’t affect their fate, Reichen & Chip are annoyed by Steve & Josh’s stunt in the last leg, so they decide that they don’t need to heed the line either. Accordingly, while everybody’s waiting for the train station to open, they go to the doors, ignoring the backpacks laid out, and stubbornly hold on to them until the whole gang decides to go take a bus to a different station. This is definitely one of the less reacted-to cases, as it doesn’t really get major reactions other than some passive-aggressiveness from Steve.

-Leg 3: A bit less of a case, but the first teams to get in the fiacres don’t get to ride in them first thanks to missing the tickets. In this case, the affected teams rightly are annoyed at themselves rather than the teams that boot them out. Later on, David & Jeff do snag a Roadblock tag before Russell & Cindy when the latter got the clue first, in a sort of mini-instance, but it’s not made a big deal of.

-Leg 4: It’s at this point where I think the prevalence of this little plot becomes amusing. As teams arrive outside the lighthouse in the middle of the night and are turned away from waiting at the entrance, most line up on the shoulder of the nearby road, and when Reichen & Chip and Tian & Jaree come in the morning and are allowed to wait right outside the entrance, the other teams completely lose it. A big bunch of them go up to confront the two teams, ultimately succeeding in both annoying them (especially Chip) and making them decide going first isn’t worth it, with Reichen & Chip retreating to the end of the line and Tian & Jaree sitting and letting everybody else go first.

-Leg 5: Just for some extra fun, the issue comes up one more time and Reichen & Chip try to get Tian & Jaree to get them tickets to jump up in line. Tian wisely leaves it up to Kelly & Jon, who stand to lose from it. Jon doesn’t think much of the idea.

Overall, I found this an interesting and mildly amusing plotline through the early season. Obviously there’s no rule saying that you have to respect the line (except in certain cases, like, I assume, the party in Venice), but I would say that it’s almost always best to do so anyway. Going in a few seconds earlier isn’t worth drawing the ire of everybody else.

The Alpha Male “Problem”

Reading about the season online, I’ve found that apparently some of the results of this season caused some people to raise complaints about the Race being too friendly towards men – in particular, Reichen & Chip’s victory increases the number of relatively young, fit male winners to 7 out of 8, and the fact that Tian was the first woman ever to perform bull racing (in leg 7) also drew some comment. While I think that young, fit males (also known as alpha males) are advantaged in the Race, I don’t think that necessarily makes the Race unfair.

The way that competitions work, any competition will have a certain type of person whom it is more suited towards. For examples from other reality shows, Survivor is innately more suited towards those with good social skills, while American Idol requires both excellent vocal talent and the ability to charm millions of viewers at home. The Amazing Race is in fact a race, with the ultimate goal being to get from point A to point B (and so on, and so forth) as fast as possible. In that sense it is, always has been, and always will be primarily a physical competition. (In fact, I would say that this tendency increases as the seasons go on.) There are certainly aspects of the Race where other skills can shine – such as a more cerebral Roadblock, or self-drive legs which challenge the racers’ navigational abilities – but having a physical edge is probably the greatest advantage that a team can have. This is a big reason why teams like Dave & Margaretta, Peggy & Claire, and Steve & Dave never really had a shot at winning the Race.

Since alpha males are, in most cases, the best physical contenders, teams including them have a tendency to perform well. Obviously, though, it doesn’t guarantee dominance – for instance, Derek & Drew had a definite weakness in the form of travel, and made some poor decisions or missed important details that set them back a couple of times. But when you factor in their innate advantage, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that almost all such teams featured up to this point have been successful. (It is, however, worth noting that good fortune can play as much of a factor in the win as physicality. Rob & Brennan won Season 1 not because of their physical advantage, but because their cabby was able to get them to the final Route Marker faster. Similarly, Reichen & Chip primarily won because they had great directions to the USS Arizona memorial.)

I understand that more physical teams have an inherent advantage, and partially because of this, it doesn’t bother me when alpha males succeed. (It also helps that they don’t all blend in together to me – Rob & Brennan, Chris & Alex, and Reichen & Chip all had personalities that were distinct from each other.) However, others have more of a grudge against the alpha males’ success, and there’s not much that can be done about it. It will be an issue for those people no matter what. Ultimately, CBS also agreed that more women needed to win the Race, so Seasons 5 and 6 will both see zero alpha male teams cast (one less fit all-male team per season), and that will happen again several times throughout the show’s history.

Also, re Tian being the first woman to bull race and that potentially being unfair: I don’t think it was. I suspect the reason no Indian women had done it was for cultural or personal reasons. Tian did have smaller hands than the men on the other teams, giving her a disadvantage, but that’s part of the game – some team members are more suited for some tasks than others. Once she was able to keep her grip at the start of the run, she was able to complete it fine, and it didn’t even directly cause her and Jaree’s elimination – they seemingly would’ve been fine if they hadn’t missed loading their elephant to start with. So I think that was fine.

The End of Certain Elements

When it comes to a show such as The Amazing Race that has a history of now 30+ seasons, it’s only natural for somebody looking at the whole history to notice different “eras”/”ages” unfold across the life of the show. The show is not static, but does change, and so people coming up with eras based on these changes makes enough sense. However, not everybody agrees on how to divide the show’s history, which is the biggest reason why I have made no mention of eras and ages until now.

Despite this, I do feel confident in saying that Season 4 marks the end of the first “age” of The Amazing Race. For the first four seasons, much of the Race’s setup was static – while Season 2 did make a lot of cosmetic changes, and there were a few experiments made (most notably Seasons 3 and 4 having 12 teams), the basic structure of the Race remained the same, with no big changes or twists. However, starting in Season 5, we will see changes of this sort. Season 5 will feature the Race’s first true twist, and also start penalizing teams for coming in last on non-elimination legs, and a lot more changes of this sort will be particular season across the period of seasons 5-12.

But along with new elements introduced, we will see certain elements go away, never to be seen again after Season 4. One of these is the casting style of the original seasons, as Season 5 started cutting out certain types of teams. As I already mentioned, we will temporarily see some casts with zero alpha-male teams, although those will eventually come back. Additionally, I’d say the casting of completely “ordinary” teams will at least be reduced to a trickle, if not outright eliminated. Teams like Hope & Norm, or David & Jeff, who are likable and not necessarily boring, but don’t have anything at all that stand out about them, are going to be avoided as much as possible. That doesn’t mean that there will be no boring teams, as occasionally this mark is missed, teams display no interesting personalities on the race, or they will get their personalities left in the editing room, but on the whole the casting philosophy turns against this sort of team. Finally, we see a complete stop to the casting of obviously physically unsuited teams. There will never again be a team like the Gutsy Grannies or Steve & Dave – while we do see just a couple more teams who are physically hopeless, they’re not so obviously so at first glance, nor do they have the ability of Claire or Steve or Dave to put up a good fight of it anyway. This sort of team is gone after Season 4.

The other element of the Race that comes to an end with this Season is one of the greatest elements there ever was – the Fast Forward appearing in every leg. I can understand the reasoning behind cutting it – production has to set up an extra task in each leg which no more than one team can complete, and there will always be a significant number that don’t get to feature in the episode at all due to teams ignoring them, so cutting this twist is a big budget saver. Perhaps production also wanted to try to avoid having as many different teams rise to the top in the early legs, as happened in this season with the first five Fast Forwards all taken. Perhaps the fact that only one of the top four teams had used the Fast Forward by the beginning of leg 11 played a part as well. Whatever the reason, I still am very sad that this change did take place. I think that having each team get that extra safety net, or easy pass through a leg, but also have to strategize about when to use it, was a fantastic addition to the Race, and the later game when only a couple of teams have Fast Forwards left is always interesting for me. But alas, starting in Season 5, the Fast Forward will reduced to a gimmicky twist, except for a solitary, partial resurgence in Season 20.

I still forlornly hope that someday production will try having a Fast Forward in every leg again.

Unsatisfying Results

Aside from the weak editing, probably the biggest hit to Season 4 is that, for me and for many other viewers, it’s just not satisfying to watch unfold. The first few eliminations are fine, but as the race proceeds through the middle portion and to the end, all of the better or more likable teams fall one by one, leaving three final teams that are either relatively uninteresting (David & Jeff, Reichen & Chip) or unrootable (Kelly & Jon, maybe Reichen & Chip). I feel like, especially on earlier watches, this sucks a big part of the interest out of the last three episodes, as after fan super-favorites Jon & Al get their death sentence at the airport, David & Jeff become the most rootable team (for me at least, and I would imagine most who aren’t specifically rooting to have a gay or female winner). And after David & Jeff look promising by winning the next two legs, they proceed to blow their game in the airport, turning it into a two-team race between two of the least rootable teams all season. Regardless of the undramatic final leg showdown between Reichen & Chip and Kelly & Jon, I never really had a preference which one of them one as neither was a great winner for me, in direct contrast to the first three seasons. Season 3 may have had an unsatisfying final result, but at least Ken & Gerard and Teri & Ian were the other two contenders at the end and it was interesting to watch. We didn’t get that in Season 4.

While a bunch of the better teams that got eliminated (Steve & Dave, Tian & Jaree, Millie & Chuck) all went out at what do feel like appropriate times for their stories (such as they were), I still feel like there are a lot of teams that you could swap into any position in the final 3 and improve it greatly. Steve & Josh had unused potential as characters and I think would have made fantastic finalists. Steve & Dave somehow making it to the finale would have been ridiculously amazing and would have made this a top tier season on its own. If Tian & Jaree held to their leg 7 selves, they would have made a good rootable team for the end. Millie’s hypercompetitive nature in the end of the race would have made for some good viewing, and she and Chuck would make natural endgame rivals to Kelly & Jon. And Jon & Al would provide an easy team for the masses to root for. Season 4 would have been viewed a lot differently if the final six’s boot order had been swapped and we’d ended up with a final 3 of Jon & Al, Millie & Chuck, and Tian & Jaree.

While the overall poor legs are still the biggest reason why the end of the race drags, I think who’s in it at the end is also a significant factor.

Summary

Things I didn’t like about this season:

-Few teams had a very well-defined character or storyline.

-The last few legs are a big drag.

-The later eliminations are frustrating to watch unfold.

-The opening legs in Europe aren’t very distinct, or that great. Similarly, the race spent a bit too long in Australia.

-Only a couple of really good legs, and no really great teams.

-Too many of the teams in the endgame ignore the Fast Forward.

-Detours were really lousy this season, with almost all seeing the overwhelming majority of teams go for one option over the other. Leg 8 was the only one with approximately equal Detour distribution.

-David & Jeff getting knocked out of contention early in the finale is a huge bummer.

-Only three legs didn’t have the teams fully equalized at some point.

Things I liked about the season:

-Fast Forward in every leg, especially considering this is our last time with it.

-Two of the non-elimination legs fit their role very well.

-The Legend of Steve & Dave is still a favorite of mine.

-Tian & Jaree’s story arc.

-The last few legs do have enough entertaining tidbits to keep them watchable.

-The middle segment is very good on the whole.

-A racecourse that felt more difficult than normal.

-Twelve teams to start with, even if some of them did get the editorial shaft.

-Lots of mistakes being made created a more interesting watch at times.

Leg Rankings

13) Leg 11: Seoul, South Korea – Sunshine Coast, Australia (Both of the tasks in the final elimination round are more for the thrill/excitement, so they don’t create opportunities for gaining or losing ground, and aren’t the most interesting to boot. There is self-drive but it only makes a difference on the way to the Pit Stop. David & Jeff’s Fast Forward misadventures are fun but don’t carry the leg on their own. Jon & Al make an airport mistake in about the least interesting way possible, sucking the drama out of the episode until the very end and depriving us of the last really rootable team. Overall an unmemorable and unsatisfying leg.)

12) Leg 12: Sunshine Coast – Cairns, Australia (I love the goofy product placement challenge where Reichen can’t figure out how to use the product being advertised. Jon combined with a dune buggy challenge also makes for some fun times. Other than that this is a rather drab leg. Horse challenge makes a bit of separation which then stays for the rest of the leg, and it’s not like it makes a shred of difference anyway.

11) Leg 13: Cairns, Australia – Phoenix, US (The leg starts off well, with the traditional ceremony starting teams off, a skydiving task that’s actually edited well enough to make it interesting, and all three teams going to Hawaii on different flights in a lengthy and great airport sequence. Unfortunately, once Chip & Reichen land in Hawaii the rest of the leg plays out in deterministic and boring fashion. Hawaii stuff isn’t that great (Volcanoes was a good idea for a destination but fell kinda flat), and Reichen & Chip lead the way throughout Phoenix to a drama-less finish with a final task that ended up being too easy. David & Jeff’s third place finish comes nowhere near the magic of Joe & Bill’s. I wasn’t kidding when I said the last three legs were the worst three.)

10) Leg 1: Los Angeles, US – Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (It’s a fine start to the race, just not as interesting as most of what follows. Steve & Josh’s diplomacy tactics are an interesting way to start things off and save Steve & Dave for us. A bunch of teams miss the best bus tickets in their haste. Biggest hit to the leg is that the next day, almost everything happens on a mountaintop as opposed to the various locales and travel of the first three season premieres, and while it does offer its own challenges to the teams, the challenges are almost exactly the same each time. No teams go for the more interesting-sounding Detour option. Not a lot of position shuffles, only what comes from certain teams being less fit.)

9) Leg 7: Mumbai – Alleppey, India (I like the start of the leg, with the various methods of getting to the train station and the train ride itself. Bull racing is an interesting Roadblock concept and the Detour isn’t a terrible concept. The Finishing Point is a great Pit Stop destination. However, once the train arrives the leg plays out in highly linear and rather quick fashion, with Tian & Jaree the only team to struggle at either challenge and thus the only team to have their position shift after the initial cab run. The biggest indictment against this leg is the fact that the first five teams are revealed to have all checked in in the span of 15(!) minutes.)

8) Leg 3: Venice, Italy – Gmunden, Austria (It ended up being a bit too equalizer-y, with the initial train ride, wait for the sewers to open, fiacre wait, and then a train to the Pit Stop as well. Plus other than Russell & Cindy’s blunder there wasn’t much in the way of position shuffling after the fiacres. However, this leg was still enjoyable to watch on the whole. Racing for the fiacre passes (and the fine print about said passes) provided an interesting little competition and some okay drama. Fast Forward was fun. Mozart half of the Detour was nothing special but Kelly getting major egg on her face on the Beethoven one was fun. Roadblock was pretty fun as far as bungee jumping challenges go. Finally, Steve & Dave somehow survive after being in last from the train ride on.)

7) Leg 2: Cortina d’Ampezzo – Venice, Italy (Very hard to rank in comparison to leg 3 – ultimately, the fact that we’re in Venice seals the deal. The snow rafting was a fun way to start the leg. Reichen & Chip having a silly tantrum at the train station doors and then it not mattering was amusing. Kelly & Jon and Tian & Jaree start in a hole. Detour was all right. The Roadblock wasn’t the greatest challenge ever, but on the whole delivered as some team members got too hasty, and the end felt fine and fair. However, having a big fat equalizer plopped right before the Roadblock and Pit Stop is a big negative for this leg. It’s a good thing the Roadblock did its job so well.)

6) Leg 4: Gmunden, Austria – Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France (The fact that this leg is all the way up at #6 is one reason why this season doesn’t hold up the best. Early scramble for flights is fun, with a lot of different planes taken. However, none of the tasks and locations are all that interesting. Racecar tire-changing and riding provides a few fun moments, but nothing that great. Lighthouse giving an equalizer after teams shift positions a lot is no fun. The park where the Detour takes place is nice, but what happens there isn’t that memorable other than Reichen & Chip getting majorly lost. I can see putting the leg rather lower, but I bump it up this much for the fact that it takes the teams two full days of travel to get through, making it this season’s marathon leg. I also like the way the Pit Stop combines with the less-than-ideal weather for the day.)

5) Leg 8: Alleppey, India – Manukan Island, Malaysia (Our first non-elimination works well as a relatively easy-going leg that nevertheless isn’t completely irrelevant. Between Reichen & Chip’s travel agent gambit and Millie’s overtime work to get a better flight, the airport sequence is interesting and does result in two different flights with teams, which is always a plus. The Trap task was boring but Net was fun, especially with all of the different ways that things could go wrong. Roadblock was interesting enough, although I wasn’t a fan of the “just run up the sandbar to the Pit Stop” element. Just an enjoyable but not-too-intense leg to give us an interlude, and I appreciate it.)

4) Leg 10: Sepilok, Malaysia – Seoul, South Korea (A direct contrast to the first non-elimination leg. Each team might have continued on, but they had to EARN their way to the next leg, between the language barrier with the cabbies, swimming in sub-freezing temperatures, eating live octopus, and potentially injuring themselves to break boards. This was a tough tough leg, the teams suffered through it, and I think the end result worked very well despite the leg not making much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.)

3) Leg 5: Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France – Muiden, Netherlands (Our first leg without a full equalizer! Millie & Chuck taking the taxi instead of the train and David & Jeff/Steve & Dave missing their connection create some initial separation. Navigating the river was difficult for a lot of teams and caused tensions to boil. Millie & Chuck going for the Fast Forward helps their storyarc at this point in the season well. Both Detour options are fun to watch. The Roadblock is okay. No full equalizer + self-drive = a big win. Plus we see Tian & Jaree reach their low point for the race. It’s too bad that all of this came at the cost of Steve & Dave.)

2) Leg 6: Muiden, Netherlands – Mumbai, India (After the first five legs in wintry Europe, we get a gigantic contrast as we move to the vibrant colors, heat, and super-crowded and chaotic nature of India. Teams making their way to Bollywood and camping out for the night provides an interesting start to the leg. Utter chaos ensues the next day as teams have to navigate the public transit, and while I’m not happy that the women got groped on the train, it did make the episode that much more interesting and cement the “culture shock” feeling. Later on the washing challenge is good enough (good thing only Jon & Al went for Duds) and the fish market offers a good challenge that offers the possibility for failure. But really, this episode is a prime example that sometimes it’s not the Race itself that makes the show interesting, but the environment.)

1) Leg 9: Manukan Island – Sepilok, Malaysia (Teams are completely and utterly taxed in this leg. Only Jon & Al get through without some sort of blunder shown, and they were clearly worn out midway through just like everybody else. David & Jeff have one of their roughest legs and Reichen & Chip accidentally take the Fast Forward instead. Kelly & Jon starting out behind, messing up multiple times (including going for the Fast Forward and having it be taken!), and yet somehow still catching up to Millie & Chuck is amazing from a dramatic perspective and offers a great final showdown, although I’m not especially pleased to see them actually survive. Millie & Chuck’s racing style comes back to bite them as, their energy totally spent, they make mistake after mistake to get eliminated despite a comfortable lead. Overall, the exhausting nature of this leg combined with the amazing dramatic finish makes it a clear winner, and my choice for best in the season.)

Team Rankings

12) Amanda & Chris (All we really get from them is Amanda getting overly irritated and Chris berating Amanda, neither of which is pleasant for me to watch. Not that interesting and I don’t find the Flo reference to be amusing. Happy to have them out second.)

11) Russell & Cindy (A bizarre team, especially taking into account the rumors of Russell’s post-race behavior. They do have a somewhat interesting storyline, as Russell so completely minimizes Cindy that she realizes that her earlier affections were poorly based, but Russell was also quite annoying and they never felt like they quite fit into the season. Not the easiest team ever for me to rank.)

10) Monica & Sheree (After leg 1, their content is extremely generic (either that they’re allied with Reichen & Chip or that they’re out there to prove that they can do fine without luxuries) and doesn’t really have much bearing on what we see them doing on the racecourse. Nice enough but not an interesting team. Ultimately, I think their lifestyles DID prove to be a game-ending liability as they weren’t able to adjust to the chaos of Mumbai well enough.)

9) Debra & Steve (They get a bit of a boost among the other relatively irrelevant teams because I liked them a lot. They didn’t get many scenes but I felt like they were a much more significant presence during their time than Monica & Sheree. Very sweet couple. They fell down a lot.)

8) Steve & Josh (A team that had a lot of wasted potential as characters. I liked them a lot and enjoyed most of their moments, but they were a bit underedited after the premiere and were some of the biggest sufferers in terms of not getting a coherent storyline or characterization. Would probably have jumped up a good deal if they had lasted longer.

7) David & Jeff (I always liked them. They’re rather likable and not boring, and make for the most rootable team in the finale. However, they don’t have standout personalities or anything to really make them memorable other than being the preferred choice to win. I don’t think they’re a bad sort of team to have in the race, but they definitely need to go with more interesting teams who can carry things by themselves.)

6) Reichen & Chip (This team surprised me by not really leaving many strong impressions one way or the other on this viewing. Early on they make a bunch of social blunders and get offended at various actions by the other teams. During the middle of the race they kind of fade into the background, with Reichen getting some moments of childlike wonder but not much else. Later on we see Chip’s intensity more obviously on display, which can give some amusing moments but also some unpleasant ones. They’re far from being the most interesting team.)

5) Kelly & Jon (Jon’s goofball attitude combined with Kelly’s propensity to rush into poor decisions make for quite a few fun scenes with these two, and at times I really enjoy having them on the race. However, their humor also crosses the line at some times, they get a few nasty moments with each other, and their mocking of Millie & Chuck combined with their later trolling of Reichen & Chip results in them coming off as a bit mean-spirited. A mixed bag and definitely not a rootable team.)

4) Millie & Chuck (Millie’s hypercompetitive nature, relatively slight stature, and issues with asthma combine for a unique character who is interesting to watch run around and occasionally clash with the other teams. Despite the competitive aspect and troubled relationship, I find this team to be highly likable. They also have more interesting arguments than some teams given that they’re generally visibly trying to stay nice to each other despite their disagreements. While they fade back a little bit during the middle of the race, their overworking of themselves leading to their total breakdown and elimination in Malaysia gives them a massive boost to their overall ranking.)

3) Jon & Al (Nothing bad to say about them. They were consistently positive, stayed away from the drama, and continually entertained with their antics. Jon talking about his head being about to explode while wearing a clown nose is a moment that really sticks in my head. A great team for everybody to root for. However, their antics ultimately feel a little one-note (probably a given considering their nature), which results in them not quite reaching the level as other “fun” teams do for me, and also not taking the top spot for the season rankings.)

2) Tian & Jaree (While their fighting and particularly Jaree’s attitude get annoying to watch at times, they’re also an interesting team to watch in the early portion of the season and can provide some amusing moments (“I like Amsterdam!”). But the real reason why they rise this high is their incredible story arc. They beat each other down during the early race, their spirits reaching an all-time low in Holland to the point where Tian wants to be eliminated, but then bound back once they reach India and finally learn to get along. Suddenly they become one of the most rootable teams on the season, and they’re a lot of fun in Episode 7, with it that much better because they were so hard to put up with earlier. Very few times has my opinion on a team done a 180 over the course of a season viewing, but it did with this team.)

1) Steve & Dave (Undoubtedly in the top three for worst-suited Race teams of all time, they should have gone home in (or before) leg 3, but they didn’t. Then they should have gone home in leg 4, but they didn’t. Somehow this team that should have finished dead last makes it all the way to eighth place and the fifth episode, and it’s an especially fun storyline to watch unfold on a first viewing. Coupled with that, this is a team that is extremely irreverent and will crack jokes, make fun of each other, etc. all the time without being obnoxious about it, making them a lot of fun to have around. Easily one of the best early boots of all time, and while I don’t love them as much as I once did and I understand others putting other teams at the top, I still think that they deserve their position at the top of the Season 4 teams list.)

Conclusion

Season rankings so far:

1) Season 3

2) Season 1

3) Season 2

4) Season 4

Despite the negatives to this season and the fact that it isn’t as good as the first three, I definitely enjoyed it while watching – perhaps more this time than on my previous two viewings. In particular, the fact that it’s still an original, “old-school” season and has the associated characteristics is a booster for me. Others have commented that this is one of the most underrated seasons of TAR, and I’d be inclined to agree. But it’s underrated for a reason, and that’s because it pales in comparison to the other original seasons.

In particular, in my overall rankings and comparisons, I found that the group of legs/episodes in this season was the weakest yet, with less great legs and more mediocre legs, which was a major factor in putting it last.

Up next: a season regarded by many online fans as the best of all time, but which I have considerably lower expectations of. Still, Season 5 is one of the seasons that it’s been the longest since I’ve watched, so we’ll see how much my opinion changes on another viewing.

I’m hoping to provide in-depth leg and team rankings for this season, but I can’t guarantee that it will happen, especially as I’ll be starting my Season 5 viewing soon.

Until next time!