Note: This blog post may contains spoilers for all U.S. seasons of The Amazing Race up through and including Season 8.

Season 8 of The Amazing Race is the most unique season that it has ever produced. The Race was going strong, having just churned out three seasons (two very popular) in the space of a year, and production decided that it was time to try something new. From my reading about the Race, I’ve gathered that there was a not insignificant amount of demand for a “family”-type season, parents wanting to race with their kids and whatnot. In any event, that was the theme that producers decided to work towards, and so the Family Edition was born.

A lot of people don’t like Family Edition, and it’s not hard to tell why – it’s essentially a spin-off show of The Amazing Race, not really like any other season before or since. But for my part, I enjoyed it, and I think that if you go in with the proper expectations, it’s still a decent season. Let’s dive into what made this season different…

Format Changes (and consequences) in Season 8

Normally, I put this segment of my TAR posts near the end. But since Family Edition really is defined by the various changes made for it, and they’re what makes it unique, in this case we should go over them first. Also, note that almost every change for this season is a one-time-only thing, and will not be seen in future seasons.

The primary difference of the Family Edition is the teams. In particular, three new rules apply to the teams for this season:

All teams are members of the same family. Given the season’s name, this is the most obvious and essential criteria to hold the teams to. It’s also the least impactful on the season as a whole. Some people who prefer to see the relationship drama of dating couples, or something like that, may miss the presence of that sort of team on this season, but for my part, the mere fact that all teams are family doesn’t affect the season much on its own. As far as offering new dynamics or whatnot, it also doesn’t do a lot – almost all of the relationships between two team members on this season have appeared somewhere in the previous seven, with only the father/son/brother-in-law relationships of the Aiellos and the stepmother/stepchild relationships of the Schroeders being new. Neither of those new relationships is especially interesting either. On the whole, while it does give an overarching theme for the season, the family criteria has little more noticeable effect than that.

Teams have four members each, instead of two. Here’s one that has a much bigger impact. Teams are all doubled in size, which itself has three big effects. First, the total number of characters for the season is nearly doubled (with the last-minute removal of one team being the only reason it isn’t completely). That can cause some additional confusion for viewers trying to keep everyone straight, and also ensures that individual team members will receive less focus throughout the season – even at the final leg, there will be the same number of characters as there are at the midway point of most seasons! The second big effect is that the team dynamics feel different in this season. Normally, there are just two people on a team interacting in some way, but in this season, team member A can be interacting with team member B in one way but team member C in a completely different way! That lends a whole new feel to watching the individual teams during this season. The third effect of the increased team size is that, due to logistical issues, there’s a lot less use of modes of transportation other than self-driving. It’s harder to arrange for buses, taxis, and flights when the teams have four members each, and as a result vast stretches of the season simply give the teams big vans and have them drive themselves. During the 13 legs of this season, the teams only took flights five times and buses twice! The rest of the time they were either driving themselves, or taking some form of taxi. It is nice to have the teams have to navigate themselves a lot of the time, but at the same time, as the season goes on, it’s rarely very noticeable.

What do I think of the increased team size as a whole? Personally, I enjoy having it during this season. Having the extra characters to keep track of isn’t a huge deal for me – no, I won’t have as good of a read on the individual team members as normal, but I still know who the teams are and can observe their dynamics, and it doesn’t make the season any worse. And I do enjoy having the different dynamics, whether it’s teams like the Linzes or Bransens where there’s one close ‘team’ of three and one ‘outsider’ who’s a bit different, or something like the Paolos or Schroeders where each team member is more distinct. Would teams of four be an ideal setup for every season of the Race? I doubt it – teams of two still brings relationships, is a bit more streamlined, and is definitely easier to keep track of, but as a one-time deal, I enjoy having teams of four.

The regular lower age limit is removed. On a standard season of The Amazing Race, each contestant must be at least 21 years of age. Later in the show’s history, we’ll see a series of exceptions for semi-celebrity contestants, but the absolute lowest we’ll see is 19. But here on the Family Edition, that requirement is removed, and we see a lot of younger contestants. Only the Godlewskis and Aiellos could have all four team members participate on a normal season of the Race, as we see a lot of teenagers and even two teams with kids as young as 8 and 9! This was, for me and I suspect for quite a few others, the biggest single draw of the Family Edition – getting to see the youngsters who would normally never be on the show. Of course, having the younger people on the show does restrict production’s options to some extent, as we’ll discuss later… All resultant changes aside, the addition of children/teenagers to the Race is limited in what it adds to the season, simply because most of the youngest contestants are eliminated by the halfway point. At leg 7, the under-21 contestants are mostly limited to those who are almost 21 anyway so it doesn’t make much of a difference, or else quieter teens. I think the Gaghans and Blacks were the most compelling reason for this format change, and neither team does all that well. Thus this modification doesn’t turn out to be all that great.

In addition to the multiple changes to the teams this season, there are a variety of other changes, many (but not all) of which stem from the difference in teams:

The racecourse does not leave North America. This is the single biggest non-team change to the season. Because of the logistical difficulties associated with trying to gain access for children to a variety of different countries, production decided that this Race would stay local instead. Nine out of thirteen legs’ worth of racing takes place inside the United States, with two-and-a-half legs in Central America and a leg and a half in Canada serving to break up the trend. The Race runs in a more or less circular route, starting in New York, making its way down the East coast, hopping down to Panama and Costa Rica, then back up to Arizona and going north through the western U.S., and finally around through Canada and ending back in New York State. As I’ve already mentioned, this plus the larger teams also results in a significantly shorter route than we get in normal seasons, with shorter travel segments that usually feature the teams driving themselves. Family Edition’s route only covered 11,000 miles, compared to 35,000 miles for the shortest other season to this point (Season 1)!

Undoubtedly this causes Family Edition to lose some of the epic scale that is the Race’s hallmark. However… I’m going to take a stance that I don’t think is very common among the online community, and say that on the whole, I don’t think that the different route is that big of a problem. It’s different, but as a one-time thing, I think it’s perfectly enjoyable to race largely in the U.S. While the show’s focus is rightfully usually on international travel, that doesn’t mean that the U.S. is devoid of places that are worth visiting, and I enjoy some of the highlights of different parts of America and Americana. (My guess would be that this is even more enjoyable for foreign fans of the Race, as they’re seeing a country that they’re less familiar with.) Production could have done a better job with planning out the route in the States – for instance, after a while, the locations in the west do start to all run together – but on the whole, I think it’s fine. Again, I wouldn’t want the Race to be like this all the time, but as a one-time thing, I don’t think it’s a big problem.

There are only ten teams. This is the only US season of TAR to have less than eleven teams at the start. While some might think that this was done to offset the fact that there are four people on each team, it was in fact a matter of circumstance. Eleven teams were slated to run the season, but one of them dropped out shortly before filming began, leaving us with only ten. Now, with the dramatic increase in individual racers, this isn’t ultimately that significant of a change. But as the season goes on, it does start to become apparent that ten teams is a bit small of a number, especially when you factor in another change…

There are a record five non-elimination/To Be Continued legs. This is a direct consequence of the aforementioned reduction in teams. Production tried to paint over this glut of NELs, having not one but two To Be Continued legs so that there were only three non-elimination Pit Stops, but the large number is still noticeable, and in my opinion places a definite damper on the season’s quality. Making it even worse is the fact that all of the first four legs are elimination – while it keeps the stakes up nicely during those episodes, it also leaves us with all five non-eliminations still to go… and only THREE eliminations! Having five NELs with six teams to go is too much, and slows the late portion of the race to a crawl. And despite all the NELs, over half the season is spent with half or more of the cast eliminated, so they don’t even really help the season by keeping a good number of teams in for longer. In my opinion, moving even a single NEL to the early legs of the season would have greatly improved matters. Making Leg 3 a non-elimination, and then making, say, Leg 9 elimination in its place would have improved the season’s pacing as well as adding greater uncertainty as to when the elimination leg without an NEL might appear (as opposed to what we got, where every elimination leg from #4 on was virtually guaranteed to be followed by a non-elimination). Instead we get a total momentum-killer late in the season that doesn’t really add anything positive.

Also, not one but two of the legs this season are To Be Continued legs – non-eliminations in all but name. Leg 10 is a traditional case, but I consider the finale in Canada to be effectively two separate legs as well, with the stay at the Stade Olympique serving as the Pit Stop. (There’s a Detour, a Roadblock, and multiple Route Markers on each side, so…) While the fact that the non-elimination penalty is mostly irrelevant this season, combined with the glut of NELs, makes this not too noticeable of a change to this season, it’s still not a good practice for production to be engaged in. Thankfully, neither this nor the large number of NELs becomes a habit for TAR – there will never be more than four non-eliminations again, and we’ll only see two To Be Continued legs in a season once more.

There are only two Yields and one Fast Forward. The reduction in Yields is a permanent change that will hold over to next season, as production decided to cut back one more opportunity for teams to screw each other over. In principle I don’t understand why they’d want to take away this opportunity, but in practice it does make sense and is a fine change, as the early-leg Yields in Seasons 5-7 all went unused anyway, so this doesn’t affect much. On the other hand, the inclusion of only one Fast Forward is only temporary (for now), and a matter of circumstance – there were actually two Fast Forwards included in this race, but nobody went for the second one, so it was left out of the episode – a logical decision in my opinion.

Roadblock rules are tweaked. This is 100% due to the circumstance of having four-person teams. For certain Roadblocks this season (I believe three in total) two of the four team members perform the Roadblock together, instead of just one team member. Because of the wrinkle this would cause for Roadblock counts, as well as the fact that a perfectly even Roadblock distribution would result in just 4 per person, and probably also the unbalanced nature of teams like the Blacks and Gaghans, production decided to waive the Roadblock maximum for the season. In my opinion, the waiving of Roadblock counts makes sense given the circumstances, and I’ve no issue with it. As for the two-person Roadblocks, they sound cool in theory, but in practice none of them are that interesting and the idea sort of falls flat. A worthy experiment to try in a season like this though.

Some challenges are easier. I personally didn’t find this to be particularly noticeable as I was watching, but some do: because of the fact that young children competed on this season, production had to make sure that it didn’t have tasks that were too hard for someone like Carissa, so the difficulty of some tasks was scaled back accordingly. The most glaring example is Leg 4’s task of climbing to the top of the world’s largest office chair – this was actually the leg’s Roadblock, with the final edit not showing this fact because it was such a weak task! There are a couple other, milder examples, like the golf-ball search Roadblock in Leg 11, but fortunately, on the whole, I don’t think the challenges are actually scaled back that much. I would say that the majority of Roadblocks and Detours this season were pretty standard fare in difficulty, such as you might see in a contemporary season of normal TAR, and some were even particularly hefty tasks (loading one ton of sugarcane comes to mind!). There was stuff like the centrifuge, the ski jump, or the flying trapeze that was pretty simple as actual tasks, but they were challenges that were more for the experience, and there have been plenty of those.

I also suspect that there were rules in place for who could perform certain Roadblocks – I can’t see production allowing Carissa to do the plane trick one in Leg 8, for instance.

As you can see from the length of this segment, Family Edition was significantly different from any other season of the Race. The three main characteristics that define its unique nature are the four-person teams, the presence of children and teenagers, and the much tamer route. These combine to give it a much different feel from the regular show, which is evident right from the start – it’s not a race around the world this time, it’s more of an ultimate family roadtrip. While I think this feel to the season is less pronounced later in the season, the various changes are still definitely felt, and help to make it a unique season from start to finish.

Four Parts of the Season

There are some seasons of TAR that naturally lend themselves to be divided into multiple distinct parts. I’ve covered two before in this blog: Season 1, with its adventurous beginning, average middle, and fantastic conclusion; and Season 4, with its so-so beginning, superb middle, and disappointing conclusion. Family Edition is the third season in the TAR canon that I feel I can divide like this – though in this case, I split it into four parts instead of three, distinguishable by where the teams are:

Part 1 – Legs 1-4. This part is the opening of the season, encompassing the families’ journey down the eastern coast of the United States. We get introduced to the teams, the first eliminations happen, and the Weavers’ isolation from the other teams begins. I personally think that Family Edition is at its strongest here in the early legs, and there’s a variety of reasons for that. The majority of the cast is still in, giving us a more interesting array of teams and making isolated mistakes less punishing. The theme of the season is also most pronounced here, especially in the first two legs, and I enjoy the ‘ultimate family roadtrip’ feel that it provides. Also, the big rivalry that will come to define this season, between the Weavers and everybody else, hasn’t developed too much yet, which means there isn’t too much negativity or animosity to drag down enjoyment of the episodes. And aside from all that, I think the legs are pretty solidly designed for the most part in this segment, with a bunch of interesting locations and tasks. The end of leg 3 and beginning of Leg 4 certainly dampen the momentum, but on the whole I still think the beginning of the season is the best part.

Part 2 – Legs 5-7. The season stays solid for the second segment, where teams actually leave the U.S. and race in Central America for two-and-a-half legs. While some parts of the legs are overly linear and not really that interesting, they’re largely balanced out by other, good challenges and the general interest that comes from our change in scenery. This also serves as our ‘easing in’ to the back half of the season, as the Weaver rivalry starts to escalate and we’re down to our core group of teams, losing only the Gaghans. While that makes this segment an important part of the season, those same elements could certainly be considered a drag on its quality, and a sign that the season is going downhill…

Part 3 – Legs 7-11. The midway point of the seventh leg marks the transition into the third part of the season as teams head back to the American West, where they’ll stay for over four legs. This is where the season’s momentum grinds to a halt, and Family Edition reaches its low point. Why? Partially because the pace of the Race slows to a crawl, as the non-eliminations really come in in force, including a stretch of four episodes with only a single elimination! Partially because the racecourse becomes less interesting – while there is some pretty cool stuff in the American West, and some great scenery, it all starts to feel the same after a while, and we go for a long time without anything to break up the monotony of driving the campers around and visiting places out there. We also don’t have all that much of interest going on with the teams themselves, with a reduced roster and almost nothing happening except for the conflict with the Weavers and the Godlewskis’ internal conflict, both of which become pretty stagnant storylines. I personally enjoyed all of these episodes well enough in my rewatch, but it definitely started to feel repetitive and I was more than ready for something new by the end of the stretch. This part of the season simply goes on for too long – probably it would improve the season overall to cut out Legs 10-11 (except for the elimination at their end). And I think that this part probably is one of the biggest contributors to people’s lackluster opinions of the season as a whole.

Part 4 – Legs 12-13. For the final two legs, the teams travel through Canada before the very end of the race back in New York State. This is all encompassed in a single double-length season finale, and comes across as an extremely refreshing change of pace after spending too long in the West. It ends the season on a higher note, in my opinion, with a fantastic ‘penultimate leg’ and an actually close finish to the race. The visit to Canada goes very well, on the whole, although I don’t think that it needed to last any longer than it did. A solid way to end the season.

Non-Dynamic Teams

One thing about Family Edition that I noticed pretty quickly while I was watching it, and which I think helps contribute to its overall poor reputation, is the fact that very few of the teams on it are particularly dynamic or memorable. You might know who the teams are, and each time has their own “vibe” or general feel on the show – the Gaghans are the nice team with the kids, the Linzes are the fun jokester siblings, etc. – but there are very few things they do that are specifically memorable. You probably don’t remember many actual moments from either of those teams – at least, that was my experience for the years between my first watch and half-rewatch and this viewing. Since I’ve watched the season more recently, I can remember more moments now, but the fact remains that most of the teams just aren’t that distinct, and while that doesn’t make the season unenjoyable, it does make it more forgettable, and so less likely to be remembered fondly.

There are two major exceptions to the general rule above: the Paolos and the Weavers. As opposed to the other eight teams, which are largely the same through the season and lack memorable moments, these two teams have quite a few memorable moments each and are complex teams to boot. The Paolos start out one-note enough, simply yelling at each other all the time, but starting when their fortunes turn around in Leg 4 and really accelerating once they leave the country, they show a new, more rootable, and more cohesive side, with their shining moment coming from DJ and Marion’s bungee jump in Episode 5. Whether excited or angry, they’re not a team you can ignore, but one that you remember, especially because they show such different sides to their personalities. Meanwhile, the Weavers become memorable partially because of their rivalry with the other teams, but partially on their own merits – between their backstory and the ways it crops up throughout the season, their generally negative attitudes as showcased throughout the season, and the aforementioned rivalry, they’re easily the most prominent and memorable team in the season.

Of course, these two teams also come with the normal downside to being a complex team, which I discussed some back in my Season 2 post – the fact that complexity usually means there are negative aspects to their characters, which can make for less pleasant viewing. The Paolos and the Weavers definitely have prominent times when they’re unpleasant to watch, which results in a lot of viewers disliking one or both of those teams – and since they’re two of the most prominent teams in the season, this becomes another factor that results in its generally low reputation. I myself think that the unpleasant moments of both teams constituted a significant hit on their characters, and my rankings will reflect this fact.

And speaking of the Weavers…

The Weaver Family Feud

There is one really big storyline that runs almost throughout the whole season, and dwarfs all of the (already small) others – that of the season-long rivalry between the Weaver family and almost every single other team (all the other top 8 except maybe the Gaghans). It begins in just the third episode, and really persists all the way to the conclusion of the season, leaving an indelible – and unfortunately not a very good – mark on Family Edition.

It becomes clear early on that, despite the natural sympathy their backstory can garner, the Weavers just don’t get along that well with the other teams. It’s a rare (on TAR) case of mutual dislike pretty much from the beginning – the Weavers are different from the other teams, they don’t mesh very well with them, the other teams are thus a bit uncomfortable with them, but the Weavers also don’t like the other teams and purposely isolate themselves, thus deepening the divide. The Yield in Episode 6 is what really cements the rivalry that will last for the rest of the season, as that ensures that the Weavers hate the other teams, and with both sides solidified in their opinions of each other, there’s not going to be any turning back.

Because there isn’t much else to focus on story-wise, especially once the Paolos go and teams are spending a ton of time out west, this gets brought up a lot. It’s the Weavers versus the world – editors try to spin a little storyline of the Bransens playing neutral, but when push comes to shove they’re obviously on the side of everybody else. And while the Weavers and this feud provide some interesting moments, on the whole this ends up becoming a drag on the season for two main reasons. One is that there never really is that much more development of the storyline – the teams are solidly against each other, and after the first Yield, nothing is changing that, and there’s not really any new content. Thus, it gets a bit repetitive after a while.

But the other main reason is the fact that this is a rivalry which ends up making the teams on both sides look worse – arguably the first such one in TAR history (depending on what you think of the Joe & Bill versus everybody rivalry in Season 1, particularly in the sixth episode). Most people probably think of the Weavers as the clear ‘bad guys’ in this scenario, with factors such as their bevy of insults after getting Yielded, generally self-righteous attitude, and overall showcased negativity contributing to this image – but the other teams end up looking bad too, as they’re none too kind to the Weavers. Early on, the Aiellos and Schroeders shut them out and seem quick to take offense. Later on, we get quite a few insults and general dislike thrown at the Weavers, especially from the Paolos, Godlewskis, and Linzes. Out of the top 8, only the Gaghans keep their hands clean in this feud, and that results in, to varying degrees, the other teams getting dragged down in it. While the first two episodes of the season had a more upbeat feel and more camaraderie amongst the teams, and a lot of that camaraderie persists throughout the season, the vitriol between the Weavers and everybody else taints that, and gives a more negative, adversarial feel to most of the season. And I, for one, am not a big fan of that.

By the way, for those of you not familiar with reality show editing trends, this season gives a great lesson in Editing 101. Notice how, especially later on in the Race, you see the other teams (especially the eventual winners, the Linzes) mostly having fun and staying upbeat, while you see more of the Weavers getting annoyed and complaining, not just about the other teams but about the Race itself. In one of the Western USA episodes, there’s a particular moment where you see the Linzes appreciating the beauty of the area they’re passing through, almost immediately followed by an unflattering scene of the Weavers talking about how ugly it is. Now, production can’t make this footage up, and everything you see actually happened, but they can and do choose what to show, often based on the eventual results. A big reason why the Weavers get such negative content is because they eventually lose, so this makes for a more satisfying conclusion. I can guarantee you that if the Weavers won and the Linzes lost, we’d get a lot less negative content from the former and likely more from the latter.

Back to discussion of the rivalry: While it overall lends a negative tinge to the season, it is an interesting rivalry, especially because to a certain degree I can sympathize with both sides. I tend to, like the Weavers, generally not fit in that well with the popular crowd, and often prefer to strike out on my own, so being in a case where I’m not that fond of any of the other teams really doesn’t feel like that much of a stretch. But at the same time, I definitely don’t connect very well with the Weavers – like the other teams in this season, I do find them offputting, partially due to their negative edit, but partially also just because I don’t have a personality that matches with theirs very well. So a case like this, where I can connect with both sides to a degree, is interesting. It’s also interesting because of the way that the Weavers end up being a warped version of the heroic archetype: they have the sympathetic backstory, they end up fighting the odds, all on their own against a coalition of the other teams, and if they could connect better with the general viewing audience, they could easily be viewed as the heroes of the season. But instead, because they can’t connect with the audience and have several traits that make them not so pleasant to watch, they end up becoming the sole villains of the season – although I doubt they ever saw it that way.

In any event, this storyline eventually reaches its natural conclusion with the defeat of the Weavers in the final leg. It is, undoubtedly, the single most prominent story in the season, and is not wholly without interest or merit, but on the whole, I do think it ends up becoming more of a drag on the season than a benefit to it.

Summary

Things that I don’t like about Family Edition:

-The strong theme from the first couple of legs doesn’t really carry over into the rest of the race.

-Too many legs in the American West. The third portion of the season really starts dragging down a lot.

-Too many non-eliminations, all clustered later on in the race. A lot of what happened in the late episodes had no impact on the Race results.

-The Weavers vs. Everybody Else feud makes both sides less pleasant to watch and is overall a drag.

-The two-person Roadblocks fell flat.

-The two teams with young children, arguably the biggest draw of the season, are both gone by the halfway point.

-Not much new stuff happens in the second half. Not very many storylines and those that exist don’t change much.

-Very few memorable moments for most of the teams.

-Each of the top five teams has something not to like about it, even if it’s mostly just connected to the Weaver feud.

-There are no great teams.

Things that I liked about Family Edition:

-A two-hour premiere.

-Four-person teams provided a variety of team dynamics that were unique to this season.

-Kids on the Race.

-The strong theming in the first couple of legs.

-If you don’t mind the Weavers or Paolos too much, there aren’t any really unbearable teams. A lot of decent ones.

-No “give me your money” in the non-elimination penalty.

-The Weavers do make for some really uniquely interesting moments.

-The legs outside of the U.S. succeed at providing a different feel to their episodes.

-Not a lot of plane/train/bus-based equalizers. A lot of teams controlling their own destiny via self-drive/self-navigation.

-A finale that for the most part is really good, with a compelling penultimate leg, the best final task in the series to date, and a really close finish.

Leg Rankings

13) Leg 10: Salt Lake City, UT – Moran, WY (This leg gets the bottom spot by virtue of almost being an exact duplicate of the previous one. Flying over the western scenery at the beginning? Check. Godlewskis overshooting a stop and having to turn their camper around? Check. A midway point at an RV park? Check. One team having a camera issue that puts them in last place? Check. Plus there’s a dumb equalizer right at the end, and then it’s a To Be Continued leg to make it meaningless anyway. There were a couple of good parts, like seeing Old Faithful and the railroad-building Detour choice, but we’re getting tired of the West by this point, and this episode offers almost nothing new.)

12) Leg 11: Moran, WY – Absarokee, MT (The Buffalo Bill photo shoot at the beginning is fun, but other than that this leg doesn’t offer much. The Detour is OK but not especially interesting, and the cart ends up being pretty unambiguously faster of an option. The Roadblock of finding colored golf balls also isn’t too interesting, and doesn’t offer much in terms of being competitive other than the trick of putting one ball in the whole. This just isn’t all that interesting of a leg, and is our fifth in the West, making it hard to care too much about.)

11) Leg 3: Middleburg, VA – Huntsville, AL (This leg starts out pretty well, with our first flight scramble (and a meaningful one!) and a fun Detour between a really large amount of work on the shrimp and the exciting yet tough mud run. Visiting the Huntsville Space Center and the centrifuge there are also fun, and we get an… interesting scene with the Weavers at Waffle House. But the charter buses stuck in the middle offer an unwelcome equalizer, the mud run’s distance from the downtown sign-up sheet makes that too punishing of a Detour choice to go for, and the end of the leg is downright terrible design, with the sprint from the bus to get a number for the Roadblock as the lone factor that decides the finishing order. There isn’t enough time for any teams to make up ground before the Pit Stop, and the fact that it comes at the expense of the Aiellos just makes it that much worse. That puts this leg near the bottom.)

10) Leg 8: Fort McDowell – Lake Powell, AZ (This leg offers some neat scenery and challenges, between the fighter piloting Roadblock to begin, the dam, and riding around a lake in the bottom of a canyon. The compass Detour option is a neat one, although the fact that three out of four teams go for the more boring bail-out option instead limits how much that adds to the episode. But the biggest issue with this leg is that it offers very little chance to get ahead or behind – the Roadblock is cool but very linear, the Detour doesn’t take that long, and so the Paolos taking the wrong route midway through removes any tension from the episode.)

9) Leg 6: Panama City, Panama – Quepos, Costa Rica (While both the initial task of swimming out to the buoy and the banana-carrying Detour option provide extra moments for the Paolos and Tony in particular, and we get the Yield that stokes the fires between the Weavers and everybody else and sets them back to start out with, this is otherwise too linear of a leg to be that good. The Roadblock of finding the red bean would be a solid needle-in-a-haystack task, except that everyone save Tammy gets through it really quickly, thus setting one team behind and not doing much else. The Relic Detour option is a nifty trek through the jungle, but not that interesting and extremely linear, leaving no opportunity for most of the teams to gain/lose ground on it. The travel portions don’t allow for a comeback either, resulting in an all-too-inevitable early elimination of the Gaghans which serves as a hit to the latter portion of the season.)

8) Montreal, Canada – Lewiston, NY (This ‘leg’ got the shorter half of a 2-hour finale, and for the most part feels too watered down to be a great leg. Starting off by equalizing the final three to be within 10 minutes of each other is not great, and while going to the top of the CN Tower is nifty, the task there comes close to ensuring that all three teams will finish it right after each other since they can piggyback off the others’ success – that the Weavers failed to do so was likely the exception. The Detour, while better-balanced than it initially seemed, wasn’t that big or time-consuming of a task on either side, and so doesn’t do much to change the overall standings. The boat ride is kind of cool but also does nothing to change the standings. The biggest plus to this leg is the fantastic final task – one that is relevant to the race the teams have run and benefits those who know more about it, and is also legitimately difficult and time-consuming to complete. One of the closest finishes in Race history keeps it uncertain until the last minute, and the Linzes do make for satisfying winners, resulting in an overall strong end to the season.)

7) Leg 9: Lake Powell, AZ – Salt Lake City, UT (As enjoyable as any of the Western fare in the season, I found this leg to be an overall fun one. The initial helicopter ride is cool, we have good scenery, the Detour is fine if not at all original, Bart the Bear is a fun clue, and the ski jump Roadblock provides a few fun moments even if it is extremely short. Definitely the best part of the leg is the Weavers getting extremely lost, leading to a personal low point for the team before they decide to deal with it in their own way and even laugh at the fact that they’ve been Yielded. Unfortunately, the leg is a bit linear on the whole and not very interesting from a racing perspective other than the Weavers getting lost.)

6) Leg 2: Lancaster, PA – Middleburg, VA (Keeping with the strong American roadtrip feel of the first leg, the nation’s capital and a Civil War reenactment are good destinations to visit. Having two different reflecting pools causes a lot of confusion and sets some teams far back, and the traffic jam on the way to Virginia causes a nice wrinkle that teams might get stuck in or might avoid. There’s enough trouble getting around that even the Rogers’s costly early mistake doesn’t automatically doom them. Unfortunately, where this leg is strong in travel, it’s weak in tasks – while fun, the spy Roadblock is over too quickly, and the Detour at the reenactment is too linear and quickly completed. The fact that there’s only a small run from the Detour to the Pit Stop kills most of the tension at the end of the leg, and is the final blow that prevents it from climbing higher than this.)

5) Leg 7: Quepos, Costa Rica – Fort McDowell, AZ (Could easily see it being rated lower, but I liked this leg quite a bit. The tasks were fun, in a way, just for the sheer amount of work required for them – loading ONE TON of sugarcane, fifty lengthy laps on a go-kart track, and a tedious painting task that also was the least linear of the ones on this leg. In an NEL especially, it’s cool to see that extra work required. The airport scramble midway through is a good one as well. The leg starts out really strong, but it does admittedly peter out near the end, preventing it from being a really good one.)

4) Leg 5: New Orleans, LA – Panama City, Panama (Our first leg out of the country does not disappoint! The boat race and search for Ricardo early on is fun. The Panama Canal is an obvious location to visit, but still a good one. The Diablo Rojos are an interesting transportation mode. The Fast Forward provides the Paolos’ shining moment for the season, and even though the Gaghans fall behind here, they’re still able to make a comeback later on. As a baseball lover, I liked seeing a baseball Roadblock even if most of the teams finished it too quickly. Unfortunately, the Detour is rather linear and the teams have little to no control over their transportation, but this is still a solid leg and makes for a nice change of pace.)

3) Leg 12: Absarokee, MT – Montreal, Canada (What a refreshing change from the last four-and-a-half legs this is! A fantastic leg overall, with an early and meaningful flight scramble, a legitimately hard-to-find clue in the maze of the Underground City, a decently fun if not amazing Detour, a really neat destination in the biosphere, a fun little Roadblock with the trapeze, and probably the biggest and most epic-scale search for charter tickets in Race history, where it took hours for any team to find a clue. The Weavers’ journey in the leg is also notable and makes it that much better, as they have a really good leg for most of the episode and some good interactions with Ted the cab driver, only to end up completely breaking down at the end with the ticket search. The only problem with this leg is that it is a bit on the linear side most of the way through, and the ticket search at the end leaves everything that came before feeling largely irrelevant.)

2) Leg 4: Huntsville, AL – New Orleans, LA (The beginning of the leg is a bit weak, with a Roadblock so simple they didn’t even air it as one, the party bike challenge being a little underwhelming (although somewhat fun), and the BP product placement Route Marker adding pretty much nothing to the episode. But there’s a lot of good stuff in it as well. In the first day, the Weavers have to confront a personal demon in an interesting twist of fate, The World’s Biggest Office Chair really isn’t that terrible of a quick stop, we get an amazing shot of the Paolos finishing the party bike in the shadow of an oncoming storm, and at the trailer park, teams once again make the mistake of pulling a time without checking farther, letting the Paolos get a decent departure time despite arriving last. It never fails. In the second day, the Detour is a solid balance if a bit quick, New Orleans is a distinct and nifty place to visit, the Paolos begin their comeback, and Mark Schroeder blowing everything up for his team throughout the leg makes for an interesting downfall. This is probably the best leg in terms of seeing the teams react to various twists and turns, and I found it quite enjoyable on the whole.)

1) Leg 1: New York, NY – Lancaster, PA (In my opinion, the beginning of Family Edition is also where it’s at its best. It does take a little long to get out of New York, but once that’s done we have self-drive all the way, teams getting themselves lost, a nice thematic challenge with crossing the Delaware, a cool moment of seeing all the teams bond setting up tents at the midway point, and a well-balanced Detour at the end of the leg, with a grueling physical task that can be completed faster than the other side (see the Gaghans), but can also be a cunning trap for other teams (see everybody else who tried it). The Weavers get one of the series’ biggest ever “I can’t believe that just happened!” moments right away as the cart runs over Linda, but it does all turn out okay. We also get a nice close finish at the end with an eliminee that, all things considered, was a better option. The icing on the cake for me is that this leg’s results are purely based on the teams’ skills at the Race, with luck playing little to no part at all in the proceedings. A fantastic beginning, on the whole, and it truly is a shame that the rest of the season couldn’t live up to it.)

Team Rankings

This is my messiest team rankings, and the one I’m least confident in, yet – mostly because I didn’t get most of these hammered out until a good four months after I finished the season! Why exactly did it take so long? I’m not sure, especially with the lack of complexity for most of the teams, but unfortunately it does mean that with these I’m having to rely on months-old memories instead of the fresh memories I normally rank teams with. These rankings are likely prime targets for revision whenever I get around to watching the season again…

10) Rogers Family (There’s a mini-storyline in Episode 2 centered around Denny as the leader of the team, but really the Rogerses don’t contribute anything especially good or interesting in their two episodes. I don’t find them unpleasant as some do, but they’re pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.)

9) Black Family (Leaving aside any discussion of their name, the Blacks were a perfectly nice team, laid-back and ready to enjoy themselves and grow as a family. While that’s nice, it does result in them not sticking out very much, their quieter personalities leaving them more in the background. They also didn’t seem to really be cut out for the Race, in particular having zero travel experience, so their elimination in the premiere was likely a case of just getting the inevitable over and done with.)

8) Godlewski Family (The fourth-place team this low? I’m not 100% certain they belong all the way down here, but it’s a case of not having all that much to offer, combined with a lot of not-very-pleasant bickering late in the season. For the first half they’re fine enough, a fairly generic group of four energetic sisters having fun, but as they start clashing more later on it becomes less pleasant to watch. I do enjoy Christine’s uniquely upbeat personality, but that’s the only real positive point this team has to them, and at least in my 4-month-old memory it doesn’t outweigh the not-so-good.)

7) Schroeder Family (A team that had the potential to be huge characters but honestly aren’t the most prominent even in their four episodes. I expected better from them going into this viewing, but they don’t really get much in the way of notable content in the first three episodes other than not wanting Hunter to associate with the enemy. Their final episode is interesting, with Mark taking control of the team and steering them wrong multiple times to get eliminated in their hometown, much to Stassi’s distress, but even then there’s a lot of other interesting things in the episode. While they’re an inherently interesting team, I just couldn’t get a very good read on them this time through, and they didn’t stand out that much when they were around.)

6) Paolo Family (This position will probably surprise a lot of hardcores, most of whom found the Paolos to be the best team in the season, and they certainly aren’t without merit. Great content like DJ and Marion’s bungee jump, Tony impressing his sons by doing some heavy-duty banana lifting, and Tony attacking Phil at every Pit Stop, combined with a general transformation of the team midway through the fourth leg that makes them actually a quite rootable team, all ensure that they leave the Race with an overall positive impression. But I also can’t ignore the way they start the season, and their constant yelling at each other and fighting for the first few legs really is too much for me. They’re still not the greatest even later on – they don’t really have the same transformation as Tian & Jaree – and that early fighting drags them down to the point where I have them below the teams that were more interesting or had a more overall positive presence.)

5) Weaver Family (What a team the Weavers are. On the one hand, they’re a fascinating team, with an instant hook in the backstory, several big moments related to that, their overall swings in mood and fortune (they’re a big reason why episodes 9 and 12 are as good as they are), and their warped would-be heroic role in the season, complete with drawing closer together with Rolly stepping up as the man of the family near the end of the season. On the other hand, you can’t ignore the negative aspects that helped make them the villains – their overall generally sour attitude, nasty insults of the other teams and sometimes of the places they visit as well, lots of self-righteousness that can make them hard to deal with, and generally offputting personalities that make them hard to connect with. The overall product is quite difficult to rank – I left this viewing thinking MUCH more highly of them than I used to (when I couldn’t stand them at all), and could see potentially raising their rank in the future, but for now they go below those teams that didn’t have so much negative content.)

4) Aiello Family (Is this a bit high for a team that lasted only three episodes? Perhaps. But the Aiellos are a pretty neat team that bring a solid amount to the table in those three episodes. The very unique team composition (this is the one and only time a team of in-laws is EVER on the Race), a generally fun and likable presence that got a good amount of content, and even a nice mini-arc of the three sons-in-law proving themselves to Tony, and all growing closer in the process, make for a standout among early boot teams. It’s a pity the end of Leg 3 was so terrible.)

3) Bransen Family (Another case where it’s possible I overrated a team a bit, but they get this high for being a presence throughout the season without much negative content. The Bransens are a very unmemorable team, but at times I actually found them more enjoyable than even the Linzes, just for little things like much of the girls’ teasing of their dad, noticing the way that they sounded kind of like him, Lindsay being a bit more sympathetic to him falling behind than the others, etc. Not a standout team by any means, but still an enjoyable one, and they contributed throughout the season.)

2) Gaghan Family (Part of the Gaghan’s high rating comes from the fact that, unlike most of the other teams in this season, I found nothing to dislike about them. Part of it comes from the inherent appeal this team has: for somebody like me, for whom having kids on the Race was the biggest draw of this season, the mom-dad-two-young-kids team that actually survives the first leg will automatically be a favorite, and they offer a perspective on the Race that no other team can. In some ways, they are the face of Family Edition. Now, as it turns out, even the Gaghans aren’t exactly riveting, nor do they have many memorable moments. But despite that, they’re easily one of the most-remembered teams of the season, despite being eliminated before the halfway point, and I think that explains why they rank this high almost as well as anything would.)

1) Linz Family (The Linzes’ stock in my eyes actually went down on this viewing; some of their joking around is just kinda crude and not really funny, and they do engage in some nasty talking about the Weavers. But at other times, they’re a really fun team to watch with all their goofing off and having fun in that way that siblings do, and that outweighs the fewer not-so-good moments. What really makes them good, though, and locks down the top slot for this season, is Meg’s dynamic with her brothers. She makes for a great “straight man” to their generally more over-the-top antics, as the saner, more relatable member of the bunch, and they also get some nice scenes demonstrating that she’s no less a member of the family for it. In general the Linzes have as strong of a familial bond as any of the teams in this season, one that makes them that much more rootable and appropriate as the winners of the season. It’s for these factors that, despite the not-so-good stuff, I still think they’re appropriate to put as the #1 team in Family Edition.)

Conclusion

Before I provide my updated season rankings, I should point out that in some ways, Family Edition really can’t be compared to any other season of the Race. As I said at the beginning of this post, it’s a unique season, and more like a spin-off of The Amazing Race than a normal season, especially with the four-person teams and much smaller scale. It’s just not quite the same product as the other seasons.

That said, it still is, at its core, The Amazing Race, and can be compared to the other seasons on the basis of the factors that it shares with those. With that in mind, my updated season rankings:

1. Season 3

2. Season 7

3. Season 1

4. Season 5

5. Season 2

6. Season 4

7. FAMILY EDITION

8. Season 6

Unfortunately, even leaving aside the fundamental differences in format, Family Edition doesn’t compare that favorably with other seasons. In particular, the dragging third quarter, overall unimpressive cast, unpleasant Weaver feud, and lack of many really strong points leave it as a lower-tier season on the whole. But it’s also not a completely lost cause, and I do think it deserves to stand above the lackluster Season 6 for several really good episodes (including the opening, which I loved), the unique team dynamics, and an overall more enjoyable cast.

Make no mistake, Family Edition is not a great season, and it’s not the same product as the normal Race. If you go into this expecting everything that you get from the normal Race, you will be disappointed, and I think that’s a big reason why it suffers in its reputation. But if you go in with the proper expectations and can appreciate the unique elements that this season has to offer, I think it’s definitely still a worthwhile and enjoyable watch. I have yet to rewatch a season on this blogging journey that I haven’t enjoyed.

Up next: After the highly experimental Family Edition, we go back to safe territory and the normal Amazing Race experience. The next season of the Race is still unusual (for different reasons), and has met a pretty divided reception in the fan community, but it’s also the season that has historically been my favorite – the one and only Season 9.