Warning: This post will spoil the events of The Amazing Race 31, including the final results. Some teams in this season raced in previous seasons as well, so spoilers about their runs in those seasons can be expected. I also vaguely reference some events of previous seasons, although for this post I have made sure to omit any names to minimize the spoilers.

Read on at your own risk.

Well, that puts me up to 2-for-6 in correctly predicting the winner prior to the finale over the past six seasons. This season I correctly predicted Colin & Christie to win right before the finale – and in fact, looking back, I’ve had them in first place on my Power Rankings since the Race’s halfway point after episodes 5-6. The lowest I had them there all season was 4th, at the beginning of the season and after the third leg. How was I able to know to put them that high for so long? Honestly, it was just the fact that they were always one of the strongest teams in the season, combined with weak edits for most teams. Leo & Jamal looked like the favorites at the start of the race, but from episode 3 onwards they were not top contenders, and from that point the only teams that ever looked like strong potential challengers to Colin & Christie were Nic & Vic and Tyler & Korey. The former weakened after the fourth episode to the point where I couldn’t comfortably put them above Colin & Christie, and the latter just always had a really weak edit that made me largely dismiss them as winner contenders (and yet the still kept me guessing until the end of the final challenge). I was never super confident in putting Colin & Christie at #1, but they were always clearly the favorites – and they eventually cashed in on that.

Spoilers Out in the Open!

While checking some information on this season’s Wikipedia article, I found out that, for who knows how long, there’s been a link to Final 3 spoilers right in the Wikipedia article! Back when the final leg was filmed in Detroit last July, an online news article was published about it, and somebody saw fit at some point to link it as a source on Wikipedia. Among other things, the article names members of two of the final three teams, has pictures of all three teams, and even comments that Leo & Jamal were stuck at the Roadblock for over two hours! Amusingly enough, the article also mentions Tyler and Jamal by name, but for the pictures of Colin & Christie, simply captioned them as “Two contestants on The Amazing Race.”

Nothing else to say about that, just an interesting tidbit I thought I’d share.

Leg 11

This was a pretty mediocre leg in my estimation. A few jumps in placement during challenges but not many. In particular, the helicopter and speedboat rides that dominated most of the travel in this leg seemed to be ones where the teams just had to sit back and not do any work – not even finding themselves a taxi. That knocked the leg down some.

Roadblock was a decently interesting concept, but eh in execution. Christie was the only person who struggled with it significantly, with Leo, Victor, and Korey all getting through it pretty quickly. Detour originally seemed good – despite looking almost like a carbon copy of the opening Detour option in Season 29, the boat rowing was quite difficult to the point where three different teams switched away from it! However, while initially seeming quite intimidating, the taxi route option that those three teams went for ended up being a dud in my book. Not only did the teams not seem to have any opportunity to pass each other, but I also really did not enjoy watching the challenge itself – I was groaning internally every time a team started reciting the route again. That was a very boring aspect of the challenge to me, and significantly drags the episode down in my book.

And then the surprise final task… This is a Pit Stop surprise that I approve of. It’s not anything ridiculous or massively game changing/breaking like “Surprise! All four of you are racing to the end so the last leg doesn’t mean a thing!” Just another task in the leg that the teams don’t initially see coming. The task itself, however, was not very interesting. Same general formula that I’ve seen a bunch of times, nothing to really make it stand out, and no teams getting so hung up that they start getting passed. In that respect it largely felt like just filler, not a significant contribution to the episode. And yes, as is usual for me, I was rather frustrated seeing all of the TAR teams working together and sharing task information to try and lock out Nicole & Victor from reaching the end. I don’t think it ultimately changed the results, but I always find it unsatisfying to watch everybody work together against somebody who hasn’t really done anything to deserve it. (Where are all the people who slammed Chris & Bret for U-turning Rachel & Elissa now, when Tyler & Korey actively worked to get the strongest team to the final three with them? I haven’t seen any criticism in that direction.)

On the whole, a leg without much going for it. Nothing remarkable happened and the tasks were relatively weak. It’s not going to get a high ranking for me.

Leg 12

The final leg wasn’t amazing in my book, but it was a step up from the previous leg. Producers got rid of one of my random complaints by no longer sending the teams on business class to pamper them before the final leg. We got a decent variety of Detroit destinations and aspects of local culture. And it’s fairly decent on the scale of final legs, simply by virtue of the fact that the lead did jump around several times and all three teams got their time in front.

The opening Roadblock initially seemed like it would be a pretty lame challenge on the whole, with a simple rappel and number memorization task not something that would trip up any of these experienced veterans. However, the safes proved to add a surprise level of difficulty to the challenge, completely shaking up the order and even essentially eliminating one team! That’s a definite boost right there, and one that is needed considering the weakness of the following challenge. The fowling was a fun concept, but making the only criteria for success be that one person eventually knocks over a group of ten pins made the challenge feel a little weak. I think they should have either given a limited number of throws, or at least require both team members to knock all the pins down.

The record-making challenge was okay. It did provide the opportunity for the lead to change in a close contest, and was decently interesting. And then the final challenge – on the one hand, it was a definite challenge for the teams, taking at least the top two teams an hour-plus each to complete (thanks to u/rlangmit on Reddit for the insider info) and being incredibly difficult for them to focus on. I would have probably gone crazy being there, with the same riff blasting into my head over and over and over and over and over again at volumes way louder than I’d ever be comfortable with. On the other hand, on the scale of actually doing anything to affect the final results, the challenge did nothing, and having the race-ending challenge of a would-be big reality showdown be putting together a drum set is far from climactic.

It was a decent array of challenges, and a pretty good two-team race throughout, but it felt just a bit too weak at the end for me to give it a great rating.

The Results

First off, I was rooting for Nicole & Victor entering the first episode and was definitely disappointed to see them go in the penultimate leg. I had been rooting for Leo & Jamal to fall once again, and instead seeing them get to proclaim themselves “kings of The Amazing Race” was a bit less-than-fun for me. On the other hand, it was far from a surprise to see Nic & Vic eventually eliminated – they put up a good run and did by far the best of any crossover team this season (more top-three finishes than the other five combined), but had definitely weakened by the end, and ultimately they just weren’t able to keep up with the more experienced competition. I’d say that, especially given the circumstances, they had a run that they can be proud of.

As far as the final leg results, count me as satisfied. Leo & Jamal end up finishing a distant third, finally making the final leg but completely failing to capitalize on that. Having made it to the eleventh leg in three different appearances, they easily take the record for most legs and pretty much every other record that you might expect from such longevity (although they did not, as I was thinking they might possible, catch the record for last-place finishes). However, after this season, my impression is that while they’re a team that’s good at sticking around, they’re not and likely never will be a very dominant team. Their three leg wins this season doubled their career total, as they only had two in their first season and one in Season 24, and those were the only three legs of the season in which they finished above the halfway mark of teams remaining – a couple of finishes in the exact middle of the pack and then a bunch at the bottom of the pack rounded out their appearance, and considering the big advantage that they had as returnees going up against newbies, that’s a particularly unimpressive run.

Tyler & Korey’s second place finish and impressive winning streak confirm that they are in fact a strong team and that their dominance in Season 28 wasn’t just a fluke. While it took them a while to get going this season and they were given a big advantage, they still took full advantage of it and during the back half of the race were able to consistently do well against the other TAR returnees as well. Their racing skill deserves respect. While it wouldn’t have been terrible for me to see them win, I’m still glad that they finished second to…

…Colin & Christie. It truly was a magnificent return for them, as they undoubtedly won over many fans who disliked them in their original run (including myself, to some degree), retained the adoration of fans who already loved them, and won the whole race to cement their legacy as one of the very strongest teams of all time. They have now run two complete seasons (now two of only seven Racers to accomplish that feat), and were the team to beat throughout both of them. Finishing second and then first gives them easily the best finishing record of any team that’s raced more than once. They’ve finished first place in nine legs out of a total of twenty-five, and only finished outside the top three five times in their two seasons. The last time that they finished worse than fourth in a leg was waaaaaaaay back in the second leg of Season 5. While one could still argue that the accomplishments of a couple of single-season teams make those teams contenders for Best Team of All Time, Colin & Christie are the top contenders for that spot now. And I have no quarrel at all with their win this season.

The Season as a Whole

So, how was Season 31 on the whole?

Pretty weak, I’d say. Looking at my leg and team ranking charts, this is easily a worse season than any of the first six, and based on my memories it’s easily the worst of the past three seasons. Worst of all time? I’d need to do a full rewatch of the modern TAR era to say that. My inclination is to say no, however.

The season started out incredibly weak to me. The first four legs were all okay, each one a bit better than the one before, but then it utterly crashed for legs 5-7. The annoying trends of the entire season up to that point reached a critical point for me, the legs themselves were weak and had all the teams all very close to each other at any given time, and there was nothing good to recommend it. However, the eighth leg salvaged things, and the rest of the season was a step better. Factors like teams actually having to navigate themselves some, several legs in a row where teams messed up and actually fell significantly behind, and an actual flight scramble contributed notably, and I put legs 8-10 in the top four of the season (more on that later). The ending to the season wasn’t particularly strong, but it wasn’t terrible either.

The single biggest problem with this season, and one that will prevent it from ever attaining much of a ranking for me, is that there just wasn’t anything about it that I thought was particularly great. While some legs were pretty good, none really burst out to a better level. I didn’t think that any of the teams were that great. Nothing really stand out in a positive way to me, and that will always hamper this season in my estimation.

The Twists

I say that there were two real twists of note this season (U-turns and where they’re positioned relative to the Detour are not notable to me at this point in the TAR canon). The first was the Head-to-Head, which made its return after debuting last year and was essentially unchanged. It retains the same problems as it had in Season 30, namely a poor position right before the Pit Stop and boring task selections – in one case a task whose design ensured that the finishing order wouldn’t be changed by the challenge, and in the other case a task that was apparently so boring that they cut it from the episode completely. I have the same stance on the Head-to-Head that I did sixteen months ago – if production wants to keep it, they should put it earlier in the leg and find tasks that are actually fun to watch. Otherwise they should scrap it.

The second was the first ever U-turn vote, not an especially surprising one to see when one considers the theme of this season. I gave my thoughts on it back after Episode 8: It wasn’t terrible, but I don’t love it and it soaks up too much airtime in the episode. I don’t particularly care to see it appear again in future seasons, but if it does I’ll probably be okay with it as long as editors can figure out how to fit it in better.

That’s about it, and I’m frankly a little surprised that we didn’t see more crazy twists to go with the reality clash theme. According to reports, there was one more, unaired twist: a concept called the Extreme Roadblock, which I believe could have been leveraged to force both members of an unfortunate team to perform a Roadblock. As the reports say, this was up for grabs as a prize for winning a challenge at the starting line, and Tyler & Korey won it but never used it. I’m glad that it ended up being unused – we already have the U-turn, and I don’t think any further twists of that sort would be good additions to the show.

The Theme

The other general point about this season to discuss is the first one that was publicly known, the Reality Clash theme. Short version of my thoughts on it: I think it worked poorly.

Longer version: Obviously, the main point of this theme was to attempt to give TAR a ratings boost by drawing in more viewers from Big Brother and Survivor, and I’ll grant that in this respect it was a success. I saw quite a few people on Reddit over the course of the season who commented that they were only there because of BB/Survivor teams. However, in all other respects, I think the season was worse off for the theme, for two main reasons.

The first thing that I think was notably worse about this season because of the theme was the extra emphasis on scheming and “strategy” – that is, “whom shall we U-turn?” Thankfully, for much of this season, that wasn’t a big factor, but when it was – especially in the seventh episode – it really dragged down the season for me. There’s just not all that much to strategize about on the Race, and furthermore that sort of strategy discussion is boring to me anyway. I tried watching this spring’s season of Survivor but quit halfway through, in part because most of it was just “whom should we vote out?” talks and that got really boring for me. If you like that sort of stuff, I’m happy for you, but I’d prefer for it to stick to Survivor and Big Brother, and stay off The Amazing Race.

And then there was the fact that the theme made this season’s results utterly lopsided. On paper, the TAR returnees had a massive advantage over the crossover teams. At first, it seemed like that might not be the case, as Art & JJ went home in the premiere – but then the remaining four teams utterly dominated the competition for the rest of the race. In the twelve legs there were a combined 47 top-four-in-the-leg positions for teams to finish in, and the four TAR teams took 34 of those positions. Crossover teams only finished that high thirteen times in twelve legs – barely over a quarter of all such positions! (Nicole & Victor finished with the lion’s share of those, at seven out of thirteen, with Chris & Bret taking four and Rachel & Elissa taking two.) None of the crossover teams was ever able to win a leg. The returning Racers, regardless of how long they’d been absent, had a massive advantage because they’d already dealt with the stress of the travel pace and knew all the little tricks. Nicole & Victor seemed at first like they might bust the trend, starting the season strong, but then they faltered later on as they fatigued and weren’t able to deal with it as well as the Race teams.

Unfortunately, for some of the returnees their legacies as racers will probably be sullied for some fans because of this fact. When there’s only three other teams at the same level to compete against, you’re bound to look good! That may be a legitimate point in the case of Becca & Floyd (not enough information for me to draw a conclusion on that), and Leo & Jamal were weak regardless, but I think that Colin & Christie and Tyler & Korey deserve recognition for their prowess regardless. The lopsided field may harm them in that respect in the future, however.

Summary

Things I didn’t like about this season:

-Editing was the typical modern TAR style with all the associated little things that I dislike.

-The three weird night legs in the first half of the season.

-Lack of really good teams.

-Lack of really good episodes.

-Lack of really good anything, really.

-Too much scheming and strategy talk.

-Head to Head is still a deeply flawed twist.

-It felt like the Reality Showdown theme came at the cost of other elements of a good season.

-The non-elimination legs were clustered too closely together in the early race. I appreciate production doing something different with them, but having so few eliminations early in the race really stunted the momentum of the season. We need at least one NEL to wait until later in the season for best results!

-The competition was overly lopsided in favor of the returning Racers.

-Way way way too many legs without the teams having to navigate themselves anywhere or get on separate flights.

Things that I liked about this season:

-No egregious twists added. The U-turn vote worked out fine.

-Laos and Uganda are added to the TAR catalog.

-Survivor and Big Brother teams properly acknowledged the superiority of TAR, at least as a difficult competition.

-I was introduced to a Big Brother team that I actually actively liked.

-A solid finale to end the season.

Leg Rankings

Before I delve into my leg and team rankings for this season, it’s worth noting that they’re going to be significantly affected by the fact that this was my first viewing, and my perceptions were doubtless colored by the fact that I was rooting for some teams and against others. I don’t think I’ll be able to fully appreciate a season until my second viewing of it. Whenever I get back around to this season and rewatch and blog it (projections don’t see that happening until 2023 at least based on my current rate), my rankings likely will see some change.

12) Leg 6: Dubai, UAE – Kampala, Uganda (Other than Janelle’s costly mistake at the Roadblock, the teams were all close together for the entire leg. No great difficulty with any of the tasks and they weren’t particularly interesting. The Head to Head was utterly pointless.)

11) Leg 5: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – Dubai, UAE (This was a weird leg to me. Everybody except for Leo & Jamal and Rachel & Elissa was close together for the entire leg with very little separation. A weak Roadblock where production messed up the potential interesting effect by playing music over too much of it. Detour was okay but not amazing.)

10) Leg 7: Kampala, Uganda – Meiringen, Switzerland (The first half of the leg was extraordinarily linear, with a fear-based task and then a helicopter ride allowing for no change in placement for the teams until the Detour. Even the Detour allowed little opportunity as almost everybody went for the linear option. Also, the episode was filled with way too much scheming and controversy bred from said scheming. The brief period of self-drive at the end of the leg is its only saving grace.)

9) Leg 11: Amsterdam, Netherlands – London, UK (Roadblock was easily completed by everybody except Christie. Too much production-provided transportation in the first half of the leg. The rowing Detour was good, but the cab option too hard to gain ground on to the point where the finishing order was mostly decided by what order teams quit rowing in. The challenge at the end of the leg was a nice twist but ultimately changed nothing.)

8) Leg 1: Los Angeles, US – Tokyo, Japan (Pretty good start to the leg, as teams having to wander on foot around Tokyo sent almost everybody for a loop. Interesting ending as well. Unfortunately, the leg does take a hit from the cheesy Japanese game show theme that they adopt for TWO Roadblocks, and neither challenge is all that fun to watch. An okay start to the season but could definitely have been better.)

7) Leg 12: London, UK – Detroit, US (I struggled a lot with where to put this leg, and despite its relatively low ranking I do think it was a solid end to the season. We’re more in the realm of “average” legs as opposed to weak ones now. The surprise challenge of opening the bank vault was welcome in my eyes. Leo & Jamal start with the lead but then choke as Colin & Christie and Tyler & Korey have a convincing battle for the win in the rest of the leg. Fowling was a weak challenge, but record-making somewhat made up for it. Final task wasn’t terrible but was a bit underwhelming in a way. Good ending to the season. On the whole this leg was solid but had nothing special going for it, while the legs above it do have something.)

6) Leg 2: Tokyo, Japan – Ban Xiengkeo, Laos (The most interestingly-presented episode, and I mean that in a good way. The scene with the monks early on was surreal and barely felt like TAR, again in a good way. Early Double U-turn to draw the lines, and while neither task is too difficult, some teams’ struggles combined with the difficulty of navigation ensures that it’s not an automatic game-breaker. Roadblock was cool enough that I can mostly forgive its rather linear nature. Rupert being booted so early is a disappointment though.)

5) Leg 3: Ban Xiengkeo, Laos – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Boring beginning to the episode that had so much wasted potential. However, taxi trouble combined with difficulty dancing makes for a more exciting first part of the leg than what we got in the first two episodes. Teams start to fall significantly behind in it. Also, I loved the prawn-fishing challenge. Roadblock is pretty weak in comparison, however, and the ending felt weird and rushed. A mixed bag for sure but it upped the excitement in terms of results drama.)

4) Leg 9: Brienz, Switzerland – Split, Croatia (Airport scramble! Teams on three different flights! Nic & Vic fall behind but then snag better tickets for a classic-style airport story. That alone gives this leg a massive boost. In Split, the Detour is both good and bad. On the one hand it stymies Chris & Bret for long enough that the other teams can catch up, but on the other hand the coin-searching option was essentially a trap to suck time away from any saps who chose it and the poetry option wasn’t hard enough to allow for that much time gain. Roadblock was an interesting concept, but having teams work together on it made it much more boring and killed any tension at the end of the leg for a frustrating conclusion.)

3) Leg 4: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Several teams fall far behind when they can’t find a taxi. Then some teams fall behind on the Roadblock. Then Leo & Jamal and Rachel & Elissa both mess up on the water lift Detour and lose a lot of time. Overall a lot of position jumping which is usually going to elicit a seal of approval from me. I did like the Detour and the boats option was fun even if a bit too easy. The Roadblock was more eh. Despite the unaired Head to Head messing with the results, I thought that the episode as presented worked out well.)

2) Leg 10: Split, Croatia – Amsterdam, Netherlands (Teams have to navigate themselves almost everywhere in the Netherlands this leg, which is a huge plus. Everybody except for Colin & Christie messes up with directions at some point which makes their win feel very deserved. Similarly, Becca & Floyd’s early getting lost combined with being careless and not checking their eggs makes their elimination feel very justified. The Detour was weak and there was no Roadblock, but the canals challenge made for a decent substitute. This was a leg determined almost entirely by the teams’ skills, not luck, and the teams struggled to complete it.)

1) Leg 8: Meiringen – Breinz, Switzerland (I don’t have it on top because of the U-turn vote, but despite that. First third of the episode is more scheming, a long voting sequence, and overall not interesting to me except for Chris & Bret crashing the party. However, after that point I think the episode is great. The Speed Bump is good and hits the right balance. Detour’s a bit weak and easy as can be expected in a U-turn leg, but it’s not terrible. And then SELF-NAVIGATION THE ENTIRE LEG! Leo & Jamal get lost and have to play catch up. Multiple teams make mistakes on the way to the Pit Stop. The Roadblock was a fun one but also allowed tension to build until the last minute as it was a simple “win or lose” deal. This leg just works and does everything right to the point where I think it’s the best in the season – even if I wouldn’t consider it a particularly great leg in the broader scope of the TAR canon.)

Team Rankings

Once again, I include the disclaimer that this is based on having immediately finished viewing the season for the first time ever. My opinions will quite possibly change in the future.

11) Corinne & Eliza (Deliberate nastiness to other contestants is not a character trait I will ever enjoy in the slightest. End of story. I know that Eliza later apologized and became friends with Rachel & Elissa, and that’s good, but it doesn’t affect their appearance on the show.)

10) Art & JJ (First boots with no real significant content. Their second appearance joins many other irrelevant teams from over the years.)

9) Rachel & Elissa (They didn’t do anything that stands out as something I enjoyed, but they were a kind of mostly innocuous but mildly annoying team for me to watch throughout their run. I probably would put them slightly higher if that was all, but they were also responsible for the most strategizing and scheming during the season, and as I’ve mentioned I did not enjoy the strategizing and scheming. Episode 7 in particular is a big knock to them in my book with all the extra drama and whatnot.)

8) Janelle & Britney (Completely failed to stand out in any way throughout their run. They were basically Rachel & Elissa’s sidekicks. Never really came into their own as racers, either.)

7) Tyler & Korey (I enjoyed them a lot more than in their first season, but in their first season they were a constant annoyance to me, so that’s not necessarily saying much. Tyler & Korey didn’t annoy me this season, and I was fine with them. However, they also weren’t very interesting. They were mostly just there, winning legs, doing well, having fun, but not doing much to actually stand out. Other than cementing their status as all-time great racers, this appearance didn’t add anything to their legacy or characters.)

6) Rupert & Laura (I now officially love Rupert, and he and Laura were my favorite team for the first two episodes. However, they didn’t get a ton of content in those two episodes and so I can only put them so high.)

5) Leo & Jamal (I’m not quite sure where to put Leo & Jamal in this ranking. They brought absolutely nothing new to the table in their third appearance, I didn’t especially enjoy them, and they got annoying at times. But they were also a definite presence in the season, were more interesting than Tyler & Korey, could be fun sometimes, and had the interesting arc of doing poorly throughout the season compared to the other TAR teams. I’m of mixed opinions on them but this is where they go for now.)

4) Becca & Floyd (Team Fun was sometimes fun, sometimes just there, never really particularly annoying (although I did not enjoy the rap sessions). I don’t think I really have anything else I can say about them, they were just a decent presence in the season.)

3) Chris & Bret (As I could have expected preseason, Chris & Bret were a consistently fun presence. They kept ragging on Bret, they had fun times, and they were refreshingly uninvolved in all of the strategy drama. That gets them a good placement in this season. On the other hand, while they were fun, they weren’t really fun and were a more low-key type of enjoyable team during their run. That’s not a terrible thing, but it does prevent me from considering them a great team.)

2) Nicole & Victor (Their ranking here is quite possibly inflated by the fact that they were the team I was rooting for during the season, and I might well put them lower when I rewatch the season. But for now they’re here. They were the sole crossover team to look like strong contenders among the TAR teams, which brought more interest to the season, but then they also had their downfall as they succumbed to Race fatigue, which was also interesting. They were also very likable (in my opinion) and finally broke the trend of me either disliking or being neutral on BB crossover teams. The catch is that there’s nothing else memorable that I can think of about them right now, and so that might turn against them in the future.)

1) Colin & Christie (Without the win I might have them lower, since their content did get repetitive after a while. However, with the win they end up with an all-time great storyline. Fifteen years after their original appearance, where Colin became infamous for his outbursts and they barely missed out on the win, they make a surprising return. They’ve grown personally in the last fifteen years and now are able to enjoy themselves on the race instead of being laser-focused on the competition at all times, lose the classic outbursts and replace them with spreading love to the other teams. Their skills have gone nowhere though, and they continue to dominate the Race and the social game. Ultimately this season of growth culminates in them winning in their second chance, this time having won the hearts of many viewers for the ultimate redemption story. While during the season their content got a bit stale, with little other than talk about how they’d changed and explanations of their zen worldview (which I did not find particularly engaging), they still had their fun moments (Colin at the Leg 8 Pit Stop comes to mind) and the starkness of the contrast between “I’m super serious even when I’m winning” Season 5 Colin and “I’m super happy and zen all the time” Season 31 Colin could get quite amusing. Coupled with the amazing storyline, these traits make them easily the best characters in Season 31.)

Conclusion

And so concludes another season of The Amazing Race. Season 32 was filmed last year and current talk indicates that it will probably be kept on the shelf until next year to show. After that, who knows? I felt like this season was a bit of regression compared to the past two and won’t do much to help the show stick around. But speculation about how much longer the show will last is pointless right now – there’s going to be at least one more season, so let’s get to and enjoy that before we worry about what comes next! In the meantime, I’m guessing my opinion of this season will probably climb when I get back to rewatching it in however many years – without expectations to be disappointed, I’ll be more able to just sit back and enjoy it.

Speaking of which, I’m hoping to get another blog post out soon, this one about Season 6. Keep an eye out here or on the TAR subreddit for that. Hopefully I get around to finishing it in the next week or so…