Note: By its very nature as a season with returning teams, Season 31 and pretty much everything to do with it is going to contain spoilers for past seasons of TAR (as well as Survivor and Big Brother, but to a much lesser extent). Additionally, I will freely reference events from previous seasons of TAR throughout my Season 31 coverage on this blog. Read at your own risk.

The Amazing Race is about to end the longest hiatus in the show’s history. Previously, that distinction went to the 11-month period between the finale of Season 4 and the premiere of Season 5, but as I sit here writing this in April 2019, it has been almost three months more than that (a year and two months minus a few days) since Season 30 concluded. But now, on Wednesday night, my favorite television show is finally returning, and it’s doing something new and extremely hype-able: the first-ever reality clash between contestants from CBS’s big three reality shows (Survivor, Big Brother, and The Amazing Race).

I’m not a huge fan of this twist. While the promise of teams returning from past season of TAR always intrigues me, and I can handle the odd crossover team (especially from Survivor now that I have some degree of knowledge about the show’s history), a season with five-and-a-half returning teams and five-and-a-half crossovers doesn’t particularly appeal to me. But I’m not upset by it either – I’m fairly certain that I’ll pull through this season just fine.

Nor is this twist, or the cast, a surprise to me – since the season began filming close to a year ago, I’ve known of the twist (no surprise there given Phil gave a short teaser video to Twitter) and who the teams are, thanks to postings on the TAR subreddit. But I have been able to avoid spoilers as to what will actually happen during the season, and even if I was somehow to stumble across a spoiler, I would not share it here (and would cut out some coverage if it would be affected by the spoilery knowledge). If you are looking to avoid spoilers for this season, you may consider this blog a safe space. (On that note, if you haven’t watched the preview for the season premiere yet, be warned that it makes it pretty obvious that one team is NOT eliminated first.)

During the season, I’ll write my thoughts on the episodes, teams, and likely future events in posts after each episode. For the preseason, I will share my thoughts on each team based on my knowledge of their history and preseason press, as well as a basic power ranking of how likely the teams are to win the season.

The Big Brother Teams

I have never watched Big Brother and have no interest in ever doing so. None of the previous TAR teams that came from BB have done anything to change my mind – I either was annoyed by them or felt more or less neutral towards them. Based on first impressions, I don’t think that these three newcomers are going to be any different in that regard. I also don’t think that their experience on BB gives them any sort of advantage on TAR – they may have inherent skills for the Race, but I don’t see how those would have come from their experience in the house. Since my familiarity with BB is so low, I’ll have the least to say about these teams.

Nicole & Victor: This team makes the least impression on me preseason. They don’t immediately seem to stand out as much as any of the previous BB couples, but look like just a standard nice-enough dating couple. I like them fine going in. Apparently Victor’s athletic enough to win BB challenges, but I don’t know just how much that is. He also seems to be a pretty chill guy. Nicole is self-admittedly bad at directions, so we’ll see if that comes in to bite them during the season or not. I really don’t know what to expect from this team; my guess is they’ll get through the first few legs fine thanks to a hopeful lack of crippling mistakes, but fall before too long in the face of stiffer, more knowledgeable competition.

Janelle & Britney: I don’t have any prior knowledge of the members of this team, but they seem to be a very popular duo among certain fans. Given the general types of reactions that I’ve seen to this team, and the reality contestants I’ve previously seen reacted to in a similar manner, I don’t think this team is really going to be my cup of tea, but so far they don’t seem like they’ll be that bad either. We’ll see. As far as racing ability goes, their bio is fairly promising, in that it makes them appear capable of dealing with the stress and not particularly likely to have any major meltdowns. Is there going to be a lot more to this team that I don’t see right now? Reactions from others would suggest yes, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Rachel & Elissa: Ah yes, here’s somebody I do know. I was not a fan of Rachel on either of her previous experiences on TAR. I doubt adding her sister to the mix is going to suddenly make her team more endearing to me – this will be a team that I tolerate having around at best. On the other hand, how they’ll fare on the race will be an interesting factor to look at. Rachel is famous for her breakdowns on her previous seasons, especially Season 20, but she did show an increased maturity and ability during the first part of Season 24, and is one of only three people to have run the entire Race twice (although I expect more will join that club this season). Four and a half years later, will her maturity have increased further to the point where she can run the Race just fine without Brendon to help carry her through? In any case, I doubt that Elissa, her younger sister who has zero TAR experience, is going to be any help in this regard. If she proves to be like the original Rachel, prone to big breakdowns, then that will probably kill this team’s chances. Even if she doesn’t, Rachel has a massive uphill battle for this season as she will need to learn how to work with a new partner when she has two full races’ experience of working with Brendon, and take on the leadership role that Brendon at least appeared to fill in the past. Mark & Mallory imploded when trying to make this adjustment; Eric & Danielle were able to adapt but Eric is quite possibly among the best individual racers of all time. Rachel does have the advantage of having raced before, which gives her and Elissa an edge over the other Survivor and BB teams, but how much of a load Elissa’s inexperience turns out to be is going to be what makes or breaks this team.

The Survivor Teams

For a long time, I happily never watched Survivor, much the same way as I still do with BB. However, unlike BB, Survivor was eventually able to hook me in. I wouldn’t consider myself a Survivor fan, but I watched several seasons a couple of years ago and then, after several seasons’ hiatus, have watched much of the currently airing season, Edge of Extinction. I’ll probably watch at least the start of Season 40 if it indeed turns out to be an all-winners’ season.

But in addition to my viewings, and despite my still middling opinion of the show as a whole, I have for whatever reason done an inordinate amount of reading about the show, its history, etc. Because of this, I recognize all six crossovers easily, even though I only watched two of them in their Survivor runs, and so have a bit better formulated opinions of them.

Corinne & Eliza: This is my least favorite team going into the season. I have never watched either of these two on Survivor, but everything that I have read about Corinne leads me to the conclusion that if I were to watch the entire U.S. Survivor canon (which I never will), I would most likely find Corinne to be at least one of the five most unpleasant characters of them all. Going into the season and announcing that you’re going to be as unpleasant as possible to everyone (at least behind their backs) is not a good way to win my appreciation, and it looks like she intends on continuing to play up her nastiness towards her fellow contestants. Meanwhile, Eliza doesn’t have such negativity associated with her, but is well-known and beloved amongst online fans because… she made a bunch of over-the-top faces as a member of the jury? That doesn’t exactly make up for Corinne, and indeed there’s nothing to particularly indicate to me that I’ll really like Eliza that much at all.

So how well are they likely to do on the Race itself? It’s hard to tell, since they’ve never competed together on a reality show before. I can’t predict beforehand whether their strong personalities will lead to them clashing and harming themselves as a team, or they’ll work just fine together. This is also a team that I could in theory see crashing and burning on the racecourse itself early on, since there’s nothing to indicate that they have any particular Racing skills and I can see them having trouble with culture shock and/or the Race itself. Of course, this could also easily be wishful thinking. We’ll see how they do, but I don’t think they have what it takes to beat out the TAR veterans.

Rupert & Laura: Now this is a team that I’m actually quite excited to see cross over! As one of only four (at this writing) four-time Survivor players and a former fan favorite vote winner, Rupert is one of the most recognizable faces from the Survivor franchise, and a character whom I have heard a lot about over the years. Online fans generally don’t seem to think all that much of him nowadays, but I’m nevertheless quite excited to get a chance to see him in action for myself (I technically did watch his last run, on Blood vs. Water, but given the unusual and very short nature of said run, I don’t feel like I really got the Rupert experience at all.) Laura is not nearly as well-known, of course, but nothing’s indicated to me that she’ll ruin the experience of seeing this team in action.

Unfortunately, as much as I’m excited to see this team race, I also can’t shake the feeling that they’re also prime early boot fodder. They’re the oldest team on the season and don’t give off the impression of being as athletic as the other older teams. Rupert also looks way too much like Anita & Arthur, which is doubtless one reason why I feel this way about them. Rupert may be a good survivalist, but nothing indicates to me that this team has any particular skills that would make them good at the Race. I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but I fully expect to see them get eliminated in one of the first few episodes, if not first.

Chris & Bret: Unlike all of the other crossovers, I actually have seen Chris & Bret compete before, as one of the few seasons of Survivor that I watched in its entirety was their season, Survivor: Millenials vs. Gen X. (No, I am not making that name up.) And I’m honestly a bit surprised that they of all people got cast for TAR – they’re nowhere near as recognizable as Corinne, Eliza, or Rupert, and were fairly muted characters in their own season. But I’m perfectly happy to have them on and will be rooting for them – I liked them fine on Survivor, they seem to have a good rapport, and I think the less cutthroat atmosphere of the Race (as well as the fact that they’re permanently on the same team) is going to bring out their more fun side.

I also think preseason that they have the best chance of any of the crossover teams. Chris is the only crossover contestant that I know of who has previously been an athlete (college football). These two are not going to have any in-team drama; I doubt Rupert & Laura will either, but Chris & Bret are much more physically threatening, and I could see any of the other four crossover teams having their share of drama. Chris & Bret also don’t seem likely to make any major blunders, neither having been eliminated from their season of Survivor by any such mistakes (although they may have been employing poor social or numerical strategy), and I don’t see them having any sort of breakdown either. In short, I think a low chance for big mistakes, combined with decent physicality and a persistent focus that I don’t know that the other crossover has, makes them the favorites to topple a TAR team and take home a victory for one of the other shows.

I still don’t think they’re going to do it, though.

The TAR Teams

It should be obvious that the returning Racers have a huge advantage over the crossover teams. Pretty much any game or reality show is easier for somebody who has competed on it before and has some familiarity with it; in the brutal challenge that is The Amazing Race, this is just as true. The Racers already have some experience with the frenetic travel pace, making travel arrangements, dealing with the culture shock, and so forth, and when the other contestants are simply working on adjusting to this world, the Racers will be far ahead of them. I fully expect the Racers to dominate the first portion of the season; I’ll go on record as saying that unless any gigantic blunders, strokes of bad fortune, or Head-to-Heads take place, none of the first three boots will be TAR teams, and at least in theory, the odds are very high that a TAR team will ultimately win.

As far as the returning teams themselves go: I always like the idea of having teams return, but CBS disappoints me time and time again by mostly choosing particular teams that I’m not very excited to see, and this season is no exception. I disliked three of these teams when watching their original season, and the return of the other two don’t excite me. But let’s take a look at all of these returnees, one by one…

Becca & Floyd: Sometime after the Season 31 cast was leaked, I went back through my posting history on the TAR subreddit, and found a post where I commented that Becca & Floyd were shoo-ins for a returnee appearance at some point. This doesn’t speak to any particular prescience of mine as much as it indicates just how obvious of production favorites they were, and so it was with absolutely zero surprise that I learned that they’d been cast. This is also probably the team I’m most pleased to see return; while I wasn’t a huge fan of them in their original appearance (finding their fun not annoying but also not very transferable to me as a viewer), I also had no problem with them, and I’m hoping that now that they actually know each other, they’ll have a better rapport and be more fun to watch. (It’s also worth noting that, unless I’ve misread them, they will officially be the first ever male-female team of 100% platonic friends where neither team member is gay. The few other such teams we’ve seen had at least some degree of “will we get together?” as a storyline.)

On the other hand, as competitors against the Survivor and BB interlopers, they have the weakest credentials. They only reached fifth place on their season, ultimately unable to keep racing due to exhaustion, were never particularly dominant, and made the costly mistake of losing their passport at one point (even though they were able to recover). All four-and-a-half other TAR teams had more impressive runs then they did, and so I think that Team Fun is, at the start of the season, the least likely returning team to win.

Tyler & Korey: Oh boy. I am NOT a fan of Tyler & Korey. As I’ve said in the past, during Season 28 I viewed them as more or less the embodiment of annoying stereotypes of social media stars, and their complete dominance of the season’s narrative was a major detriment to my enjoyment of that season. I don’t expect to enjoy them any more this season, and can only hope that they’re muted in comparison to their previous appearance and/or go early. But I also can’t deny that they were very strong contenders on Season 28, and thus in that regard were good choices to return for this season. Tyler & Korey more or less dominated their original season, giving one of the strongest overall performances of all time, and now will be their chance to prove that their performance wasn’t just because they were running an easier race, or up against weak competition. I have to begrudgingly admit that they’re one of the top contenders going into this season; we’ll see if anything’s changed or if they will be the favorites to win once more.

Leo & Jamal: I am fundamentally opposed to the concept of TAR teams returning for the third time; that said, I am also resigned to the reality of the situation and so am not particularly upset to see Leo & Jamal back again. I’m not exceptionally pleased about the situation either, however, as I never loved them that much and they don’t seem poised to be much different. Again, as far as their run goes, I’m stuck with hoping: in this case, hoping that they keep with their actually kinda fun personalities from later in their runs, or mellow even more, and haven’t reverted to their obnoxious early Season 23 selves.

Competition-wise, Leo & Jamal don’t have any dominant performances to boost their reputation like some of the other returnees do, but they do have a proven tenacity, having finished in 4th place twice despite being U-turned a record number of times, and their former seasons are recent enough that they’ll hopefully still have some advantage from their experience. They probably won’t ever be the favorites to win, but I’m willing to bet that they’ll be sticking around a long time once more.

Art & JJ: Without question, this is the team that I was most surprised to find out was racing again. Art & JJ have an extremely poor reputation among the online fan community; pretty much anywhere TAR teams are ranked, they’ll be in the bottom tier. I’m no exception, as their behavior during Season 20 was quite antagonistic and unpleasant in general. If Phil is to be believed in his assessment of their popularity, there must be another contingent of fans somewhere that supports them quite a lot, but with such a poor reputation among all fans that I’ve seen, I’d figured that since they didn’t return for Season 24, that was that for them. But no, out of the blue, they show up years later on Season 31.

And now that they’re back, I’m actually rooting for them to redeem themselves. I’m hoping that Art & JJ have matured since their first race, will no longer be insulting and/or condescending to the other teams, and will become rootable contenders. And they almost certainly will be contenders; they ran a very good race on Season 20 despite that being the season where a different team set the current record for most legs won, and if they’re at all like they were back then (which it looks like they will be), they have a very competitive spirit and will potentially be the team most gung-ho about competing for the show that they represent (especially against the Big Brother teams). On the other hand, they aren’t young, both approaching their 50s, and they previously competed a full seven years prior to their appearance on Season 31, which could very well render their advantage minimal. We’ll see; going into the season, Art & JJ are one of the biggest question marks for me, though not as big as…

Colin & Christie: On the one hand, I’m ecstatic that, for the first time, TAR is reaching back and inviting back teams from before the last returnee season to return. Sure, we already had that with Art & JJ, but here we have a team from the true olden days of TAR, one that was originally invited for the first All-stars but had to decline. This is the sort of thing that’s just been a forlorn hope for me for years!

…on the other hand, Colin & Christie are most definitely NOT the team I would have chosen. Season 5 is next up for me to rewatch and re-evaluate, but in my two previous viewings of the season, I did not like Colin & Christie – Colin’s intensity was simply too much for me to enjoy them. So while I love that we’re having a team back that last competed fifteen years prior, I’m not super thrilled that it’s this particular team. But we’ll see. If nothing else, Colin & Christie are going to probably be the most interesting team to watch this season. Fifteen years is a long time; how much have they changed in that time? Colin’s bio indicates that he’s done a lot to ease up on the over-intensity and be more rational; will that hold true as they race or will his old ways resurface under the pressure of the competition? Will they still have the competitive fire that helped them to largely dominate Season 5, or will fifteen years have weakened their ability to compete? Will the fact that Christie has to do more Roadblocks become a relevant point?

Colin & Christie were definitely strong TAR competitors back in the day, but that was fifteen years ago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they entered this season on roughly equal footing with the crossover teams. Regardless of how well they do, though, this will be one team whose run I will follow with great interest.

Ranking How Much I Expect to Like the Teams This Season

11. Corinne & Eliza

10. Tyler & Korey

9. Rachel & Elissa

8. Art & JJ (going to assume similarity to their original run for now)

7. Janelle & Britney

6. Nicole & Victor

5. Leo & Jamal

4. Colin & Christie

3. Becca & Floyd

2. Rupert & Laura

1. Chris & Bret

Preseason Power Rankings

I expect to have a Power Rankings feature here during the season, but I’m not yet sure what it will signify; probably likelihood of winning meshed with how well I expect them to do in the near future. For this particular post, though, this is simply my ranking of how likely the teams are to win, based on their TAR experience and my preseason impressions.

11. Rupert & Laura. Again, probably mostly because they’re too much like Anita & Arthur, but I just don’t see them doing well.

10. Corinne & Eliza. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but I see none of the potential advantages in them that the other Survivor/BB teams have.

9. Nicole & Victor. Nice enough, but don’t give the impression of being true competitors.

8. Janelle & Britney. They seem poised to be ready competitors, and potentially able to withstand the pressures of the Race, but they haven’t raced before.

7. Chris & Bret. As I mentioned before, they’re the strongest-seeming of the crossover teams. They’re also a crossover team.

6. Rachel & Elissa. Rachel’s presence as a TAR veteran automatically puts them above the other Survivor/BB teams. Elissa’s presence as a TAR newbie automatically puts them below the TAR teams.

5. Becca & Floyd. Not only did they put on the least impressive performance of all the TAR returnees, but Floyd also earned an instant and massive demerit for being the ONLY contestant to say that Survivors have the advantage in this competition, when the obvious answer (that all 21 others gave) is that the Racers have the advantage. It is for that and for that alone that they get the bottom spot among TAR returnees.

4. Colin & Christie. The fact that they last raced 15 years ago minimizes their advantage, and makes them a massive question mark for now.

3. Art & JJ. An extended period away from the Race combined with advancing age may have diminished their ability to compete effectively.

2. Leo & Jamal. They should be in for a looong time. They also have the inherent advantage of experience that other teams simply do not have.

1. Tyler & Korey. Much as I am loathe to put them here, they competed recently and put on a strong performance, and also didn’t make any obviously wrong responses to bio questions. We’ll see how things change once the season itself begins, but to start out, they are the mostly likely team to win it all.

My Winner Pick

Just for the fun of it, I’ll make an official winner pick here. I don’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure this is who I picked when the season started filming last year as well…

Despite my power rankings, and no doubt at least partially to be different from most people, I am selecting Art & JJ as my winner pick. I want to see them redeem themselves, and I think there’s a solid chance that they’re still competitors, and that the nature of this season will give them the extra drive. We’ll see if I’m right or not in time; for now, enjoy the new season of TAR!