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From Taiwan, the teams are immediately told to fly to their final city of Anchorage. Which sort of makes it feel like they left off the last half a leg, but okay. In Anchorage, they first have to go to a store where they're supposed to pick up their clue and some outdoor gear. Ron and Chris get hold of the lead, while tragic clue-non-reading leads Nick and Don to ignore the "outdoor gear" part of the stuff they're supposed to pick up at the outdoor-gear store, and they wind up lagging for the rest of the leg. The Detour requires the teams to pick between hunting through a tank full of live, pinching crabs and cutting open a bunch of disgusting fish, and when the Detour is done, Ron and Chris are still in the lead, followed by TK and Rachel and Nick and Don. The teams take a speedboat ride, followed by an ice-wall climb that is neither Detour nor Roadblock; it's just kind of there, in the middle of the leg, thumbing its nose. When the ice-wall thing is done, Ron and Chris are still in the lead, then TK and Rachel and Nick and Don. And then...oh, and then. The teams encounter the most diabolically complicated puzzle-style Roadblock in the show's history. While the race's puzzles have usually not been puzzles so much as dumb popularity contests and memory games where they wind up guessing and guessing until they get it right, this one is really hard, and involves gathering a collection of objects that fit a very elaborate set of logical requirements (as one of my pals said, it's like a GRE logic problem). Christina gets started first, and then Rachel, and then Nick. Ultimately, it is Rachel who remains calm and logical and thinks her way through what she's doing enough to finally come up with the right answer. She and TK look like they might lose it in the cab race with Chris and Ron between there and the finish line, since Chris finishes (it appears) not that far behind her. But in the end, it is TK and Rachel indeed, running up to the mat just as excited as they've been about every good thing that's happened to them. It's a surprisingly satisfying finish, and all three of the teams seem to be in such a good place relationship-wise that it almost makes up for the heartbreak of not all of them being able to win. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on The Amazing Race: The whole season. The donkeys, the chickens, the propane tanks, the pink hair, the hernia, the yelling, the blah bling bloo, and ultimately, the city of Taipei and the elimination of Nate and Jen, which was so overdue that fines were piling up. Fudge! Wow, the previouslys really make me ponder how much it would have sucked to spend this whole season with Ari and Staella. Gross. Incidentally, the best part of the previouslys, by far, is the affectionate montage of Don explaining that he's done practically everything in his nearly seventy years of life, short of an emergency tracheotomy and a drag show. And I'm not so sure about the drag show. Anyhoo, there are three teams left, and this is your finale. Who will win one million dollars...tonight?
Credits. Did you get an autographed picture of Kynt and Vyxsin? Didja? Didja? Do you want one? Did you get one? [BOMP.]
Commercials. You guys, I wouldn't touch another season of Big Brother with latex gloves and a fifty-foot shovel. You could promise me that they would soak every episode in Purell before I watched it, and I still wouldn't. They could cast Yul, Dr. Drew, and Patton Oswalt, and I still wouldn't. Are we clear? Oh, good.
It is night in Taipei, which Phil says is a "burgeoning city" (doesn't he call half the cities they visit "burgeoning"?), and where the teams stopped most recently. Tenth pit stop! Racearoundtheworld! And then, as if by magic, it is morning.
9:47 AM. It is time for lead team Ron and Christina to leave. The clue tells them to fly to the "final destination city" of Anchorage, Alaska. So, compared to seasons, they're just kind of chopping off what would normally be the end of the race after the run through Alaska. Phil says this is more than a 4500-mile trek. When they arrive, they'll have to get to an "outdoor adventure store" called Sixth Avenue Outfitters, where they'll pick up "necessary gear" and a clue. Christina counts out their $392 (I have this weird feeling that these numbers appear to the producers while they float through dreamlike hazes, because otherwise, the logic of $392 escapes me), and they leave. As they get in a cab, Christina comments again on how she and her dad are "stronger and smarter" than everyone else. Better hope so, lady. As I look at them together, I just want to tell future racers: slogan shirts are okay, but please -- just one. One slogan shirt. And if your slogan happens to be a question, please put a question mark at the end of it, rather than an exclamation point, or else I will be distracted by the constant desire to copyedit your shirt, which is not good.
10:30 AM. TK and Rachel look very happy about the idea of going to Alaska. In an interview, rather than proclaim his superiority over the other teams, TK says that they all just have different ways of doing it, and Rachel stresses that for them, remaining calm and methodical has been key. "I've always wanted to go to Alaska," she says. "Hell yeah," he agrees. You know, I've heard there are some things that are legal in Alaska that aren't legal in most places. Just a thing I've heard! Just a rumor! Not saying that's why you wanted to go there! Juuuust observing!
10:37 AM. Nick and Don open the clue for Anchorage. In an interview, Nick says that the race has really made him respect Don for pushing himself so hard, and my favorite part is that in the interview, when Nick talks about how great he is, Don raises his hand and points to himself. That's right; that's him. I really, really wish he could have won, you guys. Nick says he knows no one else at his grandpa's age that could do the same. While I don't doubt the number of seventy-year-olds with great abilities, I do question how many people as tall as Nick could make it a whole month folding their giant legs into cabs as often as Nick has. I think he has his knees around the front passenger-side armrest half the time. Nick speculates in the cab that there should be hunting and fishing challenges in Alaska, and Don -- guess what! -- says that he hunted and fished as a kid. When he wasn't working in the mines, or the mill, or in vaudeville. It would be great if it turned out Don made it all up, and it's like, "Nope, been in accounting since I was seventeen." Hey, maybe he's hiding a secret past! Black ops! Could be.
At the China Airlines desk, Ron and Chris inquire about tickets to Anchorage. Christina asks to get seats closest to the front. Ron asks for a "free upgrade to your lounge," which turns out to be where they hope to find internet access. TK and Rachel pull up to the airport , and they also choose China Air. They ask if there have been other Americans followed around by cameras coming up to the counter, and when they get the sheepish and smiling "yes" they're looking for, they ask for the same tickets. TK points out to Rachel that it's been a while since they were on a flight with another team. Heh, true that. Nick and Don get to China Air as TK and Rachel are leaving with tickets, and they get the same flight, so all the teams are on the same flight to Anchorage. But TK and Rachel and Nick and Don don't know this yet, for sure, because while they sit and have a chat with each other, they haven't seen Ron and Chris yet. And then there's this ridiculously great shot -- I'm saying ridiculously great -- of TK and Don sliding from right to left across the screen on a moving sidewalk, with Nick behind them on the one parallel, and Rachel -- awesomely -- walking along on the regular floor, having to walk extra-slow to keep up with the speedy people-mover. It's one of those little visuals that remind you how hard people work to bring you the little program you are currently enjoying.
Ron and Christina look up Sixth Avenue Outfitters on the internet and find that it has practically no web presence -- just a photo of a guy holding a giant fish, and a message that they're still building their site. They've basically got everything on that site but the little animated .GIF of the guy shoveling in a hardhat, but it looks like Ron and Chris do retrieve the address, at least, which is good. At the gate, TK and Rachel are waiting with Nick and Don, and they're starting to stress out that Ron and Chris are somehow out ahead of everybody, although TK swears the board listed it as the only flight. Rachel plays solitaire and tells TK not to worry -- there's no other flight. I believe she's got a little bag of Milano cookies to her, which is probably why she's in such a good mood. By the time they all look up to see Ron and Chris strolling down the stairs, they're all pretty relieved. Interestingly, after TK says he can breathe again, a shot of Ron and Chris gets the marble-bouncing-down-the-metal-stairs sound effect, which is how you can tell they're not going to win.
Flight to Anchorage. Ron says they're excited about the finals, and TK says he and Rachel are "in it to win it," and Nick and Don say they're "ready to go to the top." I really feel a connection with you, I won't know what's going to happen until tribal council, you sing like a Brazilian whore on a Korean cruise ship...every show has its tropes.
Anchorage! As everyone waits to get off the plane, TK notes to Nick and Don that he's seen Ron "run like a ninja." That's right: a ninja with a hernia. The Hernininja. Doubled over, but still deadly. Off the plane and to the taxis, it's Ron and Chris, then TK and Rachel, then Nick and Don. They get taxis to Sixth Avenue Outfitters in that order. As some of the EEFPs noted, I don't really understand why they're all hauling their giant backpacks around at this point. The shedding of whatever you don't need heading into the final leg has always struck me as a good idea, and these people are obviously hauling everything.
At Sixth Avenue Outfitters, Ron and Chris run in and grab a yellow plastic bag full of stuff and a clue. The clue tells them to find Ship Creek Boat Launch, and you'd better believe that in a room full of loud revelers, that sounds exactly like "Shit Creek Boat Launch." Where...like, you wouldn't want to end up, right? Up...without a...never mind. You get it. It's not as funny without the margaritas. Phil explains that at the boat launch, which looks in the previews like a great place to launch your boat into a giant pool of sludge (seriously, like it really is the Shit Creek Boat Launch), they will find another clue. Ron and Chris head back to their taxi and take off. Ron looks at the knife that's in their bag and observes that he thinks they're going to fillet a fish. You know what I've always wished they'd introduce into Ron's task-related control-freak wig-outs? A big, big knife.
TK and Rachel go to the store and grab their gear and clue. They leave. I love how Rachel's like, "Oh, a big knife for removing the guts from fish. Wonderful." Their driver answers whether he knows where the boat launch is with "I think so," and...rattlesnake! Uh-oh. Perhaps they are up the other kind of creek after all. Dun!
Nick and Don get to the store, and they take their clue and read it. And as they leave, we go back to the counter to see that they have left the gear on the counter. Yikes! In fairness, one yellow bag sitting on the counter isn't nearly as conspicuous as two or three would have been, so they might have been less likely not to notice if they'd been first or second, but it's really just...not reading thoroughly enough. Apparently, none of Don's jobs were "fact-checker." In the cab, Nick says they're looking pretty good being only a few minutes behind, and then we look upon their yellow bag of gear...again. Oh, I get it, editing guys. I get it.
Ron and Chris arrive at the boat launch and read the clue, which is for the Detour. It asks them to choose between fisherman's task. The choices are Cut The Cod and Grab The Crab. In Cut The Cod, you cut through several giant fish searching for a miniature clue. Phil allows that the task is "disgusting," but says if you have "guts" (har har), you might finish quickly. Oh, Phil. Not puns. In Grab The Crab, you jump into the hold of a boat that's full of 500 or so live crabs. You search to find one crab that's marked with a little red-and-yellow ribbon. While it's cleaner, this task will require you to deal with more pinching than the trains in India. Hi-yo! Ron and Chris want the cod. Ron interviews that the way he understands it, being pinched by crabs hurts, so he thought dead fish would be better. Good call, I'm going to say. They are surprised, though, and a little intimidated, by the size of the fish, which look like they could have come from a nightmare scenario involving a nuclear meltdown. One person, it turns out, can use the fillet knife, so I guess the other person just looks through the cut-open fish guts. Hey, nobody said racing was glamorous.
TK and Rachel are deposited by their cab driver at...what is clearly not the boat launch. Nick and Don check with their driver to make sure he knows where it is, and he says gruffly, "I'm a cab driver; I know stuff like that." Heh. You'll find out later that this particular cab driver is most definitely playing for the cameras, because...well, you'll see. Meanwhile, TK and Rachel find out from some guys fishing in the river that they're about five minutes from where the boat launch is. Their driver didn't miss by a lot, but he missed by a little. When they pulled up in their cab, it looked like they were at more of a visitor center or the picnic grounds or something, which is strange, because as previously noted, the boat launch looks kind of nasty and not like a "let's enjoy the view of the boat launch" kind of place.
"This is a lot of nasty guts," says Ron as he cuts into the fish. "People don't eat guts here, do they?" he asks. If I liked Ron better, I'd be charmed by this tendency he has to say really weird, random things, because let's just say: I sympathize. Ron wonders whether the clue might have been eaten by the fish. That looks...really disgusting, what he's doing now. It kind of looks like the fish's last meal was three buckets of creamy peanut butter. I can't really improve upon "this is a lot of nasty guts." Ron is right in the middle of bossing Christina around when she magically turns up the clue. Ding! The clue tells them to travel about sixty miles by taxi to a boat landing, where they'll take a speedboat ride to 20-Mile Glacier, where the clue does not warn them, but Phil warns us, that they'll have to climb an ice wall to get their clue once they get to the glacier. This sequence is notable mostly for the footage of Phil on the ice wall, which set off predictable screaming by the TARcon Phil Phetishists who find all footage of Phil in outdoor gear to be the equivalent of seeing him naked and covered with rose petals. Chris and Ron get into their cab, and their driver seems pretty sure he knows where the glacier is.
Nick and Don pass Ron and Chris's taxi going the other way as they're pulling up to the boat launch, so they know they're running behind. TK and Rachel are a bit behind Nick and Don, and Ron and Chris see them, too. Christina tells her cab driver that he has to stay ahead of all the other yellow cabs all day long. Nick and Don pull up to the clue box, followed closely by TK and Rachel. As soon as Nick reads the clue for the Detour and its mention of "rubber gloves from the bag you got at...," he knows what went wrong. "We didn't get a bag," he says. "Crap," says Don. Aw. AW!
Commercials. I don't want a luxury car! Get me back to my show!
In the cab back to Sixth Avenue Outfitters, Don is really frosted that Nick didn't read the clue in full and that they didn't get the bag as a result. He's laying into the kid, pretty hard, for missing the boat on the clue. "Your hindsight is always 20/20," Nick says quietly, but Don protests that it's not hindsight -- frontsight should have been just fine to read the clue and get the gear. I think what they're maybe both missing is that you really don't want just one person to read the clue. You have a perfect opportunity to double-check each other; I think you probably always want to do that. I'm not sure why they wouldn't, but since you have the option of doing that, you can't ever really blame one person for not reading the clue. Not slowing Don down much, though. Unfortunately, it's your basic Killer Fatigue mistake, coming on when teams are just desperately trying to get to the end, and they're not eating or sleeping very much, and they just lose a step. Incredibly easy to do; often fatal.
Now in second place, TK and Rachel read the Detour clue. They think that digging around inside a fish sounds worse than looking at the outsides of crabs, so they're taking the crab option.
Meanwhile, Ron and Chris are feeling good about being in first place, though Ron is sure they're not out there by much. "We're a good team now; we've come a long way since leg one," Chris says with a grin. It's good that she feels that way. We'll see how long it lasts.
As soon as TK and Rachel hop into the tank, the crabs start in on them. "This is an experience, huh?" he says. Heh. They quickly learn that these crabs are very cranky and pinchy and will motivate you to hurl them across the tank, which makes searching them for race colors kind of difficult. Furthermore, those gloves look really thin -- I was thinking they'd be big, sturdy rubber gloves that would help protect you from the pinching, but they're totally not. Being pinched by a crab that size through those particular gloves would, I think, really hurt.
A grumpy Nick and Don collect their gear from Sixth Avenue Outfitters. They ask the cab to get them back to the boat launch.
TK keeps groaning in pain as various crabs latch on. At one point, he even offers up a "Let go of me." Meanwhile, Nick tells Don they should do the fish, because he's pretty confident that Don will be very speedy with the fish-gutting. Undoubtedly, Don gutted fish for, like, the USO. TK and Rachel figure out that they can look in separate tanks, and this will at least give them a little wiggle room (or "getting away from the crabs" room), and they keep looking as Nick and Don speed toward the Detour. I enjoy the fact that Rachel shrieks, but then explains to TK with a chuckle that one of the crabs tried to take her shoe off.
Now wait -- take a moment, and mentally place Flo in the tank of crabs. Awesome. ["...Not for Zach." -- Joe R]
Anyway, Rachel tells TK that they might have to change Detours. The pressure's about to increase, because Nick and Don are back and ready to gut a fish. TK and Rachel agree to switch -- according to later interviews, they set a time limit that they'd look for ten more minutes, and if they didn't find it, they'd change tasks. And then (reportedly with one minute left on the Switch Detours Clock), TK flips over a crab and finds the yellow and red ribbon. They're leaving just as Don is preparing to cut into the cod. TK and Rachel leave, with TK -- exactly correctly -- telling Rachel that they need to hustle, because this task is not going to take Don very long. They get in a cab.
Don cuts open the fish and tells Nick to dig in and look around. "With my hands?" Nick says hesitantly. "Yes, what do you think?" Don says impatiently. Kids today, only want to play videogames, don't know the satisfaction of getting into something's innards with both hands. But it's Don who actually pulls out the clue sending them to the glacier. Back into the cab. Their moods seem better, knowing that they got through the Detour quickly and undoubtedly have picked up a little time on TK and Rachel, but Don still says, "I don't like being third out of three." Can't argue with that logic.
On the way to the glacier, TK and Rachel think Ron and Chris are about 20-25 minutes ahead of them. Rachel speculates that it shouldn't take anything too huge to close that gap, and she's very much correct, though post-flight, it's a tougher go to catch up. Ron and Chris are just pulling up at the boat launch and getting their life jackets on. They hop in a speedboat and take off, hooting and yelling as you'd expect. Christina tells us that it's been "a dream come true" running the race with her dad, and...good grief. I mean, "dream come true"? It was only, like, six or eight real days ago that he stopped hollering at her, wasn't it? Wasn't he horrible in India? I've had that dream, only I think of it as only slightly better than the one where I'm trapped in the mall when it's taken over by masked gunmen. (Recurring! Since I was a teenager! I fear retail!) She says that she and her dad are closer now. Ron's position? "We're pumped."
TK is dismayed to find that his cab driver is on the phone, asking someone where the river is. "We need another taxi, or we need to get there," TK says unhappily to the driver. "Honey, try and stay calm," Rachel says. And then a really hilarious thing happens -- we switch over to Nick and Don's cab, where Nick is saying he thinks they have a good cab driver. And their driver says, "You got numbah-one taxi-drivah." Dude. He watches the race, he knows it's the race, and he's making a joke about the race. Because he -- not Nick or Don, but Anonymous Cab Driver -- got that from Ian's weirdly obsessive repetitions of "numbah-one taxi drivah" back in Vietnam, which I totally didn't notice in the bar at all, but which is obvious on playback. That is a really weirdly meta moment. Can you imagine being that cab driver and being like, "Holy shit! I'm picking up Amazing Race contestants! Quick, what's a taxi-driver joke? ...Wait, that one's kind of racist and makes no sense here anyway. Eh, what the hell. I'm on television!" Meanwhile, TK and Rachel conclude that the drivers they had in India were easier to communicate with than these guys. But soon, he tells them that he's gotten directions and knows where to go. We shall see. TK shakes his head miserably.
And at the boat launch, it's TK and Rachel, with Nick and Don very close on their tails, having made up basically the whole gap created by the forgotten bag by having perhaps a better taxi driver and definitely a faster Detour option (at least for them). As TK and Rachel travel in their boat, Rachel interviews that her favorite thing about being on the race with TK is that they have so much fun, and...I think I believe that. I think they work really hard to do well, but they also really have managed to keep enough perspective to find things a hoot, and a lot of teams are basically hoot-proof by this point in the race. "YEAH, BABY!" TK yells, but not in the gross, fratty way. As Nick and Don ride, Nick tells us that the race has been all he hoped it would be and then some, with everything they've gotten to see and do. "We'll have many stories to tell," he says.
In first place, Ron and Chris pull up to the glacier and get the news from their guide that in order to get the clue, they have to climb the glacier. "Okay," Chris says, but Ron is like, "Um, both of us?" Ron tells us he's afraid of heights and afraid of falling into ice water, so this was stressful. Both sensible fears. Chris assures him that he can do it, and he gets strapped into his gear. Ron interviews, as we watch him climb, that it was "very intimidating" trying to do this, because of how steep it was. Christina is behind him, and she seems to have a little bit more trouble, at least as the editing tells the story. Ron finishes and is told it's "pretty impressive" for a first try. Christina keeps trying.
TK and Rachel pull up while Chris is still on the glacier. "Daddy," she says unhappily, and we go to commercials.
Commercials. Hey la, hey la. Such a good song.
When we come back, we're still in the drama of Will Chris Do It? And, of course, as is always the case in pre-commercials drama, Chris does it. I tell you, nothing portends post-commercial success like pre-commercial failure. But TK and Rachel and Nick and Don are approaching, as Christina insists in an interview that what helped her get through it was knowing that her father would be there at the top, waiting for her, ready to give her the real truth flavor about the boogers in her bones. TK is on the ice face. Ron and Chris head for the clue box. Rachel starts out on the wall. The clue tells Christina and Ron to get into a helicopter and take a nice ride to Merrill Field. Or a harrowing ride, depending on how you feel about helicopters. Phil says that when they land, they'll head for Goose Lake Park, where they can pick up another clue. Chris and Ron both look like they're cool with the helicopter ride, and they head out. They take off, as Rachel looks like she's struggling a bit on the ice wall. From the helicopter, Ron can see that the other two teams are "neck and neck right behind our tail." (I'm going to pause now while you draw a sketch in your head. Got it? Good.) TK finishes the ice wall and waits for Rachel, cheering her on until she reaches the top and they get in their helicopter. She actually gives an excited little hoot about getting in the helicopter -- I have to think they saw the helicopters and were sort of hoping that was what the clue was going to say.
Don goes first up the ice wall for his team. As he climbs, Nick notes that it puts a little pressure on him to see his 69-year-old grandpa get right through it. Yeah, that wouldn't be a great story to take back to your buddies: "Grandpa got up the wall, but hearing his bones creaking wasn't enough to motivate me up there."
TK and Rachel smooch in the helicopter.
Ron and Chris have already landed, and as TK and Rachel salivate about passing them, father and daughter hop into a taxi to Goose Lake Park.
Nick is at the top of the ice wall, so they get the helicopter clue and go. "The Roadblock's the only hope," Don observes, quite correctly. Elsewhere, TK and Rachel get a cab. Inside, as he talks about how much he loved the helicopter ride, she reaches over and grabs around his arm and just squeezes it and smiles and pushes into his shoulder with her forehead...it's one of my favorite moments of theirs, because it's just so impossible to fake something like that. That's exactly how it feels, that little overflowing happy thing, where you just grab whatever's nearest and flatten yourself against it...she's excited, and she's exhilarated, and she's stressed out, and she really, really, really likes him right now, and it's all in that little squeeze.
Ron and Chris haul ass to the clue box at Goose Lake Park, and when they open it, it's a Roadblock. "Who wants to relive your experience on the race?" the clue asks. As has been the trend in recent seasons, this does come down to remembering and cataloguing the race up to this point. Basically, in this task, you are given fifteen "recognizable items" from various tasks and points on the race. You're looking to take ten of them and place them on your little stage. The items have to meet a very imposing set of exacting requirements, including: one from each leg, three animals or animal byproducts, one U-Turn, two items at or brought to pit stops, two wheeled forms of transportation (one from a Detour), and one form of transportation generally looking like a stick. As one of the EEFP's carefully and impressively calculated, it was possible to solve this as a straight-up puzzle, without guessing. But whether you could come up with that strategy on the fly probably depends on how often you sit around playing with logic puzzles and Sudoku and whatnot. At any rate, when you have the right answer and say "Done," your clue box will open.
Christina takes the Roadblock, and Ron says he's "counting on Christina" to do the Roadblock quickly, because her memory is better than his. Diabolically, the instructions tell Chris, she notes, that she's not allowed a pen or pencil. Damn. The show carefully displays the correct items, but you know what? You won't remember what they are. Ron notes that the teams just behind them are "blowing on [their] necks." Wow. Really? This is taking a turn.
TK and Rachel. Nick and Don. TK hopes Chris and Ron slow down at the Roadblock. Christina, meanwhile, seems to confuse herself by adding requirements like an idea that "transportation" can't mean Roadblocks or Detours, so she doesn't get where she can find two forms of transportation shaped like sticks, since the pole vault (one) was a Roadblock and the stilts (two) were a Detour. "I don't get it," she says. Overthinking! Less thinking, more answering!
And here come TK and Rachel. What the show doesn't tell you, but what TK and Rachel have talked about since, is that Rachel kept a very detailed journal along the way (consistent with their actual interest in the travel aspect), and they consulted and studied it on the flight to Anchorage, specifically anticipating something like this on the last leg. Rachel takes the Roadblock for the team. "Have fun," TK tells her, and she leans forward and gives him a smooch, complete with "mmm-wah!" noise. Aw! TK says he thinks she'll do well. He and Ron have a little friendly chat as Rachel and Christina continue to try to do the puzzle. When Nick and Don show up, Nick takes the Roadblock, but he looks really nervous about it when Don tells him "that's you." Don tells TK and Ron there would have been no point in his even trying it: "I'd be there for a fuckin' year." Hee. I actually think Nick takes a pretty smart approach by bringing everything over and then trying to figure out what he wants to keep and what he wants to remove.
Christina is first to call herself done, but her clue box doesn't open. She's got the wrong thing from Ireland -- she's supposed to have the bike, and she has the donkey. I'm pretty sure this is the animal thing messing her up, because she's got the donkey on the assumption that the cleaning man isn't an animal. She doesn't seem to notice, though, that this doesn't give her two wheeled forms of transport, so it can't be right anyway. Rachel looks at her list, and she's off, too. She's got the donkey instead of the bike and no cleaning guy (same problem), but she's also got the propane tank bike for India. So she's doubled up on items from India, is her problem, because she can only use the U-Turn for India. So she's got two from India, and I'm thinking that means she's got eleven things on there. Yep. Eleven things, because when she does her count of ten, she doesn't count the U-Turn.
Nick's first try is confused. He's got the Blackberry in Lithuania, and it belongs in Italy, for one thing. Multiple difficulties. Nick's not close.
As Chris tries to regroup, she actually makes herself more wrong. She can't get past the "animal" thing, so she won't pull the donkey in favor of the bike. Rachel and Nick both have the guy on their stages, though. Rachel is having trouble remembering what the big red stick is, even though -- as the flashback demonstrates -- she's the one who pole-vaulted on it. Nick, on the other hand, can't remember the gun that was fired at the pit stop. Christina? More wrong than before on this guess. Rachel and Nick can't figure it out. Their partners know that it's all pretty even now, and anybody could take it. Which is true. The puzzle solvers look miserable.
Commercials. Man, that movie with Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey looks terrible. Just like their last movie was.
Puzzle. Widespread confusion. Worried partners. "It's a quite difficult puzzle to solve," Ron observes. Rachel closes her eyes to think as she voices over that there was a formula for it. Christina is saying "frickin'" a lot as she grows more frustrated. There's even real swearing. Has she sworn on this entire race until now? Frankly, I think Christina has confused herself so much now that she's lost the thread totally, and she can't untangle anything. Rachel takes the propane bike off and puts the other bike from Ireland on. Christina has resorted to prayer. Finally, Rachel remembers the pole vaulting. "Pole-vaulting was in Amsterdam," she says. It also seems to have occurred to her that the cleaning man is an animal, because she has the right combination now. "Done," she says. And the box pops open. "Yyyyyes!" she says, and she runs over to grab the clue. She runs back over to TK, who's excitedly pumping his fist and jumping up and down with happiness. Everyone else looks miserable. I think TK and Rachel are expecting this clue to say "finish line," but instead, it just tells them to find the "Cook's-eye view of the sleeping lady." Phil explains that this means they're supposed to take a taxi to a statue of Captain Cook. "I'm so excited, baby," she squeaks as they grab their backpacks. In the cab, she claps for herself, and she deserves it. TK and Rachel's cab driver seems to know where they're supposed to be going. Of course, "seems" only counts in horseshoes. Or something.
Christina is still praying. And finally, she gets the answer and pops the clue box. She runs to her dad, as Nick looks around even more miserably than before. As she opens the clue, Christina is basically crying, which...okay. I realize you were ahead for a long time, but let's pull it together, okay? Thank you. Ron and Chris's cab driver knows where it is, and she begs him to beat the taxi that left before. Meanwhile, TK and Rachel's cab needs to turn around, so they're unhappy about that. Meanwhile, Ron assures Chris that it's not time to give up, since anything can happen. "It's not over until it's over," he says.
Cook statue. And it's TK and Rachel, opening a clue telling them to find the "Salmon Hooker." Phil says this means you run into downtown, and you find the statue of...a salmon hooker (you'd be surprised how much it looks like...a salmon, but also a hooker) and find their clue. Ron and Chris open the clue. Both teams get directions to the statue. And first to get there are...TK and Rachel, who open a clue telling them, "This is it!!! Take a taxi to Girdwood Airport and run to the Finish Line. Hurry!!!! GO, GO, GO!!!!!" Yeah, the clue people are hitting the exclamation points just a leeeettle bit hard, there. ["At least none of them are '1's." -- Joe R] They hunt for a cab. So do Ron and Chris. Both teams get in cabs. In the cab, TK is really, really stressing out. They're just so happy and excited together that it's really quite touching. After all the teams who have just stressed and sweated and looked miserable at this same point, they're just...you know, they're really glad to be there. They're excited. Meanwhile, Ron is talking in the cab about how he learned to be a better person. Yeah, yeah. Finish line!
Teams in cabs! Teams in cabs!
A taxi pulls up to the finish line where all the teams are waiting with Phil at the big red mat. Everybody cheers and claps. Aaaaaaand, TK AND RACHEL! I was so happy, seriously. I know it would have been nice to have an older dude win, but based on these individual teams, I like them so much more, and they really did do this the way I wish everybody would do it. They had fun, they played hard, they didn't take things personally unless they were personal, they didn't yell at each other...they really did play a model game, from my perspective, and I was really, really happy to see them get out of that cab. "I think I'm going to cry already!" Rachel says as they're running. My absolute favorite part is that as he's running to the mat, TK turns back to face her, doing the exact same fist-pumping, good-spirited stuff he's done all along, running backwards so he can look at her being so happy. I just think they are adorable and wonderful. They're beside themselves with joy. "It's kind of freaking me out," TK says once he's heard the "you are the official winners" speech from Phil. Asked how their relationship changed, TK says that it's really only stronger -- which is clearly true -- and they smooch. TK interviews that while Rachel is little, she "beat a hell of a lot of very competitive people." Which is completely true, and a fair point.
Ron and Chris run up to finish second. They look genuinely happy as they receive congratulations. Christina insists to Phil that there's nobody else she'd do the race with other than her dad. Really? Nobody? Why do I find that a little bit sad? Ron tells us that he feels grateful that he's a changed person and so on. And then Ron says this: "For once in my life, when I say these words, 'I love you,' I really mean it." Uh...huh. Okay. Maybe he...meant something else? Because that sounds horrible. It literally means "I have not loved you until now." I find that...I mean, the show clearly wants me to find it heartwarming, and I find it completely chilling. Sorry not to be with the vibe, here, but that's an awful thing to say, or think, about your kid. It's one thing to say "I love you and I don't express it," it's another to say "I express that I love you, but up until now, I didn't, actually." Ron goes on about bonding, but I feel like that slip there was so telling that if I'm being honest, I don't take any of it to heart. Loving parents do not announce on television that they've spent their lives not loving you. That's capital-G Gross. She seems like a pretty nice person, and I think she handled his shitty attitude really well, but...man, I think she's in for a lot of disappointment once there aren't any cameras around.
Nick and Don finish third (Nick has confirmed in post-race interviews that he did indeed finish the Roadblock; they didn't get a "mercy clue," at least at that point.) Everyone cheers, and Phil tells Don he's the oldest person to ever get this far in the race. Phil asks Don if he figured he'd get so far. "Yeah, but not in third," he says. Asked if he got what he wanted from racing (other than winning), Nick says he really wanted to finish the race, and he wanted to have a great time with Don, so he did get what he wanted. There is a "Grandpa! Grandpa! Grandpa!" chant from the other teams on the mat as everyone mingles and exchanges hugs. Don says he always said he could do it, and now, he proved it. He says he was happiest just to go on every leg. Rachel says TK is her best friend and rock and "favorite person." Aw. TK says that they ran the whole without "compromising [their] relationship in any way" was very satisfying, and I think that for once, he's actually earned that comment. Because they were unusually good at managing arguments without turning on each other, and it does kind of make the "we scream at each other because we're so competitive" thing sound like the crapload it is. Those things are on separate axes, and you don't act meaner because you want to win more; you just don't, and he's right, and good for him. And that's why when he says "nice guys can definitely finish first," that seems okay. He's not saying "nice guys finish first," as in, "I won because I am a nice guy." He's just saying that it's possible to win and be nice, which I read as a direct response to Jen's bullshit complaining about how they obviously didn't care about winning, since they didn't scream at people and act like dicks.
Aaaand we're out. Thanks for a good season, folks, not to mention more than six good years. I couldn't have spent it better.
Executive Producer? Jerry Bruckheimer.