Average ranking after leg 12 in New York
- Jas & Jag 1.75
- Joseph & Adam 4.25
- Kyland & Taylor 4.66
- Izzy & Paige 4.72 (eliminated at the end of E11 in Paris)
Let's start with that cliffhanger in Paris.
Actually it was a lot closer than we thought due to the fact that Joseph & Adam got lost at the Trocadero looking for the pitstop and even spotted Izzy & Paige running to the pit stop mat from a distance. So just imagine if Izzy & Paige had taken a far more efficient route to complete their scramble in Paris, they could have overtaken Joseph & Adam. The Trocadero is a really big area and it is usually full of tourists, so trying to find Phil and the pitstop mat there would have been a challenge. Joseph & Adam ran all the way down to the Eiffel Tower and back - that was a lot of time wasted and I can only imagine the sheer panic they would have felt at that moment as they knew Izzy & Paige were also fighting for that last spot in the finals at that moment. This was precisely the kind of drama that the producers love. But that would have been a moot point regardless, since neither teams were ever going to realistically challenge Jas & Jag in the final.
I love the way Jas & Jag formed such a bond with their Punjabi taxi driver.
For those of you who didn't realize, allow me to explain: Jas & Jag are Sikhs, their parents came from a region in India called Punjab - the language they speak there is known as Punjabi. So with this taxi driver, not only did they share a language, they have the same religion and cultural roots. As they approached the Yankee Stadium, they emptied their wallets and gave him everything they had on them, even the euros. Now that is a textbook approach on how to form a bond with your taxi driver on the Amazing Race, "if you get me there faster than the other teams, I will give you a lot of money." Okay, you could argue that Jas & Jag's taxi driver probably wanted to see a Punjabi team win, but they weren't just expecting that loyalty for nothing, they were willing to back that up with real money and a lot of it. As I have said so many times before, it is in really bad taste to flaunt the fact that you could potentially win one million dollars in front of a taxi driver who will never ever make that kind of money driving a taxi. Instead, you should try to use some kind of cultural bond to get to know them better, treat them like a friend and build a bond with them. If you are not planning to share that million dollars with your taxi driver, then your taxi driver has absolutely no reason to care if you win or not as Izzy & Paige found out the hard way in Paris when their bad taxi driver took the longest possible route and that led to their elimination.
The rappel challenge is easier than it looks - it was way too easy.
There was nothing that could go wrong with that rappelling challenge, it was too easy. The racer was in full control of the descent and the mechanism to release the rope was really simple to operate. The only thing that could've gone wrong was if a racer was that terrified of heights and refused to do it, but that never happened. But I always say, if you're afraid of heights then never go on TAR. Like have you ever watched this programme before for crying out aloud? In my heights challenge on 007: RTAM S2, not only did I have to climb up a climbing frame bolted to the side of a skyscraper in Bangkok (climbing up was pure physical strength, unlike rappelling down when gravity does all the work), when I got to the top, I had to solve a puzzle with my race partner when the lactic acid in my arms, legs and back was making me struggle to hold on - yet I had to ignore the pain and focus on a complex puzzle. All that time, the moment I looked down, I could see the crowd gathering on the pavement below looking like ants as I was dangling about 60 storeys up in the air by a thin rope and safety harness. It was so much more difficult than this challenge at the Empire State Building. We finished 2nd in that leg. What I had to do in Bangkok does seem a lot harder than a task chosen by the TAR team for a finale, which disappoints me. Big fans of this kind of competitive reality TV like me have seen teams pushed to the limit doing incredibly difficult and scary tasks when there is a lot of money at stake and this one just seemed way too easy. So before you people wanna say, I'd like to see you do that Alex before you judge the others - guess what? I am a former contestant in this genre and I have done far more difficult stuff before, so yes I will judge what I see harshly because I have definitely earned the right to do so having been through this process myself. But note that I am not judging the contestants here, I'm only judging the production crew for their poor decisions in the construction of this leg in New York.
The Sesame Street delivery was a complete waste of time.
What the heck was that? There was no difficulty in that task. What could have possibly gone wrong? They weren't even navigating the streets of New York to find the studio -they were in a taxi and the drivers were using their phones to find the address. Whilst Sesame Street is a cultural icon that many viewers would recognize, I feel that the racers should have been made to do a task like solve a puzzle before getting their next clue. Alternatively, they could have been made to do a task at the bakery - either something physical in the kitchen or something intellectual like trying to identify the ingredients of a cake, before being given the package. The producers dropped the ball on this one and that was dumb.
Even the fabric selection task at Spandex House was too simple.
Granted the reams of fabric are heavy, the teams had no difficulty identifying the correct fabrics in the shop. That meant that this task was really straightforward, albeit time consuming and there was no real way for a team to mess up or get stuck on this task, allowing a team from behind to catch up. When a task is so linear and straightforward, it creates a boring leg where teams simply depart in the order they had arrived in. The editors in post-production tried to make a big deal about how Jas & Jag got into big trouble when some of the red fabric got tangled in the wheel of their cart but I was like, yeah right, as if. You're just desperate to make a big deal of it because they were already so far ahead at that point.
The crossword puzzle wasn't that hard either, was it?
None of the teams got stuck at the crossword puzzle. There is a fine balance to be struck with the final memory challenge - it should be hard enough to challenge even the most meticulous teams who have taken notes, but it shouldn't be so crazy hard that it proves impossible to solve. The really only confusing part of their memory challenge was the cryptic clues 'first strike' and 'last strike' which was in reference to the consequences of their first challenge on the first leg, hence 'express pass' and 'hazard'. But even with that, the rest seemed straightforward - if you couldn't solve a particular cryptic clue, then you simply left it and came back to it later, knowing that you could spell out the answer with the remaining letters at the bottom of the board. Even if you did get an answer wrong, the system was set up to show you exactly where the mistake was and it was easy to correct the error like that. Hence I felt that this memory challenge was definitely too easy as it really didn't give the teams trying to catch up a realistic chance to do so. I am not against the concept of using a crossword puzzle but the level of difficulty has got to be high enough and this clearly wasn't the case. I would have also liked to have seen them use something like a Wordle to make it more relevant to 2025, given the popularity of the game and it did originate from New York as well, on the New York Times website. I'd make the teams solve a series of Wordles to get their last and final clue but for each one they fail, they must serve a five minute penalty.
Any surprise with the results?
No, not at all. I predicted the results of the finals correctly but it was hardly rocket science. You might have thought that an easy leg devoid of hard challenges would somehow level the playing field for the other two teams but they needed Jas & Jag to have made a silly mistake to have any realistic chance of catching up and that just didn't happen. Jas & Jag's average of 1.75 is impressive but still doesn't match the average of 1.45 set by Ricky & Cesar in S36. This finale was an anticlimax, the results were a forgone conclusion the moment Tucker & Eric were eliminated. I don't even like Tucker & Eric but I would have much rather seen them in the finale to at least create some tension for the viewers - without them, it was just way too easy for Jas & Jag to simply cruise their way to victory without being challenges at all.
What were the biggest criticisms of this season?
The biggest complaint seems to be the route which confined the racers to Europe - I don't actually have a problem with that but it does come across as quite an easy route for the racers on this season as Europe is obviously a rich and modern part of the world, so you would have a far easier time traveling around a European country compared to destinations like India, Tanzania or Peru. There is also less of a language barrier in most European countries as well, so this almost seemed like an easier route for the racers this season and I think the fans really want to see the racers pushed to their limits in more challenging locations. It is not like the places they visited weren't beautiful or interesting, but they are very tourist friendly and that makes life a lot easier for the racers. My biggest complaint is the same season after season: it is the casting of the teams - some of them are very capable whilst others are joker teams. I understand that they are drawing from former BB contestants but good grief, there were at least five joker teams in this season who had no hope in hell of surviving more than a few legs if they were lucky. Then you had two super strong teams who had a realistic chance of winning, but oh dear, one of those teams Tucker & Eric got eliminated before the finals. I would really prefer to see a season where there are no joker teams who are so weak and incompetent, but with every team evenly matched.So if you want a black team, great cast a black team who are super intelligent and capable. You want an LGBTQ team, great, then cast a lesbian couple who are super intelligent and capable. You want a single mum and her daughter team, great - cast a single mum and her daughter who are super intelligent and capable. Never sacrifice the "super intelligent and capable" part just to put in someone in the name of diversity. You can still have a very competent cast that can still be very diverse at the same time, diversity doesn't mean casting someone who is woefully incompetent.
The idiocy on social media will shorten your life I swear.
I read so much crap on social media about Jas & Jag's win and some of you have felt that it wasn't fair but you blamed Jas & Jag and made them the object of your hatred. There was also a lot of blatant racism in that as well since Jas & Jag are turban-wearing Sikhs, but having been through the process myself as a former contestant, I know what it is like to be on set during the filming - there will always be a massive crew that are off-camera, they are not seen but they control so much of the outcome. Instead of directing your hatred, anger and frustration at Jas & Jag for winning, why not direct those negative feelings at the producers? I don't want to make this about myself but from my own season, I have a very, very long list of complaints about some of the decisions and behaviour of the production crew during the filming and of course, the viewers never ever get to see any of that but I am only acutely aware of how their decisions, actions and words affected the outcome of the race. These people in production are human and they make mistakes - they can have poor error of judgment, they may jump to the wrong conclusions and yes, pardon me for stating the obvious, they do really stupid things which adversely affect what you may see as a viewer; but how about holding the production crew to account for a change instead of blaming the racers? Please. I urge you to consider how this whole product is very manufactured and edited, and how the role the production team decides and manipulates what the viewers get to see.
One last word on the 'let's go' debate.
Many of you have commented that the phrase 'let's go' has been very overused by the racers on this season and I agree - the phrase makes a lot of sense in certain context when you want to start doing something. So if we're shopping in the mall and we're in a shop, you are not interested with the stuff in that shop, so you would like to move onto the next shop and you want to check with me if I too am ready to go. So you ask me, "are you done here?" And if I am indeed done, I'd reply, "yeah, let's go." So in this context, "let's go" makes complete sense as I'm literally telling you that I'm happy and ready to leave this store and go onto the next one right now. So in certain conversations, the phrase 'let's go' is completely normal. But many Americans have now used the phrase as something they would exclaim to celebrate when they are happy, like if they have successfully completed a task on the race. I have found this rather unimaginative and it is like the racers in question lack a wider vocabulary - well-educated Americans should have a much better command of the English language to choose something a lot more interesting than 'let's go' to express themselves in such a situation. So what I did when I was on 007 RTAM S2 was I used a variety of loan words from various languages to express that same emotion, I used French, Spanish, German, Russian, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Welsh, Dutch and Italian - and of course, I came across as very pretentious and I drove the producers mad at the thought of just how they were going to subtitle me. There was this scene in Mexico when another team was casting so much shade on me for choosing to do an entire section in French instead of English and I remember am exasperated producer once yelling at me, "Alex, can you just please speak English for this part." I realize that only two teams on this season were at least bilingual - Natalie & Stephanie speak Spanish and Jas & Jag speak Punjabi so why didn't they use their own languages a bit more?
Which were the biggest surprises in this season?
I think there are three incidents stood out for me. Obviously, there was the shock elimination of Tucker & Eric in E9 as they were such a strong team. Secondly, it was how Jack & Chelsie just kept surviving le after leg all the way till E10, despite the fact that I thought they would be one of the first to be eliminated as Jack just came across as a fish out of water from the very start. Then of course, it was Jas & Jag literally giving the first place prize away to Natalie & Stephanie in E3, that has never ever happened before and it was only in the Australian TAR that something similar has happened in the finale in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia back in TAR Australia S7 when all three teams decided to step on the pit stop mat together at the same time, creating a tie. They were all celebrity teams anyway trying to raise money for their charities, so the prize money was split three ways amongst the three charities - whilst that outcome created a lot of feel-good vibes, it never happened again on TAR Australia as the viewers really want to see a true winner after the entire process.
So, what else is there to watch in the meantime?
Well you should all watch 007: Road to a Million S2 to see me in action there. I am also currently enjoying Traitors Canada S3 which is awesome, I love the host Karine Vanasse so much. Then there is Wie Is De Mol (WIDM) Anniversary special which is available for free on Youtube - it is in Dutch but there are English subtitles. I have just completed the current season of UK Celebrity Race Across the World S2 - it is watchable enough but it struggles with a weak cast, these are celebrities looking for another 15 minutes of fame, they have no idea what the race is about and they are so incompetent and stupid at times it is painful to watch. Obviously, a lot of these series will wrap up and finish before the Christmas break so I'll still be on the look out for something good to watch next. In the meantime, I'm planning my next epic journey in late January: it will be long haul, two capital cities in Asia and I will be visiting my 81st country but until I book the flights, I don't want to make any announcements. But you can always follow me on my Instagram to see me travel around the world. It has been my pleasure to guide you through this season, thank you very much for reading.
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