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The 30th installment of title series.
In this season, described as "most competitive season ever", it boasts quite possibly the “most competitive” group to undergo the perennial hunt for red and yellow flags and includes an Indianapolis 500 Winner, former NBA All-Stars, competitive eaters, and a pair that came essentially straight out of this season’s Big Brother house to hit the race running. Host Phil Keoghan describes the casting as selecting the people who are the best in their field. The season premiered on January 3rd, 2018.
The season was one of the better outputs in recent years, if divisive. On the one hand, it contained an ugly rivalry between two dating couples in which neither team was likable and it had some unfortunate eliminations early on. Often times it felt poorly produced such as having many tasks either too easy or too linear, extensive Rubberband AI that placed all the teams on the same flight every leg, but the most grating example was going three consecutive legs without a Roadblock with one of those legs also lacking a Detour. Alongside that, many legs had one side of the Detour clearly easier than the other. Furthermore, not only were both the Fast Forward and the Express Pass removed, but the U-Turn before a Detour returned and two new twists were introduced to varying degrees of success (the Partner Swap and the Head-to-Head). However, it did produce several likable teams and every leg had multiple placement changes, resulting in five different winners in the first five legs, offering the competitive edge that the show promised. Ultimately, the finale was what divided fans the most. Despite it having an epic Final Exam Finale, it produced one of the most controversial winners in the show's history. Nevertheless, the new time placement put it at its highest ratings since Season 13, leaving fans hoping this season won't be its last.
Teams:
Cody Nickson & Jessica Graf (#TeamBigBrother)
Newly dating couple from the recently concluded 19th season of Big Brother, with Cody winning the "America's Favorite Houseguest" prize of $25,000. They established themselves as frontrunners early on, winning the second leg, and became early favorites to win. Starting with the second French leg, though, they found themselves finishing in the bottom two for five legs in a row due to Jessica's frequent whining (though one of these finishes can be attributed to the Partner Swap). It was this whining and their sometimes questionable gameplay that earned her the ire of fans and Brittany. Nevertheless, they soldiered on and started to look more threatening towards the end with back-to-back second place finishes. In the finale, they wavered between first and second, especially when they failed a taxi. Luckily for them, the incredibly hard memory task allowed them to catch up and they found all the pieces before anyone else. Henry's accidentally replacing the right piece with a wrong piece allowed Jessica to catch up and win, allowing them to earn the distinction of becoming the first Big Brother team to win The Amazing Race. This grand prize win redeemed their poor showing on Big Brother and let them begin work toward starting their happy family, as Cody proposed to Jessica around the time the season finale aired, extending their victory celebration.
- Action Dad: Cody is incredibly athletic to the point Jessica calls it his "cyborg mode", and he has a girl named Paisley from an earlier premarital relationship that came to an end when the woman learned she was expecting a baby (long story), but Cody took in her child as his own.
- Animal Motifs: Kittens, for Jessica. We discover why Jessica has a Cat Eared Headband (which she wore in Big Brother 19). She loses all control around cute kitties.
- Affectionate Nickname: Jessica often refers to Cody as built like a "cyborg". On Big Brother, jokes about Cody behaving like a robot abounded (stoic, emotes very little, makes robotic movements, very driven and focused, etc.)
- Arch-Enemy: For Jessica, Brittany. Jessica just doesn't like her, as she's emotional and difficult to work with in the game. Brittany also hounds her for doing things to propel only Team Big Brother forward and deliberately sabotaging others.
- Big Bad: Achieved this status as of Leg 6 because they are the only team who is antagonizing the progress of others and upsetting people. Given that they were competitors on a show where swindling is encouraged, this is expected. Surprisingly, Jessica is more proactive as a villain than Cody, but both of them had a hand in U-Turning Team Well Strung when Team Big Brother was in last place, a decisive move that saved them and wiped out the violinists.
- The Bad Guys Win: Despite not being nearly as antagonistic as they were in Big Brother, the most villainous team ended up winning.
- Character Overlap: Cody and Jessica made their reality TV debut on Big Brother 19, where they almost immediately became enamored with each other. Cody tried to take control over the house after Paul Abrahamian returned in a twist and dominated the group. However, all attempts to stand against Paul were thwarted, resulting in a large amount of quarreling as the couple became payback targets and were ousted from the house, bemoaning the incompetence of their peers when Paul made it to the end of the game, but houseguest Josh Martinez (who did a lot of things to annoy the couple) ultimately surpassed him. This time, Cody and Jessica are self-reliant- and Josh can't bang pots and pans to annoy them.
- Chasing a Butterfly: All the adorable kitties at the fish port (because cats love fish) in Morocco steal Jessica's attention away from a challenge, causing Cody to remind her to focus. Then she spies another kitty in Leg 9 and it happens all over again...Cody: Oh my God, she's holding another kitten.
- Chekhov's Skill: We learn Cody can speak loose Arabic from his time deployed in the Middle East as a sniper, which he picked up as part of survival. For the first time on camera, he uses it to speak to a cab driver as soon as the man says he's not good with English, which amazed Jessica as well as the viewers at how sudden and efficient that is.
- Dark Horse Victory: Nobody expected them to win the show. While their progress started off as good, the team began to labor in the bottom ranks about a third of the way into the race. Their unsteady placing in the previous legs and constantly scraping away from elimination made for a stunning upset at the final leg.
- Directionless Driver: Cody, living up to the stereotype, didn't want to waste time trying to figure out which way to go to get to the docks in Iceland... which got him and Jessica even worse off if they had stopped to ask somebody for help.
- Dramatic Irony: They went from being the most hounded people in Big Brother 19 who were the bitterest of enemies to Paul and Josh who would go on to be the final two houseguests, to winning $1,030,000 combined, more than Josh and Paul's winnings put together. This couple essentially redeemed their standing as decent competitors and set themselves apart from one of the most polarizing casts in reality game show history as people who actually worked to earn their keep and did not blindly trust Paul or make fools of themselves like Josh.
- Fish out of Water: Jessica has never been camping in her life, which makes her incapable of setting up a tent.
- Hidden Depths: Cody wants to start building houses after he finishes the race, and is hoping to use his game show winnings along with the assistance of Jessica to finance and make his dream a reality.
- Hypocrite: Jess got snippy with Evan for not wanting to work with her and Kristi right away in Zimbabwe during the 7th leg, despite her withholding information from teams in the Roadblock just one leg prior until she had finished.
- I Did What I Had to Do: The extent of Jessica's explanations for not telling Brittney about leaving her gnome behind by accident and not giving vital information to help Ocean Rescue or Indy Car. Jessica maintains survival mode instincts for the race; this is seen when she avoids telling other teams things that would help them advance when Jessica and Cody are on the fringe of or are in last place or fear that they could fall behind at any time or have something come bite them in the butt. Jessica doesn't actually show any real satisfaction in doing these things, yet should not be surprised that Brittany has disdain for her.
- Irrational Hatred: Jessica doesn't seem to grasp why Brittany is mad at her in the first place and is equally mad at her for being annoying.
- Irony: The couple that everyone (the houseguests) hated in the Big Brother house ironically become the most hated team by the remaining teams. See Alpha Bitch under Ocean Rescue below. Subverted when it turns out to be only Brittany really bearing a grudge and Ocean Rescue gets the boot. Then, out of the remaining teams, X-Games and Indy Car actually really like Team Big Brother and Yale is neutral toward them.
- Language Barrier: Despite Cody doing well with Arabic in Morocco, he struggled with French in the two France legs.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Invoked and played with. By Leg 6, Cody and Jess have screwed over other teams enough that Cody fully expects for them to be selected for a U-Turn. It finally happens in Leg 8 by the very team they screwed over (Ocean Rescue). However, see Misblamed below, and they actually managed to get enough headway over the twins that they ultimately remained in the game over Eric and Daniel.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Had several top three finishes in the first few legs, but then fell to near the bottom and hung on precariously. They lampshade becoming the back of the pack in Leg 10 but Jessica clarifies she is not that kind of girl in their relationship.
- The Load: Jess worried that this was what she was becoming as the race wore on. It didn't help that she only did three of the Roadblocks, without technically breaking the Roadblock split rule. However, she ultimately averted this when she pulled ahead in the Final Memory Challenge.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle:
- Cody shed his footwear to hop in the fountain at the start of the race, but as a consequence, it slowed him and Jessica down to last place getting away as he put it back on, while other teams didn't bother to do that and rocketed ahead.
- A literal case occurs with Jessica, who somehow ended up having her sneakers disappear when she changed clothes to partake in a Detour of Leg 8, and was stuck in flip-flops prior to the start of Leg 9. Thankfully, she and Cody made a run to a shoe store and used a budget of 30 dollars worth of Zimbabwe money to hook her up with some new sneakers.
- The Millstone: Jessica lampshades herself as this late into the game, claiming they only got second place in Leg 10 due to Cody and probably would have gotten first if she wasn't so useless. Though averted at the Final Exam Puzzle, where Jessica ended up being the first to finish it and netting them the win.
- Misblamed: She was accused of sabotaging Brittany and Alex by them and the fans, when all she did was just wait till after she finished to give Brittany and Alex the correct answer. Jessica's notorious reputation seems to be the motivation to smear her name. It doesn't help that the team itself was notorious on Big Brother for harassing other houseguests, through bullying, and while Paul's revenge went too far, they ironically ended up as a well liked villainous couple. Brittany and Lucas getting even with a U-Turn is fueled by Jessica's repeated and deliberate choice to be pragmatic and help herself and Cody and not make their situation worse by helping other teams that are lagging behind whenever they teeter on last place, which happens a lot.
- My Greatest Second Chance: Both, especially Jessica, see the race as their redemption for Big Brother, where she was the last person to be evicted before Jury and Cody got evicted twice and was the first juror. Jessica also thinks their win makes them the team to beat. So far, it's looking like they've got a good shot, especially after surviving legs that would normally eliminate teams and even excelling at tasks that would normally be difficult.
- No Sense of Direction: Their refusal to ask for directions cost them first place in the first leg. Well, Cody's refusal.Jessica: (irritated) Cody... you're not listening to me...
- Older and Wiser: They've learned to be slightly more cautious from their last game show competition outing. Jessica is not mean-spirited as she had been in the past. Cody also acknowledges how many times he was wrong in the house. They still make some mistakes, however, as it was October 2017, just a few weeks after Big Brother 19.
- Patriotic Fervor: When Jessica asks Cody about living in Saint Tropez, France, Cody refused due to France not having a constitution or bill of rights as good as America's.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Jessica not telling Brittany she had left her gnome behind was not really intentional so much as the fact she and Cody were close to last place themselves. However, she didn't realize she had been the one to cause the problem in the first place by moving the gnome out of Brittany's hands, which Brittany understandably speculates may have been intentional, even though the edits show it wasn't.
- Pride Before a Fall: After finishing the roadblock in first, Cody brags about beating two Yale graduates at a spelling challenge. After the final task, Cody's confidence gets the better of him when he and Jessica loses the foot race to win the first leg after refusing to ask for directions. The Yale team itself actually caught up from their own stumble and finished the leg right after them, and it would have been very ironic if they passed Cody and Jessica.
- Rage Quit: A downplayed version where Cody flat-out gives up on the singing challenge in Zimbabwe because he doesn't think he can do any better no matter how many times he goes at it and needs a kiss from Jessica to spur him on.
- Relationship Upgrade: They are now engaged as of February 2018.
- Took a Level in Badass: They've managed to consistently stay in the top bracket of the race, and when they don't, they play quite aggressively to survive. They also now have an impressive $30,000 in combined game show winnings (Cody has $27,500, Jessica has $2,500; this is not counting the minor contractual stipends for each week they stayed in the Big Brother house, respectively).
- Took a Level in Kindness: On Big Brother, these two were constantly in conflict with an unreasonable house and unable to have control over their fate in the game, whereas on The Amazing Race, they are in control. They compliment the intelligence of their fellow racer compared to their Big Brother season alumni, and Cody cracks a few funny jokes, too. Justified in that their negative attitudes from their debuts were situation-induced. Cody mentions in episode 2 three months feels like three years in the house and you can't get away from people you hate, but in the race you can do as you please. When you don't have a Paul and/or a Josh on your case, life gets easier.
- Unkempt Beauty: Cody after being through a rigorous task to carry supplies to weight down scales with 300 pounds is all sweated up, and Jess isn't having it. When she tries to tidy him up as he drives a cab, he (jokingly?) whines like a little kid that she's embarrassing him in front of his friends.
- Villain Ball: Episode 3 shows Jessica taking advantage of Brittany's neglect to pick up her Travelocity gnome... and then Brittany figures out she's been had and yells for her down an alley. Also, it was a non-elimination leg, so Jess may have to answer for that. By Leg 6, they screw over two teams and become easy candidates for the dreaded U-Turn.
Henry Zhang & Evan Lynack (#TeamYale)
Dating Yale debate teammates. They stood out early when they struggled at the very first Head-to-Head challenge in Belgium, but soon proved they could step it up when they need to after winning the following leg. From then on, they became a middle-of-the-pack team, with the two having their argumentative moments (mainly due to Evan's competitive spirit). They also distanced themselves from other teams as the race wore on, causing them to be seen as outcasts. However, they ultimately survive both a U-Turn and a Speed Bump during the race, becoming the third team to bounce from last to first after completing said Speed Bump, and were one of the favorites heading into the finale. Though they arrived at the memory task last after falling behind at the Ball Park challenge, Henry was shown to have reached the right answer first. He then made a tragic error of trading that piece out before checking to see if he was right. This allowed Jessica to beat him out and they ended up in 2nd.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Invoked near the end of the race, where they put themselves at a distance from the rest of the teams. The other three teams see themselves as highly competitive and get along well and feel like good friends and want to round out the final three teams together, but Yale is the odd group out and not exactly the most athletic.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Double subverted. Evan gets smacked by a metal sailboat pole and a piece of her tooth is broken off into the ocean and she tries and fails to rescue it. Thankfully, dental was there to reconstruct her tooth immediately after she and Henry checked in at the Leg 4 Pit Stop so that she would not have to spend the race with a chip.
- Chekhov's Skill: Evan uses her knowledge of Arabic from a semester of abroad studies in Marrakesh to communicate with a cab driver in Leg 3. Henry's experience with Cantonese aids him very well in Leg 11 and lets Yale defy a Speed Bump and finish the leg first, something only two other teams have managed to do.
- Disaster Dominoes: Their horrible luck with the Frites Race. They went from third place to eighth, with almost all of those losses being to teams who did it in one try. each time getting more tired and alternating to try and get the race licked. As a final insult, Harry wipes out right as he's about to cross the finish line and win, but at least he has a healthy lead on April that gives him enough time to recover and finally secure his and Evan's spot on the Pit Stop mat. A future stumble has Henry flashing back to the same thing.
- Gender-Blender Name: Evan is rarely a woman's name.
- Hime Cut: In Leg 5, the first time we get a good glimpse of Evan with her hat and headband off, she has these signature clipped bangs revealed. Most of the time she either has her hair up or covered.
- Idiot Ball: Averted, but just barely. In Leg 9, Henry backed away from a flight booking station and thought it was a good idea to try and get a better flight than the one everyone else had in Leg 9, but it was then brought up that there may not even be another flight to choose. Yale stuck with the same flight.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle:
- Evan understandably leaves her shoes behind and goes barefoot during the watery sailing roadblock. Amusingly, she has a full pedicure. The fact that she has time to maintain red nails during the race is astounding. She puts the shoes aside again during rafting in Leg 7, along with Daniel.
- Henry has the literal example happen to him in Leg 2 when he starts to slip out of his shoe running the Friet Race the first time and has to stop and re-affix his heel inside the sneaker.
- Never My Fault: In the penultimate episode of the season, Evan starts to lose patience and confidence in Henry's ability to make decisions and opposes a few, causing them to be held up long enough that they come in last. Any time Henry so much as hints that Evan is causing problems, she stares icy daggers into his soul until he shuts up.
- Poor Communication Kills: One thing that gets Evan quickly irritated is when Henry doesn't tell her what he's going to do next. In the final three legs, her patients runs out and she starts sighing with exasperation and impatience and calls him out on it.
- Pragmatic Hero: Evan. She'll be helpful when she needs to, but she doesn't always make herself a team player outside of her boyfriend and is willing to win most arguments (it's what she does best as a debater).
- Taught by Experience: Henry finally passed the Goat Yoga Moms at the Head-to-Head in the second leg when he figured out that he had to cut her off at the corner after he was cut off there several times. He also realized keeping in the middle of the course was safer than going for the inside lines (where he wiped out several times). Evan also invoked this trope when she finally figured out how to steer the boat in Leg Four.
- That's Gotta Hurt: During the roadblock in Leg 4, Evan chipped her tooth when the sail's railing was blown into her mouth. Fortunately, she got it repaired in time before the next leg.
- The Smart Couple: Evan very quickly figured out the meaning behind the letter challenge and the team propelled their way to first place. They unfortunately ran into trouble with the drink-naming challenge next when a man off the street gave them bad information.
- Tomboyish Baseball Cap: Evan is almost Never Bareheaded, wearing her black ballcap nearly all the time, and she has a take-charge and athletic personality.
- Tomboyish Ponytail: Evan sometimes has a staunch ponytail, usually with her tomboyish hat.
- Tragic Mistake: In what may be the one scene that causes Henry to bang his head against a wall when he sees what happened in the finale and Evan to Dope Slap him, Henry actually had all twelve parts on his plane assembled correctly at one point, but unknowingly switched the tail fin for the wrong one, because after numerous tries to get it right, he simply didn't realize right from wrong and blindly pushed himself into making the most fatal and costly error of the entire game.
- Weak, but Skilled: Showed signs of this on Leg 2 after failing six foot races. They bounce back terrifically in Leg 3, scoring their first win and proving they can be physical as well as smart. Henry's ability to operate a winch and pull a rover out of the mud subverts the perception in Leg 7 when he demonstrates actual strength. Evan's slow ascent up the Bay Bridge in the final leg compared to the athletic Cody and Kristi, however, does not.
Kristi Leskinen & Jen Hudak (#TeamExtreme)
Professional skiers and X-Games champions. As the last female team standing early on, they hoped to become the fourth all-female team to win the Race. They quickly established themselves as a threat, for even though they only won two legs, they were the most consistent team - only placing below third once (during the partner swap when Kristi got stuck with Jessica). As a result of this and their cordial gameplay, they became early favorites. Alas, they began to falter towards the end as their emotions ran high, scraping by in 3rd in the 10th and 11th legs, but they still managed to make the finale (being the first all-female team to do so since Season 25). They caught an early lead when they were the only ones who thought to look up Willie Mays homeruns before going into the task and burned through the fortune cookie task. However, Jen ended up struggled more than anyone else with the final memory task and they finished tearfully in 3rd place.
- The Ace: The team with the best overall finish despite placing 3rd, as they (Jen at least) always placed in the top three in their entire race.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Invoked by Kristi as the way she acted around Jen being like an annoying little sister during Leg 10 in trying to lead her off to the rice paddy bullfrog catching Detour over the elephant sanctuary measurments taking Detour by trying to have her way when Jen correctly predicted it was more troublesome to go do the other Detour.
- Bittersweet Ending: In a meta sense, as they lost the race, but managed to set new records for all-female teams in the US version by finally being the first all-female team in 30 seasons to score the season's best average, being only the second all-female team to score a sub-3.0 average after Dustin & Kandice, and beat their average of 2.92note with their own 2.36 note .
- Boisterous Weakling: Kristi turns into one of these when she goes through the race as the peppy half of the duo but is unable to smash old electronics in the rage art Roadblock and even yowls and squeals in pain trying to break them. You can even see some yellow paint matted on the bottoms of her right and especially her left shoes as she rows through the final leg.
- Broken Tears: Their final two legs had several moments of this as their emotions caught up to them.
- Can't Hold Her Liquor: After drinking the Black Death, Kristi got very queasy by the bridge near the first Pit Stop and almost retched up, but managed to recover after about five minutes. Admittedly, the drink was nasty.
- Chekhov's Skill: Jen worked in a beer factory to supplement her skiing career when she was younger, and in Leg 6, it helps her with knowing how to handle large kegs of the stuff.
- Consistency: They never finished below 3rd.
- Dramatic Irony: Kristi and Jen were the only team to preempt the Willie Mays home run count by asking a bystander to look it up, and pulled ahead, but Jen got hopelessly stuck on the final puzzle, Big Brother surpassed them, and both girls broke down crying. Compare this to their first leg outing, in which they won with total confidence and passed Big Brother.
- Heroic BSoD: By the finale, they make several big blunders and both girls are losing their composure very quickly and ultimately fall short of the goal. Their mutual breakdowns, which were starting near the end of Leg 11, finally hit by the last two legs.
- Last of Her Kind: They quickly became the last female team standing. Acknowledged by Kristi at the beginning of the third leg.
- Loose Lips: Jen bemoaned her own stupidity at blurting out helpful directions to Evan in Leg 8 as she and Henry were just about to complete their tire deliveries after Kristi and Jen were done with theirs and headed out, especially considering that Evan hasn't done anything to really help them. Helpful human nature and goodwill led to a small boo-boo this time.
- Meganeko: Kristi sometimes wears reading glasses.
- Poor Communication Kills: Compared to two other teams in Leg 3. They tried to speak French to a non-English-speaking cab driver in Leg 3 but it was hopeless, and face charades only made them look silly. When the women finally found people who could communicate with them in French, they had ended up far away from the port and in last and had to hustle to make up for lost time.
- Precision F-Strike: After spending the race with relatively peaceable words, Jen's temper slips in the finale when she outright drops a few F-bombs and is one of the few people to get her mouth blurred, as she suffers an anxious breakdown.
- Rule of Three: They never ever dropped below third place, and ultimately finished in third. Three was practically their Arc Number.
- You Go, Girl!: They often mentioned they came on the race to prove women can do anything. Though the message came off as kind of flimsy at time as by this point, three other all-female teams had won the American version.
Alexander Rossi & Conor Daly (#TeamIndyCar)
IndyCar Series racers; Alexander is notable for winning the 2016 Indianapolis 500, while Conor is one of two racers in the series struggling with diabetes. They never took the race very seriously, with Conor often cracking jokes about the tasks. However, this didn't impact their performance at all - by the 10th leg, they had become the only team left to not finish in the bottom two at some point. Riding off three leg wins (four with the partner swap), they appeared to be shoo-ins for the finale once they arrived in Hong Kong. Indeed, despite a brief hiccup at the Detour, they were one of the first teams to arrive at the final task: looking for signs on the street and using the corresponding leg numbers to open a suitcase. Unfortunately, they over-analyzed the signs they found (thinking that the Washington Square Arch was the Arc De Triomphe) and they ultimately ended up behind the trailing Kristi & Jen, sending them home in 4th. This complicated an agreement between the drivers because they share an apartment together and agreed to move out at the end of the race as incentive to win, but mused their winnings would let them add another month to that deal.
- Bash Brothers: These guys have a friendly dynamic and when they get to the first Pit Stop, they're joking around and making the greeter laugh.
- Beergasm: During the beer Detour in Leg 6, Alex and Conor were talking about how much they liked beer to the point where one of them took a sip of beer before beginning their delivery.
- Chekhov's Skill: Alex's racing experience allowed him to finish the Head-To-Head on the first try. He went for the apexes of each turn while Conor gave him a heads up of the late apexes he couldn't see around his french fry costume or sharp turns as he steered his dolly. On the Travelocity gnome Roadblock, it's brought up that they can also handle exhaustive conditions well, such as the heat of Morocco, because they sit in race cars in several pounds of hot equipment and sweat off body weight in their cockpits during a lot of their races, and are smart as well as physical.
- Commitment Issues: Conor isn't in any hurry to get married when he sees Ocean Rescue have tied the knot.
- The Eeyore: Conor complains quite a lot, especially when things go south.Conor (Leg 7): Stuck in a mud pit... always the story of my life.
- Failed a Spot Check: Just averted when the two try to go off to the Pit Stop after changing out of their belly dancer outfits from the Shake It Off Detour in Leg 3, and realize they've neglected to bring their gnome with them, who must come to the end. The short delay lets Evan and Henry keep their lead.
- Guide Dang It!: The penultimate leg totally screwed them when they couldn't make heads or tails of what signs to look out for that indicated the legs of the race to help decode their suitcase lock.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Conor says if he does something new and fails at it, he automatically hates it, like with the fish sorting and the baguette making challenges. Lugging lager across Prague made Conor especially difficult when he complained at Alex banging the keg on the cobblestone.
- Irony: They, being Indy Car drivers, of course take the tire-themed delivery Detour in Leg 8 thinking it is right in their element, but end up mistakenly delivering their tires to a flatbed driver that isn't even part of the race. It even takes the men a moment to ask the driver why he isn't giving them a clue and for the penny to drop that they confused this flatbed loader truck for the intended truck, due to the language barrier. The two have to roll their tires back up the marketplace and lose a lot of ground.
- Last of His Kind: They became the final all-male team to be in the race after Leg 8.
- Mercy Kill: Just as they were able to head for the Pit Stop, Phil came to intercept them because all the other teams had beaten them and it was irrelevant at this point. Phil gave them a sincere compliment for their three wins and admirable effort, however, yet the dream team alliance fell because the Indy Car drivers were not at the end.Kristi: Poor Indy...
- Rage Quit: As soon as Conor got pinched by a hairy crab in one of the Detours in Hong Kong, he instantly gave up on it and switched to the restaurant Detour with Alex and was groaning that he might have lost his fingers, which he needs to drive. Alex was also quite put out by the crab challenge, as when Henry asked if he had an appetite looking through the food in the kitchen of the restaurant, Alex said the crab fishing spoiled it.
- Self-Deprecation: Alex remarked Indy Car's win at Leg 4 was his "first win in years", evidently feeling a slump coming on from a drought of victories as a race car driver.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Right before the very intense final leg, the sole comedic team was eliminated.
- Troll: Conor photo-bombed the X-Games girls on the train while they were sleeping en route to Leg 7.
Lucas Bocanegra & Brittany Austin (#TeamOceanRescue)
- Conor: First rule of the Amazing Race Club: always have your passport on you.
Dating (later Engaged) lifeguards. They were unknowingly in sync with the others' desires to tie the knot. They were a middling team for the first few legs, barely escaping elimination in the third and fourth legs. However, they pulled ahead on the fifth leg and claimed first place, after which Lucas proposed to Brittany. From then on, they seemed to be more put together team, though they weren't necessarily perceived as a threat, due to their occasional flaws with directions. After back-to-back first places on the seventh and eighth legs, Lucas lost his passport during a connecting flight. Through their tenacity, they were able to get a temporary passport and fly to Bahrain, but they were unfortunately too far behind at this point to survive and were eliminated overall in 5th.
- Alpha Bitch: Brittany, whenever she gets huffy. She isn't awful, but her interactions with Jessica when rightfully pissed off by her opportunistic gameplay are rough.
- Broken Tears: Both of them are crying when they discover they've been bumped out of the running without even getting to the end of Leg 9.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: A lot of fans liked Ocean Rescue for the romantic angle, but Brittany was running on emotional overdrive almost the entire time in the race and had a large number of melodramatic reactions, and fans complained that it got grating. Fans also didn't like how Lucas seemed to be henpecked in every other scene, and in contrast, didn't say much- let alone get to say much- half the time.
- Directionless Driver: A justified case. Lucas gets pissed off in Leg 4 while trying to talk to an overly emotional Brittany for instructions, who isn't giving him decent information, and it is a low point for the both of them in the race as they take it out on each other and their day gets all the more disappointing and they place next to last.
- Dramatic Irony: Brittany expresses hope of Lucas proposing to her, Lucas admits in his interview he plans to.
- Enraged by Idiocy: At the astronomy Detour in Leg 6, Lucas became fed up when he listened to one of the professors supporting the Flat Earth Theory, causing him and Brittany to switch Detours.
- Entitled to Have You: A downplayed version with Brittany, she mentions in the first leg she feels she deserves to have Lucas propose to her, which he plans to. Think of it as Dramatic Irony.
- Failed a Spot Check: A really bad one in Leg 3. Jessica holds Brittany's Travelocity gnome for her as she places a phone call on an old-school pay phone, but then Brittany runs off without it and finds two women who can speak Spanish and will take her all the way to the souk where Lucas is waiting for her... then she has to go back... and cries foul at Jessica for not telling her about the gnome being left behind and wondering if it was deliberate.
- Failing a Taxi: When his attention is torn between Brittany and the streets in Leg 2, Lucas is unable to flag down a cabbie before the car drives off, leading to a lot of grumbling on his part and the first use of their safe word on her part.
- Foregone Conclusion: When they lose that passport, all hope is lost. It took forever to replace it. The editing makes no attempt to hide it, immediately pushing them out of the spotlight once the other racers start advancing through Leg 9, and even the previews for this episode give enough away to affirm that this was a game-ending blunder for them.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Brittany is prone to break into her Spanish tongue when excited or flustered. Lucas can speak it, too.
- History Repeats: For the FOURTH time, a couple who got engaged partway through the race came in 5th.
- Like Chad & Stephanie, they won the leg in which they were engaged.
- Irrational Hatred: Brittany is mad at Jessica for not helping her in a bad situation, but can't tell if Jessica meant to maliciously hinder Brittany's progress; it's actually Jessica trying to be practical and survive the race, not something like Team Guido shenanigans.
- It's All My Fault: Lucas beats himself up very hard for losing his passport, but Brittany does her best to console him, and says the money isn't important, and she already has what she wanted all along- him.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Lampshaded by Jessica when Team Ocean Rescue suffers an enormous setback at the start of Leg 9 right after they U-Turned Team Big Brother in Leg 8 in a bid to get rid of them, and she thinks karma is hitting sooner than she expected, which Conor remarks is cold of her.
- Manly Tears: For once, Lucas breaks down crying at Ocean Rescue's elimination. As soon as Phil confirms their fears, Lucas completely loses it.
- Mercy Kill: The passport fiasco causes Brittany and Lucas to be unable to leave the airport for a connecting flight and express-rush a temporary passport (where they joke how Lucas looks traumatized in the photo). By the time Brittany and Lucas make it to the first part of Leg 9, it is nighttime, every other team has finished, the shipyard they needed to go load 300 pounds of weight in has shut down, and Phil is there to send them through their elimination.
- No Sense of Direction: Lucas reveals that he can't read a compass
- Parenting the Husband: Brittany mentions she believes this rings true in all relationships saying she thinks women are in control in all relationships.
- Safe Word: "Pineapple", which is what they use to tell one another to calm down if one of them is getting bent out of shape. It gets used in the second episode after Lucas doesn't signal a cab because he misinterpreted Brittany's request and he grows annoyed.
- Something We Forgot: They disappeared midway through their final leg once it became clear they had no hope of catching up.
- Tender Tears: Brittany is very prone to get emotional.Phil: Every time I see you, you're in tears.
- Tragic Mistake: Lucas leaving his passport behind on a desk in Zimbabwe. Lucas's briefest moment of neglect completely destroyed Ocean Rescue's solid run, dropping them from first to last and never recovering.
- The Unfair Sex: Lucas was always the one apologizing after their fights when Brittany was just as much at fault as she was sometimes even more so.
- Wacky Marriage Proposal: After winning the fifth leg of the Race, Lucas proposed to Brittany while Phil had other teams who were checking in learn about the news.
- Will They or Won't They?: Real life example. Their relationship had been going on for nine years, but Brittany's dad didn't think Lucas was wanting to go down that road of marriage.
Eric Guiffreda & Daniel Guiffreda (#TheFirefighters)
Twin brothers (the only family-related team this season) and firefighters. Both of them have near identical Southern accents and faces, and a dry wit and knack for cracking puns. Notably, Eric is a father who has recently added a third member to the family, just days before shipping off to compete in Season 30. They struggled early on with directions and only survived due to a few lucky breaks, but surprised fans with much more consistent placements from the 5th leg onwards. Though they had initially been Out of Focus, they still became one of the fan-favorites of the season with their spirited and overall pleasant demeanor. While the U-Turn gave them a healthy buffer on Leg 8, they focused more on practicing than performing on the singing task, which allowed Jessica & Cody to overtake them and they were eliminated in 6th place.
- Achilles' Heel: Singing, which one lampshades. Both twins get the performance part down-pat, but are ghastly when it comes to the vocal part, which stalls them up for so long that they get passed by both U-Turn recipients and know they are toast after finally finishing the task.
- Ascended Fanboy: Both admitted to being fans of the race.
- Born Lucky: They scrape the bottom rankings of each leg of the race up until the fifth leg and come dangerously close to elimination with last-minute saves.
- Breakout Character: Zigzagged, they were one of the pre-season favorites due to being the most "normal" team after a string of gimmicky season. Despite fading in the background in the first few episodes, their dry wit and being all around Nice Guys made them one of the favorites of the season.
- Companion Cube: One of them decided to call the Travelocity Roaming Gnome "Pasquale".
- Disappeared Dad: On the day before the Race, Eric had another baby with his wife and didn't have much time to watch the birth.
- Down to the Last Play: Due to the Head-to-Head, they were forced to beat the Goat Yoga Moms to stay in the race in the second leg.
- Fatal Family Photo: Surprisingly averted during leg 4. Eric talks about how he had to leave for the race soon after his wife gave birth, and yet they weren't eliminated on that leg, or even during the next leg that aired right after. It's pretty surprising, given how much the show uses this trope. Ultimately subverted in the 6th episode when their family was brought up in the beginning and they were eliminated in 6th at the end.
- Graceful Loser: Even after recognizing that they're going to face elimination, the twins carry out their stage performance task until they get approved by the judge and go to the Pit Stop satisfied in making it as far as they did and admitting that they are not singers or dancers but are primarily firemen and need to go back to the firehouse and return to what they do best.
- Graduation for Everyone: Eric and Daniel never gave up at the astronomy quiz Detour in Leg 6 and were able to use the strategy of listening to the lecture multiple times and then improving on the quiz since they were exposed to the questions before.
- Hidden Depths: Despite being the quietest team up to this point, they finished the very difficult Diamond Glint Detour on the first try.
- Human Notepad: Whereas some teams used reflections to invert their letters, these guys resorted to stamping themselves on their hands and arms to try and get an idea of how to place the type face in the printing press Detour, but it was still no use.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: The only things that let us tell who is who is that Eric has the thicker accent and fuller head of hair and Daniel has the deeper voice and shaved head with a ballcap commonly atop it. When they swap partners in Leg 7, Phil can't identify which twin arrives at the Pit Stop mat first.Phil: You're difficult to tell apart.
- Jabba Table Manners: Handle dead fish? "We can lick our hands clean later."
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: They do poorly for the first 4 legs of the race, but quickly pick up steam by legs 5 and 6.
- Loophole Abuse: They acknowledged they can go back and forth between questions and lecture in the Leg 5 Detour. However, in Leg 8, they get tripped up thinking they can't carry more than one package at a time through the mailing Detour and realized during their first delivery run that no rule said they couldn't.
- Nice Guy: Both of them are mild-mannered and pleasant.
- No Sense of Direction: Their biggest flaw. It's consistently what drops them to the bottom of the pack and they lampshade it by the second episode.
- Out of Focus: They barely got screentime in the first two legs. Then they start cracking puns and their screentime gets a little bigger.
- Pungeon Master: The twins had a lot of fun making puns in Morocco... and in Europe. Even a little of Africa. Leg 3 is where they start cracking jokes, and other teams like Slam Dunk and Well Strung get in on it. Even their farewell statement upon their elimination is a pun.
- Running Gag: Either they're lost or stuck in traffic or both.
- Sibling Team: Identical twins whose own intro is mirrored with them getting out of a firetruck on opposite sides.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Daniel preempts his performance in Zimbabwe with an apology to his son for when he gets old enough to understand what is going on and the disaster about to happen. This is also both twins' reaction when they know for sure they are coming in last and will definitely go home.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Their reaction when they try to switch to the Diamond Glint Detour and know it should be on the right of the printing press facility... and run right into a construction barricade: "Are you kidding me?"
Trevor Wadleigh & Christopher Marchant (#TeamWellStrung)
Violinists who are both members of the group Well Strung. They also share an apartment. They showed a lot of promise in the first 4 legs placing at the upper half of the standings. Once in France, they got horrendously lost and while they were saved by Joey & Tim's critical mistake at the Detour. As the last team in the running to depart, they were in dire straits the whole of Leg 6. This left them on the 2nd flight to the Czech Republic. Cody & Jessica then U-Turned them, and while they did fine on both sides, it put them behind long enough that they were eliminated.
- Bash Brothers: Trevor notes how close they are, saying about Christopher, "I know all your idiosyncrasies."
- Bittersweet Ending: Even though they were eliminated, Trevor and Chris talked about how they were happy to return to Prague due to them performing a concert in the city at some point in their lives.
- Brutal Honesty: When he see some teams acting nice out of common courtesy (being nice without real meaning behind it), stockaded Trevor groans, "When does that saccharine crap help anybody!?"
- Deadpan Snarker: Trevor is really witty at times. This was seen at the astronomy Detour in Leg 6 when delaying and debating their answer on whether the Earth was round or flat.
- Dramatic Irony: Invoked by Trevor and Chris when one explains they were U-Turned (forcing them to do both sides of a Detour) by a statue that is related to a song they play in the orchestra and now it will remind Trevor of the elimination.
- Failed a Spot Check: Neither of them initially realized they were getting their own skin flakes on the diamonds under the microscopes in Diamond Glint, which caused them to mistake the diamonds for flawed and incorrectly calculated their values.
- Foreshadowing: Chose A Load of Bull over Colorful in Leg 5 because they feared it would be too hard a challenge to complete and take a lot of time, especially if it involved sliding puzzle pieces. Team Chomp later chooses Colorful- the only team brave enough to tackle it- and they suffer elimination for those exact same reasons.
- Manly Gay: They are both gay, but incredibly fit.
- No Sense of Direction: They did miserably at finding their way to the bull arena at Leg 5 and were only saved by Joey and Tim's own foolishness.
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Leg 5, this occurs, if you look at the way Trevor reacts. Traffic in Europe slows them down and they're in a race and none of the ordinary citizens going about their daily lives know it, so why not blame the slow drivers? We all do it, right?
- Vitriolic Best Buds: They mention they're close enough that they can sometimes hate each other from living together, but still get along swimmingly.
Joey Chestnut & Tim Janus (#TeamChomp)
- Phil: You, know, it's a tough pill to swallow.(beat)Phil: No, too soon?Joey & Tim: No, it's alright.Joey: It looks like we aren't wieners today.
Competitive eaters. One of Phil's favorite teams, but a bit lunk-headed when it came to some challenges where they didn't realize the full extent of what to do and it caused them to quickly fall through the ranks. Finally, in Europe, they got totally turned around and chose a Detour everyone else had unbeknownst to them avoided out of fear of the difficulty, and were summarily punished by its complexity. They came in eighth place and Phil had to regretfully tell them they were eliminated, with the duo thinking their run had been cut short all too soon.
- Badass on Paper: Played with. The greeter's impression of Joey at the second Pit Stop, who doesn't know what to think when he says he holds the world record for french fry-eating and isn't impressed. This actually makes both Joey and Phil himself take a pause and wonder why she doesn't find that amazing.
- Big Eater: This is a given when you know they compete in eating contests for a living. Joey is the number one in his field of 70 hot dogs in one setting, while Tim was formerly number two.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: They unwittingly chose a Detour far worse, taxing, and confounding than the one everyone else did while not realizing they were in last place. It actually saved the violinists from becoming the expected team to be eliminated. They arrived at the Pit Stop so late that any news of Ocean Rescue's engagement was of little consequence and an off-screen announcement for this team (and the violinists, too).
- Failed a Spot Check: Joey completely missed the Roadblock checkpoint in Leg 2 when returning from the Travelocity Gnome zip-line mission and the fumble was bad enough that Team Chomp dropped to last, then Joey got too caught up in Shake It Off belly dancing to realize he was supposed to be looking for words spelling out the Pit Stop name. It happens again, this time their downfall, in Leg 5, when the camera painfully focuses on a latch on the easel puzzle out of the way from the moving puzzle pieces on the painting that they never manage to spot until Tim by happenstance fiddles with it after they've run through the other steps of the puzzle at least ten times... and then they come in last.
- Fatal Flaw: Obliviousness, or more specifically, tunnel vision. Joey and Tim don't pay enough attention to their surroundings to study them and see things that would be clear to others or otherwise impossible to recognize without close examination. This resulted in two huge and crushing hits to their standing in the race, the second of which made an already bad situation hopeless when their last place situation became a severe deficit that they could never hope to escape from in time to undo their own undoing.
- Fish out of Water: Joey and Tim discuss in the second episode that they are used to competing against each other instead of as a team, and are needing to get used to it.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: As shown above, Joey made one during his Elimination Statement, following up on Phil's "tough pill to swallow" comment. Goofy music even played after he said it.
- Reverse Psychology: Joey actually likes it when Tim complains because it teaches him what he needs to do better.
- Speech Impediment: Joey's got a strange way of talking that sounds like The Pink Panther.
Cedric Ceballos & Shawn Marion (#TeamSlamDunk)
Former NBA players, "The Matrix", and the host of the radio talk show "Nothin' but Net", respectively. Cedric is the oldest competitor of the season, approaching his fifties, and has survived a trio of heart attacks, but trying to prove that won't kick him. Shawn was formerly an NBA champion in 2011. In the third and fourth legs of the race, Cedric participates in the Roadblock challenges but his age takes its toll. The team finishes last on a non-elimination leg for the third Pit Stop, and is then briefly waylaid by a resulting Speed Bump in the next leg, and they lose to a struggling Lucas and Brittany in the Head-to-Head Competition as the last arrivals at the Leg 4 Pit Stop, finally running out the clock on their game.
- Ascended Fan: Cedric said he watched the past 29 seasons and has yelled at the TV when teams do dumb things.
- The Big Guy: Both fellas are almost 7 feet tall and even bigger than 5'7'' Cody. Cedric notes this is a problem in the french fry race because Cody's center of gravity is lower (basketball logic makes a big deal out of how taller players are better suited for wide range positions on court) and thus makes it easier for him to maneuver and he predictably has a bad time rolling his dolly across the course.
- Butt-Monkey: In the first episode alone, Shawn goes out into the bogs several times to spell out the name of a lake but cannot figure out that one of the O's has an accent mark, even going over to other completed stations and not discovering the problem. The team loses nearly all their ground and plummets to last place. Worse, Cedric helps Shawn in the meantime. The two grouch on the way to the next challenge about what happened and are lucky enough to claw back to eighth simply by getting to the next location faster, but when they clear it and reach the Pit Stop, Phil slaps a 30-minute penalty on them and they come dangerously close to being overtaken by the stragglers, with the penalty expiring less than a minute before the last teams arrive. They fell to ninth place in the meantime. In the third episode, they plummet from first to last all because Cedric passes the checkpoint where Shawn was trying to flag him down, and are just saved by a non-elimination setup. It only gets worse for them when Cedric repeatedly bungles the next Roadblock on top of their imposed Speed Bump delay eating up their time, and they get to the pétanque game last and lose it, and this time, they really get eliminated.
- Failed a Spot Check: Their failure to notice the accent on the O nearly got them eliminated. A second instance of this comes up when Cedric doesn't check his gnome's pouch for phone coins until happenstance and misses the checkpoint in Morocco where Shawn is waiting for him post-roadblock and Shawn didn't do enough to get his attention.
- Fatal Flaw: Cedric's Pride. Cedric wanted to prove he was capable of getting through the race despite three heart attacks and proving he could do better than teams he yelled at from the past seasons. He tried to do too many strenuous roadblocks in his older condition that wore him out when Cedric could have taken the reins and it cost them twice. His large size is also arguably a problem, as he lumbers through many challenges because of it. Also, Shawn's lack of bluster in speaking up, as he didn't stop Cedric from missing a check-in and stepping in during tougher challenges.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Nobody bothered to warn Cedric that you are not allowed to help people during roadblocks. Even though it was compassionate, Phil had to inform them of its consequences.
- Say My Name: An exhausted Cedric bellows Phil's name at the end of Leg 3 in relief. Repeated for emphasis in the following recap next episode.Cedric: PHIL!!!
- Too Dumb to Live: In Leg 3, Cedric was obviously exhausted from a physically demanding Roadblock, but he and Shawn chose another physically demanding Detour requiring them to drag heavy food carts up big hills over an easier belly dance challenge. They came in last and were lucky not to get eliminated. But then they got a Speed Bump as a penalty for that finish and Cedric got overly confident with how easy it was and decided to go do the Roadblock, running into the exact same problem he had in the Friet race where he was too big for the task. They fell down to last place and couldn't knock the pétanque challenge in their only shot at it (no time to pick up the learning curve) and their second chance was blown.
- Unwanted Assistance: Cedric tried to help Shawn on the Roadblock in the first leg, which is against the rules. That gave them a 30 minute penalty, and they were mere seconds away from being eliminated because of it.
- Verbal Tic: Cedric and Shawn end a lot of their sentences with "Baby".
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Cedric loses his breakfast the moment he catches a whiff of the ripe fish in the docks of Morocco.
- Worf Had the Flu: Their severe trouble in Leg 3 is mostly because Cedric went into the Roadblock unaware of the physical toll it would take on him and not realizing Shawn was the better fit, because Cedric's older age and body wear down much faster. He also admits he survived three heart attacks, and throughout the leg, you can see sweat gradually drenching his shirt more and more.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Cedric thought he could be an excellent competitor on the race, but then learned after a lot of exhaustion that it really is harder than it looks and will no longer boast that it's easy and people have just not been competent enough to win.
- Your Size May Vary: In Leg 2, Cedric noted it was easier for Cody to maneuver a wheelbarrow than him because he was smaller and his center of gravity was lower. In Leg 4, Cedric's tall size and large weight didn't work so well with a small row boat in the roadblock, causing the boat to capsize numerous times.
April Gould & Sarah Williams (#TeamGoatYoga)
American Ninja Warrior athletes and Goat Yoga instructors. They started off in the back of the pack thanks to poor navigation, but managed to just barely avoid elimination over Dessie & Kayla due to Sarah beating Dessie to the pitstop by literally inches. They remained in the back of the pack the next leg in Belgium, and their decision to go for the harder Diamond Glint Detour kept widened the gap between them and the other teams. Though they were able to come back after Eric & Daniel made the decision to switch Detours, a new twist called the Head-to-Head put them in a race for last between them, the firefighters, and Henry & Evan. Henry learned from his mistakes, allowing him and Evan to take 8th, which left April and Daniel in a final race to avoid elimination. April took the early lead, but spun halfway around allowing Daniel to catch up and eventually take the lead, leading to her and Sarah's elimination in 10th.
- Down to the Last Play: They were barely saved by a footrace in their first leg then eliminated by it in the Head-To-Head.
- Heavy Sleeper: April and Sarah have a lengthy and petty argument in the opening hours of the game all because April slept on the plane while Sarah did the legwork to figure out where to go next.
- Irony: April and Sarah were about ready to quit Diamond Glint when the twins showed up, having switched Detours themselves, and they got reinvigorated and finished first thinking at least they weren't last. Then the twins catch up and compete with them in the Friet race and Eric beats April and the girls must face their elimination.
- One Head Taller: Non-romantic example- Sarah is about a head bigger than April.
- Sadistic Choice: Their final race which will determine their elimination either has to be run by April who is exhausted from the previous race, or Sarah who hasn't done the course yet. Sarah didn't think she could win, so April ran and Eric plowed through the course.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The first leg showed shades of this and continued after the race when they went at each other on social media.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Much bigger and sterner American Ninja Warrior Sarah in comparison to the more emotionally-driven and petite April who has found enjoyment out of a whimsical idea called goat yoga.
- Tranquil Fury: When Sarah started complaining April was being all passive-aggressive and unreasonable, April's little Aside Glance to the camera operator in the car was very telling.April: ...Sarah can be a little "B".
- Vitriolic Best Buds: The first episode of the season sees them complaining at each other for a really long amount of time on the way to their first task, with April calling Sarah too sensitive to reason with, but they settle the arguing and remark these quarrels are fairly common and easily resolved by the end of the day. Except then comes the part where their elimination episode airs on TV and they keep bickering online months later!
Dessie Mitcheson & Kayla Fitzgerald (#TheRingGirls)
- Kayla: We got KO'd.
- Action Fashionista: They have rather glamorous looks because they are models, and are quite fit and actually do manage to prove they had a fighting chance, yet luck was not on their side in the opening leg. They at least manage to look good when they return to the finale in stylish country girl attire with matching red hair ribbons.
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Dessie got grouchy and started throwing out stingy remarks after the pair made several trips through the Icelandic burbs looking for their next task and griped about not knowing how to park their vehicle smoothly. She was the driver, and because of her clumsy parking, she got to the Pit Stop last.
- Down to the Last Play: The footrace between them and April & Sarah made Season 2's finish looks like Season 16's, with it coming down to the mat. Unfortunately, Dessie was last to land there.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Kayla hopped out of her shoes at the fountain and replaced them in wet socks, but like Cody and Jessica, this slowed down both her and Dessie.
- No Sense of Direction: Had trouble finding both the first task and parking for the drinking task. Parking the large Jeep rover was especially costly because it was too big and troublesome to wheel into place, which led to a footrace when the goat yoga instructors caught up with them in the meantime.
- Out of Focus: Their only leg saw them have barely any screentime, except for their introduction to yank our chain by playing up their underdog status and the last few minutes so as to give context for their elimination.
- Underdogs Always Win: Inverted. Not only did they note their underdog status as small models, they were the first to be eliminated. It had to be decided by a literal foot in an instant replay to tell who got to the Pit Stop first. Sadly, Dessie's foot crossed the threshold last.
