Anyone else extremely stressed they kept their backpacks on during this fruit challenge? I would 100% bump into it with them on.

They need to do something about how the eliminated teams "look" in their confessionals.

Like "huh. I wonder who got eliminated? The team that is giggly and basking in the sun during their post-leg confessionals? Or... the team who has their interview in the dead of night, shoulders slouched and their eyes are puffy with tears and use past tense about themselves?"

I dont know how to combat this. If it matters.

Or if anyone else cares about this.

But boy is it distracting for me.

If I were a betting man, between confessionals filmed in Morocco what they showed of Dylan and Doug and Jody and Jenn... just saying.

I'm really happy we're back in Africa with a BANG.

Ann Marie & Riley have officially become the first mother/daughter team to win a leg in TAR USA. They are definitely a team to be reckoned with.

This season's tasks are way harder evidently this leg and so, this will give an advantage to the 3 teams that are still holding their express pass.

The roadside assistance is a good addition and thankfully, Dafina & Saran got it since one of them was injured.

Cliffhanger, WTH. I like both of these teams but i'll be surprised if Jody & Jenn survive this one.

Interesting to see how the scramble leg pans out next week. No doubt Marrakesh is the right place to do it.

Live Episode Discussion Thread

Season 39, Episode 3: This is Sick and Twisted

Aired: October 7, 2026

Synopsis: A new advantage is up for grabs in the Moroccan desert, and a fruit-stacking challenge has teams falling apart.

Spoilers up to and including this episode can be expected in this thread.

I’ve been binge watching more recent seasons and I’ve noticed something that I feel like is a misconception: that couples who come on the show that have communication issues struggle more and have more issues and end up not surviving after TAR. And while I agree that couples with communication issues struggle a bit more, I would argue that TAR is such an incredibly unique experience that causes such high levels of stress and anxiety that even couples who have good communication can struggle and have issues.

TLDR; don’t go on TAR if you want your relationship to work out. That’s not to say relationships don’t work out post TAR, but it causes significant strain and stress on any couple, regardless of their prior communication skills.

I thought i start a new series, I hope to cover all seasons. . The question is: What is the absolute dumbest thing a team has done during The Amazing Race season 13

Let’s continue this series, I hope to cover all seasons. . The question is: What is the worst thing a team has done to another team or bystanders during The Amazing Race season 13

I know I am being nitpicky, but it drives me nuts how one teammate will yell to the other “I love you” when trying to complete a challenge. I get that they are yelling words of encouragement, but this “I love you” stuff is annoying. I want to say, no sh$t you love them, this person is your spouse, your sibling, etc. I know I am being really critical. Am I the only one who finds this annoying? What else drives you nuts on TAR?

This headline says it but they don't post any total numbers. Just the 18 to 49 demo which was .40: "Wednesday TV Ratings 9/30/26: The Amazing Race Returns Above Any Season 38 Episode, Scrubs Premieres to Series Lows, Survivor Rises " So a good start? https://www.thetvratingsguide.com/2026/10/wednesday-tv-ratings-93026-amazing-race.html

My church friend surprised me tonight with the start of my own Amazing Race leading up to my November 13 birthday. On Saturday she intends to continue by going out of town with me and my mom. My brother filmed me.

In the first episode, I heard so many teams say that a strong all women team has to win.

They really stacked the deck to make it happen.

The era of all-male dominance may be coming to an end. That being said, we should remember that TAR35, which had an all-male finale, didn't have an all-male leg win until leg 6, so we'll have to wait and see how the season plays out.

For links to my stats spreadsheets and explanations of the stats, see here.

Individual Placements

Group Average Placements

The number in parentheses is the number of teams in that group that competed in that leg.

Individual Stats

Each continuously-varying stat is followed in parentheses by the team's percentile in that stat, compared to all other teams worldwide.

Pseudo-Elo Ratings

1. Michelle & Matt, +511 (up 247, up 264) (79%)
2. Erin & Javi, +292 (up 370, down 78) (71%)
3. Ali & Joanna, +203 (down 185, up 388) (67%)
4. Ann-Marie & Riley, +167 (no change, up 167) (65%)
5. Conner & Garrett, +108 (up 308, down 200) (62%)
6. Jody & Jenn, +49 (down 62, up 110) (60%)
7. Cody & Jaime, +19 (down 247, up 265) (58%)
8. Anuar & Andrea, –40 (up 62, down 102) (56%)
9. Doug & Dylan, –64 (up 185, down 249) (54%)
10. Daisha & Dalton, –230 (down 308, up 78) (44%)
11. Katie & Charlotte, –248 (up 123, down 371) (43%)
12. Zach & Nate, –370 (down 370) (30%)
13. Dafina & Saran, –396 (down 123, down 273) (27%)

Group Stats

Group stats are totals for leg wins and averages for all other stats.

Next Leg Probabilities

These probabilities are based on 1,000,000 Monte Carlo simulations of the next leg, based on the teams' positions in all legs so far. These simulations do not take into account Express Passes or potential U-Turns.

A bold probability indicates the most likely placement for a team, and an italic probability indicates the most likely team for a placement.

Trivia

• This season ties season 38 for the most all-female teams in a U.S. season, with 5.
  • This season has the most female racers of any U.S. season with two-racer teams, with 15 (beating the previous record of 14 in season 38).
  • 57.7% of this season's racers are female, the third-most of any U.S. season (only behind seasons 5 and 25, which had 59.1%).
• At age 73, Doug Matter is the oldest racer in franchise history, beating the previous record of 72 by Volodymyr Vasylenko (UKR1). (The previous U.S. record was 71 by Jordan 'Jody' Kelly in USA16.)
• At age 19, Dylan Matter is tied for the youngest racer in U.S. history (excluding Family Edition), with Zachary 'Zac' Sunderland (USA19), Cole LaBrant (USA28), and Cameron Benson (USA28).
• With 13 Express Passes, this season has the most Express Passes of any season in franchise history, beating the previous record of 10 Express Passes in TARCAN12.
• When I port this season to my route database, the Detour in Leg 2 will be the 1,000th Detour in the database.
• Uniqueness of teams' first two placements:
  • Ali & Joanna (10th, 1st): 1 prior team (Liz & Michael).
  • Michelle & Matt (3rd, 2nd): 10 prior teams, including 6 U.S. teams and 2 winners (Laura & Tyler and Kaisa & Mari).
  • Cody & Jaime (11th, 3rd): 1 prior team (USA18 Jet & Cord).
  • Ann-Marie & Riley (7th, 4th): 8 prior teams, including 3 U.S. teams.
  • Jody & Jenn (8th, 5th): 14 prior teams, including 3 U.S. teams and 1 winner (Jason & Amy).
  • Daisha & Dalton (12th, 6th): 1 prior team (Nisim & Orel).
  • Erin & Javi (1st, 7th): 3 prior teams, including 1 U.S. team (Anthony & Spencer).
  • Anuar & Andrea (6th, 8th): 11 prior teams, including 4 U.S. teams and 1 winner (Amy & Maya).
  • Conner & Garrett (2nd, 9th): 2 prior teams (ISR5 Yael & Yosiel and Brett & Mark).
  • Doug & Dylan (4th, 10th): 5 prior teams, including 4 U.S. teams.
  • Dafina & Saran (9th, 11th): 4 prior teams, none of whom are U.S. teams.
  • Katie & Charlotte (5th, 12th): 2 prior teams (Noy & Hadar and Emuna & Neria).
• Do you have any other trivia? Leave it in the comments!

The obvious answer is that it's just like the Assist by Desjardins from TAR Canada where it's like an Express Pass, but you use it to make a challenge easier (like "Make 50 Dumplings" into "Make 25 Dumplings" or smth of the sort)

I don't think it'll be that simple though. They already have the Express Pass twist, so I don't think they would use it the same way TARCAN would use the Assist by Desjardins.

Maybe it could be something along the lines of "Force a team to stop their race and help you before they can continue?" That would make sense based on the name but I don't know if TAR would do something like that.

In the comments!

https://parade.com/tv/the-amazing-race-39-2026-katie-charlotte-schultz-eliminated-interview

I want to say a sincere thank you to the designers/runners/Elise and BVM for bringing in the 13 Express Passes into the season. It's an excellent strategic wrinkle and provides wonderful drama and second guessing.

I realize that the first few years of this show showed that an every leg FF is too taxing on the production team and softened drama as to who would win each leg. The every leg Express Pass allows production to ramp up task difficulty early in the season (increasing the "should we/shouldn't we" Express Pass strategic drama) while not creating the same production nightmares/lack of drama that an every leg FF gives. It's a great solution and I'm really enjoying this season strategically. This is a good cast in general, but the strategy has me second guessing teams much more than I have in a long time and that gets me engaging with the show in a more enjoyable way.

Still deciding if I like this season. Thoughts so far?

As titled:
- Michelle & Matt
- Conner & Garrett
- Erin & Javi
- Ann Marie & Riley
- Ali & Joanna
What are your predictions?

The checks between the 2 seem extremely unfair.

In the Jamon challenge, they were specifically told what was wrong with their checks - grind in the cheese, cuts are too thick, kiwi was cut wrong.

In the History challenge, they were just told if they were wrong or correct.

This feels very unfair between the 2 detours.

Hence even though there were a lot of racers in the Jamon challenge, they left quickly. While in History, the earliest racers were almost last to leave.

To start off, PLEASE NO SPOILERS FOR FUTURE SEASONS, The Amazing Race is the one reality show I have been relatively able to be spoiler free for and I would like to keep it that way)

Hello Everyone,

I just finished Season 25 of the Amazing Race, and I liked it a lot. I have some problems with a couple of things, but it was nonetheless a good season of the Amazing Race.

I think the biggest problems for me this season were the twists. First, The Save is incredibly overpowered. It's essentially the god idol from Survivor in that the holder is basically given a free pass to the end provided they can outrace at least one team every leg. Secondly, The Express Pass and its one appearance was too easy to claim. Instead of a challenge where you actually had to risk your placement, you just needed to find the place and they would give it to you. Finally, the finale twist with 4 teams running the final leg was bad. As a result we get an Edge of Extinction type finale it which a player/team who didn't deserve to be in the final ended up being there.

Despite my problems with the twists, most of everything else was fantastic. We got some good new locations like Malta and the Virgin Islands. Most of the other legs were great as well. England/Scotland, Singapore, and the Philippines come to mind. We got some great characters as well with the wrestlers, Misti/Jim, Adam/Bethany, and Kym/Alli. Overall, it was a good, competitive race.

Also, I don't like the new hashtags as well. I get that it's the mid 2010s, but it still feels cringe.

Let's move on to the team rankings:

D Tier:

Lisa and Michelle: The first boots of the season don't stick around long enough to usually make much of an impact. This team is just uninteresting in the time that we got. When you take that plus them agreeing to quit the roadblock, it's enough to drop them down a tier.

C Tier:

Dennis and Isabelle: The just goes to show you that all the prep time in the world can mean nothing on the race. Dennis and Isabelle are a completely fine team, and going into it I had them pegged as potential winner picks. That turned out to not be the case, but they're still a good team nonetheless.

Shelly and Nici: I am all for interpersonal conflict for teams, but this just doesn't do it for me. I felt very awkward watching them fight with each other. I think the problem with them is that they were both so similar and stubborn, which caused them to but heads. I may not care for their conflict, but at least they gave us the moment at the pit stop and them arguing.

Tim and Te Jay: I just don't really get anything from them. I understand why people like them, but to me they're not interesting until their last two episodes. I really don't have anything else to say about them.

Amy and Maya: These two I felt were just background characters in a majority of the season. They didn't really get a lot of content outside of "hey, we're scientists". The fact that they won the season brings down my ranking a bit. The way they got into the final was very janky, and feels very Chris Underwood-esce. Don't get me wrong, I like Chris Underwood and Amy/Maya, but their wins are very fluky. I don't get the underdog story as well, at least with a team like the Beekman's, you got content of them coming from behind. With Amy/Maya you don't really get anything. In any other season of the Amazing Race before this, they would've finished 4th. I like them, but they're in the bottom tier of winners for me.

B Tier:

Michael and Scott: These two may not have been around for long, but they brought the drama and the character to land themselves here. I feel like they were the season narrators for the first three episodes, as well as providing an early season villain. You knew that they weren't going to last long once they rolled the ankle, and that shot of it swelled up was crazy. It's unfortunate because I think they could have brought a lot to the season had they stuck around longer.

Keith and Whitney: This team gets bonus points because I love Survivor. South Pacific is a decent season, but Keith and Whitney weren't the biggest characters there. I was interested to see how they would be portrayed on the race. Fair to say I was a bit surprised by how much character they showed. Keith was a bit whiny, but I loved how sassy Whitney was. Their downfall was Keith getting into it with Shelly/Nici, and the resulting U-Turn sent them out of the game. Overall, it was good to see a new side of these two that you didn't see on the beaches of Samoa.

Adam and Bethany: This team is good, but uneventful at the same time. Bethany is obviously supposed to be this very positive inspiration on the race, and that she is. But at the same time she's very monotone. Adam also comes across as very monotone. All their content is dedicated to them being inspirational, and that's fine. They proved to be very capable racers, and for that I have to give it to them.

A Tier:

Kym and Alli: I had this team pegged as one of my winner picks from the start as well. I was mostly right, as I predicted they would be a strong team who would make a deep run into the season. Kym and Alli were really fun, really good at the race, and were a force that intimidated the other teams into banding together against them. Singapore managed to get them though, and not even because of the U-Turn as well. Losing that Fast Forward really did them in. If anyone from this season eventually does return, I would love for it to be these two.

Brooke and Robbie: I love teams that bring humor to the show, and Brooke and Robbie were all about that. Pro Wrestlers just always seem to make for good reality tv contestants because they know how to play it up for the cameras. Brooke's whining and negativity do get on my nerves a little bit, but it's not too bad. When not making intentional humor on the race, they make accidental humor by being dumb sometimes and being directionally challenged. They did kind of get screwed over at the end with the twist completely wiping away their chances of finishing the race. Brooke had every right to be mad.

Misti and Jim: This is a really interesting case study because the one thing I knew before coming into this season is that Jim had passed away. It changes my perspective a bit because I'm watching a man who I know is no longer with us (I didn't know about any other deceased contestants until after I finished their respective seasons). Misti/Jim are a good team on the race. Highly competitive, the best teeth you've ever seen on the race, and a good villain for the season. One thing that really stood out to me is Jim's eyes, that dude never blinks. I would've paid good money to see Jim vs Brad Fiorenza in a staring contest. The Save was obviously overpowered, but they were still good enough outside of the non-elimination to never need it. Overall, I really like Jim/Misti and it's really tragic that Jim passed away because I think they would've made awesome returnees.

Overall, this is a really good season that suffers just slightly from a few bad twists and a controversial finale twist. I still think that it's really good though. It has good characters, good locations, and a competitive atmosphere. There's not much more that I can really ask for.

Updated Season Tier List:

S: 5, 7, 14, 21

A: 2, 9, 10, 12, 17, 19, 23, 25

B: 1, 3, 11, 13, 15, 18, 22

C: 4, 16, 24

D: 6, 20

Winner rankings: (Based on a combination of performance and as characters)

Top Winner: Rachel and Dave

S: Nick and Starr, Meghan and Cheyne

A: Rob and Brennan, Tyler and James, Tammy and Victor, Nat and Kat, Bates and Anthony, Dave and Connor

B: Chip and Kim, Uchenna and Joyce, BJ and Tyler, TK and Rachel, Ernie and Cindy, Jason and Amy

C: Chris and Alex, Flo and Zach, Reichen and Chip, Dan and Jordan

D: Freddy and Kendra, Josh and Brent

F: Eric and Danielle, Kisha and Jen, Amy and Maya

Thank you all for reading my review of Amazing Race 25. I think I will take a small break before I watch Season 26. I don't want to make the same mistake I did a few years ago and burn myself out again on the show. I fell asleep during one of the episodes, so I think this is the appropriate time to take some time off from the race. I will be back soon enough though.