TAR twists: Why Amazing Race doesn’t need a social game

The Amazing Race is still must-see TV for me every week, but I’m distressed about how season has taken more of a turn toward Big Brother and Survivor, pitting the teams against each other more frequently.  I’ll look at the history of TAR’s social twists, and consider how necessary they are. 

Transcript

The world is waiting, and so are a bunch of twists I’m not sure the Amazing Race really needs.
That’s today on Made from Humans, How Reality Becomes TV.
[music]
I’m your host, Andy Dehnart, the creator of Reality Blurred and a writer who believes in the power of true stories.
This week, the Amazing Race is back to being must-see TV for me, but I’m distressed about how this season has taken more of a turn toward Big Brother and Survivor, pitting the teams against each other more frequently.
We’ll take a look at the history of TAR’s social twists and consider how necessary they actually are.
[end music]
Welcome, I hope your day is going well.
Thank you so much for being here with me for our first segment analyzing the analysis where I look more closely at a show and/or my critiques of it.
Today it’s a show, The Amazing Race, which I have loved since the beginning, though I have fallen out of love with it at various points in its life.
Particularly in the middle there, there was a kind of a dip when I just kind of got a little bit of a little tired of it, not a little bit of tired, a lot of tired, so I kind of stopped watching and writing about it.
But the past few years, it’s really found itself again for me.
And I actually think the pandemic was a big part of that.
It broke in the middle of a season, obviously, because of the like it was filming when the pandemic broke out and then stopped filming and then returned.
And a lot of the decisions they had to make in order to film safely brought it back to some of the things that I loved, like self-driving and using navigation more and more.
Really, what I like most about The Amazing Race is that it is a show about a pair of people who already know each other and already have a relationship navigating the world together.
So that’s unlike shows like Big Brother or Survivor or the Traitors, which given some exceptions over the years, are for the most part a group of people who don’t know each other trying to play a game.
So here we have people who already bring their strengths, their weaknesses, as a couple, pair, duo, whatever it might be, and they have to figure out how to find their way around the world.
Of course, they’re actually navigating a course set about for them by the producers of The Amazing Race.
So this isn’t just a show about international travel that is following people as they just go about their normal lives.
They are in a race as they often and sort of obnoxiously remind locals and cab drivers and people who could probably give a shit that some Americans are racing for a million dollars and that’s really not going to be a way to hurry someone up to help you out, to like scream at them we’re in a race.
But I digress a little bit.
Maybe I don’t digress.
Those kind of moments, the stress of travel, the stress of relationship, and trying to figure out how we navigate these obstacles together, whether it’s getting directions or finding a location, which I guess is also getting directions, or you know doing something in a in a challenge of some kind.
The Amazing Race finds its drama from two people navigating the world together, but of course they’re navigating a course that the producers have set about for them.
We’re not just flies on the wall as they you know get on planes and go places that they’ve chosen.
This has all been mapped out by the production and so they’re taking a very real thing which is people traveling and the stress of travel and the challenge of being in places where you don’t speak the language and turn that into something that is not just a game but also something that is very entertaining and kind of instructive sometime like how would you approach this, how would I approach this?
So I really love all of that and I like that so much of the drama entertainment conflict comes from trying to work out how to do this together, not trying to figure out how to vote somebody off or how to you know navigate some kind of strategic twist.
Of course I love Survivor and shows like that but this is different.
That’s what made the Amazing race different.
Big Brother, people locked in the house for three months, Survivor on an island for 39 days, similar-ish shows, although very different environments which affects them.
Amazing Race as the third big tentpole reality series on CBS and one of the original reality competitions gave us something totally new.
So when it strays from that model of here are two people and they are trying to figure this out together for you know and again that doesn’t always work out or is not as easy as it says and I mean not no judgment here like the stress of travel is real so even when I’m traveling by myself I can feel that and trying to communicate with another person while navigating in a place where the signs are in different languages or you don’t know how to use the public transportation system.
Like that’s a lot.
And especially when you’re tired, especially when you have a million dollar prize, potentially waiting for you at the end of all this.
So I absolutely get that.
It’s worth going back quickly to season one and remembering how out of control the race was right from the start.
I’ll link in the show notes or the episode description area of your podcast app.
The piece that I wrote, the oral history of the Amazing Races first season where everyone who was there talks about what it was like.
And really what happens is the teams kind of get spread out around the world.
Notably one team at the end, they’re like completely in several time zones away from everyone else when, when the race ends.
So that becomes really difficult as a production survivor locked into one location, big brother, obviously it’s a sound stage.
So we’re the traders is in a castle.
When the entire world is essentially your playground, battleground, I don’t know what you call this, like, and I don’t want to just turn the world into a plaything for Americans here.
But when the entire world is available, there are all kinds of possibilities.
So this is where the production comes in and where the producers guide teams on a route.
They figure out what flights are available.
And so they kind of have a sense of when people might be able to get from place to place.
As you’ll see in that first season, they missed some of the flights.
So teams like beat them from flying from South Africa, I think was where they got on a plane to Paris.
And that was they just didn’t realize there was a totally separate flight that was happening that day.
Over time, what we’ve seen is that the production and of the race and the actual route itself and all of the links in that route, each of the legs, has gotten more compact and tighter.
And by that, I mean that there’s basically less room for people to go astray.
All the teams are often on one flight to another country.
And that means that sometimes they’re equalized and they just all start from the same spot.
Sometimes they have a slightly staggered start.
But essentially, there’s less chance for teams to fall a day or two behind.
And that just doesn’t happen anymore.
And that’s, I think, for all kinds of reasons, logistically, just to make this impossible task more doable.
Also, budgetary reasons, you can’t just have teams buying every kind of airfare left and right, as maybe they used to be able to do with budgets being tighter and tighter, as Wall Street demands more and more profit from entertainment companies.
But I’m digressing a lot here.
So essentially though what we have in the past few years, if not the past 10 years, is a race where the legs are tighter, the clues are a little more direct, they’re less… yes.
What’s the word I’m looking for?
They’re not puzzles in the same way.
Occasionally they are, but sometimes they just like go to this place so that the challenges find the place, not figure out what the place is and then find it.
Again, some exceptions, but more direct than before.
And also we see teams working together more and more, in part because they’re in the same place together more frequently because of the way everything has been compacted.
Now, The Amazing Race season seven, which is the one with Rob and Amber from Survivor, is one that people think about.
Because there was a moment in that race when Rob apparently convinced other teams to skip one of the challenges the Roadblock and just take a four hour penalty.
And the strategy there was that he was basically saying if they skip the chat task two then we all have the same penalty and therefore we won’t fall behind.
So it was a very smart move other teams have disputed whether that was really, uh, entirely his idea or he took too much credit for it.
But I think that’s something where there’s like a new layer of competitiveness of social interaction.
It’s not just two people trying to find their way through this Route and also doing these challenges, but now it’s multiple pairs that are trying to like either sabotage each other or help each other, etc.
But it was actually two seasons earlier that The Amazing Race introduced one of those things as a mechanic in the show, and that was called the Yield.
Basically teams had the opportunity to stop another team for 30 minutes in the middle of the leg.
So they could just, if they arrived at this yield station once per season, they could stop someone behind them if they were worried that they might be overtaken or they were worried that they might fall behind as a team.
That Yield lasted for seven seasons total through season 11 and it actually came back in season 32 in a way that I liked a little bit more which was that the Yields were either 10 or 20 minutes and the teams had to as part of the race find an hourglass for either 10 or 20 minutes and then hold on to that and take it with them for the rest of the race until they wanted to actually use it.
I think that could have gone a little bit further in the, if they had had the teams basically have a choice, like, do you want to yield someone?
Search this area for an hourglass and then use it if you can find it.
Basically give it, make it a sort of like, are you going to delay yourself to try to delay another team?
How much do you trust that you can find this hourglass kind of situation, but really it was just pick up an hourglass and then take it the rest of the race.
That has not come back, thankfully, just like this idea of just stopping the race and for another team.
Instead, what we’ve come to have as the major social component of the Amazing Race in terms of the game is the U-turn, where teams select another team to have to go back and do the second challenge at a detour.
If you’re haven’t watched the Amazing Race in a while or you’ve never watched it, the detours are a challenge where the teams have, as host Phil Keoghan says, the choice between two tasks.
So in a detour, teams will try to figure out which one’s going to be their strength or which one seems like it’ll take less time.
If they get U-turned, they have to do both.
So it’s a way to really penalize another team and force them to do more work. that has become a double U-turn where there is now a vote that takes place among all the teams to U-turn the two teams that they think deserve it, I guess, I don’t know.
And the problem with this, as we saw this season, is that the outcome is obvious.
They’re going to choose the team that has the most, or that is the farthest ahead, right?
The teams that are doing the best are going to be penalized by everyone else and that’s exactly what happened.
The teams that have been coming in first and second Matt and Michelle, Dalton and Daisha on season 39, they were the ones who got all the votes.
There was a moment of kind of interesting strategy from Doug and Dylan where they said they were trying to vote for a team they thought they could pass by so they cast one of their votes that way.
I think that’s an interesting strategy but that’s pretty much not the way this has ever played out.
So one, just the predictability of it makes it less interesting to me.
Two, I don’t really need other teams to penalize each other or each other.
Other teams to penalize each other.
I don’t need that mechanism in the Amazing Race.
I don’t want them to be slowed down by how much they like each other or how much they perceive each other’s threats.
That’s not the the amazing race’s core strength for me.
Again, I want to see a team really do well because they have managed to navigate efficiently and get help from people who know the area and really be smart in a challenge or, or lucky or whatever.
I don’t want to see them held behind by another team’s, you know, spite or jealousy or just smart strategy, honestly.
Yet in season 39, we’ve now had versions of this three episodes in a row.
In episode five, we had the driver’s seat where the first team to arrive at a challenge got to choose the difficulty of the challenge for every other team.
The way that that worked out and having it two challenges in a row meant that the same team, Matt and Michelle, arrived first and therefore got to distribute all of the tasks in a way that benefited them.
And that was also, again, kind of not surprising.
Like of course, if you slow other teams down who are right behind you, you’re gonna probably arrive first at the next driver’s seat.
So I don’t think we needed two in a row.
And I also don’t need to see other teams choosing how difficult a task will be for someone because they make it difficult for themselves.
That’s the fun part.
One of those tasks was basically gathering grapes, putting them into a grinder and crushing them into a barrel, and they had to get a certain amount of weight, which was the variable chosen by the other team.
And one of the players, Anuar, didn’t take the top off of his barrel.
The top was just basically a piece of wood.
It looked like plywood.
And so he was just grinding on top of this, and the juice and the grapes were just kind of falling out.
And I think he thought he only needed to get the juice in.
And at one point he actually picked up the, sort of, or kind of swiped away all of the crushed grapes.
And was like, oh no, like, and his daughter who was standing in the sidelines couldn’t help him or say anything.
‘Cause that’s the rules of The Amazing Race.
So you basically have someone who hasn’t paid enough attention because of the stress and they are now, you know, causing problems for themselves.
And actually in that moment, another team pointed it out to him and helped him out.
And that is, you know, a kindness, but also I don’t necessarily need that again.
In the same way that in the most recent episode, Matt and Michelle took a, they’re the kind of like team that’s in the lead.
They took a bus that was behind another bus.
So the last place team, Doug and Dylan, grandfather and grandson, incredibly charming.
They arrived before the faster teams and Dylan, who was kind of waiting around while his grandpa did the challenge, refused a question or just a decline to answer Matt and Michelle’s question about where the clue box was located.
Because of course he would.
Like, why would you tell your competitors who are doing so well in this race?
And they got so pissed and so self-righteous and just like, like, how dare you?
And Matt called him a little rat and just like, that’s I mean, I guess there’s something there about Like the, if this kind of moment is showing us who people are and who these teams are.
But the expectation that someone would help you in a competition like this, like is interesting at the very least.
So yeah, so anyway, we had the Driver’s Seat.
Then we had the Intersection where teams have to wait for another team and then do a task with them, which was actually kind of fun.
They, one person from each team had to do a dance together. so they had to learn together with someone they don’t really know well.
And there were some fun pairings there, but still you’re reliant on another team.
And because teams kind of figured this out and paired off that left some teams behind.
And then we had the double U-turn in episode seven.
Coming up in tonight’s episode, when the teams go to Laos is what Keoghan says in the trailer for this tonight’s episode is a twist nobody sees coming.
And I’m really hoping that twist is not going to be another U-Turn or another Driver’s Seat or something else like that.
It’s just too much in a row.
Again, I understand that the producers are putting these mechanisms in to create drama, create entertainment.
They’re making additional layers of stress for the contestants.
They’re also making sure that even with maybe shorter legs that are more self-contained that we are having a little bit more possibility for things to move around and keeping things interesting.
Because that was actually one thing that caused me to drop off from the Race—was just like it’s not that interesting to watch a team just kind of like go from challenge to challenge and check off boxes and then end up in the same order at the end of that leg, because there’s been no chance for them to move around in the middle.
So I understand the function there.
I prefer the tasks or the twists, I guess, that allow the teams to basically figure things out for themselves.
This is in every team received a fast forward, allowing them to skip a challenge, but they could only skip it if no one else had skipped it.
So this was about them as a team figuring out if this was right for them in the moment, That’s the kind of strategic thinking I want to see is do we waste time and ask the person at the bus terminal if there’s a faster bus or do we just jump on this bus?
That’s the kind of decisions that navigation and travel provides.
And then if the race is going to introduce those kinds of things, it’s like here we are in a challenge.
Do we think we have the ability to do this quickly or not?
Let’s skip it, use our fast forward right now.
So that’s great.
I love the scramble, which we saw earlier this season, where basically teams have the option of completing smaller tasks in a relatively self-contained area in any order, like in a city basically, in any order that they want.
So there’s not as much of a linear flow, and that gives lots of options, lots of possibility.
I also like the mega legs where we have double the number of challenges, which is obviously really exhausting for the teams, nevermind the production crew, but that is another way of just adding a layer of challenge to what’s already pretty freaking challenging, let’s be honest.
I just don’t want them to continually be challenges that they face that are about how much other teams like or load them.
As much as I want to see Matt and Michelle out of the race, I want to see them fall out of the race on their own like Robin Amber did in their second season where they just couldn’t do things on their own or in their first season when they just failed at a challenge.
I want to see them fall on their own ass basically.
I don’t need to see other teams, you know, going after them.
That’s what Survivor is for.
Okay, on to recommendations where I share things that are bringing joy and entertainment into my life.
First up, the trailer for Can You Hide Shaq?
That is an actual show coming up on ABC and ESPN in December.
Just learned about it yesterday and the trailer dropped during Dancing with the Stars.
I’m linking to it in the show notes so you can watch too.
And basically, so you can just say what the fuck along with me.
What the fuck.
Yeah, that’s all I have to say.
Literally the entire show concept is right there in the name.
Can you hide shack?
Yeah, you just have to watch it, like, because the answer is no.
And why are we doing this?
Okay, I guess I will probably still watch at least an episode of it.
So I will I’ll watch it for you and let you know if there’s anything redeeming about about that.
My second recommendation is for St.
Dennis Medical.
This is not a reality show but it is a sitcom that is back on NBC and of course you can watch it on peacock.
It is a delightful workplace sitcom that is set in a hospital so there is some medical stuff occasionally and like occasionally some blood and references to things but for the most part this is this is not the pit.
You are not going to see all the grisly horrors and intensity. is much more about workplace dynamics and just happens to be a hospital.
Just lovely characters who I think are all pretty great and really fun actors just having a ball doing it.
So it’s kind of got vibes of Parks and Rec and The Office if you like that and it’s the mockumentary style where they acknowledge the cameras and are talking to them in interviews.
So yeah, Stained Dennis Medical, season three so far has been, or no, season four we’re in.
Are we in season three or four?
Yeah, season three is on right now on NBC and Peacock.
And then finally, a recommendation for an essay and then some recaps that are coming up on Reality Blurred.
This is one of those where I don’t want to recommend my own stuff, but I’m not.
I’m recommending a writer who has written for me on Reality Blurred.
It’s a new writer to Reality blurred Sarah Pacifucci, who is covering Southern Charm.
Bravo’s, I don’t know, I want to say like Real Housewives-like show that’s set in Charleston, but that’s probably underselling it a little bit.
Southern Charm follows a group of actual friends in Charleston, and Sarah, as our correspondent and recapper, is someone who lives in Charleston.
So she has a particularly great perspective on this, and also a love for the show, and also has some really interesting things to say about it.
The essay that she wrote kind of previewing season 12 and also catching those of us who haven’t watched up touches on those things, so I’m linking to it just for you to check out if you haven’t ever watched Southern Charm or you’re ready for some smart and fun recaps for it.
This will be a great preview for you.
Finally today, Life Advice from TV coming to us from an Amazing Race deleted Scene, starring Joanna, who talks to us about things you can and can’t control.
First, what I can control is giving you some brief credits.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
I really appreciate having a home in your podcast player, and thank you for subscribing and rating if you have already done that.
Our theme song that you listen to at the top of the episode is is “Cherry Monday” by Kevin MacLeod.
And this episode is by me, Andy Dehnart, and is copyright 2026 by Reality Blurred LLC, which is also me.
You can find me at realityblurred.com and and andydehnart.com.
And here from a deleted scene that I will also link to, our former professional soccer player, Joanna’s thoughts about what you can control in the amazing race and in life.
[begin clip]
I think the difference between a great team and a good team is a matter of inches, right?
It’s like those inches, But I think Ali and I understand the inches live between your ears.
What’s going on in your brain?
How are you speaking to yourself throughout these challenges?
Because self-talk is the number one influence of confidence.
So even when we’re in the back, we’re not sitting here and being like, “Oh, we should have done this. We should have done that.” It’s just like, “Okay, what’s our next move? How do we take a next step towards getting closer to these other teams?”
So I think that’s what you can control.
There’s so much of this race that is outside of your control, what you can control, your thoughts and your actions.