The Amazing Race 6: Thinking Smart in the Final Episode

The Amazing Race 6 is a wrap. Freddy and Kendra won, Kris and Jon came in second, and Adam and Rebecca crossed the finish line in third place. Hayden and Aaron were eliminated – but got engaged. Good for them; I wish them a happy, successful, and long marriage.

In the first leg, the choices at the detour were between scrolls and spraying; and all teams elected to paint the vehicles. So I have no idea which was the best task, though in hindsight it seems that with a bad cab driver (like Hayden and Aaron had) the easy-to-find location would have been the best choice. However, I absolutely hated the Roadblock in this leg. One team member had a key – which only fit one lock in over three thousand of them. It was mostly luck, and my regular readers know I have a serious problem with luck-based Roadblocks.

Kris and Kendra had the best luck and found their locks. Hayden gave up, and their team bet the race on the four-hour penalty for failure. In a bit of great circumstance, Rebecca found the right lock and got their clue. Ultimately, it allowed them to get to the finals. What do I call this? Swedish Roulette, once again. It cost Lena and Kristy everything in episode three, and it cost Adam and Rebecca the chance to win it all. There was no portion of the remaining race that would let them catch up and level it out, giving them a fair chance to win.

In the final leg, teams dealt with airline regulations, and two teams were denied earlier flights due to these regulations. Kendra cried about her (imaginary) sick child, Adam did his own bit of whining. The real lesson is that teams in the final leg should not just rely on the airline to give them connecting flights, but should check out everything they can – even if there is just a small chance of making the connection.

The Detour was outfits or outriggers. Which was faster? Well, I would have bet on outrigger, but in practice, Jon and Kris did better than the others by picking outfits. Sometimes the clues and descriptions can be misleading. In the first Amazing Race, one detour option challenged somebody to get 10 points against a Chinese table tennis champion. What they weren’t told was that the champion was a child of about 10.

The roadblock was just another standard task – skydiving. It’s been done before in The Amazing Race (as a detour option in the third and fifth series). There was no skill, just racing skills to get to that point. It didn’t matter who did it – the result was the same.

What the race eventually came down to was the best flight to Chicago. Kris and Jon failed at this point because they trusted somebody who was biased – a ticketing agent working for an airline. Freddy and Kendra got the better flight, and no matter how much editing was done to try to show it was a race, it was the endgame advantage they had and the reason they won. Their better flight gave them the time needed to win. Maybe (just maybe) they were slower eating the pizza. Maybe (just maybe) their cab driver didn’t know the place to go. But the better flight and that time advantage made up for any mistakes they might have made.

Who was thinking smart in the final episode?

Freddy and Kendra: I can’t fault them in the end, because they not only won, but used their time advantage in the final leg to the best result. They have had their problems, but overall they were the team who got to the finish line first. Well done.

Kris and Jon: They are a great couple. They have been a pleasure to watch during the race, and I’d have liked them to win. However, they made a fatal mistake, and mistakes must be paid for eventually. They didn’t book the fastest flight to Chicago, and it burned them. No matter how well they got along and raced, that fatal mistake was the difference in the end.

Adam and Rebecca: What went wrong with this team? Swedish Roulette (a luck based Roadblock) cost them a lot of time – enough to give them little hope of winning at the end. To their credit, they never gave up, and Rebecca chanced finding the right lock in order to make it to the final three teams – a bet which paid off. However, the time problem put them behind in the final leg – a problem they couldn’t bypass.

Hayden and Aaron: What went wrong? Well, in short, it was a combination of a bad cab driver, bad luck, and an attempt to rush when the chips were down – Hayden broke her key, and they lost time getting a replacement. They had a very bad day... or maybe (I hope) a very good day – maybe one of the happiest in their lives. In race terms, they lost and had a lot of things go against them. But after elimination Aaron proposed to Hayden. She accepted his proposal. I hope they have a happy marriage, even if they didn’t win the race.

Jeffrey Clinard lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his cats, Lam and Princess. He can be reached at realityfeedback@bookslv.com.

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