The Amazing Race 8: The Finish Line, Episode 6

Here we go, time for The Amazing Race: The Finish Line! My colleague Jenn and I [Associate Editor’s Note: Don’t forget the loveable Associate Editor!] are trying to recover from the trauma of seeing our favorite family Philiminated. It’s tough, but we must go on. That’s what they would want us to do, right?! At least we get this one last look at them before we will be forced to move on! Let’s see what Bill, Tammy, Billy, and Carissa Gaghan have to say. I’m at the mercy of the CBS Video Player, which is not being particularly cooperative, unfortunately.

Hosts Sarah Bernard and Jon Weiss greet us. Whoa, the show is on at 2 PM this week. Thanks CBS, for keeping us on our toes! Jon and Sarah agree this week’s episode was a great one, and promise an equally great Finish Line. As always, they will be taking viewer phone calls. (The sound quality on my clips is really bad today. There is another sound track playing along with the Finish Line sound, it’s REALLY annoying! Let’s see how long it takes before I get fed up…)

Unfortunately for them (and for Jenn and me) the Gaghans are in the studio with Sarah and Jon today. Sarah gets right down to business, saying she hopes the Gaghans are not too sad to be there. Tammy says no, they aren’t, they are very happy and it’s all good. Jon says they were a very well-liked team and they were competitive and ran a great race. Bill says their number one objective when they were getting ready to start the race was to have fun. They definitely did that so it was a success for them. (I LOVE this family!) He says more than that but I can’t hear it because of the other sound track. I don’t know how much of this I can take…

Sarah says Billy and Carissa were the youngest competitors ever on the show and there were some advantages to that. They are all in fantastic shape, and Carissa remarked in Episode 1 that she was little so she could run faster than everyone else. Sarah asks if there were any disadvantages to that, pointing out that the Linz family are all around the same age. Bill says yes, when it came to strength challenges they had things to overcome. He and Tammy had to step up and take charge and they did that. The major disadvantage he saw was with navigation, when they had to read maps in an unfamiliar location they could have used three people to bounce ideas off of and make sure Dad wasn’t going the wrong way. That was what they needed, but every team has its strengths and weaknesses. Jon says Carissa’s keen eyes helped out a lot. I wish I could tell you what Bill’s response is but the sound is so bad I can’t. All I can make out is something about clue boxes. Sorry.

Sarah says she has never seen a family that was as calm as the Gaghans were, and asks if that was just the clips they chose to show. Were they actually screaming at each other like the Paolos and CBS just didn’t show it? Or were they always complimenting each other like we saw? Bill says that’s who they are, they support each other and screaming at each other doesn’t motivate them. Tammy says that’s their family dynamic, she was still mom even though they were on a race. She was making sure everyone’s clothes were folded and that they had clean underwear.

Our first caller is Anthony from Connecticut. He feels the nice guys finish last, and compliments his hometown team on a race well run. He wants to know what their most difficult moment was and Bill says it was pushing the Amish buggy. He’s run 11 marathons but that was hard. Although they had less weight to push, they didn’t have two adults who could switch out and give the others a rest. The other teams were asking them how they pushed the buggy and Tammy says it was the endurance they have from running marathons, they know they can always give more, unlike the other teams who felt they were at their limit.

Jon asks if after that challenge they were worried about what might come next. Bill says at that point they finished in second place and their goal was to stay at the top. And again my sound is so screwed up I can’t understand the rest. Tammy says something, and Bill didn’t want anyone sitting down, but that’s all I can hear.

Jon says they didn’t seem to make any alliances through the race, that they were focused as a team. Tammy says everyone was friendly, they hung around with whoever they were with and worked with them. Whoever was on the second bus or the second plane worked together. Bill says they helped every team at some point and every team helped them at some point. It was part of the whole feeling of the race and it started the first night of the race, when they camped in Pennsylvania. The first three teams pitched their tents and then they helped all the other teams as they came in.

Sarah says it seemed last night that everybody hated the Weavers. (I know I did… such hypocrites!) She introduces a clip that illustrated how everyone really felt about the Weavers. This should be good… (Incidentally, I love the nicknames these teams have for each other… the Desperate Housewives, the Rugrats, the Brady Bunch, Florida. I wonder what names they had that didn’t get shown…) The Paolos yield the Weavers. Everyone rejoices. The Weavers declare their Christianity and then mock the other teams, starting with ridiculing the Paolo family for being in front of a garbage truck. (I wonder how they would feel if there weren’t people in the world who were willing to pick up their garbage?)

Tammy likes being the Rugrats team. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE this family?) The Gaghans were not surprised that the Paolos chose to yield the Weavers and Jon asks why that was. He wants to know if it was just that they didn’t spend much time with them but when they did they didn’t like what they saw, or were they truly disliked because of things like what they saw on the clip. Tammy says they actually got along with the Weavers. Bill says he thinks it all started early in the race, when there was a long Pit Stop in Virginia and a lot of the teams were downstairs commiserating and getting to know each other. The Weavers had come in first place in the leg and they spent most of their time upstairs in their room isolated. That was their race strategy but it separated them from the rest of the teams. When they later tried to change that it was not well-received. It was difficult because nobody trusted them anymore and things just got worse and worse and bad things were said back and forth between all of the teams.

Sarah says the Weavers did not say the nicest things and Bill says it was embarrassing to watch. At least I think it’s Bill, now my picture has frozen so I can hear the two sound tracks but can’t see the video. It sounds like Bill and not Jon, so I’m going with Bill. Sarah wonders how much the teams heard, saying the viewers could of course hear everything but she doesn’t know if the racers heard it as they passed. She specifically mentions the comment about the garbage truck in the Paolo family picture. Aha, my picture is back! Jon makes a face indicating that he doesn’t appreciate the Weaver family’s comments. Sarah says when you look at their profile you wouldn’t expect that kind of treatment by the other teams. She would have expected a widow and her kids to have everyone’s sympathy, especially after what they went through at the race track. Bill says he gave them the benefit of the doubt about a lot of things but in the end everyone has to be accountable for how they act and the things they say. (Yes! Just saying you’re a Christian and better than the other teams doesn’t give you the right to be nasty. Thank you Bill!) He knows it was hurtful for the Paolos to hear some of the Weaver family’s comments on last night’s episode.