I don't understand why so many folks here at the KT are rooting for Rachel and Brendon when so many folks here at the KT were so adamantly against Boston Rob and Amber when they were on TAR. The folks who were against Rob and Amber kept saying that because she'd won $1 million on Survivor that they shouldn't be on TAR. Well, Rachel won $1 on Big Brother, so why is it ok for her but not Amber? I think that some of the reasons they've gone to India so many times are that seeing the plight of the people who live there might awaken a humanitarian spirit in those who watch the show; the country can certainly use the money the producers pay in order to film in the country; the show undoubtedly uses (and pays) local folks to work behind the scenes while they are "in county" which is greatly needed; and there are a lot of local customs, etc., that make for good challenges. I like the Kentucky guys. They are having a good time, they're not giving each other grief, and they're playing fairly. And speaking of Boston Rob and Amber, Rob showed a lot of smarts when they were on. Remember the challenge where they had to take a specific number of hardbound books from some store and deliver them to a library and put them all on the shelves? They had to use a handtruck to move them from one location to the other. Well, Rob figured out how to stack the correct number of books on the handtruck so that they only had to make ONE trip between the two locations, while all of the other teams had to make at least two trips. Then, there was that awful meat-eating challenge where one team member had to eat an incredible amount of really gross stuff. If you didn't finish a challenge, you had to endure a two-hour penalty at that location before you could move on to the next task. Well, Rob knew that there was no way that he could eat that stuff, so he said to Amber that all he had to do was officially say he was sitting out the challenge, then wait a few minutes and then talk one other team into sitting it out, too. Because he had started the penalty first, it would guarantee that at least one team would be behind them so they wouldn't get eliminated. He had no trouble at all convincing another team to sit out that challenge, and I think at least one other team decided to sit it out, too. So... Phil made a big mistake on this week's episode when he said to the team who had the two-hour penalty at the pit stop that this was the first time in TAR history that a team that had to wait through a penalty hadn't ended up being eliminated -- because Rob and Amber did it during their season.

This season the episodes were 90 minutes long, because production anticipated the writers/actors strikes and knew that there would be time to fill. The season airing now was not supposed to be shown this season - they flip-flopped it with what will be next season (that was supposed to be this season). Next season Survivor will start with two, two-hour episodes, and then the remaining episodes will be 90 minutes each.

I was really happy with ‘old school’ AR this season. That is what they called it and I really hope they stick to the format. Most of the racing teams really didn’t get into any huge arguments (a few did, and I chalk most of that up to the stress and fatigue of the race itself). The finale was great. The winners were smart and played smart all the way. But any one of those 3 teams could have won.

I’ve been an Amazing Race fan for a long time, but I just cannot get into this race. It is the people in it and their attitude and behavior for the most part. When I found out they were mostly from Big Brother and maybe some from Survivor, now i know why. They are getting better as some drop out and the ones left have realized it’s a serious race and requires attention to detail, some physical and mental skills and common sense and the ability to get along with and be nice to others at times.