The Amazing Race Recap on S26E12

SPOILERS

• Ooh finale time! This shall be fun!
• Who will win The Amazing Race? I’m going for Laura and Tyler.
• Three blind dates vs one dating couple …
• During the episode credits, I realised that I don’t remember many of these couples. Methinks I must have come into the season later than episode two maybe? Not too sure on that. I guess with the season being over, I can finally Google – as I couldn’t previously due to not wanting to see spoilers. Spoilers are the worst!
• Dallas – the final city!
• The top 3 teams think it’s a final 3 but surprise! Here’s Mike and Rochelle to mix things up! “That’s the race, expect the unexpected” – Jelani.
• “All four teams are going to Dallas!” – Tyler.
• “You’re gonna listen, right?” – Hayley to Blair. Again.
• “Back in America!” – Tyler. “Dallas, hope you’ll be good to us” – Laura.
• “Follow that van. Hope we can beat them. Overtake” – Hayley and Blair during the taxi ride out of the airport. How can you follow a van and yet want to overtake it?
• Rochelle and Mike arrive first at A&T Stadium for the Roadblock “Play Like A Pro” – one team member must dress in whatever sports outfit they’re playing (is it American football? I know not American sports), retrieve their playbook from high above the air, catch a ball and then kick a field goal.
• What an amazing roadblock! I’m so jealous. I would LOVE to do all that!
• “That was awesome!” – Mike’s response to retrieving the playbook.
• Tyler – “Ran onto the field, it was like a dream come true”
• Does Tyler have a selfie stick? Oh wait, they all do. Jelani is making me dizzy!
• Wow that’s SO high up!
• Woohoo go Tyler! Caught the ball straight away and make the goal.
• Mike is struggling with catching the ball/kicking the goal. “Guys my size usually play defense”
• But Rochelle is just amused because Mike’s “pants are falling down”
• And now, a moment with Jenny. “MAKE THAT FIELD GOAL!” “KICK HIGHER! KICK HIGHER! KICK HIGHER!” Jenny is insane. Shut the hell up!
• Tyler and Laura’s taxi driver doesn’t know the way to the P2 ranch so they decide to wait for Hayley and Blair. Hayley just wants to “gotta get rid of them. go!” but Tyler finds waiting for their taxi to leave “so brutal” because they wasted about five minutes waiting for Blair to finish. Probably should have just gotten their taxi driver to give you guys directions. Methinks that would have been the smarter move.
• Hayley describes Laura and Tyler as “so shisty” – is that even a word? is that even how you spell it? I’ve never heard it before. Does she mean shifty or does she just have an accent that I don’t understand?
• Laura decides that she and Tyler “We should not follow Blair and Hayley” not too sure what happens after this regarding directions … any-who.
• Mike and Rochelle’s taxi driver couldn’t wait for them. Oh no. This is such a bad thing to happen during the last leg. Taxi drivers can make or break your game. “We went from first to last” – poor Mike.
• Those longhorn are quite amazing looking creatures!
• “The one thing I’ve never done is ride a horse” – I’m sure there’s many things you haven’t done, Blair. Have you made a dress out of watermelon? I don’t think you have.
• Tyler to Jelani – “I thought you were fast!” Now that’s a running race!
• Such cute cowboy outfits!
• So the teams have to put on cowboy outfits, ride some horses and do something with the longhorn. I think round them up but I missed what Phil said because I was just staring at the pretty longhorn.
• Oh no! Second bad news for Mike and Rochelle. Their taxi driver is almost out of petrol! “Have to go in the opposite direction of where we’re going to get gas” – Rochelle, “We’re screwed.”
• Haha Hayley’s horse can’t seem to stand Hayley as much as everyone else!
• “My cowgirl’s pretty hot” – Tyler says about his helper cowgirl. I thought he was talking about Laura because she was a dead ringer, but he was not.
• “Hayley, get your lil horse riding butt over here” – Blair to Hayley.
• So I’m a terrible person, but Jenny falling off her horse kind of made me laugh. She will be sore later though! And it would be really scary to do so!
• “I’m a cowboy, baby!” – Tyler
• “Oh. I love you guys!” – Laura to the helpful cowboys on the ranch.
• I hope this episode is entitled – “It’s like a Ferrari”
• Poor Mike and Rochelle are eliminated from the competition. Sad face. Mike – “Thought the race we’ve seen people bicker and fighter” but he’s happy to be the “last couple standing” and it was the “best experience of my life”
• I think Mike and Rochelle did really well because I certainly didn’t expect them to go as well as they did and I liked them as a couple/competitors.
• Ugh to Blair bragging from going last to first. As in last out of the airport and now currently in first to the tower. And what a pretty tower it is!
• ^ “I don’t want them to win! How can they have such a far lead?” – Tyler reacting to Hayley and Blair leaving the task. (Which, by the way, is to repel down the tower while looking for flags nearby the train station)
• “I’m gonna drop from the tower!” – Jenny is excited.
• Laura and Jenny spot the flags together – different from the one that Hayley and Blair are currently in the taxi traveling towards. When they realise that they’re chasing the wrong thing, Hayley screams “Blair help me make decisions here!” even though Blair has no way to know where to go because he’s not the one who spotted the “flags” from the tower. Silly.
• Jelani and Tyler’s impressions of Hayley and Blair bickering was so spot on. So great!
• “You girls got this. Let’s go” – Tyler encouraging Laura and Jenny.
• “There’s yellow and red flats flying in the wind there,” Laura says to Jenny. I hope they’re right!
• Hayley wants to go back to the tower and try to follow the others. Typical. She doesn’t want anyone following her but she feels like she may follow everyone else. Still unsure of what to do though, she screams, “Blair, help me make a decision. We’re a team!”
• OMG monster trucks! How very cool. This episode has everything!
• Tyler looks like a little kid in a candy store wanting to drive the truck. He goes with the “bad ass green one” because, who wouldn’t? “This is Texas, baby!”
• What does “Stroked” mean on the back of the truck? If that’s the company, consider this a free plug.
• The teams drive their monster truck to their final challenge. They must solve a combination lock on their storage locker and then using a map, place their selfies in the chronological order in which they were taken.
• It’s one giant self memory test! I have a feeling Jenny and Jelani make smoke this!
• “In Texas everything is bigger and better!” – Jenny, upon seeing the monster trucks.
• Blair waits as Hayley repels down the tower again and comments on “we had a big jump on the teams” but now they’re back in last place.
• “Either she wants to get the hell down or she found what she’s looking for!” – Blair comments as Hayley comes down from the tower. Hoorah she’s found the flags! But is it too late? … “I’m so sorry. Lost a million dollars because of me” – poor Hayley. That’s karma’s way of saying you should have treated Blair nicer.
• “We were confident on two of the four” “There’s two that we can’t remember and it’s killing us!” – Tyler and Laura seem to be struggling with the lock.
• Jenny and Jelani smoked it and seem to have gotten it right away.
• Tyler and Laura finally get their storage locker open. It’s a race between Jenny and Jelani & Laura and Tyler. Who will finish this first?
• “Great selfie, by the way” – Tyler impressed with his own face.
• “I love that the selfies are coming into play right now” – Tyler. Now it all makes sense why the selfies were introduced, although I hope this doesn’t happen next season. Still, let us stop to remember the couple who missed their train on an earlier leg because they were too busy taking a selfie. So good.
• “Maybe we’re still in this” Hayley, ever the optimist before screaming at Blair to “BUCKLE UP!” Now that’s funny.
• “I’m not not hurrying” – Jelani is struggling putting the selfies on the map.
• Laura and Tyler are killing it! GO LAURA AND TYLER FOR THE WIN. Come on!
• Tyler is happy that he gets to go back in the monster truck.
• Oh no! Laura and Tyler’s taxi driver doesn’t know where the location of the final mat is. Can Jenny and Jelani over take them?
• “Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go.” Jenny shouts.
• Laura sees Hayley and Blair as they leave for the mat. “You sure you saw Blair and Hayley. They weren’t, like, ghosts?” – Tyler asks. I think he knows they’re first. But “this race isn’t over til you see Phil” …
• Jenny points out the location “see all those people?” to the taxi driver because he can’t go that way because he’s “gonna hit a wall”
• Who is going to make the mat first? This is exciting!
• And it’s …
• .
• .
• .
• .
• .
• LAURA AND TYLER!
• Yes. Yes. Yes. I couldn’t think of a more deserving team then them. They played the game well, respected each other, supported each other and did really well. I’m glad that they took the win.
• “21 days ago you didn’t even now each other” – Phil says to Laura and Tyler.
• Phil, ever so noisy asking if people found love on the race.
• Tyler “found love in the world” and when speaking about his friendship with Laura, “We balance each other well.”
• Their finale selfie has been the best selfie of all.
• Jenny and Jelani come in second. I wonder how far afterwards they arrived.
• “I couldn’t have asked for a better teammate” – Jenny speaking of Jelani. “He’s going to make a girl happy” Ooh burn.
• Blair and Hayley must have arrived a lot later because the sun was going down by the time they hit the mat.
• Hayley feels responsible because she is sure they would have won if she had spotted the flags from the tower in the first place. “Will you ever forget that tower?” Phil rubs it in.
• Go Phil!
• “All came looking for love,” Phil says. “Still looking,” Blair says. Ooh double burn!
• Phil is going to pastor at Matt and Ashley’s wedding. That’s lovely if it is true.
• Hayley says that she wouldn’t do the race again without Blair. Blair – “I would do it again if Hayley promises not to …” We’ll take that as a no. Hayley then changes her mind that she’d only do it again if Blair listens.
• Well, no love lost between them. I think they would be approached as a team to come back during an All Stars season though. I feel like the money would bring Blair back to the race forgetting how annoying Hayley was, and then during the first leg he would remember. I definitely see this happening.

Until next season! Thank you for reading!