Amazing Race Season 21 and Team Chippendales

Though I haven't posted anything Amazing Race-related in probably a year, I just needed to talk about the latest season which just had its finale a little less than an hour ago. Mostly I wanted to shine a light on the delightful team made out of Chippendale dancers Jaymes and James. Now I am sad to say that I judged them wrongly off the bat. I immediately thought they would be those annoyingly aggressive and entitled alpha male teams that would tear through the race making enemies left and right. And really from the get go, they proved me wrong time and time again. They were probably the nicest team this season, not only to the other teams, but to each other. Despite their slow starts, they never got angry at one another or displayed a "woe is me" attitude. They approached the entire experience with wonder and glee that was frankly infectious and it helped that they were definitely eye candy (see their picture above). With all of that said, it's no surprise then that by tonight's finale I was rooting for them 200%. More on tonight's finale including spoilers on final outcome...

Again, even though Team Chippendales started out a bit slow (they barely escaped elimination in the first episode) and stuck mostly in the middle for the first half of the race, they really stepped it up towards the end finishing first or second in their last 6 legs. Their second first place finish came in tonight's penultimate episode, which pleasantly surprised me as it looked like they were going to finish second. That win got them a couple of sweet cars and more importantly the momentum heading into the final leg in New York City. Unfortunately, unable to find that first clue proved detrimental making the boys play catch up to Trey/Lexie and the Beekman boys throughout the episode. The final roadblock though consisting of assembling the right combination of hello/goodbye greetings in the native language of the season's countries' pit stops became an equalizer giving all three teams trouble. The Beekman boys finished the roadblock first, however, and thus crossed the finish line first just ahead of Jaymes and James who ended up in second place.

In their final commentary after winning, the Beekman boys proclaimed that "sometimes nice guys finist first." Well, this season, the nice guys also finished second. Hope the producers bring back Team Chippendales for an All Star Edition. And finally, I can't talk about this season without bring up the weirdness that were episodes 7-9 with the missing passport drama, the various airport insanities, and the epic use of the Double U-Turn. It's when the season went from okay to must-see TV and I'm grateful for it all.