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In this episode, teams made their way from Los Angeles to a small island off the coast of Ireland which was definitely the perfect Irish countryside. At the end of the day, it was a couple of stubborn donkeys that determined the outcome of this leg. Ari & Staella and Nathan & Jennifer got two donkeys that refused to move, but I am sure it had something to do with the teams personalities and how they treated the donkeys too. The moral of the story: treat donkeys right and they’ll treat you right.

Ari & Staella completely alienated their donkey and ended up paying the price. Who knows if they ever led their donkey across the finish line. Maybe the producers let them off the hook when they realized all of the other teams had finished. We’ll never know. As much as I don’t like Kynt & Vyxsin, they were scrappy enough to get a second place finish in this leg. Ultimately, it was Azaria & Hendekea which came in first place.

The Amazing Race won a 5th consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Reality-Competition program! Big ups to the team that makes the show possible.

The Amazing Race 12 will drop the non-elimination legs that have stripped teams of clothing and money, and most recently "marked them for elimination." Phil will finally get to say that the last team to arrive *will* be eliminated. None of this "may" crap.

CBS has renewed The Amazing Race for at least one more season. The Amazing Race 12 was listed in their 2007-2008 schedule as a mid-season returning show, which means that it will likely air in early 2008. An exact air date has not been announced. This is a change from the two seasons per year pace that The Amazing Race has been on in the last few years. Perhaps CBS has decided to air The Race only in the mid-season and will not schedule it in the fall any more.

Wikipedia has an incredible page of Amazing Race stats and trivia. Check it.

In this final episode, teams made their way from Guam to Hawaii. The last three teams left the final Pit Stop with only one hour and forty minutes separating the first place team (the Beauty Queens) and the third place team (Team Schmirna).

All three teams were supposed to be on the same connecting flight to Honolulu, but Charla & Mirna hustled to get on another connecting flight that was scheduled to land 40 minutes ahead of the other teams. It was a pretty ballsy move, considering that had they failed to board that flight, they would have almost certainly missed the second flight as well since it was at a different terminal.

In this episode, teams made their way from Macau to Guam. Team Prada was marked for elimination but missed the earlier flight to Tokyo. They got on a later flight to Tokyo hoping to make the connection. Of course, they totally made the flight to Guam despite the drama created by the producers of the show through editing. It would have been lame if they were eliminated by missing a flight!

Teams bunched up leading into the first task, but they felt safe knowing that they would have a half hour cushion as long as Team Prada did not come in first place. Team Schmirna was in last place leaving the Detour, but passed Team Prada on the way to the Roadblock because they got lost, yet again. It would have been nearly impossible for them to gain thirty minutes on Team Schmirna anyway.

In this episode, teams made their way from Hong Kong to Macau and did several tasks, including an amazing Roadblock at the Macau Tower. There were no long plane trips or airports on this leg of the race, just good old fashioned hustle to get from one place to another. Teams were at the mercy of navigational skills for this entire leg, whether their own or their taxi drivers’.

Eric & Danielle who were marked for elimination and yielded on this leg managed to miraculously make up the time. Danny & Oswald were completely screwed by their incompetent taxi driver. The taxi driver drove them to the wrong location on the Detour and the wrong park for the Pit Stop. Danny & Oswald were to blame as well. They wasted a lot of time unable to find the Dragon Detour destination on foot.

Danny & Oswald were lucky to find the last non-elimination leg. Instead they are now marked for elimination, but somehow I doubt that they will be able to run a flawless leg to get to first place. They also will not run a leg like the one Eric & Danielle just ran. Team Prada is likely to go next, but I hope it’s Team Schmirna that goes.

In this episode, teams made their way from Malaysia to Hong Kong. Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong must be the New York to Boston connection in Southeast Asia, because most flights there were booked. Danny & Oswald hustled to get on the first flight, the Beauty Queens and the Schminas got on the second flight, and Eric & Danielle trailed three hours behind on the third flight. At this point, I thought for sure that they were gone.

Luckily for them, this was a non-elimination leg and they were able to stay in the race. The producers edited the leg to build up tension, but everybody knew that even with all of Charla & Mirna’s mistaked that Eric & Danielle were really far behind them. Still, through the magic of editing they almost made it look close. We’ll have to wait for next week to see who’ll be in the final three.

In this episode, teams made their way from Poland to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. All teams chose sensible connections through Paris except for Uchenna & Joyce which chose a connection with only a one-hour layover in Frankfurt. You would think that after hearing the horror story from the last episode that they would have shied away from the tight connection. Instead they went for it, and it cost them dearly.

Uchenna & Joyce were so far back after missing their connection that the entire episode was about the remaining four teams. I totally forgot about Uchenna & Joyce stuck in Frankfurt until the very end of the episode. At least the race organizers sent them straight to the Pit Stop after landing in Malaysia to put them out of their misery. Surely it was because Phil needed to start heading to the next Pit Stop.

In this double-sized episode, teams had to make their way from Zanzibar to Poland. All of the teams were given tickets on a flight that landed in Poland the next morning at 11:25AM. This was quite an equalizer. Some teams were at the travel agency for about four hours trying to book better flights. Amazingly, Team Guido left the Pit Stop almost a full 15 hours behind the first place team.

Luckily for them, Eric & Danielle were unable to book flights earlier than their pre-arranged flight. Those two teams were tied for last place. In Kilimanjaro, they missed their connecting flight and fell even further behind the other teams. Teams fell so far behind in fact that in the following leg teams started the next leg before those two teams even finished.

In this episode, teams made their way from Mozambique to Tanzania. Getting to Tanzania however was no easy task. There was one direct flight from Mozambique to Tanzania that was full so all of the teams except Charla & Mirna decided to get on standby for that flight. Charla & Mirna went to Johannesburg to get a connecting flight to Tanzania. When the other teams failed to get on standby, Charla & Mirna looked like geniuses for heading to Johannesburg.

All of the teams now had to make their way to Tanzania through Johannesburg, but connecting flights were all running at near capacity. Teams were on standby lists on these flights, but only a few teams got on the connecting flights. Charla & Mirna, Uchenna & Joyce, the Beauty Queens, and Oswald & Danny all made it to Tanzania the first day.

At the beginning of this episode, teams were immediately bunched up waiting for a chair lift to take them up to a glacier in the morning. I hate it when this happens. Teams that were five hours ahead all of the sudden have their lead taken away. Teams searched through a glacier for buried avalanche beacons to find their next clue. Even though Danny & Oswald were first to leave the Pit Stop, they were the last team to find the clue at the glacier.

The clue at the glacier advised all teams to travel to Maputo, Mozambique. And wouldn’t you know it!? Teams were again bunched up on the same flight to Africa! That just pisses me off! There’s no reason why the race producers can’t let teams maintain some of the bigger leads. I’d like to see the faster teams with 12-hour plus leads on the other teams. That would be pretty cool.

In this episode, teams made their way to the city of Punta Arenas, Chile. Rob & Amber are the team to beat and the producers made it a point to have several teams say that on the pre-race interviews. This led me to believe that they were vulnerable on this episode. Call it a premonition or something, but I just knew something bad was going to happen to Rob & Amber. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that they would come in last place and be eliminated.

Rob & Amber chose to perform the Sign It Detour because Rob said “I’m good at building things.” Well, not really. Amber asked him to switch the task early in the Detour and Rob wanted to prove something by doing it. This was shocking to me because the Navigate It task seemed so much easier. All of the teams that chose that task were the first ones at the airport for the chartered flight to Argentina. Surely this would be an omen of things to come for Rob & Amber.

Mirna had a near mental breakdown doing the Sign It Detour and just ripped Charla a new one. Interestingly, Mirna wants to control exactly how things are done and lacks the emotional maturity to communicate to her cousin as an adult. I felt bad for the midget in this one. Mirna turned into a crazy bitch while yelling at Charla.

In this episode, teams made their way to another city in Chile called Puerto Montt. Rob & Amber had almost a full hour lead ahead of the pack of other teams. The Beauty Queens made an uneasy alliance with Teri & Ian. The Coal Miners were teary-eyed in the pre-leg interview thinking about the Cho Brothers. Please! It’s a race not summer camp!

Rob & Amber got some locals to help them find an Internet connection almost immediately. They actually found a travel agent slash internet café that was open all night and were able to get on the earliest flight connection. They booked their tickets before all of the other teams. All of the other teams headed over to the airport directly and ended up confirmed on a connection that was an hour later.

The leading teams landing in Puerto Montt were Rob & Amber, Team Guido, Uchenna & Joyce, and Eric & Danielle. The teams that were one hour behind managed to catch the other teams at the Roadblock, which was pretty brutal. One team member had to carry stinky fish for over an hour, not cool. Leaving the Roadblock, the order of the leading teams were Uchenna & Joyce, Team Guido, Rob & Amber, and Eric & Danielle.