Fall TV Blog

The Czech Republic welcomed the final four for a leg filled with trickier clues, feats of upper-body strength, bickering, failed alliances and transportation theft. The following travel tips were gleaned from watching the episode, which was more heated than last week’s elbow-gate. — Carrie Bell

1. Don’t mock your traveling companion. Especially if you don’t know what you’re talking about either. One brother inquired if they speak Spanish in Prague. The other laughed at his stupid question just before foolishly declaring Prague a country.

2. If you have time to lean, you have time to surf the net. Teams had a few hours to kill at the Estonian airport and yet only two teams bothered to use the readily available computers to deduce what a vintage Praga (an antique convertible) is despite the fact that they were instructed to find one. Meghan decided to fib about the definition before she overheard the Globetrotters figure it out. The brothers lucked out when they arrived simultaneously with The All-Americans and could watch them run to the car. Otherwise, it would have be candelabra-gate all over again. Which it kind of was when Mr. And Miss America arrived solo and clueless (more…)

After finishing last in a non-elimination round and being penalized with a speed bump, construction manager and mortgage broker Gary Tomljenovich, 47, and his college student son Matt, 22, couldn’t catch up to the other teams in Estonia and were Philiminated on this week’s episode of The Amazing Race. The Montana-based father-son duo recently discussed with PEOPLE their adventures in cross-dressing, finding candelabras, male bonding and more. –Carrie Bell

You had a great run for two people who had spent so little time together in recent years. What was your strategy?
Gary: We went in trying to put our many differences aside. We realized we had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we wanted to take advantage of it to the best of our ability. In order to do that, we had to get along. We set the goal early on to have fun and that eased a little bit of the stress.

Before the Race began, you were worried about embarrassing your mom and wife. How has she reacted to your television debuts?
Matt: She has been embarrassed about a few things — mainly dad wearing a dress. (more…)

The final five teams crossed the Baltic Sea to explore Estonia on Sunday’s The Amazing Race. Things got heated — and not just on the sauna bus — as brothers Dan and Sam engaged the Harlem Globetrotters in a foot race to the pit stop. Here are a few dos and don’ts as the Race’s end draws near. –Carrie Bell

1. Get a taxi at any cost. All-Americans Meghan and Cheyne cut off a cabbie in the middle of the road to get directions to the ferry. Mr. America Brian, who hung out the window and waved his arms, said he was “lassoing taxis.” And when the two teams spotted a cab simultaneously, Mr. America let the other team take it but asked their driver to call for another cab. As their cabbie was going to make the call, the All-Americans told him to forget it. “We don’t care about them,” Meghan said. Meanwhile, the brothers resorted to begging occupants of a taxi to get out. That didn’t work and they found themselves fighting with the Globetrotters over transportation. With neither team backing down, the rivals ended up sharing a minivan. Another AR golden rule: Stay within sight of at least one other team. (more…)

The final five teams headed to Scandinavia on Sunday’s Amazing Race and, asked to blow up dynamite, some blew up at each other when they hit the switchback, a task that required players to tackle one of the show’s most brutal roadblocks. Things might have been a little less heated had the teams used the following travel tips. –Carrie Bell

1. Never take the elevator when you have other options: From the Stockholm airport, teams took a train and a ferry to the Tivoli amusement park. Already behind three pairs who got an earlier flight, the father and son rode an elevator to the platform, which caused them to miss a train Mr. and Miss America caught, and it set them back 15 minutes.

2. Watch like a hawk: Once at Tivoli, a team member had to ride the Fritt Fall and spot an arrow showing the way to the next clue. It was only visible for 15 seconds before riders plunged 24 floors in three seconds. Eagle-eyeing the sign seemed easier than stomaching the drop for Cheyne and Sam. The only female to do the task, Ericka, merely let out a trademark “Oh hell no,” before the fall, and Big Easy was disappointed that he was too tall to participate. (more…)

After surviving wasabi bombs, a nasty fall in a dirty river and a car accident, the lucky streak ended for professional poker players Maria Ho, 26, and Tiffany Michelle, 25, in Holland. Over the phone, the only all-female team in the competition defended their decision to quit during the detour in Holland. –Carrie Bell

It must hurt to be yet another all-female team knocked out due to a lack of strength.
Maria: We didn’t come into this thinking we would be the physically strongest team, but we also didn’t think we would be faced with something that we just couldn’t do because we lacked brute strength. We were forced to throw our hands up in defeat. It was a very hard situation … We would have been able to get the dance and we would have eaten the herring, but that carnival bell dinger added an element that was physically unfair … It was heartbreaking.

And the golf game really wasn’t any easier?
Maria: It was not regular golf. And you have to add in the other elements like weather and the fact that we were freezing from swimming. There were literally 30-mile-an-hour winds blowing in the opposite direction of where we had to hit the ball. I don’t want to make excuses but we gave everything we had and we still couldn’t complete either one. (more…)

For the seventh leg of The Amazing Race, teams flew 3,000 miles to the Netherlands where cars, counting, cross-dressing, carnival games, clogs and partially clothed golfing tested their skills, strength and patience. But going Dutch proved too difficult for one team. Maybe they’d have fared better with these hindsight travel tips. –Carrie Bell

1. Test drive cars and practice driving stick: Because all the teams caught the same midnight flight from Dubai, everyone started on equal ground in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, Mr. America was tripped up by the controls of his Mercedes and immediately fell behind. It was probably humiliating for him to ask a stranger to put it in drive. And his wife nagging him all the way to the causeway statue was surely unwanted icing.

2. Count carefully: For the roadblock, one player had to climb around the bell tower of Groningen’s tallest building, the Martinitoren, and count the bells while they clanged loudly. Matt was the first to come up with the number 62. Sam and Meghan decided to work together and finished soon after Matt despite a communication setback when the chiming kicked in. The All-Americans were not thrilled when Sam saved Tiffany from the whole second floor by sharing the answer. Miss America was the only contestant to miscount and did so several times before pouting to her partner. He met her frustration with patience and a pep talk and it gave her the boost she needed to return and come up with the correct tally. (more…)

Nashville songwriter Canaan Smith, 26, and his aspiring country singer sweetheart Mika Combs, 22, had no problem taking a figurative leap of faith by joining The Amazing Race only a few months into their relationship. Yet it was the literal plunge at Dubai’s Atlantis Resort that ended their reality-show run—but not their romance. —Carrie Bell

Considering your combined lack of travel experience, Mika’s laundry list of fears and the fact that you’ve been a couple for less than a year, you guys lasted longer than anyone expected.

Canaan: Even though [Sunday] night made it look like it, we are not quitters. We’re both dreamers. We pursue everything that we dream and we believe in it before it happens. We were the underdogs but we never gave up. Everybody loves an underdog.

Was it naïve to think you could handle whatever producers cooked up despite the aforementioned obstacles?

Canaan: We really thought we could handle anything. We went on the show to have a great time together and learn more about each other and win a million dollars. We had an agreement to go for it all out and do whatever it takes. We knew Mika would be terrified in that type of scenario and I told her from the beginning that I would push her if I had to. And I definitely tried to push her, but she had a death grip. Unfortunately, fear is so irrational and paralyzing that it won in this instance. (more…)

Seven teams scurried around Dubai for a second day for an episode filled with panic, debilitating heat, secret codes, math, gold, hookahs, an enormous waterslide and five more travel rules for the Amazing Race road. –Carrie Bell

1. Row, row, row your boat … by whatever means necessary: Thanks to last week’s fast forward, the All-Americans had more than an hour head start to take a briefcase to the Dubai Creek Yacht Club. Once there, one member had to paddle out to an anchored boat, greet a sheik, take the Rolex he offered as a traditional hospitality gift and return to the dock in your dinghy. Cheyne seemed to be frozen at times thanks to the wind. Brian steered so hard that his hands were bleeding. Big Easy barely fit so he used his arms and wasn’t concerned with his underwear flashing. Gary flipped onto his stomach and maneuvered the boat like a canoe.

(more…)

The honeymoon was cut short when Lance, 41, and Keri Layne, 33, were the last team to check in on the Dubai leg of The Amazing Race 15. But another race began when the competitive lawyer and finance manager got home to Massachusetts with just two weeks left to plan their wedding. –Carrie Bell

In Sunday’s episode, you claimed you were racing worse than any other team in the show’s history. Looking back, is that true?
Lance: Probably not the worst of all time. We blew the driving. Bottom line is we just couldn’t navigate Dubai.
Keri: We hadn’t slept in a very, very long time. In hindsight, we should have got directions; then found the car. Everything was moving so fast. But even when you got directions, the exits were often spelled differently. The language was so different.
Lance: We should have stuck with the group. Once the caravan left, we were screwed. Losing five minutes in race time is like losing an hour in real time.

(more…)

The remaining eight teams on The Amazing Race bid farewell to Asia but not to the heat, duking it out this week in the Dubai desert and establishing five more rules for the road. –Carrie Bell

1. Brush up on geography. The clue vaguely instructed teams to fly to the Persian Gulf and find the world’s tallest building (the still under-constriction Burj Dubai). Miss America was the only one who knew where to go off the top of her head. Lucky for the gay brothers, who were confused by the broad location details and asked the ticket booker for a flight to the Gulf, Mr. America was kind enough to share that information. Others headed to Internet cafes where they figured out the destination but wasted time unable to secure tickets online. (more…)