Love it or hate it, The Amazing Race season 28 is finally over. The social media stars weren’t the most popular casting strategy the show has ever attempted. It also wasn’t the worst. I still wake up in a cold sweats thinking about the blind dating season. Wherever you fall on this season, it has finally come to an end with an unconventional and surprising final three. It’s only natural then that the winner of this final three is the one team that nobody, including myself, thought would ever win.
Home to LA
The teams head to LA for their final leg of the race. While on the plane in premium class (a The Amazing Race first) the teams talk about what it would mean to win the million dollars. Dana and Matt say they could take more premium class flights. Really that’s it. Sheri says that she has a family of eight (wow!) and three boys about to be in college, so they need the money. Tyler and Korey are inexplicably wearing random wigs and drinking. This isn’t exactly surprising (I mean the wigs are weird but not the attitude) because Tyler Oakley is legitimately loaded.
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Once the teams touch down in LA, they must head to the Angelus Plaza. Once there, they must do a Roadblock with one team member heading to the top of the building and jumping off it. (They are attached by a bungee cord. It’s not like The Amazing Race forces half the team to commit suicide to win the million dollars. Though I’m pretty sure Dana would be OK with Matt jumping to his death based on their previous televised relationship history.)
Speaking of Dana and Matt, they are the first to arrive at the Roadblock and the first to leave. They are followed, not so closely behind, by Sheri and Cole and even further behind is Tyler and Korey. Tyler and Korey seem to being acting really lazy about this because again, Tyler makes a lot of money making video blogs about his life.
After the teams jump off the building, they have to get on a helicopter and into a harbor. The teams must hop into a small boat to find an even larger boat, called the Teresa Ann. The only problem is that they don’t exactly know what the Theresa Ann is. They just known they need to find it. Though once they are dropped off in a harbor, literally full of boats, they figure it out pretty quick.
Hanging on by A Thread
The positions of Dana and Matt in first, Sheri and Cole in second and Tyler and Korey in third stay all the way until the next challenge. This challenge is neither a Roadblock nor a Detour. It’s just kind of terrifying. While one member of the team repels down a cliff face, the other is suspended over a chasm. The team is connected, so the one hanging over the chasm gives the rope for the other repel, I think. (Look, this whole challenge looks like a lot math and physics; two things that scare me just as much as heights, so I don’t know how it works nor do I want to know.
You’d think this challenge would spell doom for Sheri and Cole because they’ve made no secret of their own fear of heights. Surprisingly though, they really power through it. They still stay in second but manage to stay ahead of Tyler and Korey. Once this nightmare is over, it’s onto the final part of the final leg.
And the Winner Is…
The teams head to their last and final challenge. It’s same one that exists on every season where the teams have to reconstruct their journey on The Amazing Race through some sort of cutesy means. This season, the teams must spell the cities of all their Pit Stops. In addition, they must add all the names of the hashtags that were in all of the clues.
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You’d think this is where Dana, who is chosen to do this challenge, would completely crumble. We know that she hates puzzles and this feels like a puzzle to her, even if it is more like a spelling bee. However, this is something that Dana actually loves doing. So for those playing at home, we can add at least one more thing that Dana loves in life besides dancing. I doubt any of you thought it would be spelling and/or memorization.
Dana absolutely destroys this challenge. She annihilates it. The other teams are nowhere in sight when Dana completes this whole thing in one try. No, they have to head to the Pit Stop, which is in running distance away. Dana and Matt find it and actually win The Amazing Race. I repeat, Dana and Matt are the winners of season 28.
I’ll admit I definitely didn’t see this coming, but through all their bickering and Dana’s yelling, they actually managed to do a great job on this leg, the most important one. Though I suppose we should have probably been tipped off by the interviews peppered through the episode where Matt was shown alive and well. It’s hard to imagine if Dana would allow him to live completely unharmed if they had lost.
Sheri and Cole finish second. Tyler and Korey finish in dead last. Bet those two are regretting bringing two “weak” teams to the finale.
(Image courtesy of CBS)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
Derek is a Philadelphia based writer and unabashed TV and comic book junkie. The time he doesn’t spend over analyzing all things nerdy he is working on his resume to be the liaison to the Justice League.
