Here's the finale. And here's to a less whiny Season 7, as well.
Bold Predictions:
First half: Hayden & Aaron, Kris & Jon, Freddy & Kendra, Adam & Rebecca
Second: Kris & Jon, Freddy & Kendra, Hayden & Aaron
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Thanks to CBS advertising, I know at least one (and probably two) of the teams in the final three. That said, I had formulated a guess before seeing that commercial:
Part I: Hayden & Aaron
Kris & Jon
Freddy & Kendra
Adam & Rebecca
Part II: Kris & Jon
Hayden & Aaron
Freddy & Kendra
I will not say here whether or not I know my pre-commercial guess to be correct or incorrect.
Wilhite
How the hell did they get to the Red Line from O'Hare?
Is Ping Tom Park really the best we could do? I'd have done the MSI myself. But maybe only b/c it'd have been a block and a half from where I was living at the time.
I hated random tasks like the key thing. And also, if the locks were symbols of love, and they unlocked them, what does that say?
If there's only a four hour penalty for not doing the roadblock, then Lena and Kristy would have not been eliminated had they just skipped the hay, right? Not that they could have known that.
Much as I'm sad Kris & Jon lost--and that Kris didn't set off the high-yield explosive device strapped to her abdomen when they did--they didn't make sure they got the earliest flight. (You can't trust corporate employees on American soil to steer you to another carrier). And if they had done so, they'd have beaten Freddy & Kendra at Gino's from the looks of it. (They bled some time finding the water tower too)
BTW, how cool was it that the last task was 10 min. of Happy Hour?
Stevis
I didn't even notice the Red Line bit; where was it? (Is it possible that they just took one of the tunnels/transfer thingies between the Blue Line and the Red Line before going up the stairs? I don't remember what the Chicago stop is like...)
I very much agree that Kris and Jon were responsible for falling out of the running at the end. Not finding the best flight was a blunder, but they were lucky enough to recover from it and catch up at O'Hare. But as someone familiar with Chicago, the really puzzling thing to me was their apparent failure to find the Watertower.
K&J were on the same train as Freddy and Kendra, but they weren't anywhere in sight when F&K found the cluebox at the Watertower (I seem to recall the camera showing them lost at the time, for what that's worth). But they had a 45 minute train ride in from the airport to figure out where it was! They'd already been told to get off at the Chicago stop. I have the impression that the teams are given maps, but if not, there were almost certainly CTA route maps sitting right next to them when they bought their transit card(s).
I think that practically every map of Chicago labels the Watertower (and the Blue Line!), so you'd think that 45 minutes would be enough time to work your way out from the Chicago Blue Line stop and find the route. Even if they couldn't find it on a map, I've got to figure that a majority of the people on the Blue Line from O'Hare would have some idea where it was: they could have spent their train ride hunting for people to give them detailed directions. But somehow, they managed to get a full pizza behind. (Maybe they had trouble finding a cab to Gino's?)
Anyway, it was a fun finish, even if nobody used the brilliant "advance book an insane expert limo driver" strategy from last season's finale.
A couple of replies to your comments. First, I was frustrated by Hayden's near-continuous meltdown, but on this day at least it seemed like they really were having terrible luck (bad strategy couldn't have been responsible for most of that). The "3000 locks" kind of task irritates me, too; they really do seem to turn the race into a game of craps on a regular basis. (Hayden shouldn't have quit, but after the day she'd had I can't fault her too much.) I wondered if the four hour penalty for this roadblock might have been allowed just because the location closed at a specific time. And the impression I got from the show was that Kris and Jon just lucked into getting the right cabbie at the end; I don't think they could have counted on that luck in general (though it makes it that much more frustrating that they got so far behind looking for the Watertower).
Steuard
What makes it worse is that Kris and Jon had a map of Chicago and then didn't bother looking at it until they were off the train (unless they had stopped somewhere after getting off the train to buy it). It did appear they had trouble getting a cab, I'm not actually sure where they ended up catching it as it looked like they had walked a couple blocks away from the water tower. Kris and Jon seemed to run the best race between legs 1 and the next to last and then just screwed up on the last leg.
Larry
They certainly seemed to be getting instructions at the O'Hare Blue Line station (though I've never actually been there--but it looked way too nice for Jackson or Washington, the two tunnel points.) The Chicago Blue Line stop is over on Milwaukee--it would have been neither productive nor fun for teams to get out there.
They clearly had a map; I doubt they'd been given one. It's probably worth a few seconds to grab one from a gift shop or something. Or they could've been looking at a transit map handout; which would have been less useful. I do know my first experience coming out of underground el stops frequently involved disorientation. BTW, they couldn't get a limo b/c the clue told them "train." And foot.
I just went to the CTA trip planner and it says that leaving the O'Hare Blue line station at 5:45 (guesstimate, given the flights landed around 5:20) gets you to the Red Line stop on Chicago at 6:42. I can see there not being a lot of cabs around N. Michigan quite then--but a lot more in a half hour or so.
I'm also curious what TAR lists as the "arrival time"--is it actual disembarking, or whatever the airlines call good (wheels on the ground or whatever it is.) B/c I've sat (particularly at O'Hare) for some time waiting for them to actually pull up at a gate--and at O'Hare, actually, there could be a 5 min. difference between gates (although probably not at that time in the morning for AA and United.)
Hayden's been losing it for about six legs, I think, and only this one justifiably. BTW, remind me never, ever to step in a cab in the PRC. Or for that matter step foot in the PRC, but that's political. I did think maybe they were stopping Adam & Rebecca's cab in Xi'an to send the driver to a re-education camp. I digress. I suspect Hayden is simply not the kind of person you want to go on TAR with, but may be a reasonable person in normal situations. I repeat: do not go on TAR to stress-test your relationship.
It also needs to be pointed out that they failed to race around the world, as they started about 6 blocks east of where they finished. By my calculations, they finished .0141 degrees of longitude short. "Race Around the World," my butt. Liars.
My impression of Kris and Jon is that they smoked everyone on the tasks, and more or less Forest Gumped there way from place to place. It's not that they were bad at getting around; it's that they weren't especially good at it. When the goal of the leg is to not come in last, not getting lost and doing the tasks well is the way to go. When the goal is to come in first, navigation becomes more important. My biggest worry about Kris and Jon throughout the whole race was that they were really laid-back and that they never really turned on the jets. Even in the finale, they weren't obviously more aggressive than they had been. The flight thing was a mistake, but nowhere near as big (in my mind) as not knowing exactly how to get to the Water Tower (especially since it's like 2 blocks away). It's not that they weren't the best, most consistent, and most watchable team, it's that they didn't really have another gear. Freddy and Kendra did, and they won because of it. In the CBS Insider video, they talked about how they had the entire flight staff helping them with info about Chicago. They knew exactly where they were going on the ground, had already bought a CTA pass from someone on the plane, and even knew that Kris and Jon were only 7 minutes behind them in the air (they had the pilot ask air traffic control).
That said, Colin & Christie would have been at Gino's East for dinner the night before. At the very least, they'd have had a cab waiting for them when they got to the Water Tower. I miss their intensity.
Wilhite
P.S. CBS has greenlighted TARs 8 and 9, but TAR8 is some sort of four-person family-team abomination. God help us.
Next race will have Amber and Rob from survivor, thought you had to wait awhile before winning money on a TV show
So I got bored and rewatched the Chicago portions of the TAR6 finale. When I watched it the first time, I experienced a little cognitive dissonance when teams got the clue at the water tower and then were shown getting in to cabs to Gino's East somewhere else. I thought they had just gone a couple blocks in order to find a cab. Then when Jon and Kris were looking for a cab, they showed the Sears Tower in the background, but to the north-northeast (you could tell by the shadows which way was East). It didn't look to be more than a mile or so away. But that puts them like two miles from the Water Tower, so they clearly wouldn't have gone that far for a cab, so I figured they had to have edited out a stop. But I couldn't think of anything down where they were. Turns out, the Chicago Fire Academy is on the site of the O'Leary's barn at 558 W DeKoven, just north of Roosevelt Road (12th Street). So I think there was a clue there that was edited out. I think the clue they got at the Water Tower, which started "The Old Water Tower is one of the few buildings not burned during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871" then went on to say something like "Make your way to the site of the first building burned down: The O'Leary Barn, current site of the Chicago Fire Training Academy." I could be wrong, but it makes sense and is about the only thing worth visting in that part of town.
Seriously, I only spent about 15-20 minutes on this.
Wilhite
Plus the edited out clue would help explain exactly how F&K got a whole pizza ahead of them, which seemed too long for just finding the water tower and getting a cab.
Larry
Yeah, there was definitely something edited out. When Adam and Rebecca got their clue at the Water Tower, it started off with something about the Water Tower surviving the Chicago fire. But a screencap of the clue directing them to Gino's East showed that there was no mention of the Water Tower at all. So they must have gotten that clue at an intermediate stop. But it couldn't have taken too long. Kris and Jon landed around 5:30. It takes an hour to get downtown via CTA. After running to the train and then from the CTA to the Water Tower, it's reasonable to assume they got there around 6:45. In the cab on the way to Gino's, Kris mentions tht it's 7:15. After allowing for travel time from the Water Tower to the O'Leary Barn site, that leaves little time for a prolonged task. It might have just been another clue box with no task. But there definitely were both a stop and a clue edited out.
Wilhite
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