[Macie Lightfoot]

Finished TAR Australia 2 last night!



first of all, I got a new laptop and my edgic charts don't look the same and it is driving me CRAZY, like why is this so big??? okay the font's still a little off but this is better

On a more positive note, great season! So much fun from start to finish, a super likable cast where almost everyone brought something, and a lot of fun dynamics between the teams. Just an all-around superb season that lived up to hype and I'm so sad it's over.

1. Lucy and Emilia (everyone knows the iconic Lumilia moments such as the arrest in Dubai and getting stuck on the train tracks in Cuba and getting saved by the Salvage Pass but they're so much more than that! Endearing underdogs with an emotional backstory, lots of self-deprecating fun, and honestly just their relationship and love for each other was so sweet and makes me wish I had siblings. Their cockroach journey through the first half of the Race is legitimately fan fiction levels of absurd but I love it)
2. Michelle and Jo (so a lot of the appeal just comes from them being cute blonde cheerleading twins but they were also really good at navigating the transportation aspect of the Race and had a fun dynamic of Michelle being the alpha and Jo trying to prove herself. This led to some fun moments like Michelle almost getting killed in the Turkish wrestling Intersection and Jo at the whirling dervish Roadblock and the ocean navigating Roadblock. However, what really elevates them from good to great is their performance in the final two legs: Jo's theatrics during the Chinese foot massage, them breaking the alliance with Shane and Andrew, and their entire finale performance where they melt the **** down over Paul's existence, to the point where Jo spends an entire task telling Paul how much she hates his guts and Michelle crying tears once they realized that Paul and Steve beat them for second place alksjdf;lasjf)
3. James and Sarah (alol I don't even know what to say about these two so I'm just going to list a bunch of their absurd moments: Sarah starting the Race in HEELS (#hunners), their entire fight over the bottle of coke that lasted the duration of an entire plane ride, their fight when James like... told the other teams that they just had to wait for a boat to arrive with their clue because he "gave away valuable information" or whatever, when they had to wash each other in the Turkish bath and Sarah full on mounted James and started grinding him in front of Ross and Tarryn, everything that happened in Paris with Joseph and Grace throwing their bags out of their taxi and Sarah yelling at James because she had to call for a new taxi in the pub while a bunch of drunks leered at her while she was in a cheese outfit, and their entire boot leg where they overslept/were late because Sarah had to do her makeup and then they forgot to pay for their hotel room upon checkout so they had to take like two extra cab rides and spent the whole leg with absolutely no money and had to beg strangers for donations and beg their drivers for discounts <3333 I'm so sad they're apparently not together anymore because even in spite of all their fighting they seemed like #truelove but alas)
4. Shane and Andrew (maybe ACAB isn't true in Australia? These two are just really nice family men and they didn't really have a lot of moments but were fun narrators? Nobody really expected them to do well because they always had such awful transportation luck but then they just really turned it on in the endgame and I support their win! Shane is also basically the human embodiment of Nigel Thornberry and it's hilarious to me)
5. Paul and Steve (so it took me a while to get there with them because Paul especially hams up the CPN villain a little too much for my liking, but he can at least back it up? He *IS* very smart and he *IS* good at a lot of aspects of the Race and they really did got on a streak of like five leg wins in a row. They were also easily the most important team of the season because EVERYTHING came down to how other people responded to them. Kym and Donna had a rivalry with them, Joseph and Grace had a feud with them, Michelle and Jo ****ing HATED their guts... like this season probably wouldn't be nearly as good without them)
6. Kym and Donna (alol I feel like me having them ranked this high is going to be outrageous but this is my truth! They were THE original Paul/Steve rivals and dubbed them The Boofheads (TM) and it was fun for a few episodes, especially with the pot transfer in India. But what really sold me on Kym and Donna was their boot leg? They blew all their money early on and couldn't afford to buy a map of Dubai, and then they got a flat tire, and then they got lost and just gave up? Like Lucy and Emilia legitimately got arrested and by all logic SHOULD have been eliminated, but then Kym and Donna literally just slept in their car until they got field eliminated kasdj;akslfjsda)
7. Joseph and Grace (okay so this is definitely Low compared to most Clubsters so here's what I have to say. Joseph and Grace DID have a lot of fun moments: the rivalry with Paul and Steve, throwing James and Sarah's bags out of their taxi, and their entire boot leg in China just to name a few. I definitely like them to some degree and appreciate what they brought to the Race. HOWEVER, Grace kind of bothers me oops! She's definitely content with being The Bitch Of The Season but she doesn't really own it all the way? Like, she openly antagonized Paul in Dubai and then tried to be all "friends? " but then completely lost it when he accidentally (!) knocked her over in Istanbul. And then after throwing James and Sarah's bags out of the taxi and stealing it, the next leg they were like "oh we're sorry, we'll make it up to you " which Grace literally admitted in the next scene was bull**** lol. Like, if you're going to be the villain then you need to own it, not just when it suits you best!)
8. Sue and Teresa (the aura-cleansing spray <3 honestly in theory it seems miraculous that they made it three legs BUT they placed really high in the first two? Shoutout to Sue (I think?) for having a complete meltdown in the stairs counting Roadblock and dropping from 3rd to 10th, paving the way for another Lumilia cockroach stint!)
9. Sticky and Sam (they were nice? Really competent racers who just fell apart once they got to Cuba and apparently got U-Turned? I was expecting a much more nauseating edit with Sticky's arm but they were very totally fine! Nice and harmless but not particularly remarkable)
10. Ross and Tarryn (they were nice but their shtick of Tarryn wanting to prove herself As An Adult was very one note and nothing special. They were REALLY good racers for the first few legs but then got a bad flight to Dubai and just sucked after that. Oh well, thanks for salvaging Lucy and Emilia!)
11. Adam and Dane (they were fine. Like I guess Dane being vain was supposed to be their angle? They were super mediocre racers that I remember nothing about except that their penalty spared Lucy and Emilia by three minutes thankfully <3)