[Macie Lightfoot]

Finished TAR Australia 3 last night and I know this is potentially controversial but I don't think it's quite thaaaaat bad??? I don't know, I wouldn't call it good by any means and it's definitely the worst of the first three Australian seasons, but I don't think it's quite as bad as everyone made it out to be The cast is a bit lame and derivative but the route and edit were actually okay and I don't think the endgame was nearly as bad as I was expecting. It's probably a little worse than TAR Canada 3 for me but definitely better than 5 and 6.

1. Aston/Christie (alollllll these two psychos Honestly I like them better than any team from season 1! They were just SO loud and SO annoying and SO bad at the Race and they really were the heart and soul of the first three legs for me. Highlights of theirs include: flirting with Daniel and Ryan in the airport over Christie being a life model, literally sitting in Daniel and Ryan's lap on the plane ride to Christchurch and infuriating Ashleigh and Jarrod, their performance at the tarantula eating task in Cambodia, Christie getting the temple Roadblock answer from Jono but then immediately saying that she was going to figure it out on her own anyway, and their entire boot leg performance?!?! They were getting on the plane to Thailand and Christie decided that she was D O N E with Aston because she...... put in for a wakeup call at the hotel? Christie spent the entire time at the airport bitching to Ashleigh and Jarrod about how Christie is a selfish cow, complaining on the airplane about how she is DONE working with her unbenevolent dictator of a partner, and then randomly screamed about how Christie doesn't understand the six Ps of life: proper preparation prevents piss poor performance!!!!! They then landed in Thailand and switched Detours twice and asked Cat and Jesse for help despite them being the last two teams I was very sad at their boot but in all honesty it's a miracle they survived past Leg 1 so I'll take what I can get. I also wouldn't be surprised if they weren't friends anymore after the Race and that would be sad )
2. Sally/Tyson (part of me feels weird for putting them at #2 but I'm sticking with my gut! I just really liked them. They were fun and nice and good people who went on a JOURNEY where they made multiple huge mistakes and would have been eliminated Leg 1 if not for Inga and Tiharna also making a big mistake, and then they slowly but surely became a legitimate threat to win! But even then, they typically gave up multiple places each leg because Tyson always had to stop and pee, and then they were THIS CLOSE to winning before Sally got overtaken in the final Roadblock because she was so distracted by Tyson proposing to her at the Pit Stop that she didn't pay attention to what the greeter was wearing but their finale was super cute because Sally was just sobbing nonstop about how she loves the Race and she wants to do a 100 more legs and she's so sad it's over )
3. Elizabeth/Todd (okay so in all honesty Elizabeth having like five different confessionals about how OLD AGE AND TREACHERY WIN EVERY TIME or whatever got annoying, but the rest of their time racing included Elizabeth pointlessly lying about being the first woman to step foot on the moon (?!), an entire montage where Elizabeth is just sitting in the back of rickshaw taxi going "FASTER! FASTER!" and waving at other teams while everyone else seethes in confessionals about what a dirty player she is, that moment in the temple Roadblock where she BLOCKED Ashleigh passing her up the stairs and Jarrod bitched about what a fat ass she has, and when Elizabeth fell off a boat in Cambodia and somehow cut a huge whole into her arm and was almost medevaced? and then Todd was there too. They're not All Time Troy Favos but they really did have a lot of moments)
4. Carla/Hereni (this green will surely turn into yellow once this season gets further behind in the rear view mirror because they really didn't provide any moments at all and were just vaguely fun and vaguely rootable Kiwi mums who were one of the last saving graces of the season. Like, I legitimately have no moments of theirs to talk about, they were just presences that were liked? They weren't particularly good at the Race, they weren't particularly memorable... I really have nothing insightful to say, sorry!)
5. Emily/Jono (I went on a weird journey with them where I found them to be cute at first, then I suddenly found Jono to be VERY annoying because he was just oddly intense about certain aspects of the Race like beating John and Murray and when Emily lost their tickets to the temple and she ruined EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!! even though they proceeded to win the leg alol. But ultimately I just kind of pity them and feel bad for them? They were actually really good racers for the first few legs but I felt like they never really got respect from anyone, and I *definitely* picked up some latent homophobia towards Jono from Murray AND John AND Jarrod so there's that. And then they only got eliminated because Jono didn't hydrate at all going into Namibia and collapsed multiple times during a physically laborious Roadblock that took FOREVER *and* on the way to the Pit Stop, only to be overtaken by Daniel and Ryan who at one point where in last place by a full hour their elimination was one of the few examples of an #AmazingRaceBlindside, where they became so distressed that they walked off into the plains of Africa sobbing in disbelief that they were actually eliminated poor things)
6. Daniel/Ryan (I....... don't think they're that bad? I kept waiting for the ball to drop and for them to turn awful but it just never happened alol. Like, they were randomly really competent at certain parts of the Race and frustratingly had A LOT of lucky breaks including passing Emily and Jono on the way to the Pit Stop and Namibia and avoiding elimination, and then doing the exact same thing to Carla and Hereni in Argentina, but I'm not really mad about them as winners at all? I found their confessionals to be kind of engaging at times and I feel the same way about their win as I do about Tyler and Nathan's so )
7. Cat/Jesse (I went on a weird journey of kind of thinking they were cute, then getting REALLY annoyed by them, and then finding them Not That Bad so they land right here. Their whole shtick was just being parents who LOVED their kids and Jesse was a huge softy who would like cry and ****. And on top of that they weren't athletic at all so they were never cast as a team who had a realistic chance of winning alol. I got REALLY annoyed with them in the middle of their run because they'd have a few too many cringey jokes in confessionals and they were annoying hypocrites with the Aus/NZ divide. Like, they had a confessional in Leg 5 about how they're able to straddle the line between the Aus teams and the NZ teams and play both sides, then they got all upset when Carla and Hereni helped John and Murray get on an earlier flight to St. Petersburg and declared that the New Zealand alliance was DONE...... and then they got upset again at Carla and Hereni for not giving them the answer at the Roadblock when the supposed alliance was already done?! Also they complained SO MUCH about John and Murray isolating themselves in the Nation vs. Nation Battle in Russia but they could've just fixed it themselves??? Once they got to F5 though they just became huge back of the pack fodder and struggled to do, like, everything and didn't even try that hard in some of the tasks so it was kinda funny and fine. And then they of all teams got a huge OTTPP sendoff montage when they got eliminated )
8. Inga/Tiharna (they just seemed like big tryhards with their BRAINY BUSTY BRUNETTES shtick and how they wanted to SEDUCE THE MEN or whatever. I think they bought into the Australia vs. New Zealand **** way too much and I'm particularly scarred by Tiharna saying that she wants to get some fish and chips in Christchurch in an awfully put-on NZ accent That being said, it did make me laugh when they left their ring behind on the raft and they had to drive back to the river and Inga was so stressed over being in last place that she made Tiharna pull over on the highway so she could throw up?! maybe there was some hidden potential there but oh well!)
9. John/Murray (cookie cutter CPN villains who weren't creative or inventive in any sense of the word so they were just lame. It's not even like they bounced well off of other teams because everyone else had confessionals that were like "uhh John and Murray are isolating themselves because they don't want to be ~distracted~ and it's weird af " and after coming first or second in the first five legs, they isolated themselves so much to the point where they tanked a Nation vs. Nation Battle, completely bombed a Detour, came in last place and then embarrassingly had the Salvage Pass *not* used on them I don't like them but it was a truly fitting ending for them)
10. Ashleigh/Jarrod (okay I don't want to defend them but I kiiiiiiind of expected worse? I was expecting like Jonathan/Victoria or Art/JJ levels of bad and while these two suck, I was kind of underwhelmed and I was expecting to hate them a lot more lol. They just seemed MISERABLE throughout the whole Race and I don't know why they even went on the show in the first place. Jarrod in particular just complained about EVERYTHING and it wasn't fun at all. Like, you're traveling all over the world to a bunch of different countries, why are you surprised that people don't speak English?!?! He's just bogan trash and I definitely feel like he wouldn't give Someone Like Me the time of day. H O W E V E R..... their finale performance was a hilarious comeuppance as Jarrod threw a temper tantrum over everyday tasks such as eating a hotdog with mustard, having to use a pair of binoculars, and digging in the sand on the beach. I guess I'm a little thankful that even though they made me endure them for a full season, they ended the Race on the most humiliating note possible?)