One of the few positives of this season:
The Speed Bumps were pretty good (compared to TAR19-23)
Having them print screen T-Shirts, carry a heavy typewriter around Rome, and dance the flamenco is definitely better and slightly more cultural and even slightly harder Speed Bumps than the entirety of TAR19-23's Speed Bumps. (The only Speed Bump I have ever enjoyed from those seasons were Max & Katie's Speed Bump in Botswana
)
Other than that, this season suffers from:
-Horrible Title Quotes
-Horrible Bootlist (You know it's bad when all your favorites get eliminated from 11th-7th place
)
-Horribly unbalanced or poorly designed Detours in a few legs (Leg 3 definitely comes to mind, deliver a box or spend potentially more time trying to shoot blow darts. Leg 2 as well, kicking shuttlecocks and potentially spending a lot of time or lying down for 15 minutes?)
-Bad Roadblocks (Leg 1 was mainly there for "heights" Leg 2 was pretty boring (kids saved it), Leg 3 was really linear and unchallenging, Leg 5 was really REALLY boring, Leg 8 was pretty boring too, Leg 9 was horribly unbalanced for female racers etc.) The only REAL Roadblock I enjoyed were the ones in Leg 4,6, and 7. (The locals helping and answer sharing kinda ruined Leg 7's Roadblock, but I still liked it as a task,)
-A shocking lack of Active Route Infos (common for the past few seasons but still very meh)
-Horrible Flights (I know Legs 3-4 were replacement but couldn't they have even made flights like I don't know, only an hour behind than THREE? On a linear leg? Ugh. It was definitely guaranteed last places from any of the teams on the last flight and Leg 4 was simply saved because of the flight delay.)
-Low Budgeted tasks (I could re-enact the Rome Detour at home for under a hundred dollars! Just buy some toy chariots and a toy sword. Yay! Shuttlecocks are also about 10 dollars here for a set of 15. Whee!) I really really felt like each leg of this season was made for nothing but to save money, which is a shame.
-The worst route ever (Double legs up to Leg 8
) You know it's bad when it visits even LESSER countries than TAR21
-The worst cast ever (Threepeaters and not even good ones. (I liked Margie/Luke this time around but oh well) Where are the "legitimate" All-Stars? Where were Bill/Cathi? Tim/Marie? Pam/Winnie? Andy/Tommy(Even though i dont like them the casuals adore them soooo)? Instead we got the biggest WTF decisions ever such as Jessica/John(I like them, but they deserve to be on Unfinished Business 2.0 more than "All Stars"), Jet/Cord, Globes, and Mark/Mallory. (This gimmick of a sudden hybrid team wasn't going to work from the very beginning and it was very very sad to see them self-destruct on Leg 2). The next time we have another returning racer season, the cast just needs to be better.
Overall, this has got to be the worst season ever, and TAR25 needs to pick it up, because I still love this show, and I want it to live a very very good TV life along with Survivor forever.