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Amazing Race Watch: California Gurls, They're Undeniable?

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Was TAR history made last night? / CBS

Spoilers for last night’s finale of The Amazing Race coming up:

The three final teams in this iteration of The Amazing Race touched down for the final leg of their contest in Los Angeles, to the tune of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” as if the show needed to further underscore the stakes: There was a two in three chance that the first all-female team would win TAR. The result…

…the first all-female team did win TAR, with doctors Nat and Kat dashing across the finish line in what I suspect was not as close a finish as the final cab-race editing was meant to suggest. I was happy enough to see them take it, though—although I have not watched enough of the season to develop a strong rooting interest—I was slightly pulling for home-shopping hosts Brook and Claire, who gained fame through the infamous watermelon incident and were so genuinely overjoyed to see Bob Eubanks at last night’s final challenge.

Nat and Kat seemed to wrap things up without breaking a sweat, however, getting themselves through the trivia challenge with the aid of the copious notes they’d taken on the earlier challenges. (And in the process striking a blow against the stereotype of doctors with poor penmanship.) But really, there was no one to root against in this finale, and my heart went out to Jill and Thomas, reduced to pleading with strangers for Internet access and crossing the finish line probably knowing that almost no one was rooting for their non-historic victory.

My major complaint was that the final leg, as they too often do, came down at least partly to the crapshoot of cab-driver roulette. Again, because of editing it’s hard to know exactly how much everyone was affected by the cabbie that Providence granted them, but given that this is not a cab-driving competition, that element often seem to throw too much random chance into the finale.

Now it’s on to another All-Stars installment starting in February, whose contestants were teased but not revealed officially last night. (The season, evidently, will be made up of teams who did not win their respective seasons.) I’m hoping for the return of Mike and Mel White. Any favorites you want to see again?