The Amazing Race All-Stars (Season 11): In-Depth Team Rankings

Spoilers for the first eleven seasons of The Amazing Race can be expected in this blog post, but not for seasons after All-Stars.

I originally planned to do full write-ups for every team on All-Stars. It was a season that naturally stood out for these – the teams in it are more interesting to analyze because they’re the second appearances of teams that we already know, and evaluated them in light of their first runs is an interesting thought exercise.

The Amazing Race All-Stars (Season 11): Thoughts and Rankings

The eleventh season of The Amazing Race is a very significant season, and an easy landmark to note in the history of the show, for two main reasons. For one, it is the season that really marks the end of The Amazing Race’s first era – it’s the last time we see several Race elements, and makes no changes to the Race format for one last old-style season, right before Season 12 will shake up quite a few aspects of the show’s format. But that trait of Season 11, the fact that it’s the end of an era, is made even more clear by the biggest, most obvious distinction that the season has: It’s All-Stars.

The Amazing Race 3: Thoughts & Rankings

Warning: This post contains liberal spoilers for The Amazing Race 3, and may also contain spoilers for seasons before that one. You have been warned!

One of the most generally well-regarded seasons of The Amazing Race is the third installment. Most superfans will put it in one of the top tiers of their season rankings, and I’m no exception. Having already seen this season several times, and enjoyed it each time, I was well looking forward to going through it again.

Did it meet expectations? Mostly. I continue to regard this as one of the very best seasons of all time, for a variety of reasons that we’ll dig into in this post. But it also isn’t without its flaws, and my preseason thought that it deserves the label of the best overall produced season of them all may not actually be quite right.