Longest blind date ever! As the four final teams on Season 26 of The Amazing Race rush to the finish line in Friday’s finale, three of them — Hayley and Blair, Jelani and Jenny, and Laura and Tyler — are wrapping up their three-week long first date.
The season began with 11 couples, six established ones and five meeting for the very first time, and although none of them have begun actually dating, the majority of them clearly had enough chemistry to carry them to the Dallas, Texas-set final leg of the race.
“I did not see that happening,” TAR host extraordinaire Phil Keoghan told Us Weekly ahead of the May 15 finale. “I didn’t see that it was going to be so dominated by the blind date couples! Mike and Rochelle are the only [dating] ones in there with a fighting chance to win it.”
He continued, “Our show has always been about people in existing relationships, but 75 percent of the couples making it through to the final leg have only known each other less than 3 weeks.”
While nurse Hayley and doctor Blair have had a volatile relationship from the start, lawyers Jelani and Jenny seem to have developed a brother-sister dynamic, and Los Angeles-based Laura and Tyler — despite clearly finding each other attractive — haven’t made any moves yet.
“I think it speaks to just how hard it is to find a compatible partner in life,” Keoghan dished. “On paper all these teams lined up. We really thought that the SoCal team would really make a connection and they didn’t, but maybe there isn’t that je ne sais quoi, that spark — whatever it is.”
Although there are four teams flying to Dallas for the final leg, one will be eliminated before top three race to the finish line.
“We have a really cool final challenge, and fans really love challenges at the end that really test their ability to think and to sort of figure something out,” Keoghan said. Plus, “there’s a lot of really iconic Texas elements,” including monster trucks, the Dallas Cowboys’ home base of AT&T Stadium, that iconic Dallas skyline, and of course some longhorns. “In true Texas style it’s big, it’s loud, and it’s bold.”
Even though none of the blind date teams actually found love, Keoghan said he was pleased with the fact that the show was able to do something new. “This was a really interesting experiment to just try something different,” he confessed. “I think what’s good about the format is we can make some modifications; we can try new things. We’re talking about new twists all the time.”
The Amazing Race finale airs Friday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
