The Amazing Race 25 Cast Spoilers

In a rare move, the Amazing Race/CBS announced the entire cast the morning that the actual filming began, and encouraged fans to come out to support the racers at the start line in Times Square at 3 a.m. on May 31st. (Image credit Survivor Sucks and various fans)

The cast of Amazing Race 25 is:

• Bethany Hamilton and Adam Dirks: Married Surfers from Princeville, Hawaii (Bethany is the well-known surfer who survived a shark attack that resulted in the loss of an arm)
• Kym Perfetto and Alli Forsythe: Urban Bike Racers from Brooklyn, N.Y.
• Amy DeJong and Maya Warren: Food Scientists from Madison, Wisc.
• Lisa Thomson and Michelle Thomson: Realtor Sisters from Miami, Fla.
• Michael Ward and Scott Strazzullo: Firefighters from Boston, Mass.
• Brooke Adams and Robbie E. Strauss: Dating Pro Wrestlers from Houston, Texas and Woodbridge, N.J., respectively.
• Tim Tsao and Te Jay McGrath: College Sweethearts from Pasadena, Calif.
• Isabelle Du and Dennis Hour: Model and Accountant, respectively, from Tustin, Calif.
• Keith Tollefson and Whitney Duncan: Engaged Couple from Nashville, Tenn. (They met on the 23rd season of Survivor--South Pacific)
• Misti and Jim Raman: Married Dentists from Columbia, S.C.
• Shelley and Nici Porter: Mother/Daughter from Detroit, Mich.

I'm a little scared to continue venturing into the TAR Spoilers thread on Survivor Sucks, because people are tracking the racers all over the globe, and I'm sure there are elimination spoilers all ready. But if you want to go there yourself, here is the link.

Other pieces of info that were floating around (and again, I can't confirm anything because by now (over three days into filming), the thread will be rife with spoilers) is the introduction of something similar to the Salvage Pass, used in international versions of the show.

According to Survivor Sucks, a fan at the starting line found out the following information:

#AmazingRace #TAR25. A "Save", you can hand over before the end of 9th leg if you are facing elimination and stay in race. - spectator Ron Waxman

Supposedly, the Save is the new prize for winning the first leg, and from what I hear, the Express Pass(es) will still be awarded in the second leg.

Regarding locations, all I know is that the first place the teams have to go to is the finish line of the original TAR--Flushing Meadows Park. And I believe after that, they headed off to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Hopefully when the season finishes filming, the full list of locations will be posted somewhere less spoiler-heavy and I can get it to you.

In Survivor news, Jeff Probst revealed in an interview with Dalton Ross on location that, similar to last Blood vs. Water season, one of the pairs failed to pass medical clearance and did not get to compete on the show. This means that the season will start with only 18 contestants, which is great. However, the gender balance on each tribe has been thrown off, which isn't so great. Hopefully it wasn't the Twinnies that failed to pass the medical exam.

You can listen to Jeff's interview below.

New details are being revealed practically every day, so stay tuned to Survivor Scrutiny for more updates.

Amazing Race's Twinnies on Survivor: San Juan Del Sur?

Natalie and Nadiya Anderson

There's been a lot of news in the past week about both TAR 25 and San Juan Del Sur. I'll address Survivor first, and then later today or tomorrow I'll update you on The Amazing Race.

Remember Nadiya and Natalie Anderson, the Sri Lankan "Twinnies" from TAR 21 and more recently, TAR 24 All Stars? Disappointingly, they were eliminated first on TAR 24. However, back in March, the spoiler Miss Cleo wrote the following in an Amazing Race forum on Survivor Sucks:

The Twinnies may be joining us soon. Stay tuned. ;-)

It seems as though Nadiya and Natalie are likely to compete on the second iteration of Blood vs. Water! According to Redmond, the cast has already been flown out and filming begins on Monday, which would line up perfectly with the Twinnies' recent disappearance from social media.

Natalie (@NatalieeAnd) hasn't tweeted anything since May 26th, even though she's frequently been tweeting multiple statuses and pictures per day. The same is true for Nadiya (@NadiyaaAnd), who tweeted this on the 26th:
  

Nadiya Anderson‏@NadiyaaAnd

feel like I live out of a suit case

Both twins recently followed Jeff Probst on Twitter, and were tweeting and re-tweeting about the Survivor finale. All of these events seem way too timely and related to be coincidences, so I think we can be cautiously optimistic about seeing them on Survivor: San Juan.

Drew and Alec Christy

And that's not all. While we can only say that the Twinnies are likely to be on Survivor, there's another Blood vs. Water pair spoiled recently that's all but confirmed.

According to Survivor Sucks, and a spoiler named almostsurvivor, twin brothers Drew and Alec Christy from Florida will be on the upcoming season. Apparently, Drew was in the casting mix for Cagayan but didn't make it onto the show. In addition, Allie Pohevitz (2nd boot from Caramoan, now involved with casting) is friends with Alec on Facebook.

On the 27th, Alec posted the photo to the right on his Instagram (@alecchristy5).

The caption was:


Outt Chyeaaa #hollerwhenyouseeme #family

Many of the comments on the photo were saying "good luck," so it seems like Drew and Alec will definitely be on Survivor 29.

It's both excited and relatively unexpected to know the identities of two pairs already...only 6-8 more pairs to go! I'll post later about the beginning of the Amazing Race filming, which started last night at 3 A.M. Stay tuned!

Big Brother 16 and Amazing Race Canada 2 News

Two of the shows Survivor Scrutiny will be covering during the summer season are Big Brother U.S. season 16 and The Amazing Race Canada season 2. When we get closer to summer, I'll talk specifics of covering those shows.

Big Brother 16

Big Brother alumni are tweeting left and right about possible scenarios for this summer's season. Janelle Pierzina, from BB6, 7, and 14 posted the following yesterday on Beamly:

BB12 player and BB13 winner Rachel Reilly, as well as other alumni, have been responding frequently with fans on Twitter, claiming that they've heard about an all-stars or "blood vs. water"-type season.

This makes it extremely unlikely that any of these scenarios are actually happening. Unless the alumni posting were snubbed by casting and are trying to ruin the chances for other past contestants, they are just feeding the masses and helping the rumors spread.

If someone like Rachel was to be on this season, you can rest assured production would not want her tweeting about an all-stars season.

Contrast that, though, with what Miss Cleo (a trusted spoiler who thoroughly and accurately spoiled the most recent season of the Amazing Race) had to say on Survivor Sucks

There will be returning players this season. 

There will also be newbies this season.

Cleo also hinted that the the twist would be similar to Survivor: Blood vs. Water, with returning/new contestants bringing a loved one along for the ride. Due to the alumni activity mentioned above, returning players seems unlikely, but Cleo is a reliable source so far.

Stay tuned for more updates; the cast will most likely be sequestered a week or two before the premiere (June 25th), so if any veterans are to move into the House, we will probably find out then. Click here to see the BB16 News forum on Survivor Sucks.

The Amazing Race Canada 2

Just like Big Brother Canada, the TAR version north of the border last year lived up to--or even surpassed--the U.S. iteration. And now The Amazing Race Canada will return on July 8th.

Huffington Post Canada apparently received an anonymous message from a reader in Hong Kong that reveals TAR Canada will be going outside the country for its second season:

"I'm traveling for work and happened across a Canadian team for supposedly the Australian show (overheard staff at the clue box - wanting to keep it top secret), but reviewing the video and photos I took the clue envelope clearly reads "The Amazing Race Canada" (1 - 10 sec video, 2 photos of the red team, 2 of the blue team running thru a crowd, 1 poor picture of the clue box)."

Various people on Instagram posted photos and a video that back up the anonymous source. This one is from "FTHJIL" on the Reality Fan Forum; click here to read the Huffington Post article containing the other picture and a short video of a team at a Double U-Turn.

Hopefully we'll learn more soon; stay tuned for updates!

Survivor Cagayan: Brains Play Dumb, Beauties Make Ugly Decisions, and Brawn Wimps Out

A super-sized hour-long audio scrutiny!

It was a season full of twists and turns, unexpected blindsides, and come-from-behind victories that ultimately resulted in the win of the most devious player, Tony Vlachos.

Join Ethan and me as we sit down and talk about everything that happened in this crazy finale episode and the season as a whole in a super-sized hour-long audio scrutiny.

We'll discuss the events leading up to Tony's win, including the loved ones' visit and the Final Tribal Council, and then talk about the reunion show. Then we look at Cagayan overall; where does it and Tony's win rank among the other seasons? Who's likely to come back, and what do we think about Survivor: San Juan Del Sur?

Find out in our podcast below, and as always, leave your feedback! Don't go away; there's still some more fun coming your way as we transition into our summer coverage; I'll talk more about that soon.

Survivor: San Juan Del Sur

Amidst the general excitement of Wednesday's finale and reunion show, Jeff announced that season 29 of Survivor will return to Nicaragua, and will feature all new players on a Blood vs. Water season.

All this we already knew, thanks to the great spoilers out there, and I posted about it last week. The new information that Jeff gave us was the season's logo and name: San Juan Del Sur (which is a municipality and town in Nicaragua).

I actually really like this name, even though some people are complaining that it's too long. Well, just call it San Juan. It's better than Survivor: Mesoamerica or Survivor: Central America.

I like the logo as well, although the people on Survivor Sucks generally do not. It is very similar in color and design to the Guatemala logo, but still very nice...hopefully we get some interesting buff colors this year as well.

We don't know about the cast at all yet, which is only to be expected considering they're all new players. Stay tuned over the summer, because we'll likely start spoiling the cast when they return to social media (in July or late June, maybe?).

The other tidbits of information we have about San Juan Del Sur (ok, that is a mouthful) is from Dalton Ross's interview with Jeff Probst on the season:

“We have another twist that’s going to happen regarding duels at Redemption Island, a little different from last year, so I’m curious to see how that plays out and if we can get some story from that.”

Yes, Redemption Island is back, as we expected...I'm hoping that the twist is that Redemption Island leaves once the merge occurs, because it was fine before then. Or it may just be a return to two-person duels.

“The one thing I kept asking our scouting crew for was updates on how the water situation was looking, and between our art department and our challenge department, they’ve got it under control. We’re going to have a lot more water challenges and be in the water more —and really that’s the only concern we had about Nicaragua, is that it was a little dry last time.” 

This is a good sign, because the lack of suitable beaches led to a dearth of water challenges and an unsatisfying pool was the solution. Hopefully this time they've found a better beach.

Jeff also revealed (intentionally or unintentionally) that the loved ones will be separated once again, like season 27:

We just have to do a very good job in how we tell those stories, when you cut from one person on one beach, then cut to their significant other on the other beach. 

That's really all we have for now; check back soon for more updates, as well as for our summer coverage of Amazing Race Canada, Big Brother U.S., and more! Ethan and I want to watch some of the old Survivor seasons this summer, and you can help us decide which; there's a poll on the sidebar.

The Cagayan finale podcast should be up sometime tomorrow (Saturday), so stay tuned.