On the The Amazing Race season 35's October 11 episode, The Amazing Race season 35 cast flew from Thailand to Vietnam where another classic but somewhat controversial component of the game was put into play.
In addition to teams booking their own flights this season, the Express Pass has also been brought back. Although the lucky team that earns it has some control over when they use it, there is a luck aspect to it, too. While I don't think there’s a "wrong" time to use it, some fans would say Morgan Franklin and Lena Franklin wasted it on this leg.
In the first episode of the season, Morgan and Lena ate a plate full of bugs to earn the Express pass, but they had until the end of the fourth leg of the race to use it before it expired. They opted to break it out during the third leg.
Morgan and Lena got on the second flight out to Vietnam, when there were other teams hours still behind them. However, when players arrived at the episode's Roadblock, they had to pick between one of three times (5:45 am, 6 am or 6:15 am), so now those hours that separated the teams dwindled to 15 minutes. Because all of the teams were so close, Morgan and Lena saw it as a smart time to use the Express Pass and get ahead of them all. So they ditched the challenge that would've had them take a boat to different floating markets to collect a piece of their next clue.
The problem — and also the fun part — with The Amazing Race is that contestants (and the audience) never know what's coming next. The Roadblock could be the toughest challenge for their specific skill set while the Detour could seem like it was designed just for them to succeed. But in this case, Morgan and Lena struggled with the Detour — wrapping a scooter with vinyl while avoiding air bubbles is no easy feat.
Was it "wrong" for Morgan and Lena to use their advantage on a seemingly easy (yet still time-consuming) challenge? Eh, not really. Whether they used it for the Roadblock or Detour, they were still going to get ahead of the other teams. Sure, skipping the Detour would probably have helped them out more since now we know they had trouble with it — but how could they have possibly known that?
In case you were wondering, Morgan and Lena came in sixth place (middle of the pack) for this leg. However, host Phil Keoghan surprised the players by saying they were immediately entering the next leg without a break, and no team was eliminated.
So now you might be thinking that they definitely wasted their Express Pass, because they wouldn't have gone home anyway. But again, how could they have possibly known that? If they hadn't used it, they could've come in last and gone home if it was an elimination round. They took a chance, and there was only so much they could control even with an advantage.
New episodes of The Amazing Race season 35 air live on Wednesdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream the next day on Paramount Plus.
