the standout tough person saddled with a deadweight partner (Charla);

HA! I was thinking "Chip."

I believe they are the reason they instituted the "no one person can do more than 6 challenges" (or something like that)

I liked Kim, but I don't think she did one Detour.

Actually, I don't think that any of the women in that finale ever did a detour, or if they did, it was no more than one or two, whereas the Moms split everything up evenly and still managed to do great until the final one in the Phillippines, climbing that rope.

I saw most of TAR5, and I think I probably liked it best until this one. Maybe it was even best overall, but I really liked that all of the whiners were gone for the finale. That's huge for me, because I really don't like watching people whine, even if it's justified.

This season was one of the best recent ones, but I'll admit I'm partial to the teams of the very early seasons - Team Cha-Cha-Cha, Team Zoolander, the clowns. Even Zach & Flo made for great TV!

(Of course, that was also back when DH was covering the show for TV Guide, and we got to go to all the parties. Splitting a cab with Team Virgin on the way to TARCon was made entirely of win.)

I definitely miss the nicknaming. Not coincidentally, CBS stopped doing that right around the time they started casting mostly models and young couples.

I did miss the earliest ones, although, if I remember right, I think I saw part of 1 in reruns.

Does anyone know if another TAR is going to come on more quickly because of the strike?

They're doing Big Brother and Survivor both starting in February, so that will fill up a bunch of the CBS schedule for a while.

I never could get into Big Brother, and can only watch Survivor sporadically or my head will explode. Getting rid of my tiny cable and getting more Netflix is starting to seem like a better and better idea.

A friend of mine is totally loving Celebrity Rehab, even though she knows it's all about the trainwreck factor. She feels it actually sneaks a lot of real 12-step info in between the temper tantrums. I could not last through 30 seconds of it--too horribly sad. Has anyone seen this show?

I've been watching. (Of course! I'll watch anything.) It is sad, and seems pretty realistic, after two episodes, at least. There's an article about it in this month's Oprah magazine, where Jeff Conaway (not sober) is saying "it was an acting job," but there is no way he's that good an actor. It's also amusing watching Daniel Baldwin, because he came in claiming to be sober, and seems to think he could run group therapy himself. (The Oprah article leads me to believe he's leaving the show/rehab in the next episode.)

I think Dr. Drew is definitely legit, and is trying to do some good for the folks there and people in general. While making a buck, of course, but still.

I shall have to try Celebrity Rehab -- I do watch Intervention every week, but that does a good job of picking real people with real troubles. The one last night, the one family was so dysfunctional that they ended up talking the subject's father into going into rehab, too.

I also caught up on TAR, and was just this side of superbly pleased because I could have rooted for one of the other couples to win as we've had too many young dating couples win, but they certainly earned it. Having the memory challenge after a day full of running, running, running was genius, because changing gears like that was hard, and threw the field wide open.

How much did I like seeing the other half of the teams standing around together? I get the distinct impression that they'd all come to like each other through the competition, and the speeches from the losers about how they felt like winners was genuinely meant.