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4. Kat & Kitty / Internet Buddies (Kitty Pryde1)
Season 5
2nd Place

The Buddies were hilariously good in a now unremarkable season for teams. Seriously, my next ranking thread will probably drop a lot of ATTAR5 teams even further than they are now. However, this team nailed it in terms of hilarity. The problem with Kitty's team is from the inconsistency that they seemed to show with their hilarity. Part of this had to do with transitioning storylines in the middle legs. For those who cannot remember, Kat & Kitty were the duo who met moments before the leg actually started and Kitty right away was upset that Kat was not a girl. The two were parodies of Kitty and Kat, respectively. This turned look onto "real life" people brought an interesting dynamic to the leg and everything they did was a little bit more creepy. Kat was obviously the over-the-top creeper who had a sex change in Eastern Europe at around Leg 11 was the pinnacle of the team's sheer brilliance. With Kitty's previous teams, this obviously was an enormous step up and made me root for the pair to make it to the end (but not necessarily win).

There are a couple of things I would have liked to see from the team. The duo were the strongest team on ATTAR so their infighting seemed a little odd at times since the breakdowns they would have would belong to bottomfeeder teams. And it was never really unpredictable where they would place because it also seemed so… typical. With the unexpected result of having to run 9 blocks in the finale because of a mistake with the BART stations, there were no real setbacks Kitty had to deal with. In fact, Kitty had aligned herself into a powerful alliance again for ATTAR5 which propelled her to the finals. As mentioned earlier, Kat & Kitty were not as memorable in the middle legs for some reason. Development of these two characters (Kitty was the brave woman and Kat was the weak/ambiguously gay one) was also the highlight of the storyboard era. There isn't too much to complain about from this team unless it's about the major robbage from their rightful win, but in ATTAR, the "good" ones don't always win.

3. Lachlan & Gabriel / Homeless Friends (Level 5)
Season 3
Winners

Lachlan & Gabriel actually receive a significant boost in the rankings because of their completely random win over the heavy favorites San & Rose and Russell & Valencia. This marked the beginning of Level 5's dominance in TAR games, but this was his most unlikely. In the unremarkable split leg, Lachlan & Gabriel barely survived elimination because Artemis & Carson wanted to save money and took the bus even though they had enough money to overtake the hobos. In the next leg, they managed to survive when Dennis & Stina failed to show. The Nepal leg saw them NEL'd after being stuck in the Nepalese cities detours which required them to link them up like a crossword. In the first Myanmar leg, they barely completed the Speed Bump and tour guide roadblock to secure a 4th place finish with the absence of Ronnie & Ben. Finally, in the penultimate leg, the hobos were saved when Jin-Woo & Sang-Mi failed to show up (due to schedule confusion). While this hurt the Korean couple, the hobos managed to slide into the finals and managed to take the prize in a sudden death roadblock at Dartmouth College.

This extreme stroke of luck made them one the most memorable teams of all time. There will never be anyone who matches this pair's luck and sheer will to persevere. As winners of ATTAR tend to do very well in the season overall, Lachlan & Gabriel were not seen as anything more besides cannonfodder and average racers. However, the pair also benefitted from being an UTR team in a season filled with crazy characters and fierce squabbles. At first, their lack of visibility contributed little to the season and they weren't too funny or interesting but were simply characters. However, the UTRness of the hobos was only temporary as they came into their own story-wise in the leg after Estonia. Here, they transformed into superstars and took a more aggressive role in the season. The mismatched relationship and love triangle between Gabriel, Sang-Mi, and Jin-Woo proved to be just as compelling after the Ronnie & Ben and Wan & Chung drama came to a conclusion. In fact, while the first half of ATTAR3 was interesting because of the team conflicts, the second half was really pushed ahead by the Lachlan & Gabriel. Despite being such sucky racers, the pair made their way into the spotlight and into my heart with their oddball skits and self-insults on their poverty. A particularly memorable part of this team was when they were forced to their speed bump which required them to change the lyrics of a Feist song to one that could be applied to Myanmar. One of the hobos remarked that they knew Feist by listening to her songs from the TVs in a window display. Going from hobos to mactors didn't make this team a one-note but from a surprisingly bare canvas came an interesting multi-faceted team. I congratulate them on their well-deserved win.