Toxic Couple Vinny and Amber Ended 'The Amazing Race' in the Worst Possible Way

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 17, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 17, 2024 |

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Vinny and Amber, a toxic couple on The Amazing Race. The headline on that piece was “The Normalization of Emotionally Abusive Relationships on The Amazing Race” and detailed a number of abusive incidents between the two during that leg of the race.

Vinny and Amber, meanwhile, have also been recounting the race on YouTube, recording videos dissecting certain legs of the race. They’re interesting because they offer information about behind-the-scenes logistics — how they set up interviews after the race, discussions of mandatory rest times and conversations in hotel rooms, etc. Given how toxic the two were during the episode I wrote about, I assumed that they would not recap that episode on video. I was wrong. They said that they did go private on their socials after the episode because they were getting so much negative feedback, but they also said that they received some feedback thanking them for showcasing what a real, authentic relationship looks like.

What’s particularly interesting is something that Vinny said in that video. “I want to normalize what a real relationship looks like,” he said. “It means having emotion, being very sensitive, very intense.”

“We don’t fit society’s norms, and that’s OK,” Amber added.

It’s interesting, only in that I critiqued The Amazing Race for normalizing abusive behavior, while Amber and Vinny stressed that they wanted to … normalize what a real relationship looks like.

Couples have fights, even the best of us. But I heard a couples therapist say something several years ago that stuck with me: Fights are normal, but he could predict which marriages would end in divorce based on the level of disdain the couple has for one another during those fights.

I felt that during their fights, both Amber and Vinny, but especially Vinny, expressed a lot of disdain. There was real contempt for each other in some of those exchanges.

All of this makes Vinny’s decision, at the end of their race (spoilers, but they were eliminated before the final three), to propose to Amber all the more upsetting. I had not even watched the episode yet when I received an email from a reader.

“I was yelling out loud ‘No! No! No!’ when Vinny dropped to a knee to propose,” this person wrote. “It was the final insult to viewers. I’ve never seen two people more clueless about their toxic mess.”

I’ll grant that the two do seem to genuinely get along in these YouTube videos in a calm, controlled environment, and Amber is open enough to say, “We’re not perfect. We have problems, and this leg really exposed a lot of the issues we have in our relationship.” But I was also troubled to hear Amber say during the recap, “I deserved to be yelled at because I was a freaking idiot. What the hell was I thinking? … I need to learn that, whenever [Vinny is] more firm, that [he is] probably right and I should let [him] take control.”

In other words, when he’s pissed, she thinks she should listen and that she deserves to be yelled at if she doesn’t. Yikes.

In better news (spoilers, again), the right team won the race. It wasn’t my favorite team (Rod and Leticia), but Ricky and Cesar were consistently the best team over the course of the race. They were loving, supportive, and not a particularly exciting couple, but they kept their heads down and just ran their race. They did not hesitate. They did not complain. They just did what needed to be done with no fuss. It didn’t make for great TV, but they were deserving winners.