I suppose it was inevitable that Meghan and Cheyne would win. Cheyne has been programmed to only win. If he came in second place, it would negate his entire reason for being, which is to be an example to the world why you should always be number one. If he came in second, his motherboard would short out, the spark would ignite his hair-gel-shellacked mane, and he would begin spinning in circles, flaring like a roman candle, spouting, "SO PROUD OF MEGHAN…SO PROUD OF MEGHAN…SO PROUD OF MEGHAN…"

But win he did, so he was able to patronizingly say how proud he was of Meghan without his face melting. Every time he says that, the subtext is, "I could win this thing on my own, but I decided, what the hell, I'd let Meghan see if she could match up, and she did better than I thought she would."

And for a while there, I actually had hopes for an upset. I was expecting a big event for the finale: Why else would CBS have splurged for the music rights to Katy Perry's "Waking Up in Vegas" for the final leg in Las Vegas? Usually the Amazing Race avoids big fees by commissioning slightly rearranged versions vaguely suggestive of classics. And surely the number of times they played "Sweet Georgia Brown" would have already busted what small music budget they had. I expected a song called "Vegas, I'm Waking Up In There" by Katie Ferry, but no, we got the real thing.

Sam and Dan had a two-pronged strategy for winning: "Operation Beat Megan and Cheyne, and Operation Don't Yell At Each Other." In the end, neither plan was successful. Operation Be the Same Panicky Jackasses As You've Been All Season, on the other hand: Mission accomplished!

When everyone arrived at the Prague airport, it was confirmed that this season teams are being sequestered after the finish line, and therefore don't know who was eliminated. Not sure the point of this; it usually only generates a moment of drama ("Oh my God, Harlem is out! Anyway, back to browsing Duty Free"), and it's not like the teams don't have epic plane rides in which to hobnob anyway. Tonight's meet-up provided a little awkwardness, as Sam and Dan insincerely apologized to Brian and Ericka for stealing their cab last week. Sam actually tried to blame their cab driver for abandoning them: It was his fault for accepting the brothers' bribe! Here's a short list of other people Sam and Dan blame: local shopkeepers who make their goods too tempting to shoplift; old people whose poor balance makes them far too easy to knock into the bushes when you ride by them on your roller blades; and people whose noses aren't sufficiently stuffed up when Sam breaks wind in an elevator. Bastards, all of them!

Ericka was raring to go, wanting to win this thing to prove to her parents that Brian is a worthy husband. "That finish line, I'm gonna run like there's no common sense in my brain," she said. Not to be too literal, but wouldn't something like that lead to her either running the wrong way, or possibly dashing into a nearby lake?

Nevertheless, off they dashed when the flight landed in Vegas, throwing themselves into cabs. Here's a fun fact we all learned about Vegas: there are very few cab drivers there under the age of 70. I could have sworn that Sam and Dan's cabbie was Ed Koch. In New York City, you spend your cab rides listening to drivers talk into their Bluetooths in a different language. In Vegas, the only sound you hear is the high-pitched squeak of air slowly leaking out of a hemorrhoid pillow.

The first destination in Vegas was the famous Wedding Chapel. Everyone arrived at once, and had to wait out the Elvis impersonator as he sang "Amazing Grace." Everyone except Sam got in the spirit and sang along with Elvis and the – fake? – couple. Was it fake? At first, I thought, "What couple would stand for their ceremony being interrupted by a reality show?" But then I thought, "What couple getting married by an Elvis impersonator in the middle of the afternoon be choosy about what did or didn't interrupt their ceremony?" Of course, there were no witnesses there, so: fake.

But seriously, what about Sam's utter humorlessness during the ceremony? Everyone else sang around, and he just glared at Elvis impatiently, as if the King was singing a mean song parody about Sam's mother. The second Elvis finished, Sam swooped in and grabbed the first clue, like a bully diving at a piñata when it first explodes at a birthday party. Two analogies in a row: check me out!

From there it was off to the Mandalay Bay hotel for a Roadblock: One teammate had to rappel face-first down the side of the hotel, 600 feet all the way down. As usual, these height challenges put me in a difficult position, as I am an acrophobic, and they would need a four-hour finale to fit in the entire sequence of the instructors trying to pry my fingers off the ledge of the Mandalay Bay hotel. So I can not mock anyone's fear on this one. In fact, I have to applaud Ericka for not blinking. (Brian, on the other hand, had sympathetic fear of heights. Even though he was on the ground, he still looked like he was about to pass out, just watching Ericka come down the building. Does Brian have to shield his eyes when he sees birds go overhead?)

Like Ericka, Cheyne also did not blink, but that was because in order to blink, your eyes have to open. This was the moment of weakness we all were waiting for, as, eyes clenched shut, he was lowered to the ground as if firemen were removing a corpse from a tree. "Am I facing my eyes toward the building or away?" he asked at the beginning, too terrified to crack open a lid. Feel that hard thing that your hand is touching, Cheyne? That's the wall; it's easily distinguished from air in that it is an object.

Nobody technically rappelled at all; for that you're supposed to walk down the side of the building, or at least bounce off with your feet, lowering yourself with each kick off. Sam came closest, though that was more a technicality. He looked like he was running down the side of the building, but his legs never seemed to actually touch the wall. If you laid your TV on your side, it looked like one of those old Looney Tunes cartoon where Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff and doesn’t notice that there's no longer any ground under his feet.

Brian and Ericka were first off the hotel, which gave me hope, but it all fell apart on the next challenge. One teammate got strapped into a bungee harness at the set of the Cirque de Soleil Beatles show, Love, and the other had to rocket them up to grab a bouquet of flowers. As Cirque de Soleil challenges go, it could have been worse: I was in no mood to see teams have to act like a melancholy clown.

This part was heartbreaking. What made this a good finale was that everyone remained neck and neck, and yet that's why it was so unpredictable. I let myself get my hopes up for Brian and Ericka, who I'd started to root for a couple of episodes back. But that rooting interest only left me despondent when Ericka could not grab the bouquet, as the other teams did. They took off, leaving Ericka howling and crying and tearing apart the flowers petal by petal.

It was hard to watch, and yet hope sprung eternal as the other teams struggled with the clue, "Find the most famous casino in the country of Monaco." Meghan and Cheyne were stumped, and began yelling the question out of their moving cab to everyone in earshot. I enjoyed when they were yelling out the names of any hotel, hoping one was right. The Bellagio? Caesar's Palace? The Red Roof Inn? And Sam and Dan were completely stumped, with Sam pronouncing it "Moan-ACK-o." When Brian and Ericka finally grabbed the bouquet, they knew the answer immediately: Hope!

And then all three of them were bunched up again at the next challenge, counting out $1 million worth of chips. As Phil put it, "Now, a million dollars is at their fingertips. And they're gonna have to use their fingertips to count it." How much restraint do you think it took Phil not to stick a "literally" in there? I'm guessing a lot. Whether I enjoyed this challenge or not would depend on when you asked me. During the challenge I thought it was great seeing Sam and Dan devolve into crazy bickering, with Dan panicking, and Sam staring at piles of chips like a crazy person, as if wanting to make sure that they didn't all get up and start dancing before he turned them in. And when Brian and Ericka arrived, they so calmly and quickly got down to business that I once again had hope.

Of course, after the episode I liked this challenge so much less, considering that for all of their concentration, they couldn’t count correctly. It reminded me of an old Steve Martin routine where he says that a great way to seem smart is to sit in a crowded train, pull out the New York Times crossword puzzle, madly fill it in, then crumple it up and toss it away and loudly say, "Why don’t they make these things more difficult?" The key is, you just fill up the boxes with random letters. That was how I felt with Brian and Ericka. They speedily and robotically arrange their stacks, say, "Ta-da!" and then the dealer goes, "Uh…that's 50 bucks."

And so they were left behind, with two fails that we know about. The other teams dashed up to Wayne Newton, who now looks less like a person than a guy at an amusement park dressed up in a giant foam Wayne Newton suit. Sam and Dan awkwardly didn't know his name, but they never forget a face. Unfortunately, Wayne Newton long ago forgot his face.

From there it was off to the finish line where, as it was prophesied, Meghan and Cheyne won. Perhaps it was a mark of this mixed bag of a season that I found myself with very little memories of the previous losers that they dashed by on their way to tackle Phil. The gamblers, Mika and Canaan, caveman lawyer Lance…if you'd told me they'd been on three seasons ago, I wouldn't have argued. Well, hopefully next season we'll get a more consistent run, especially if, as rumored, Jeff and Jordan are there. (Although don't those two run the risk of just being another Eric and Danielle: an exasperated jock with a dimbulb blond girlfriend?) Anyway, we'll just have to wait until next season to see. Happy holidays: my holiday wish to you is that you forgive all typos in this recap, 'cause I'm too tired to proofread.