In recent seasons of CBS's long-running reality show The Amazing Race, there have been many small moments of experimentation, which naturally makes sense given the show is nearing its 32nd season. Some of these changes have succeeded, and some have failed, but even when they "fail" it hasn't ever been a complete embarrassment. Instead, it's consistently felt like there's clear potential, and a few aspects simply need to be tweaked to make it work better the next time. The most recent example of this is the twist known as the Head-To-Head.
The Head-To-Head was a twist added to a few legs in season 30 and made it so that, in order to move onto the pit stop, each team has to directly face off against another team in a task and beat them. It was never something that felt out of place in the race, and it turns out that it makes sense because the idea had already shown up in different forms on international versions of The Amazing Race, though generally known as something different such as "face-off" or "intersection". The general idea had been tested which is why the potential was so clear, but the US version of the race did make some changes to the twist in order to more so make it their own, and upon examination, those changes do seem to be where the issues lay.
Other versions of the show tend to place the Head-To-Head in the middle of a leg. When put there, the team that fails to best any other is not automatically eliminated, but instead, they are given a time penalty before receiving their next clue. The US has already toyed with time penalties through the yield twist from classic seasons, so that version would fit just fine. As it has been so far, the twist being at the end of legs makes it feel like it's the only part of the episode that actually matters. The detours and roadblocks that came before, mean nothing when the Head-To-Head is all that dictates the final order of the leg. Taking a page out of the international season's book and moving them earlier in the legs would let it blend even better into the race.
Having this at the end of a leg isn't necessarily awful though. The Amazing Race just would have to be more precise with choosing the type of task that the twist is being paired with. The two times it was used in season 30, they didn't match well. One was fairly luck based and the other was physically demanding. Physical tasks don't mesh with this setup at all because in every Head-To-Head match up, one team has to lose no matter what. That team's odds of winning their next match up are then lower than they would've been otherwise because they've wasted energy. It's too easy for a team to fall down the rankings due to consistently facing teams that haven't drained themselves yet.
When the Head-To-Head returned in season 31, it does seem as though the show caught wind of this. In that season, the task was a puzzle somewhat similar to the Tower of Hanoi, and something like that was perfect. The Head-To-Head tasks should ideally be something where the more time a team spends with it, the better they understand it.
If The Amazing Race wants the Head-To-Head to properly succeed, then the show needs to either commit to that route or shift to how international seasons have handled it. Correcting twists and themes is nothing new for the show. The yield eventually became the U-turn. The so-so blind date season laid the groundwork for the excellent season 29 cast made up entirely of strangers. So if the Head-To-Head is truly sticking around, odds are The Amazing Race will lock it down in the right way soon.