Surely that excludes the middle ground, doesn\'t it? I\'ve gone over this before; don\'t look at is as a reward for losing, look at it as the exchange of one favor for another. That isn\'t coddling, that\'s being respectful of a person\'s time. If you had lost the final chase would you have turned down $100 per right answer in the Final Chase?
I think part of the problem is the uncertain make up of the team at the end. Does everyone get $100 a step if Labette catches them? If they do, then you can expect to dole out about $4000-$5000 to a losing team, which is not insignificant to the prize budget. If they don\'t and it\'s split among the team, then what\'s to stop an unscrupulous player from telling his teammates to go balls to the wall in the opening chase, so they can flame out and he can guarantee himself an easy grand if he makes it on his own? (And don\'t think there weren\'t people in the contestant pool for whom that would be a consideration.)
Besides that, it\'s a clumsy resolution for a game that\'s billed as some sort of cranial gladiatorial combat. Oh, sorry, you\'ve been caught and your chase is over. Here\'s $1000.
I think the show did a good enough job going across the country looking for worthy adversaries to the Beast that coddling them with a loser\'s purse isn\'t necessary. Now, if the contestant search was LA-only, knowing fully well that they were serving up fresh mutton for Labette, then I\'d be changing my tune.
