The Amazing Race began its 19th season this week, and dare I say, the first episode could be a harbinger of good things to come! I’ve been hard on the show for the past couple of seasons because of their not-so-challenging challenges, but this first leg of the race really put teams to the test.
I’m not sure of the returning Express Pass advantage, which gives the team in possession of it the option to skip any one task, any time up through the eighth leg, and I thought the Hazard penalty for completing the first pre-race task last was unnecessary … but it was better than being eliminated right off the bat. It was really just a Speed Bump in disguise.
With eleven teams in the race, it’s still difficult to get to know each and every one of them — except for Ethan and Jenna, of course — so I haven’t made any kind of connection with any of them — except for Ethan and Jenna (who were surprisingly low-key in the premiere). During the team intros, you always have to think between the lines when you hear a team talk about how skilled, or how physical, or how smart they are because that usually ends up biting them at some point.
Meet Kaylani & Lisa, two former Vegas showgirls who want the world to know how smart Vegas showgirls really are. Of course, they finished last in the first challenge which required them to find an umbrella with specific letters on it to complete a puzzle (which no one really seemed to complete), “won” the Hazard penalty, then needed directions to LAX and promptly lost a passport at the gas station. Everyone knows that you are toast without your passport, so why on earth would anyone do something as mindless as put it in the waistband of their pants or some other non-secure location?
Thanks to Twitter, the person who found the passport was able to learn that the racers have no way to communicate so the guy took it to the airport where it and Kaylani were reunited. Now, can we all secure our belongings for the rest of the race?
The producers are definitely mixing things up a bit this year with making teams look for their clues in places other than the familiar red and yellow boxes. A video billboard in Taipei nearly derailed the entire race when no one could figure out that looking up in a specific location actually required them to do just that. Poor Bill and Cathi went wandering off all around the city before going back to the location mentioned in their clue.
The Road Block was tough too, requiring a team member to memorize a proverb from Confucius that they heard on a pay phone! I’m no good at memorizing things like that so I really felt the teams’ frustrations, but I think the monk was getting a little bored because after telling them no for missing an “and” or for pluralizing one word, he finally started letting teams advance by turning “there is” into “there’s.” I really think if it had to be so specific, then contractions should not have counted.
In early seasons of The Amazing Race, they always required teams to take on real physical challenges (which did not include eating as the past few seasons have done), and out of the gate, teams had to join a Dragon Boat racing team, and the Hazard penalty required one person to bungee jump … in a mall. Inside a mall! I enjoyed the first episode more than I have many an episode over the last couple of years, so I hope this high level of problem-solving and physicality will continue.
Highlights and quotes:
Clacked by Chuck Duncan 
on Sep 26, 2011 @ 00:06 EST5EDT
