Are We There Yet?

Anyone who is anything more than an occasional view of The Amazing Race will tell you that the Family Edition of that show was undoubtedly on of the worst viewing experiences ever. Coming off of what might have been one of the show's best seasons, which featured the Machiavellian efforts of Rob Mariano and his then fiancée (now wife) Amber Brkich and the eventual triumph of "good" (in the form of Uchenna & Joyce) over "evil" (Rob & Amber), just about anything would have been a let-down, but the show's Family Edition was a let-down of the "watch that first step, it's a lulu" variety. Foreign travel was limited to an excursion to Central America – Panama and Costa Rica, with a trip to Belize being cancelled due to the threat of a hurricane – and a trip to Canada. Most of the travel was done by car or by RV, and the challenges were by in large pedestrian; things like climbing a ladder to the top of the biggest office chair in the world, or searching the holes of a golf course to find balls coloured to match your motorized golf cart. And the "villains" of the piece weren't villainous because they were sneaky and conniving because this family acted superior to others (because they were "Christians" though you'd be hard pressed to prove it by their actions in the race) and frequently insulted other players (at one point they laughed at one opponent because he drove a garbage truck and in another they threw an apple core at the vehicle of another team). And although "right" triumphed it was less that a team that deserved to win was victorious than that the team that annoyed the life out of competitors and viewers alike were beaten down. Had the producers not been wise enough to realise that this season was a dog, the Family Edition might have been enough to kill The Amazing Race. At the time that the Family Edition of The Amazing Race aired, it was suggested by some people that perhaps the problem wasn't entirely the format but the timing. Maybe, they said, if something like the Amazing Race Family Edition was run during the summer, outside the ordinary rotation of the show, it would work better. Amazing Race producers Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri wisely decided not to try but slightly less than four years after the CBS show ran NBC has brought its own version of the show to the air. Based on the first episode the NBC show, called The Great American Road Trip, won't be any more successful than what preceded it.

Hosted by comedian Reno Collier, who apparently is well known on Comedy Central (I confess I've never heard of him; he bears a vague resemblance to Andy Richter) the show sends seven families on a road trip down Historic Route 66, the so-called Mother Road of America. Although the road has been officially decommissioned following the completion of the interstate system the road has been maintained in many states in various forms, and still holds a place in popular culture thanks to the old TV series and the Bobby Troup song. The seven teams consist of a mother and father and two teenage (or younger) children from diverse backgrounds. Starting from Wrigley Field in Chicago the teams are each ushered to a motor home. Each of the motor homes has the name and pictures of the family that occupy them and decorated in a manner deemed "appropriate" for the family. For example the Pollard Family (from Alabama) has a motor home decorated with empty shotgun shells. The seven teams are:

• The Coote Family from Lockport Illinois: Keith, Jennifer, Cassidy (12) and Jake (9). Keith is a former marine who is now a carpenter, Jennifer works during the day and goes to school at night. Cassidy is described as "an academic princess" while Jake is called "high energy" (I have other words for him, none particularly flattering).
  
• The DiSalvatore Family from Yonkers New York: Silvio, Amy, Mason (16) and Blake (13). Amy is a medical insurance administrator, while Silvio is a stay at home dad. He frequently seems overly concerned with his hair. Blake is the one who tries to settle family disputes, while Blake has never been separated from his video games for more than three days.
  
• The Favery Family from Long Island New York: Lenny, Dee, Dylan (15) and Ashley (10). Lenny is a Manhattan doorman who's a stickler for routine, while Dee is a special education teacher's aide. Ashley is a committed student with a taste for the better things in life, which the family can't afford particularly in these economic times. Dylan is a musician who breaks the tension with humour.
  
• The Katzenberg Family from Westport Connecticut: Marc, Hyleri, Sami (15) and Andrew (14): Marc and Hyleri aren't married yet but they already have blended their family. Described as "active philanthropists." The kids are Marc's son and Hyleri's daughter who bonded over accusing each other of being high maintenance.
  
• The Montgomery Family from Montclair California: Darius, Alecia, Darius Jr. (15) and Tyiler (11). Darius is a former Marine who served in Iraq while his wife Alecia is a pre-school teacher. Their kids are both strong students and Darius Jr. also excels athletically, while Tyiler shows signs of following in his footsteps.
  
• The Pollard Family from Newton Alabama: Ron, Amie, Aaron (17) and Anslie (12). A typical close-knit southern family. Ron is a homebuilder who loves hunting and fishing, while Amie is a radio host, who describes herself as wearing the pants in the family. Aaron is an athlete who plays varsity football and baseball and joined the gymnastics team to meet girls. Anslie is the "apple of his mother's eye" who has won several beauty pageants.
  
• The Rico Family from Katy Texas: Ricardo, Erica, Danielle (13) and Ricky (8). Ricardo and Erica are both in the advertising business but Erica is the more forceful of the two. She owns her own business and is the "dictator" of the family, while Ricardo describes himself as the spiritual sort who is the family peacekeeper. The kids are both involved in sports.
  

Reno makes it perfectly clear that this is not a race, and emphasising the fact is the police escort that the teams get from the Chicago police from Wrigley Field. That is the escort they get when they're able to get started. Silvio it seems wants to drive the motor home but is unable to get the thing started, which holds up the four teams parked behind them. It's only when Amy takes the wheel – and refuses to give it back to Silvio no matter what he wants – that they get on the road. Their first objective is the Illinois state capital of Springfield. Because this is not a race, the fact that vehicles pass each other is of little or no import, and the only real action is kids and parents being impatient with the trip. I'm not sure which is worse, the various kids asking "are we there yet?" or Silvio being impatient with Amy driving and the flat countryside that they're passing through.

The teams spend the night at the Illinois State Fair Grounds getting to know each other (and learning how to empty the sewage tanks in the RV – something that Silvio doesn't want to be anywhere near, apparently out of fear of what it might do to his hair, and no I'm not kidding. before their first challenge at Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield. The first challenge is cheesier than anything in the Family Edition season of The Amazing Race. The Presidential Race. One of the adults from each team has to carry as many "ballots" from the starting point to their Ballot Box. They can't stuff the "ballots" into their clothing. Getting to the Ballot Box means travelling through one of the most pathetic obstacle courses you're ever likely to see on TV, escorted by the kids as "Secret Service Agents." First they have to walk through their "Reflecting Pools" – really kid's wading pools. Next they have to pass through the "Rose Garden" – a zigzag passage for each team, decorated with artificial roses. Then they have to get past "The Cabinet" – a barricade of desks that they have to climb over. Finally there's the "Red Tape" which was one of those obstacles where you have to step over ropes – or red tapes – without tripping. There's one more thing; the person carrying the ballots has to wear a giant presidential caricature head, including Washington, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush (the Younger), and Obama, which restrict their vision. The Pollards are positively ecstatic that they got the Bush. The objective of the thing isn't to get to the Ballot Box first, but to get to the Ballot Box with the most ballots before the three minute time period for the event is completed. The Katzenbergs (dad is wearing the Obama head) complete the course first, but it was the Coote Family who carried the most ballots. Their father was smart enough to use his team jersey to carry the ballots. Amy DiSalvatore complained but it didn't count as stuffing the ballots into their clothes. Still it bred a bit of conflict between the two teams. The Coote family earned a special reward, while the three teams with the slowest times had to participate in an elimination challenge.

The Cootes get their reward at the next camp site in Madison, Illinois; a ride in a fire truck to the middle of the Chain Of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River, right on the border of Illinois and Missouri where they'd have supper with the Mayor of Madison. The next day the teams pull into St. Louis and on the grounds of the Gateway Arch the elimination challenge is staged. One member of each team is strapped into the center of a giant inflatable ball. The team then had to manoeuvre the ball through five replicas of the arch, not unlike croquet hoops. To complete the course the ball has to travel completely through the final arch. The problem is that the ball is attached to the starting point with a rope, and if the team ran out of rope before they got the ball completely through they'd have to try a different route. Naturally there was only one route that left them with enough rope. Teams couldn't watch as the teams before them went through the course The Favery Family went first and had some troubles with it, but it was the Katzenbergs who had the most difficulty. It took them over forty minutes to do a course that the Faverys did in just over fifteen minutes and the Montgomerys flew through in under three. This meant that the Katzenbergs were the first team to go home.

The Great American Road Trip may not be the worst reality TV show ever. Some of the attempts to clone The Apprentice probably deserve that title, as does an early NBC attempt at the reality competition form called Lost. It is certainly the worst Amazing Race imitator – but then that's a pretty small group. The only other Amazing Race like show that I can think of was Treasure Hunters, a show that was vastly superior to this mess, even when it seemed like an extended product placement for Motorola Phones, Orbitz, Ask.com and Genworth Financial Services. The fact that this is not a race renders all of the travel segments essentially meaningless. They could just as easily be transported from point to point in limousines – which would probably be sounder for the environment than the motor homes. The only thing that having these people go from point to point in motor homes provides the viewer with is a chance to see the kids, and some of the adults, being annoying. If the first episode challenges are typical then the competition aspect is reduced to the pathetic. And remember the competitions are the deciding aspect of this show. It doesn't matter how well they navigate, if for no other reason than the fact that most of their route is preordained – Route 66. So it is left for the competitions to be involving and they aren't. This show would have been so much better if they had found a competition designer who was able and willing to both make the challenges fit the location and to make them – well challenging. Tasks like the "Presidential Race" are downright infantile. Like the challenges, this show could have been so much better than it is. Compared to this the Family Edition of The Amazing Race is absolute poetry. Don't watch it.

The Amazing Race 13 - Casting

I had an Amazing Race style experience on Friday. Not a big Amazing Race experience, but it kind of gave me a feeling about the sort of frustration that Amazing Race participant sometimes run into. I got on a city bus for a cross town trip at 4:20 Friday afternoon. I didn't get to where I was going until 6:20 p.m. And this is normally a forty minute trip at most. It literally took over an hour to travel less than eight-tenths of a mile. There was an accident on the University Bridge that effectively blocked the west-bound side of the bridge, and the bus driver was blocked into the innermost lane by other traffic so that he couldn't take the detour that the other busses were able to use. Thank goodness for my iPod and podcasts because I would have been bored to tears otherwise. Now admittedly it wasn't 12 hours in the sardine section of a fully loaded flight to some place where they eat deep fried crickets but it was something, and it makes me wonder if I could in fact do "The Race" if such a short time on a bus gave me pain, and a headache and increased my irritability.

Most of you know of course just how huge a fan of The Amazing Race that I am. I used to recap the episodes on one of the Amazing Race newsgroups, and I confess that I'm very close to deciding to do weekly recaps here in the blog, for my amusement if nothing else. But first let's have a look at the new cast. I'm going strictly by the stuff from CBS and the interviews.

There are certain "types" that the casting directors who select people for the show. There's the older couple, the long-distance daters, the couple who are in a troubled relationship and hope that being on a reality show is going to save it (!), the parent-child team, the all-female team (or usually two), the "oddball" team who has some quirk either about their appearance or their manner, and the best buds team of two guys (usually there are two such teams). One thing they seem to be trying to get away from is the dreaded "Alpha Male" team; a team of twenty or early thirty-something males who are physically fit and reasonably intelligent. The problem with the Alpha Male teams is that they had a tendency to win to the exclusion of others. Arguably the last Alpha Male Team was season 10 winners James & Tyler, best friends and models who met in rehab. (Warning: These videos contain ads. They're also in a format that I'm not particularly in love with. Unfortunately not all of the interviews are available from YouTube.)

Aja & Ty: Long-distance daters who want to see if they can live together on a regular basis. The Race is a 24/7 experience of living together which is more than what married couples spend together so it's a bit of a crash course. She (Aja) an actress and make-up artist (probably more make-up artist than actress if such things run to form) from Los Angeles, while he (Ty) is a banker from Detroit. She claims that she's, "energetic, insightful and compassionate," while he's very competitive and hates the thought of losing. He claims that her weakness is that she's easily upset, while she worries about his poor sense of time. She might also want to worry about the fact that he's never travelled much outside of the United States.

Andrew & Dan: A "best buds" team, these two are fraternity brothers from Arizona, one of whom recently entered the "real world" while the other is still in college. They claim that for them six pack refers to beer not abs. Andrew is studying urban planning while Dan graduated in Tourism Management. Andrew hasn't travelled much while Dan has travelled extensively including to the Middle East. They hope to use their travel knowledge to suck some of the other teams into trusting them (particularly the pretty girls who try to use their feminine wiles on them) and maybe eventually being responsible for eliminating them. I think they got the part about feminine wiles right but I think they may be a bit dismissive of the skills of the other teams. Right off the bat I don't like them too much.

Anita & Arthur: These two fit two categories. They're quite obviously the oldest team this time around, and well they also fill the "oddball" category. They're honest to goodness back to the land tie dye hippy types! Not pseudo hippies who get that label because they wear their hair long like BJ & Tyler from season 10, or TK and Rachel from season 12, Anita and Arthur look like they hung out in Haight Ashbury and lived on a commune. Right now they make and sell honey and run an organic blueberry farm. They're definitely hard workers with a deep sense of family. He describes himself as a problem solver and hopes to gain a better understanding of himself and Anita. Anita regards herself as "optimistic, enthusiastic and compassionate" while saying that her husband has a tendency to overanalyze things. Older teams have frequently gone deep into The Race, and I have a suspicion that these guys have it in them to go far. Right now at least I like them.

Anthony & Stephanie: An established couple that hopes that their time on The Race will bring them closer to marriage. He's a mortgage broker while she's a financial saleswoman (great timing for those careers!). I'm not sure they're meant to be together – they broke up for a year and they admit that they constantly bicker, although they claim it's all in "good fun." He claims to be adventurous and entertaining, while she's outgoing, and funny. They both claim to be athletic which they believe gives them an edge over their competition. There's a certain arrogance in some of his statements.

Kelly & Christy: A pair of young divorcees without much travel experience outside the USA. A female "best buds team" they've been friends since college and at times have worked at the same company. They've supported themselves through their marriages and their divorces. Kelly claims that their team will be quick, resourceful and resilient, while Christy claims that "their sweet, Texas charm will prove to be a very resourceful asset throughout the Race." This sort of attitude is quite common among female teams. Sometimes it works, as with Dustin & Kandice from the All-Star edition of the Race, while at other times teams overestimate their charms, or the reactions to those charms. In this particular case I suspect their self-admitted weaknesses – Kelly's admission that she can be impatient while Christie can be temperamental – will more than balance out what they see as strengths. They'll go probably further than the other all female team but I wouldn't care to wager how much further.

Ken & Tina: A former NFL player and his estranged wife, a corporate CEO who is also on the board of the Children's Cancer Center in Tampa Florida. This is a case where he cheated and they separated to the point of living on different coasts, but they want to try to make it work again. He's obviously athletic and competitive and claims to have good problem solving skills, although judgement is probably not his best quality. On the other hand he thinks her worst quality is her need to control things. She is driven, athletic and claims to be the brains of the operation, while her husband is definitely the brawn. They have travelled extensively and it's mostly been adventure travel. Frankly, to me this looks like an explosion waiting to happen.

Marissa & Brooke: This year's blondes. A pair of self described Southern Belles who claim to be willing to flirt to get what they want. Oh good grief, another one of those teams. One of them (they look so similar that it's impossible to tell them apart) can't wait to try out the Spanish she learned in Spain. Marissa (a broadcast journalism student at USC – the University of South Carolina, not the one in California) claims that "Her extensive dance training has taught her to be focused and determined, skills that could help her to do well on the race" while she claims that Brooke being a graphic designer means that she'll be sure to pay attention to detail. She also claims to be able to read Hebrew and speak a little Swahili. That alone is enough to make me expect an early exit, maybe in the first episode.

Mark & Bill: About as close as this season comes to an Alpha Male team – if a pair of self-confessed comic book geeks in their early 40s can in fact be called Alpha Males. Mark Yturralde is the Chief Financial officer of Comicon, while his pal Bill Kahler is a financial services officer. They're both gamers – they describe The Amazing Race as the "ultimate game on the biggest board you can possibly imagine." Mark is an experienced world traveller with a "love affair with the remote," and among many other things has run with the bulls in Pamplona. Bill on the other hand has done a lot of "safe" travelling, and Mark is looking forward to him stretching his boundaries by doing stuff like bungee jumping. I liked these guys even before I heard their interview tape because like me they're comics and gaming geeks, but listening to Mark talk about things he's done makes me think this could be one of the teams to beat.

Nick & Starr: A brother and sister team of people who would have to be described as extroverts. Nick is a working actor in New York, appearing Off-Broadway in the revival of The Fantasticks, while his sister spent three seasons as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. They worry about getting on each other's nerves since they haven't spent much time together in recent years and they were bitter enemies in high school. Starr is the more spontaneous of the two, although Nick regards her spontaneity as being more akin to recklessness. They claim to have travelled a good deal – for their age group – although by Race standards it's fairly limited. They expect people to help them, but they seem to have a negative attitude to other teams that comes out in their interview, but believe that they give out an aura that will lead people to want to meet them, work with them, and be stabbed in the back by them. This attitude could backfire on them quickly.

Terence & Sarah: Another dating couple trying to determine if they belong together. Yawn. Supposedly this is a case of opposites attracting. She's a graduate of the Wharton School Of Business (Donald Trump's old school) who works on Wall Street. He sells real estate to pay the bills so that he can work at his passion for coaching runners. They're both competitive – he finished the last two New York Marathons in under three hours – as well as being smart, energetic adventurous and fearless. Sarah claims to be lower maintenance than Terence while he describes himself as "witty, sensitive and driven." According to them their biggest weaknesses are a tendency to get too intense and fight amongst themselves, and their dietary restrictions. I get the sense from someone who has seen the episode that this comes up pretty quickly. Not a favourite in my book.

Toni & Dallas: A single mom and her son who has now gone off to college. They're going on the Race as much to see the world and get some quality time together as to win the million dollars. Dallas claims that his mom's big fault is telling long winded stories, but he's persuasive and enjoys getting people to do what he wants them too. She on the other hand claims to be a leader but knows she'll have to dial it down a bit and rely on her son's strengths rather than trying to boss him around. Seem good humoured enough and likely to be a fan favourite for as long as they last. I just don't think they're going to last too long.

The Amazing Race returns for its thirteenth series on Sunday September 28^th after 60 Minutes. This week at least CBS doesn't have a late football game so the show should start at 8 p.m. Eastern.

A Triumph Of Quality

We are coming to the end of the twelfth rotation of The Amazing Race on CBS, and it is my sincere opinion that someone at that network deserves an ass-whuppin'. It's probably Les Moonves but I'm sure he has lackeys who take that sort of punishment for him. But the person who not only gave the green light to Viva Laughlin but decided that there should be only one season of The Amazing Race produced, and that one season should be shortened by having fewer competitors than previous seasons, well that person deserves an ass-whuppin' so severe that he won't even think of sitting down until this time next season – if then. CBS has ordered a thirteenth season of The Amazing Race but what I find to be worthy of an ass-whuppin' is that the next season of this quality unscripted show isn't already in the can ready to dominate network TV starting this February. Instead we will be subjected to Big Brother and a show about people taking lie detector tests.

Now you know that I love The Amazing Race, and you know how much I love The Amazing Race. So I know that you will probably take a statement from me that The Amazing Race is the best reality competition show on TV with a grain of salt about the size of the Windsor Ontario salt mines. So I'm not going to say it. Instead Canwest News Service TV writer Alex Strachan is. This is what he said in his
Fine Tuning: Sunday column which appeared in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix among other places:

The Amazing Race is one of the most watched, highest rated and most admired reality competition programs on TV – more popular with Canadians than it is with Americans, where it has already been renewed for 12 seasons. And small wonder.

The madcap race-around-the-world is more than just a time filler for a dark winter's night. It's a reminder – an exciting and splendidly visual reminder – that there's a wonderful and mysterious world out there. And a reminder, too, that even though we may be suddenly transplanted into in a different culture in a different land, many of us remain who we are – for better of [sic] for worse.

Part Around the World in 80 Days, part MTV's Real World and all adrenaline rush, The Amazing Race can be jaw-droppingly good. It can be both maddening and emotionally uplifting, frustrating and beautiful, and at times – this season, especially – inspiring.

The Amazing Race was a product of the post-Survivor reality competition boom, which spawned such shows as Murder In Small Town X on FOX, The Mole on ABC and Lost on NBC. The latter two series, along with The Amazing Race had two things in common. The three shows traded on exotic locales and they all were victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I know it sounds callous to put reality TV shows on a par with the human victims of that tragedy (including the winner of FOX's Murder In Small Town X, a New York City paramedic), but I think it's an accurate assessment. The three shows featured travel to exotic locales at a time when a lot of Americans thought that the world away from their own shores was too dangerous a place to explore. The ratings for Lost soon consigned it to TV's ash heap, while ABC took The Mole (which was in its second series) off the air and eventually burned it off as a summer replacement. Only CBS stuck it out with The Amazing Race, if you can call bouncing the show to every night except Saturday (and Season Six was supposed to run on Saturday nights before sanity prevailed), and spending two seasons as a summer series "sticking with it." The show has endured such indignities as Allison from Big Brother 4 and of course the Family Edition in season eight (which had one contestant lamenting "Why are we going to Phoenix, Arizona for? I want to go to New Zealand!" It was a sentiment echoed by viewers. Fortunately subsequent seasons have erased that taint. In the process the show has won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality-Competition Series in each of the five years that the award has been presented. It has beaten such shows as American Idol (which was responsible for the delay of season 4), Survivor, The Apprentice, Dancing With The Stars, and Project Runway. It is an amazing record and I don't know of any other series that has won Emmys as outstanding program in any other category for five straight years.

The secret to any reality-competition show is casting and this season of the show has had perfect blend of people, the right mix of people we can hate like Nate & Jen, or Ari & Staella (but mostly Ari), people we hope and even expect will win (TK & Rachel; Kynt & Vyxsin), and even people we can be surprised by (Nick & Don; Christina & Ronald). While we may expect the younger and fitter T.K. & Rachel to win, there's a sense of hope that Nick and his plucky and at times abrasive grandfather Don will surprise us, or that the sometimes domineering sales executive Ronald will complete his growing realization about how intelligent and resourceful (not to mention very attractive) daughter Christina is by crossing the finish line first. For me that's a key aspect of the show. It is objective not subjective. People aren't eliminated because other competitors viewed them as a threat, they are eliminated because they finish a stage in last place. And the winner of the show will not be the people who are the most popular among viewers regardless of actual ability. The partnership that wins The Amazing Race will be the one that has surmounted all the obstacles in their path – those created by the show's producers and those that are a result of the nature of international travel – and finished ahead of all the others. There's no manipulating, no alliances and backstabbing, there's just the need to finish ahead of your opponents, and I for one like that.

It is arguable that this season has been the one in which the American TV audience has really rediscovered The Amazing Race in terms of ratings. Checking the Nielsen network ratings, as reported at TVSquad.com (you're going to have to go through a number of unrelated posts to find the weekly "Top 20 Network Shows" reports) The Amazing Race has finished in the Top Twenty in the Nielsen ratings in eight of the ten weeks it has been on the air, and on two of those occasions it has finished in the Top Ten. Credit or blame what you wish – the Writers Strike (although the only shows in The Amazing Race's timeslot that are scripted are the FOX animated shows, and The CW's Life Is Wild) for the dearth of scripted product; NFL Football overruns which push back 60 Minutes (but not every week); 60 Minutes itself which serves up a ready-made if aging audience (which obviously hated Viva Laughlin) – the fact of the matter is that people are watching the show. I personally attribute it to the American public finally realizing what Alex Strachan stated in his article on the show:

There's a reason why The Amazing Race has won five consecutive Emmy Awards, over competition like Survivor, American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

It's more than just entertainment. In a good season – and this season has been one of its best to date -- The Amazing Race is both a white-knuckle rollercoaster ride and an affirmation of life. It's feel-good TV programming at its best, reality TV made the way reality TV ought to be."

Season 12 of The Amazing Race finishes on Sunday night after 60 Minutes on CBS and at 8 p.m. Eastern (7 p.m. Central – which is where I am) on CTV in Canada.

Amazing Race 12 – The Teams

Okay, I know it's Friday and the show doesn't come back until Sunday, but since I anticipate being busy on the weekend (doing a couple of things like writing my Short Takes piece and not turning any clock in the house that adjusts for Daylight Savings Time to what the time really is here – we don't do Daylight Savings Time in Saskatchewan) I want to get this written now.

You all know that I love The Amazing Race with a passion that outshines the sun. It is the only reality-competition show that I would love to be on if only it weren't for the pesky fact that I'm a Canadian and you have to be an American to be on the show. I, rather immodestly, consider myself something of an expert on The Amazing Race and so I take it upon myself to try to rate the teams.

Teams in The Amazing Race can usually be split into several categories, and the groups' track record of winning allows a certain amount of handicapping of current contestants:

• Alpha Males – the dominant group. Of nine races run (not counting Amazing Race 8: Family Edition or Amazing Race 11: All Stars) Alpha Male teams have won five (TAR1, TAR2, TAR4, TAR9, TAR10). An Alpha Male Team is defined as male, under 40, and generally physically fit. There are no Alpha Male Teams in this edition of The Race.
  
• Married Folk – the other prime group. They're under 45 and either married or in an extremely committed relationship (including separated). Although there is some overlap with Alpha Males (Reichen & Chip described themselves as married) for our purposes they are a male-female couple. Married Folk have won TAR5, TAR6, and TAR7 and finished second in TAR1, TAR2, TAR3, TAR4, and TAR7. There are no Married Folk in this season of The Race – at least not by this definition.
  
• Trust Issues – For some reason a number of couples have gone on The Amazing Race to strengthen their relationships. Or to see if they actually have a relationship. Only one team from this group has won The Race – TAR3's Zach & Flo or as they were sometimes known, Zach & Dead Weight. Usually squabbling destroys them. There's at least one Trust Issue couple in this season, possibly two.
  
• Next Level Daters – They're a couple who are in a relationship but who are wondering if they should take it to the "next level" although what that means is frequently nebulous. It can range from moving to the same town to moving in together to getting engaged. The Race puts a lot of strains on relationships, but if they can survive it can make for a strong partnership. None has won by a couple of teams have come close. There are at least three Next Level Daters this time around.
  
• Flirty Girls – No all woman team has ever won The Amazing Race but in recent years they've come close. Flirty Girls are where both women are under 30 and have the desire to use their feminine wiles to win The Race. Best performance by a Flirty Girl Team was probably Dustin & Kandice in TAR10, who finished fourth. Flirty Girls have a tendency not to do well, most spectacularly Heather & Eve, Team Legally Blonde in TAR3. There is one Flirty Girl team this season
  
• BFFs – Women between say 30 and 45. They tend to be more level headed than Flirty Girls and so perform better. They sometimes struggle in physical tasks. Best performance by a BFF Team was Lynn & Karlyn who finished third in TAR10, but my personal favourites were Tian & Jaree in TAR4. None in this season though.
  
• Older Women – No woman likes being describes as "older" but in this case they are over 45 and getting a bit of adventure in their lives, perhaps for the first time ever. They can do very well or fall flat on their faces. Best performance by an Older Women Team was by Linda & Karen, the Bowling Moms who finish fourth in TAR5. Generally though they don't do so well. There is one Older Women team this time around.
  
• Older Guys – Over 40, usually not in the best shape try to make up in guile what they lack in fitness. Sometimes they go pretty far but often physical woes stop them. None in this Race.
  
• Older Marrieds – My favourite group because although none has ever won they usually put up a great fight. Personal favourites include TAR7 fourth place team Gretchen & Meredith and TAR9 fifth place team Fran & Barry. Best finish though was by Terri & Ian in TAR3 – they finished second. None in this Race though.
  
• Parent/Child combos – They tend to be trying to "reconnect" somehow, whether because of philosophical differences or because of the parent being not as present as he (inevitably a he) would have liked to have been during childhood. Tend not to do too well – best performance was by Nancy & Emily in TAR1; they finished fifth. There's a father/daughter and a grandfather/grandson in this Race.
  
• Siblings – There have been a couple of great sibling teams, notably Blake & Paige from TAR2 and Ken & Gerard in TAR3. Both teams finished third. In general though sibling teams don't do well in The Race and frequently don't finish in the top half. Sisters tend to do well but tend not to do quite as well as other all women teams. There are two sibling teams – one mixed gender, the other sisters in this Race
  

So let's look at the teams and try to figure out where they'll finish.

Kynt & Vyxin – Described by CBS as "dating Goths" they're biggest worry is supposedly maintaining their make-up. I classify them as "Next Level Daters." They claim to have an "us against the world" attitude because they stand out in a world of "normal" people. This could be a problem if for some reason they antagonise local people in the countries they visit. I don't see them progressing into the top six and they could be one of the earliest teams eliminated.

Jennifer & Nathan – They definitely have a case of "Trust Issues" that they're trying to iron out. They claim to have broken up several times during their two years together and in the TV commercials for the show there have been allegations that he has cheated on her. Still, they're an athletic couple and if they can hold their personal issues in check during The Race, I think they have a chance at the top four or five.

Ronald & Christina – They're a father/daughter team and apparently the most travelled of the players in this race. The story with them is that he was away for most of her formative years so this is a chance for them to reconnect. He travels a lot on business and she is a policy analyst who used to work for the State Department. Travel experience normally doesn't mean that much in The Race because of the various challenges and the various bottlenecks that restrict advantages in airports. Could be a contender if they do well in physical challenges but mostly I see a dfinish in the bottom six.

Shana & Jennifer
– They're actually older than I expected from the commercials – their age says "BFF" but their attitude (in the commercials) comes across as "Flirty Girls." They're both intelligent and well travelled which makes me think that the "Flirty Girl" thing is mostly a pose. I think they can definitely make it into top five or six and might even pull off a win, given the absence of "Alpha Males" and "Married Folk."

Azaria & Hendekea – The "mixed gender Siblings," this pair definitely has an early elimination vibe about them. Personality conflicts could definitely be a factor with the team: "She describes him as confrontational and emotional while he describes her as irrational." They could definitely be the first team out and I don't see them going much beyond the bottom three or four.

Lorena & Jason – Another pair of "Next Level Daters" with more than a hint of "Trust Issues" between unspecified cultural differences and a description of the relationship that includes the word "volatile" (a word that Jason also applies to himself). This could be a tough one. Their fitness could make them definite contenders but if the relationship becomes too volatile they might fall apart. Beyond expecting a finish in the top five I'm not willing to make much in the way of a prediction.

Nicolas & Donald – Grandson and grandfather could be an interesting twist on the Parent/Child relationship. Nicolas (the grandson) is a 23 year-old airline pilot which if nothing else should give him a leg up on navigation. On the other hand his 68 year-old grandfather has a tendency to being opinionated and outspoken. For as long as they last (which I fear won't be that long) they should be fun to watch.

Ari & Staella – Hard to read these two. They come across as a mix of "Next Level Daters" and "Siblings" – he currently lives with her family but they've been best friends for eight years. More worrisome than whatever their relationship may be is Ari's description of himself: "mean, rude and hilarious." While The Amazing Race isn't a show where alliances generally come into play, it is never a good idea to antagonise other teams who may start working to help anyone but you. If his meanness and rudeness comes into play either with other players or with locals, this could be a short adventure for them.

Marianna & Julia
– Sisters but I wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of "Flirty Girl" asserting itself. On paper they could be a strong team. One is a self-described problem solver while the other is more athletic. They've travelled together in the past and they claim that they're modelling themselves on TAR9 winners BJ & Tyler. The question is whether their relationship as sisters (Julia claims that Marianna "doesn't have a censor button and that at times she can be quite mean") will undermine their ability to work together as partners. The strength of the BJ & Tyler relationship was that they didn't argue and they had qualities that complimented each other. If they work together well they could finish in the top five, maybe even the top three.

Rachel & TK – A "Next Level Dating" couple that could be my favourites to win it all. He was a college athlete (swimming) at UC Santa Barbara while she bought her own business straight out of high schools. They're both smart and ambitious, and based on previous seasons it never hurts to have significant swimming skills. They describe themselves as "free-spirited" which is never a bad thing. The big question is whether their relationship is sound enough to handle the stresses of The Race. If so, they could win (then again I picked Rob & Amber to win the All Star Season so what do I know).

Kate & Pat – The first openly lesbian participants in The Amazing Race they've been married for three years and both are ministers in the Episcopal Church (Anglicans to us Canadians). Male Gay couples have been a fixture in previous seasons of The Race, and according to Adam Troy-Castro's book on the show My Ox Is Broken, there have been lesbians on the show but they were not (at that time at least) "out." The big thing for me isn't their sexual preference but rather their ages – Kate is 49 and Pat is 65 – combined with their gender which puts them at a disadvantage. As I pointed out earlier, Older Women tend not to do as well in The Race as virtually any other group. Sorry to say it but I expect them to be an early elimination.

The Amazing Race 11 starts Sunday night at 7 Central and Mountain, 8 Eastern and Pacific. I can't wait!!!!

Short Takes – May 7, 2007

I'm kind of bummed out because the team that I wanted to win The Amazing Race did not win The Amazing Race. I confess it – I was cheering for Dustin & Kandice the Beauty Queens mostly because they had a killer competitive spirit. Not that they were my favourite team to start the Race – that would be a toss-up between Rob & Amber and Terri & Ian, with Uchenna & Joyce and Danny & Oswald also on the list – but I liked Dustin & Kandice a heck of a lot more than I like Mirna (Charla's okay – quite daring really) and Eric & Danielle's breasts (she was showing the girls off a lot this season). So naturally Eric & Danielle (and her breasts) won. Oh well, hopefully there's always next year. The show has already started recruiting contestants for The Amazing Race 12 and although the show has not been officially renewed – we'll have to wait for next week's upfront announcements for that – it has been a solid if not spectacular ratings performer on Sunday nights and doing particularly well after a sports overrun.

Coinkidink: Speaking of Rob & Amber, I was doing a little research for something I'll hopefully finish writing in the next couple of days and I found a really strange connect the dots sort of thing linking them. It seems that Rob Mariano attended Xavierian Brothers High School in Westbrook Massachusetts. If I did my math right, one of his classmates was Matt Hasselbeck who is now the starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. Hasselbeck's brother Tim (who also attended Xavierian Brothers is married to Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who is now one of the hosts of The View on ABC. Before they were married, Elizabeth Hasselbeck – then Elizabeth Filarski – was one of the contestants on Survivor: Outback where one of her competitors was Amber Brkich, who is now married to Rob Mariano.

Gilmore Girls going: The CW and Warner Brothers TV announced that this will be the last season for The Gilmore Girls. According to the press announcement "This series helped define a network and created a fantastic, storybook world featuring some of television's most memorable, lovable characters. We thank Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dan Palladino, Dave Rosenthal, the amazing cast led by Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as well as the producers, writers and crew for giving us this delightful gem for the past seven years. We would also like to thank the critics and 'Gilmore' fans for their passionate support and promise to give this series the send off it deserves." A variety of reasons have been cited for ending the series including the reluctance of Alexis Bledel to continue in the role of Rory Gilmore once her contract ends and the sense (at least among fans of the show) that last year's decision by Amy Sherman-Paladino to leave the series resulted in a reduction in the quality of the series. Although I rarely watched a complete episode of The Gilmore Girls, as someone who was a huge fan of The West Wing I feel the pain of Gilmore Girls fans, even though The West Wing had far more time to prepare a final sequence of episodes than Gilmore Girls did. On the other hand the final episode of the series was reportedly written to work as either a season or a series finale.

Lost Ending: Not right away mind you but we now have a definitive ending date for Lost: 2009 – or maybe not. Series producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindlehof had been pressuring ABC to decide on a definitive ending date for the series and apparently ABC gave a date of two years. At least that was what was originally reported by E! Online's Planet Gossip. However a few hours after that report, E! Online's Watch With Kristin, while confirming that a date has been set and will be announced stated that the story was more complex than originally reported and "ABC will be making an announcement declaring an end date for Lost very soon. However, the exact number of remaining episodes and seasons is still muddy—and might not be exactly two seasons." Kristin also reports that next season will run continuously from January to May 2008 – avoiding the disaster that occurred this season when six episodes aired at the start of the year after which there was a gap that was supposed to be filled by the Taye Diggs series Day Break until that show was rather unceremoniously pulled from the line-up after six episodes – and will be moved back to its original time in the second hour of primetime. I'm reasonably cheered by most of the aspects of this announcement, even though I've basically given up watching Lost this year in part because of the time and in part because the six episodes followed by an extended break made me feel as if the fans were being taken for granted. The decision to run the series in a continuous run is one that I think more shows, particularly shows which are continuity heavy and as a result "don't repeat well" should look at as an alternative to pulling the show part way through the season and then returning it to the line-up.

Bellisario walks: Not far, but Donald P. Bellisario has apparently decided to step down as showrunner of NCIS after series star Mark Harmon threatened to leave the series because of Bellisario's "chaotic management style." Bellisario was reportedly in the habit of faxing in script pages to the set at the last minute which frustrated and angered Harmon according to TV Guide's Michael Ausiello. Bellisario will stay with CBS; as part of his deal with the network he will be developing two new series for the network. It is an excellent resolution for most of the people involved but particularly for the network. Not only does CBS retain one of its top drawing series, but they get two more shows from the creator of Magnum P.I., Airwolf, Quantum Leap, and JAG.

Why hold those pesky primaries and elections: TVNewser had item from FoxNews among its quotes and criticism about the first Republican presidential debate, hosted by Chris Matthews. The quote is from an article by former Clinton staffer Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: ""MSNBC and Politico deliberately marginalized Giuliani and steered far too many of the important questions to anybody not named Rudy. In doing so, they paid homage to their Democratic Party masters by diminishing the candidate most likely to win in November." While other commentaries also criticized Matthews's handling of the questioning, Fox was the only one to actually name the next president of the United States.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: No one.

I know, it's pretty surprising but the only new addition to the PTC's home page is a note praising Sears as one of the organization's ten best advertisers: "Sears Holdings consistently avoids advertising on programming that contains graphic violence, excessive sexual content and foul language, and we want to congratulate your organization." The cite sponsorship of specific shows including Reba, 7^th Heaven and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (which at times seems like and extended Sear commercial – my opinion, not the PTC's) and states that "Sears clearly understands what it means to be a good corporate citizen and the importance of adhering to a set of media guidelines for their advertising messages."

Where Has The Adventure Gone?

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time at all, you know that I love The Amazing Race with a passion that is strong and true. Not only do I think that the show is the gold standard which every other reality-competition has to measure up to but I also think that it is better than a lot of other, scripted, shows on television. I'll take The Amazing Race over all of NBC's Sunday line-up – in fact I've only seen two or three episodes of this season's Apprentice and I don't feel like I've missed anything - and 75% of Fox's Sunday too. What I'm about to say isn't going to change my opinion of the show but I think it has to be said. This season of The Amazing Race has turned into adventure travel without the adventure.

The current "All Star" season has been an interesting one as far as personalities and conflicts between personalities is concerned. The producers – Bert van Munster and his wife Elise Doganieri have used an interesting definition of "All Stars". Instead of trying to recruit the first or second place teams from each of the previous seasons (except the sucky Family Edition of course but only because it featured four person teams) or fan favourite teams, they decided to recruit tams with the strongest or most memorable personalities. It meant that some teams that were really popular with the fans were left out – Al & John, The Clowns (Season 4; in fact there was no one from that season or Season 6), B.J. and Tyler, The Hippies (winners of Season 9) – were left out while teams like Joe & Bill (Team Guido from Season 1) and Terri & Ian (Season 3) were included. None of this explains Jon Vito & Jill (Season 3) but that's beside the point. Bert and Elise got exactly what they wanted; strong personalities who are frequently at odds with each other. And it's not just with other teams. There's the usual conflicts between people who are supposed to be close friends or significant others. People who had been bums in their seasons at least partially rehabilitated their images – I'm thinking here of The Guidos and Terri & Ian – while one team (and really one person on that team) has become an object of vilification for the fans. Yes, I'm talking about Charla & Mirna ... mostly Mirna.

The thing is that The Amazing Race is supposed to bring the whole package; personalities, challenges and exotic locales and in most seasons (with the usual exception of the Family Edition) it does. What puts the show that slight bit above Survivor (and light years ahead of Big Brother or The Apprentice) is that the locale changes. The beaches in Fiji are exotic for a time but after a while that quality is lost because they become too familiar. So far in this season of The Amazing Race we've seen the mountains of Ecuador, the wild south of Chile and Argentina, rural Mozambique and the island of Zanzibar in Africa, Poland (including a brief but memorable tribute at the concentration camp at Auschwitz), and most recently Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. So this season has the personalities and it has the locales. Moreover the producers seem to have listened to the fans and made a conscious effort to eliminate the major bottlenecks that saw teams building up a huge lead only to see every other team catch up with them because a business or an attraction was closed until the morning. We've seen some examples – the busses from Warsaw to Auschwitz was a major one – but there have been more problems at the airports than there have been as a result of the way the producers have set things up.

What I think it's lacking is the exciting adventure challenges. About the most adventurous thing the teams have faced this year was a bit of white water rafting (the other option in that detour was climbing a rock wall), while the challenging food component so far has been eating two feet of Kielbasa. Not that some of the challenges haven't been interesting – using specially trained giant rats to find (deactivated) land mines in Mozambique was fascinating – but they aren't exactly adventurous. Other tasks this season have included sorting mail, tuning a piano, shooting an X-Ray, determining a location based on letters found in a boardroom, painting a sign board, and putting polish on people's fingernails. Not a bungee cord or a zip line in sight yet. This past weekend they chose between biting cookies (to find one cookie with a liquorice centre out of 600 boxes for each team that tried it) and applying wax and die to a piece of fabric using the Batik process, then in the Roadblock collecting a pile of old newspapers eight hands high from what looked to be a fairly affluent neighbourhood. It all seems rather mundane.

Then again maybe it is we fans who are somewhat jaded in our expectations. Then too, we've really seen more teams eliminated this season because of travel snafus than challenges. In several episodes it seems as if as much time was spent showing teams trying to get tickets for their next flight as they were doing the episode's challenges. Consider the following:

• Terri & Ian eliminated because they couldn't get from Maputo, Mozambique to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania on the same day as every other team except Joe & Bill. The direct flight to Dar Es Salaam was full, they weren't able to get on standby for the first flight out of Johannesburg South Africa that three other teams booked in Dar Es Salaam, weren't even considered for standby for a second flight out of Johannesburg, which went to a team that thought they had seats from the first flight an were actually taken out of their seats on that flight.
  
• Joe & Bill marked for elimination because the flight from Zanzibar that the producers provided for teams as a back-up in case they couldn't find anything better arrived 10 minutes late and they were unable to make their connection to a flight to Amsterdam. They and Eric & Danielle arrived in Warsaw after several other teams started the next stage of the race.
  
• Uchenna & Joyce, who finished the previous leg tied for first, were eliminated (and effectively disappeared from the episode after the first ten minutes) when they missed a connection in Frankfurt, Germany. According to Uchenna & Joyce the computer printer that produced tickets at the airport in Krakow broke down, leaving them without a printed boarding pass for the flight from Frankfurt to Kuala Lumpur. The desk crew in Krakow thought they'd be fine without it but by the time the mess was sorted out in Frankfurt, the flight to Kuala Lumpur had boarded. Uchenna & Joyce arrived at their destination ten and a half hours after the other teams.
  

I am not going to say that this season of The Amazing Race hasn't been enjoyable because quite clearly it has. In my book it is still the favourite to win the Outstanding Reality Competition series at this year's Emmys. The problem – if you choose to call it that – is that in all too many cases the drama has been created by the clash of personalities, and frequently the clash of everyone against Mirna rather than the adventurous quality of the tasks they've had to do in their Detours and Roadblocks. And while the removal of the numerous bottleneck points has been something of a release, the repeated incidents of high anxiety at the airports – which may be a side effect of the elimination of the bottlenecks – hasn't been that helpful. We want scenes of the teams bungee jumping and rappelling down buildings not standing around in airports dealing with counter clerks. And that's what has taken a lot of the adventure out of this show about adventure travel.

Amazing Race All-Stars - The Teams

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll know that I like some "reality-competition" shows, like Survivor and Big Brother but I am absolutely in love with only one: The Amazing Race. How much do I love The Amazing Race? Well not only did I buy both DVD box sets that they have released so far, I also bought a book about the show called My Ox Is Broken by Adam-Troy Castro. In the book Castro writes about his loathing of reality shows in general: "I loathe the concocted situations, vapid contestants, and sniggering sexuality of the many series that hinge on speed dating, cruel pranks, staged conflicts, and the ubiquitous hunger for fifteen minutes of fame." But The Amazing Race "makes me a panting, unreserved fanboy." For one thing he loves the set. For another, he says: "It boasts the virtues that so many of its reality-show competitors lack: humanity, a broad canvas relevant to the world we live in, a premise that celebrates human diversity, and a structure that measures the character of its contestants in ways that go beyond willingness to embarass themselves for fame and glory. It helps, too, that its contestants have shown as much warmth, humor, and nobility as the far more typical fame-whore brattiness."

Late last year CBS and the producers of The Amazing Race announced that the eleventh season of the show would be an All-Star edition with teams who had competed in earlier editions of the show. As seems to be the case in reality shows, being an "all-star" in The Amazing Race doesn't necessarily mean that you were the winner or in the top two or three in a given season. It was more a case of who was popular - or was perceived as popular by CBS and the producers - with the fans, and of course who was available and willing to do the show. The following is the breakdown of teams based on finishes in their seasons:

• First place - 1 team
• Second place - 2 1/2 teams
• Third place - 1 team
• Fourth place - 3 team
• Fifth place - 1 team
• Sixth place - 2 team
• Seventh place - 1/2 team

There are teams from every season except seasons 4, 6, and 8 (the Family Edition which had four member teams). Here are the teams selected (links are to pre-race interviews on CBS's InnerTube site. There's some interesting stuff in the interviews): Kevin O'Connor & Drew Feinberg - Season 1, fourth place: "Swing you fat bastard." That was the line that had me cheering for these guys from the moment it was uttered. Sure they fought among themselves and fought with at least one other team but the Original Frat Brothers were fun and enjoyed themselves while they were doing the race.
View Meet Kevin & Drew on innertube now

Bill Bartek & Joe Baldassare - Season 1, third place: The came up with their own name - Team Guido after their dog - although the other teams called them Bert & Ernie. They were a tough team, at times downright underhanded and they came to be regarded as the "heels" of their season after the tried to tie up some of the other teams in a line-up for a plane. The first gay couple on the series (with a relationship that has lasted longer than a lot of heterosexual marriages) but most assuredly not the last.
View Meet Joe & Bill on innertube now

Danny Jimenez & Oswald Mendez - Season 2, fourth place: Gay friends (but not a couple) who I guess live up to a lot of the stereotypes. They quickly became known as Team Cha Cha Cha, and they were absolutely fabulous. In a famous moment in Hong Kong they literally stopped racing to go shopping. Not only that, but they finished that leg in first place, largely because while they were shopping a high end travel agent was arranging their fight to the next destination - a flight that the other teams who were making their own arrangements knew nothing about.
View Meet Oswald & Danny on innertube now

John Vito Pietanza & Jill Aquilino - Season 3, fifth place: The team with the story. Jill had originally applied to be on the show with her brother F.T. who was John Vito's best friend. F.T. died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. John Vito Jill became romantically involved after his death, although they are no longer together. Nothing particularly memorable about them besides that.
View Meet John & Jill on innertube now

Teri Pollack & Ian Pollack - Season 3, second place: I quickly became a fan of theirs after an incident in Spain where Teri accidentally put gasoline in their diesel powered vehicle. Several other teams did the same thing but only Ian reacted in a no nonsense way - he syphoned out the gas while Teri went to get diesel. Some hated him for being environmentally insensitive, in addition to constantly bossing his wife around, but to me this showed more than a little resourcefulness. The oldest team ever to finish second.
View Meet Teri & Ian on innertube now

Charla Faddoul & Mirna Hindoyan - Season 5, sixth place: Liked Charla, not entirely crazy about Mirna. Charla wasn't about to let dwarfism stop her from doing most of the tasks placed before her although she also wasn't above using her size to get people to do things for her. Mirna, on the other hand seemed to be a lightning rod when it came to antagonizing other racers. Famously, she tried to get a ticket agent for an airline not to sell tickets on a flight to some of the other racers by telling him, in Arabic, that they were "bad people" and violent.
View Meet Charla & Mirna on innertube now

Rob Mariano & Amber Brkich - Season 7, second place: Romber. One of the greatest teams in Amazing Race history. Sure they were gimmick casting but they brought a whole new tactical outlook to game. They weren't above bribing a bus driver using other people's money, persuading other teams not to do a roadblock or (and this is the only one I fault them on) driving past a car crash. Interesting to note that they no longer list themselves by their former occupations. Rather they describe themselves as "TV personalities."
View Meet Rob & Amber on innertube now

Uchenna Agu & Joyce Agu - Season 7, Winners!: The only All-Star team to have actually won a season of The Race. Their battle with the Romber juggernaut was one of the great confrontations in the history of the show although it never became personal as it did with some of the teams in their season. The Force was strong in this couple (okay, so Joyce actually appeared in a several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, usually in a non-speaking role). They won based on persuading a pilot to reopen the doors of his plane for them, but the real decisive moment came in India during a Fast Forward where Joyce allowed her head to be shaved.
View Meet Uchenna & Joyce on innertube now

Eric Sanchez & Danielle Turner - Season 9, special case: Eric competed in The Race with his best friend Jeremy and finished second behind B.J. Tyler, while Danielle competed with her best friend Dani and finished seventh. But now they're a couple (what is she thinking?!). As such, while they've competed in The Race they haven't competed as a team before. They're the 1/2s on my list.
View Meet Eric & Danielle on innertube now

David Conley & Mary Conley - Season 10, sixth place: I loved the way that they - and in particularly Mary, who had never even been on a plane before The Race - embraced the whole experience of meeting new people and seeing the world. They were public favourites, not to mention Rosie O'Donnell's favourites. That said I don't think that they should be on The Amazing Race: All-Stars. Of course I don't think any Season 10 teams should be on the show with the possible exception of the winners of the season, Tyler & James - it's too soon.
View Meet David & Mary on innertube now

Dustin Seltzer & Kandice Pelletier - Season 10, fourth place: Maybe the strongest all woman team despite the fact that Lyn Karlyn were the first female team to make it to the final episode. They were tough and could compete with the best of them, but were also sneaky and conniving, and managed to alienate most of the other people in The Race by the end. But what I said about David Mary holds true for Dustin Kandice - it's too soon.
View Meet Dustin & Kandice on innertube now

The Amazing Race: All Stars debuts February 18.

The Amazing Race Finale - Sunday!

If you've been reading this blog for any serious length of time you will know that I am a huge fan of The Amazing Race. I watch Survivor, I tolerate Big Brother, I enjoy Hell's Kitchenand I am occasionally amused by Beauty and the Geek, but for me the best reality-competition series on television - bar none - is The Amazing Race. I love it because of the people, the originality of the tasks but most of all for the different locations they visit. Often enough the American contestants find themselves amazed at how giving the "foreigner" can be and the audience often get to wonder whether they would display the same attitudes that people on the show do. Most of all, The Amazing Race is the most accessible of the Reality-Competition shows. I couldn't imagine myself on "the island" in Survivor, and I'm not pretty enough to be on Big Brother (although I'm getting to "sacrificial wily old guy" age), but I could very easily see myself with a partner being "Philiminated" late in the game. I can't see myself actually winning anymore but the thing about this show is that just about anything is possible.

While I wouldn't rank this season of the race up with the best ever (my absolute favourite has to be TAR7 - the season of Rob & Amber and the miracle airplane situation that allowed Uchenna & Joyce to get on the plane and win) I has been a pretty good one. The show managed to add another six countries to the list of places they've taken viewers to - Mongolia, Kuwait, Mauritius, Madagascar, Finland and Ukraine - and without the showiness of Survivor's "segregated tribes" managed to have one of the most diverse casts ever, including two South Asian players (Vipal & Arti), two followers if the Islamic faith (Bilal & Sayeed), two people of Korean descent (Irwin & Godwin Cho), two African American single mothers (Lyn & Karlyn), a pair of recovering drug addicts (Tyler & James), a father trying to restore his relationship with his Gay daughter (Duke & Lauren), a Kentucky coal miner and his never travelled before wife (David & Mary), and an amputee who runs triathlons teamed with the guy who built her prosthesis (Peter & Sarah). It made the requisite Gay couple (Tom & Terry) seem positively pedestrian.

There were several changes from previous seasons, one good, one bad, and one which needed some work. In the first episode, two teams were Philiminated, one without warning. This was not received well by fans of the show. On the other hand the punishment for finishing last on a non-elimination round was changed from losing your possessions to having to finish first in the next leg or being "marked for elimination", an automatic thirty minute wait after reaching the mat before checking in at the Pit Stop - if there was at least one other team behind you when the penalty expired you were safe otherwise you were out. That was well regarded by the fans. As for the one that needs work, that would be the newly created Intersection. This forces two teams to work together as a four person team until they are told to stop. This one showed up when there were six teams left and teams essentially chose who they would work with. Things would have been much better both in dramatic terms and probably in show terms if the Intersection had been implemented earlier in The Race when there were more teams and if the teams had been forced to team up with the next two players to arrive, given the animosity between a couple of the teams.

But the big thing in The Race are the people and how they faced the tasks. This season's most memorable team was the Dave & Mary a couple so isolated that they didn't know any Asian people and had never met any Gays until they met Tom & Terry: "But I like 'em!" It was hard not to enjoy the enthusiasm that Mary felt at every new experience during The Race, and even the most hated and aggressive team on the show - Dustin & Kandice, "the Beauty Queens" - regarded them as good people. They managed a first for The Amazing Race, an alliance that lasted longer than the time between tasks and where alliance members actually stuck together and tried to help each other. The "Back Pack" and later the "Six Pack" alliance died after Dave & Mary left but it was amazing while it lasted. There were other things to remember as well. There was Tom & Terry who, failing to defeat the currents in a Vietnamese bay by rowing a sampan jumped into the water and pulled it in the style of Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. There was the sight of Sarah, the woman with a prosthetic leg and a "racing" foot climbing up the Great Wall Of China, up a cliff, and up the outside of one of the famous Kuwait Towers, while her able bodied partner waited on the ground cheering her on. There was a Beauty Queen driving a Ukrainian T-64 tank like a pro while her male counterpart from the Models team of Tyler & James stalled it, got soaked to the skin crossing a small stream, collided with the only other tank on the course and - as he put it - "drove like a girl"

So we come to the big questions: Who remains and who will win?

Lyn & Karlyn - Team Bama: These are the single mothers. Based on the way the show has been edited I don't like them. They don't seem to take any joy in the places they're visiting. They're in it for the money and that seems to be it. They have endured a great deal, and if I'd been asked at the start I would have picked them to be eliminated very early in the game, not to be the first all-female team to make it to the final three and to actually cross the finish line. They aren't particularly fit physically but they have a ton of grit and determination plus a willingness to be unsentimental. They are definitely tougher than they look. I still see them as the probable third place team.

Tyler & James - The Recovering Addict Models: The Amazing Race has a tendency to cast Models. It's an occupational advantage for them since the show requires all participants to be able to take off about 30 days from work. Models are able to arrange their schedules to do that in the same way that struggling actors, self-employed entrepreneurs and retired people can. What makes Tyler & James unusual is their back story. They are both recovering from serious drug addictions, and in fact they met in rehab. This has definitely made them a strong team. They are the team in this season of The Race that has finished first in more legs than any other team. And yet there sometimes seems to be something lacking in them. I wouldn't be surprised to see them finish first but I also wouldn't be surprised to see them make some minor error and finish second or even third.

Rob & Kim - Relationship Challenged: Every season there is a team that is testing their relationship, trying to see if it will survive going to "the next level". Actually there are usually several. This season there was Rob & Kim and Peter & Sarah (who ended their romantic relationship after they were eliminated). It's a dumb Idea unless you want to spend 30 days, literally 720 hours together, usually no more than 20 feet apart as mandated by the Race rules. This more time in one stretch than most adults ever spend with another adult. The situation is full of stresses that are nearly impossible to describe. Teams usually end up fighting with each other, and again there is usually one team that stands every season for their fighting. That was Rob & Kim. Everything was drama with them and they wouldn't be in the final three if I had anything to say about it, but I, and the other fans, and the producers, don't have any say which is the great thing about The Amazing Race - it is all the abilities of the players, not popularity. Rob & Kim have only finished first in two legs, but after the first two legs they've never finished lower than third. I'm willing to suggest that they are the team that Tyler & James are going to have to defend against most if they hope to win the million dollar first prize.

The Amazing Race has had it's best season ever in terms of ratings helped, ironically enough, by the thing that fans of the show feared would hurt it the most, overruns of NFL football games on CBS. Ratings on nights when football games ran long, delaying the start of 60 Minutes have been among the highest that the show has ever experienced. The one hour finale of the 10th Amazing Race airs this Sunday following the Denver San Diego football game and 60 Minutes. After that the show will be on hiatus until February (I believe) when the All-Star version of The Amazing Race begins. I have some thoughts on that, but they'll keep until the teams are announced.

Short Takes - July 16, 2006

Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the fact that in the two Full Tilt Poker Fantasy League tournaments I've managed to qualify for I've been acting behind incorrigible chip bullies on tables where only two players - me and he - were actually present; I do much better when people are actually playing against me. Maybe it's spending a couple of days away from my air conditioner and with a three year old who only wants to watch one episode of one show over and over again, and knows how to use the remote. Did I mention that his father, my brother doesn't believe in air conditioning because it costs money?. No, I think it's the heat. Suffice it to say that I am feeling somewhat irritable of late. Still I shall soldier on.

Too Big: The biggest news in Canadian television at the moment is Bell Globemedia's friendly takeover of the CHUM Media Group. Based out of Toronto the CHUM group includes the CITY group of TV stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver; the smaller market A-Channel group, 33 radio stations and 21 cable specialty channels including MUCHMusic (Canada's MTV) and Space: The Imagination Station (Canada's answer to the Sci-Fi Channel but in the opinion of our friends at TVSquad, better). BellGlobe Media owns the 17 station CTV network and 17 specialty channels including Canada's answer to ESPN, TSN. The deal is expected to pass through the CRTC's regulatory process unhindered as Conservative Industry Minister has "recently instructed the CRTC not to interfere in the media marketplace except when necessary."

Personally I think that this is a case where interference is necessary. Even though Bell Globemedia has announced plans to sell off CHUM's A-Channel stations, this deal would still result in the company owning two stations in five of the largest English language TV markets in the country as well as 38 specialty channels. This would seem to represent unfettered capitalism at its most unfettered, and while Bell Globemedia has generally been good as far as producing new Canadian shows (well better than Canwest Global at any rate) this has to have an impact on the production of original Canadian programming. This doesn't even begin to deal with the impact of the sale on the news media, where CITY-TV (the chain's Toronto station) had a particularly innovative look and feel. According to Toronto Star media analyst Antonia Zerbisias the merger is a bad thing because “mergers and acquisitions always result in job cuts, consolidation of operations and reduced newsgathering resources.”

Speaking of Canadian TV: I would be remiss not to mention Dianne Kristine's one woman effort to gather all the news about Canadian shows in one place. The new site currently called Canadian TV (as generic a name as it is possible to imagine) the blog is full of news about shows, synopses of series and descriptions of upcomng episodes. In my wildest dreams I couldn't hope to pull together the material the Dianne has access to. An excellent job.

Who'da thunk it: The producers of the series Rock Star: Supernova were hit by a lawsuit from an Orange County California punk band called Supernova. It seems that the band, which has been in existence since 1989 and recorded four albums, have taken umbrage at the use of their name. Naturally they have sued. According to an MTV article the Supernova that doesn't want to be associated with Tommy Lee (and really who can blame them) wants "the destruction of all "labels, signs, prints, packages, wrappers, containers, advertisements, electronic media and other materials bearing the Supernova mark" as well as forcing the TV show producers to "publish clarifying statements that [the show is] not associated with [the punk band]." Finally they are seeking punitive and compensatory damages, attorneys fees and the "profits and all damages sustained by [the band] due to [the] misuse of plaintiff's Supernova mark." I suppose there's a certain justice to this, although there is a certain foolhardiness of a punk band going up against a company that hires lawyers like some people hire gardeners. My only surprise is that they've only one band suing over a name so generic and hackneyed as Supernova.

Now that's writing: On occasion I stand in awe of real writers. Take Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times. In an article about America's Got Talent (registration required but I've never had any trouble with The Times) she stated that "the contest is cheerful, vulgar and unembarrassed, a liberating belch in an increasingly proper and sleekly self-conscious television landscape." In other words the show, which is the most popular series of the summer with over 12 million viewers (about 3 million more than So You Think You Can Dance) is pretty much successful for the reasons that most critics hate it. The show's popularity is probably similar to the reasons why Dancing With The Stars was popular last summer. For all that it featured "celebrities" that show worked because it was something that you didn't see much of in the sophisticated world of dramatic TV. It was fun, it was different and on the whole it revelled in its difference. Now I watched last Wednesday's two hour show - one of the semi-final episodes - and I didn't like it as much as I did the qualifying rounds. Not all of the acts that qualified were given a chance to perform (I think they had 15 acts in the back stage area but only 10 performed and the 5 that didn't won't be given a chance to show their stuff). The acts didn't get the snarky commentary from the judges and what the judges said didn't matter anyway. That said it was still a reasonably fun show.

Amazing Race cast list released: Although the names aren't up at the CBS website, the cast list and details for Amazing Race 10 has been released at the summer meeting of the TV Critics Association. In addition to the usual teams - a gay couple, models and/or beauty queens, dating couples trying to define their relationships, a parent and child, and a team of brothers - there's a married Indo-American couple, two Muslim friends, and a woman with an artificial leg. This season's race will start in Seattle and go from west to east. Destinations include at least three places the show has never visited before - Mongolia, Kuwait, and Madagascar - as well as China (which they've visited several times in previous seasons) and Vietnam (which was memorably visited in Season 3 by a group including Vietnam War veteran Ian Pollack). According to series creator Bertram van Munster "This cast is as different as it's ever been," executive producer Bertram van Munster told the Television Critics Association's summer meeting. "It's meltdown city on this trip."

Let us go forward slowly: I heard this on a couple of Leo Laporte's podcasts last week. According to Media Daily News, Mike Shaw, ABC's President of Network Advertising had held preliminary discussions with cable companies (I think - this article is full of acronyms) with the objective of disabling the Fast Forward button on future Digital Video Recorders so that people would have to watch commercials. According to Shaw "I would love it if the MSOs, during the deployment of the new DVRs they're putting out there, would disable the fast-forward [button]." He expanded on this saying that as cable companies are currently beefing up their own local advertising sales "They've got to sell ads too. So if everybody's skipping everybody's ads, that's not a long-term business model for them either." He just keeps digging in deeper too: "It really is a matter of convenience - so you don't miss your favorite show. And quite frankly, we're just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I'm not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don't fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can't skip commercials." Presumably Mr. Shaw is all for the rewind button not being disabled at the same time since that might force people to watch the commercials over and over again.

Here's an idea - make commercials that people don't want to fast forward through, or integrate advertising into the show itself more effectively. Product placements have been around since TV started - check out I Love Lucy when the show was sponsored by Philip Morris (in one scene where Lucy is trying to entertain Ricky's Spanish speaking mother she offers the woman a cigarette but not knowing the word in Spanish she says "Philipa Morris" - Ricky's mother exentually understands), and old time radio experts like Ivan Shreve and Harry Heuser will recall days when people like Don Wilson or Harlow "Waxy" Wilcox would do commercials that were integrated right into radio shows like The Jack Benny Program and Fibber McGee & Molly. I realise that would be close to impossible in most shows today but it just shows that it is possible to make commercials that sell the product and ar entertaining.

Who does the PTC hate THIS week? Clearly the diligent monitors who seek to keep our eyes from being corrupted have cut back on TV viewing for the summer. The PTC is still outraged over the rape scene on Rescue Me, Circuit City for advertising on shows that the PTC doesn't like, and that same episode of America's Got Talent with stripper Michelle Lamour (who bills herself as "The ass that goes POW!"

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