Amazing Race–Season 1, Episode 4

This is an unusual episode of The Amazing Race in a couple of ways. For one thing, no one uses the Fast Forward, nor – as far as I can see – is there an envelope for the Fast Forward. This is unusual in the early seasons of the show because Fast Forwards were basically available in every episode of the show. Of course, given the way this episode was set up and the way that Fast Forwards were handled in the first season, having the Fast Forward available might have had a disastrous effect on the dynamics of The Race.

The most unusual thing in this episode though is that nothing happens in the first third of the episode. Well that’s not strictly true. A lot happens, but most of it is personal drama between teams and between teammates. It’s the little things that get to some of them. and it’s easy to put it down to the fatigue of participating in The Race. And you can just guess who is at the centre of some of the biggest drama. Hint: they have a little dog too.

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The show opens with the usual recap of the previous episode’s events, and includes an aerial shot of Chateau des-Baux and the town of Les-Baux-des-Provence that does justice to the importance of the place as a feudal era fortification and seat of power for an assortment of barons – robber and otherwise.

The order of departure shows just how big the choice of getting off at Avignon rather than Marseille was for the teams who did that. It also suggests that Kevin & Drew went to Marseille rather than disembarking at Avignon; their lead should have been much bigger than it is if they and the second place team had both disembarked at Avignon simply because Kevin & Drew had less to do in Paris and started earlier – when the tea shop opened – than the other teams. Note also the difference between Dave & Margarhetta, who left Paris between 40 and 50 minutes after the other teams but disembarked at Avignon, and the three teams who went to Paris.

1. Kevin & Drew – 3:53 a.m.
2. Frank & Margarita – 4:07 a.m.  +14 minutes
3. Rob & Brennan – 4:15 a.m.  +22 minutes
4. Joe & Bill – 5:04 a.m. +1 hour 11 minutes
5. Dave & Margharetta – 5:47 a.m. +1 hour 54 minutes
6. Paul & Amie – 6:47 a.m. +2 hours 54 minutes, (1 hour behind Dave & Margharetta)
7. Lenny & Karyn – 6:48 a.m. +2 hours 55 minutes
8. Nancy & Emily – 6:49 a.m. +2 hours 56 minutes

So the real difference between going to Avignon and going to Marseille is an hour and a half. If Kevin & Drew went to Avignon instead of Marseille – which I’m assuming due to their arrival time – they would have arrived at 2:23 p.m.

Whose Flag?

Not that it matters of course. The teams’ clue is a picture of a man in a fez – or rather a hat that might be taken for a fez – and the a flag with a red Star & Crescent in a white circle on a red ground. Racers have to travel to the port of Marseille and then travel by ship to the capital of the country whose flag it was. There they’ll find the man standing beneath an arch that vaguely (as in almost not at all) resembles the Arc de Triomphe. Once they greet him with the traditional greeting “a salaam” they’ll get the next clue. Passenger ships aren’t common, Phil informs us, but a savvy team could gain ground by traveling in a cargo ship. Of course, first they have to get to Marseille, which seems to be easier said than done.

The liars are lawyers

Smart teams, knowing that they’re probably going to be leaving Les Baux-des-Provence either arrange to call a cab before they leave the Pit Stop from their hotel rooms (on the producer’s dime one presumes) or go back to their hotel room after being released from the pit stop and call for a cab. Kevin & Drew pre-booked a cab, as do Rob & Brennan. On the other hand Frank & Margarita don’t pre-book a cab. They depart before Rob & Brennan, and disappoint the Lawyers by not reading the clue out loud so they can hear it or showing it to them before the guys themselves are allowed to depart. But Frank & Margarita go to the area where the taxis had left the teams in the previous leg as if expecting that there will be taxis waiting there for them. When the cab that Rob & Brennan have called arrives, they expect that they can just take it. The cab driver insists on seeing passports though, because he has the names of the people he’s picking up, and those names aren’t Frank & Margarita. And when Rob & Brennan try – unsuccessfully as it turns out – to keep their cab driver from calling a cab for the other team, Frank & Margarita explode. Rob & Brennan expect to get help from them but they never offered to pre-book a cab for Frank & Margarita or even mention that they were pre-booking. Then again Frank & Margarita have considered their alliance with the Lawyers to have been over after the incident on the Champs Elysee and have behaved like it. But because of this Frank is able to say, “the Lawyers are liars; the liars are Lawyers.”

Bill & Joe also didn’t pre-book their cab, but they are smart enough to head back to their hotel room and call for a cab after they got their instructions. And Dave & Magharetta have a pre-booked cab as well. Things are a little bit different for Paul & Amie. They’ve called and arranged a cab the night before but some reason – whether they weren’t there when the cab arrived or the cab simply wasn’t sent – there was no cab for them. Maybe Lenny & Karyn, who are seen getting into a cab and don’t relate details of how they called it took Paul & Amie’s cab. They see a cab arrive, but Nancy & Emily are there first. They believe it is the cab that they pre-booked, but Paul & Amie are sure it is theirs. They don’t show the driver checking passports, but from Paul & Amie’s demeanour you can tell that it is in fact Nancy & Emily’s cab. Unlike the Lawyers they do allow – maybe even encourage – the driver to call for a cab for Paul & Amie. But the whole incident provokes yet another round of Paul giving up and saying I quit, let’s go home. (for those keeping score this is three out of the first four episodes – he was quite happy in the third episode.

All of this sturm & drang about cabs doesn’t really matter of course. They have to travel by ship to the destination on the flag. There are a variety of guesses about whose flag it is. Kevin & Dew are certain that it’s Algeria having been told by a girl at the port of Marseille that it’s the flag of her country (the Algerian flag has a red star and crescent moon on a green and white background). Another team guesses Morocco (a five pointed red star on a green background) while Dave is sure that it is Turkey (closest of all; a white star and crescent moon on a red field). The correct answer is…….Tunisia. As it happens, there’s a ferry to Tunisia that very day, and while Phil does a voice-over suggesting that teams that were daring might get there faster if they booked passage on a cargo ship, none of the teams seems interesting in taking the risk. And that leads to the big blowout of the episode, the affair of the tickets.

My favourite shot of Dave & Margharetta

It all started when Bill & Joe arrived at the ferry terminal. They’re able to sense the animosity between teams and between teammates. The latter is particularly obvious with Lenny & Karyn. As is their habit they get in line at the ticket counter even though there’s no one there yet. as a result when the clerk arrives they are the first to try to arrange their passage. What they want is a private room where they can get some rest and strategize on their own. When the ticket agent mentions that if they’re travelling as a group there could be substantial savings. On his own, without being asked by the others, Bill decided to make the arrangements for the whole group because he spoke French; or as Margarita put it “Bill decided to be the martyr….” When the tickets came out they were misnumbered, and as Bill put it, “Margarita started screaming for her ticket.” Except that from what we see in the episode it doesn’t sound like Margarita is screaming. She just thinks that there is a better way for Bill to distribute the tickets. Bill interviews rather self-righteously that he could have torn up the tickets if he wanted to and left the other teams to their own devices. He further explains that his purpose in handling the negotiations, and in French was to keep the other teams off balance; as he put it “control the game, play the game our way….Of course, we’re playing them like a violin.” This may also explain why, once the ferry sails they isolate themselves from the other teams. While everyone else dines at a communal table and talks together, Team Guido sits at a table that, in a pinch, might have seated four people.

At this point about a third of the episode has passed, and there haven’t been any “action” in terms of tasks for the players. We’ve seen team wait for taxis, try to figure out the country the flag belongs to, wait at the ferry terminal, and talk about their relationships. And yet as we’ve seen the interlude is not without drama. Even Phil comments on this, before asking the rhetorical question of whether “any of them really ready for the strange and unusual things they’ll find in North Africa.”

The first thing they have to do is find the man in the photograph. He’s standing under or near the Porte de France or the Bab El Bahr, as it is known in Arabic. First they have to get there and that means the usual taxi race from the port, with teams urging their drivers to go faster and to drive more recklessly than they’d be happy with in their normal lives. this leads to some near collisions since the Tunisian drivers aren’t exactly cautious at the best of times. The teams arrive at the gate at roughly the same time and after greeting the man they’re looking for with the traditional greeting “a salaam” they get their next clue. It’s a Detour; the choice is Full Bodied Brew or Full Body Massage.

In Full Body Brew, the teams have to enter the Medina or old Arabic quarter of Tunis find a specific coffee shop and order two cups of coffee. The problem is that the only way they have to identify the coffee shop is through a photograph. In Full Body Massage teams have to enter the Medina and find a Turkish Bath. The location of the Turkish Bath is clearly marked on a large tourist map of the Medina, however to get the clue both players have to submit to a 20 minute Turkish massage. Teams taking Full Body Massage have to hope that teams taking the Full Bodied Brew option will take more than 20 minutes to find the coffee shop. Needless to say virtually every team decides to go for Full Bodied Brew. The only exception is Paul & Amie and their decision seems to be totally based on Amie wanting a massage.


Of course it helps that the teams all find hordes of local youths – and some not so youthful – idling about on the streets and willing to help them. This was ten years before the Tunisian Revolution which unseated the dictator Zine El Abidine ben Ali, but the most basic seeds of the revolution are here; youth unemployment. How else do you explain so many young people (men mostly) with time to spare to help these Americans find a coffee house – or a Turkish massage – in the marketplace at the middle of the day. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if you’re a pretty girl –Nancy theorized that the reason the group of boy who helped them were willing to take them where they wanted to go was because they thought Emily was cute – or a couple of handsome guys, since Rob & Brennan were the only ones to get female guides who were also quite cute.

The teams arrive at the cafe, and get their coffee and their clue. Some of them like Drew, even drink the coffee, but it seems like there were a lot of full cups left on the tables. The order of departure from the cafe was Rob & Brennan, Lenny & Karyn, Kevin & Drew, Frank & Margharetta, Nancy & Emily, Bill & Joe, and Frank & Margarita. The clue they get is a cigarette lighter with the name El Jem and the picture of a “coliseum” (actually a Roman amphitheatre) with the words “Go here” on the back. Their destination is the town of El Jem (or El Djem according to Wikipedia) and the old Roman coliseum.

Paul's masage

Meanwhile Paul & Amie find the Turkish Massage place. Each has to take off their clothes and wrap up in a towel. Then they go into the main area of the building where they’re given their massages. Amie’s massage seems quite gentle, to the point that when Paul gets the clue after the 20 minutes is up, she doesn’t seem anxious to go, she’s been enjoying it so much. Paul on the other hand didn’t enjoy it one little bit. His massage, administered by a rather beefy man, sees him bent and twisted and pulled, and “no oil.” He’s more than happy to get back on the road with the El Jem cigarette lighter.

There are two ways for the teams to get to El Jem. Taking a taxi is faster but more expensive. Taking the train is cheaper but slower. Most teams decide that taking a taxi would be better. The only teams to opt for the train are Rob & Brennan – taking the advice of their female guides – and Lenny & Karyn. The rest of the teams head out of the marketplace with their guides and find cabs. More specifically, it seems, they have to find cabs that are licensed to operate between towns. Bill & Joe once again build on their reputation. While Nancy & Emily are trying to give their young guides some money for helping them, and trying to make them understand that they need to split the money, Bill & Joe yell at their cab driver to drive through them, which isn’t exactly popular with the crowd.

A bigger problem faces another team though. Dave & Margharetta get a cab but discover that he’s only taking them to a place where other cabs that will take them to El Jem are located. And he wants to be paid. He wants to be paid in Dinars – the local currency – which Dave & Margharetta don’t have. They have American Dollars since the teams are given funds in Dollars at the start of each stage, but they forgot or didn’t know where to exchange their money. The try to exchange money on the street but get an offer of 1 Dinars to the Dollar rather than the official rate of 1.6 Dinars. They seem to believe that it is illegal to exchange currency on the street, and that may well be the case. Alternatively the guy might just have been trying to make a profit off of the desperate Americans. There’s a bank nearby…but it’s closed. Finally they were able to get enough Dinar from a young man to pay the taxi driver and be on their way.

The first team to arrive at El Jem are Team Guido. At the entrance to the Amphitheatre is a clue box. It’s a Roadblock with the clue “Not for anyone whose afraid of the dark.” Bill decides to do it and opens the full clue. Taking a torch the person doing the Roadblock has to proceed in a clockwise direction into the tunnels of the building to find a staircase to the lower level of the amphitheater where gladiators and wild animals were kept while waiting to enter the games. Once at the lower level they have to find a sword hanging from a rope over the “Pit Of Death.” They then have to make their way up to the main level and find a table with the sheaths for the swords. Sheathing their swords completes the Roadblock. The last team to do that will be eliminated because the end of this Roadblock is also the Pit Stop for this leg.

Nancy & Emily are the next team to arrive followed soon after by Kevin & Drew. Emily and Drew decide to do the task. Joe is still outside the Coliseum and “helpfully” instructs Emily as to which way is clockwise. She’s still looking for the stairs when Bill finds the swords at the Pit Of Death. There is a high metal fence there with sharp points at the top. presumable to deter tourists from climbing up to look down into the Pit of Death. There are long wooden poles with a hook at one end for teams to recover the swords but they’re not right beside the pit. Bill figures this out and hooks the rope for the sword. Once he has the clue and the sword he makes his way back to the main floor, finds the table and sheaths his sword…with a certain degree of pomposity on Team Guido’s part.

Emily sets fire to a World Heritage Site

Meanwhile Emily has somehow managed to set a small part of a stone wall on fire and attempts (presumably successfully) to put it out with her feet. Drew does the task for his team and is having the same trouble getting to the lower level as the others. In “talking” to Emily he learns that there’s a staircase to the lower levels but considers jumping down (definitely not a good idea). he eventually finds it and once he and Emily are united they decide to work together to the point where, once they get the swords (with the pole) they run to the Pit Stop together, with Drew carrying the torches and Emily carrying both swords. They are the second an third teams to arrive.

You think maybe a sign would have helped?

Frank & Margarita and Paul & Amie are the next to arrive.They’re looking for the swords – according to the way the episode is edited at least – even as Rob & Brennan and Lenny & Karyn arrive at the El Jem train station. For most people the name “Pit of Death” and the four feet high iron fence with the spikes on the top would be sufficient warning that people like UNESCO and the producers and whoever administers the El Jem Amphitheater locally didn’t want you climbing up and trying to balance yourself over said pit to retrieve a sword tied over it,  but it’s not a deterrent for several of our contestants. Frank finds the swords and climbs over the fence – getting this sweatshirt caught up on the spikes on top of it and sheathes his sword in fourth place. Still, Amie hasn’t found the Pit of Death by the time Brennan reaches the lower level and they both retrieve the swords, by climbing over the fence of course. Paul & Amie finish in fifth because Rob calls Brennan over as he’s about to sheath his sword. As for Lenny, he eventually finds the Pit of Death and even figures out that you could use the poles to get the swords without standing over something called the Pit of Death.

This leaves David & Margharetta of course. When they get there Lenny is still looking for the swords (he pronounces the “w”), so there’s a bit of hope. But David heads in the wrong direction; counter-clockwise instead of clockwise (and remember this man was a fighter pilot with over a hundred combat missions over Vietnam) and then has trouble finding the passage to the lower level. So we’re aware that Lenny has found his sword and sheathed it – dramatically – well before Dave even gets to the lower level. Margharetta expresses some initial hope, but you can see her counting the sheathed swords and working out that they’re going to be eliminated (since at this point no one knows that there are non-elimination legs). Even as Dave uses the pole, left there by Lenny to retrieve his sword. Their departure from The Race is greeted with genuine emotion from the teams – Frank & Margarita, Paul & Amie, Lenny & Karyn, and Rob & Brennan – who are still at the Pit Stop. Even Phil seems a bit unhappy to eliminate them.

Order of finish:

1. Joe & Bill
2. Kevin & Drew
3. Nancy & Emily
4. Frank & Margarita
5. Paul & Amie
6. Rob & Brennan
7. Lenny & Karyn
8. Dave & Margharetta – Philiminated

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– In his book My Ox Is Broke, author Adam Troy-Castro claims that Nancy & Emily took Paul & Amie’s cab, but Nancy quite clearly states that they called for a cab and Paul & Amie called for one. Meanwhile we have no knowledge of whether Lenny & Karyn pre-booked a cab but there was one waiting for them. Is it possible that Lenny & Karyn got Paul & Amie’s cab? Mmmm could be.

– So why no Fast Forward this leg? Well here’s my theory. In this season of the race Fast Forwards are delivered with the first clue envelope. In this case that would be in France and would most likely involve a task in France. Once the task is completed teams are free to travel to the Pit Stop by whatever means available. So the clue revealed by the Fast Forward would be along the lines of “Now travel to the Pit Stop in El Jem Tunisia. They don’t give instructions on how to travel there, so you would expect a team who used the Fast Forward to travel to Paris – or even Marseille – from wherever they were doing the Fast Forward, fly to Tunis and then take a cab to the amphitheatre at El Jem. Meanwhile the other teams have to travel to Marseille, then take an eighteen hour boat trip to Tunis, complete the coffee/massage Detour Travel to El Jem and do the Roadblock. This would have given the team doing the Fast Forward an advantage that would be nearly insurmountable for some time at least for a long time in race terms or perhaps not at all. There would be a couple of minor instances of this in the second episode and in at least one episode later in the series. Of course what they could have done was to give the Fast Forward clue out once the teams reached their man in Tunis, and in fact that’s what they would do in later editions of The Race.

– The Porte de France is a rather interesting relic of the French colonial period. although the show describes it as a miniature replica of the Arc de Triomphe, the actual structure predates the Arc de Triomphe. It was one of the gates of the original Arabic city and was originally connected to houses on either side which formed the city walls in that area. That particular gate led to the sea, hence the name Bab el Bahr or “Gate to the Sea”. When the French colonized Tunis, they tore down the houses on either side of the gate and made it the boundary between the old city and the new European city that they built.

– In a way I can actually understand Paul’s position even if I can’t sympathise. For the most part his concerns are about Amie’s reactions to The Race. As he says, this is her baby; he didn’t want to do it. He’s pissed because there seems to be something on every leg that is making her unhappy and as far as he’s concerned winning a million dollars isn’t worth her being as emotional as she’s being. All he wants, he says, is for her to be happy, and so far as he can tell being on The Race isn’t making her happy. What he seems to be missing is that between times when she’s angry and frustrated and “unhappy” she is having a tremendous amount of fun. She’s enjoying the adventure way more than he is, and I can’t help but wonder if his concern for Amie’s emotions isn’t masking his own desire to be at home living his everyday life,and that he has a lower “adventure desire” than she does.

– There are a couple of commentaries on the stress of The Race in this episode. On the boat Margharetta, who is one of the most calm and level headed of the people in this Race, even including her husband interviews that the stress is getting to a lot of people, who are reacting in ways they normally wouldn’t. It’s Nancy who has the most poignant comment on things. Interviewing apart from Emily, because she thinks it would embarrass her: “This is hard, with people saying bad things. The language I’m hearing, I don’t like. The back-stabbing, the viciousness, I don’t like it. And  can’t get away from it.”

– Going with Full Bodied Brew was definitely the right choice for the teams but it might not have been if circumstances had been different. If there hadn’t been local people willing and able to help the Racers find the coffee shop, or if the instructions for the task had said that they couldn’t get help from the locals beyond asking for directions things might have been significantly different. It has in fact a complaint from some fans of the show over the years that teams shouldn’t be able to get help from the locals to either be led to a location or help in completing a task. It was particularly strong in the Seventh Season when, on at least three occasions, Rob & Amber had people stay with them most of the day because they recognised the couple from their recent time on Survivor (and in southern Africa from having their faces on a popular magazine). On the other hand it’s an aspect of The Race that is either unforseeable, unexpected or sometimes unavoidable.

– In Roman times El Jem was the Roman city of Thysdrus, which was one of the principal cities – after Roman Carthage – in the Roman province of Africa. The Amphitheatre, built in 238 AD is considered to be one of the most complete examples of the Roman construction to survive, although much stone from the building was taken to build houses in the town and the Grand Mosque in Kairouan. Other damage was inflicted in a revolt against Ottoman authorities. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site (so it might not have been a good idea for Emily to set fire to it).

– Team Guido’s strategy for the trip to Tunis is, to my mind, bizarre. They may think that they’ve got some great master plan to divide and conquer, and to keep the other tems off balance and marching to their drummer, but viewed from an outside perspective it comes across as yet more hubris – assuming that they were superior to the other teams and that they could make them dance to their tune. What in fact they accomplished was to give most of the teams a common goal, to eliminate Bill & Joe from The Race. In a clip not aired on the show, Kevin & Drew stated that the biggest party imaginable would happen if “Bert & Ernie” were eliminated at the next Pit Stop. And, I think that the animosity that the teams felt was also felt by the show’s viewers. They wanted The Guidos to get their comeuppance as much as some of the teams did.

– Ratings for this episode which aired on October 3, 2001 were down again to a 5.7/10. The West Wing won the night with their “Terrorism Special” which has a rating of 18.0/26, whiile ABC’s Drew Carey Show had a 7.0/10. The second half hour on ABC was Carey’s improv series Who’s Line Is It Anyway which earned a 5.9/8.

– Margharetta Groark, who was 59 when she appeared on The Amazing Race passed away in 2008 following a long battle with cancer at age 67.

Amazing Race–Season 1, Episode 3

In my opinion the show is starting to hit its stride with the third episode. It’s not perfect or even near perfect; in fact I think this whole season is very much a case of finding out what works and what doesn’t work. Still they’re doing a much better job of letting us know team positions at intermediate points in the race. On the other hand the trick editing, in most seasons restricted to making us wonder which teams will be coming in last is still being used to try to create tension early in the race by making it unclear how close teams are to each other. This episode will see the first major incident in which “Hours of Operation” comes into play but in this episode it comes into play a little too much in my opinion. Finally I think it offers a couple of dos and don’ts for people who want to do The Race (like me…and probably just about every other Canadian).

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The opening of the show is fairly standard so I want to spend a bit of time looking at the departure times and trying to see what they tell us about the previous leg.

The bunching event that occurred at the Johannesburg Airport is pretty obvious here. We know  that the first five teams made it to the first flight. We also know that Pat & Brenda had done the Fast Forward in Zambia so they were able to go directly to the Arc de Triomphe. Their arrival time doesn’t really give us a baseline to work with in terms of the arrival times of the two flights that the first and second group of teams were on. For that you need people with similar experiences. That would seem to exclude Joe & Bill as well since they took the RER to the city rather than grabbing a cab. If you compare Rob & Brennan’s arrival time at the Pit Stop with the first team to be officially checked in from the second group (Paul & Amie), and assuming similar traffic flows, you can estimate that the second flight arrived in Paris about two hours after the first. Similarly we can estimate that Bill & Joe’s decision to use the RER saved them about half an hour over the teams who took cabs from Charles de Gaulle airport, although that time is a bit shakier since – as they are forever pointing out in this episode – they lived in Paris for two years which if nothing else probably made them quite familiar with the city’s monuments. Even then the task seems to have taken them about two to two and a half hours to complete, and probably took teams who were not familiar with Paris longer.

The order of departure is:

1. Pat & Brenda – 9:06 p.m.
2. Joe & Bill – 11:38 p.m.  +2 hours 32 minutes
3. Rob & Brennan – 12:11 a.m.  +3 hours 5 minutes
4. Frank & Margarita – 12:18 a.m.  +3 hours 12 minutes
5. Kevin & Drew – 12:27 a.m.  +3 hours 21 minutes
6. Paul & Amie – 2:18 a.m.  +5 hours 12 minutes
7. Nancy & Emily – 2:23 a.m.  +5 hours 17 minutes
8. Dave & Margharetta* – 2:46 a.m.  +5 hours 40 minutes
9. Lenny & Karyn – 3:03 a.m.  +3 hours 57 minutes

* We aren’t told how many minutes that Dave & Margharetta lost as a result of the penalty for one of them not going back to the second level of the Eiffel Tower in the previous episode. We do know that it was enough to move Paul & Amie and Nancy & Emily up one position. We also know that Paul was at the Tower when Dave & Margharetta went to the second level we would be safe in making the assumption that they got to the Arc de Triomphe just a few minutes before Paul & Amie. Under the circumstances I think a penalty of about 30 minutes is about right as that would put their actual arrival time about two minutes before Paul & Amie’s.

Pat & Brenda at Le Grand Roue

 

When the teams depart their clue tells them that big news awaits at La Grande Roue. It also gives opening and closing times. The opening time is 9 a.m. while the closing time is 12:30 p.m. When Pat & Brenda depart they initially think that they’ll have to wait till the next morning. It quite literally takes them a few seconds to realize that they have about three hours before their destination closes. But of course they have to find out where they have to go. La Grande Roue can be a bit of a pun in French; Roue, which means “wheel” in French, is a homophone of Rue, which means “street” (it’s also a homophone of Roux, which is the thickening agent for a number of sauces, but that’s unlikely to be a factor). La Grande Rue would be “the big street” rather than “the big wheel.” Pat & Brenda as a police woman about La Grande Roue and are told that it's the big Ferris Wheel at the Place de la Concorde. It’s visible down the Champs Elysee – which some people might interpret as being a “Grande Rue” – from the Arc de Triomphe. They elect to take the #1 subway line to the Place de la Concorde. So do Bill & Joe when they depart. The two teams get their clue with plenty of time to spare.

Bill & Joe expect that Rob & Brennan and Frank & Margarita wont make it to the Ferris Wheel before it closes and they won’t know what to do, “So screw’em.” And while Rob & Brennan decide to wait for Frank & Margarita, and initially think that they don’t have enough time to reach it they decide to give it a try. Rob & Brennan grab a cab as do Frank & Margarita. And suddenly it’s war, at least as far a Frank is concerned. They were supposed to be allies but Rob & Brennan went off on their own as soon as they got the chance without thinking about Frank & Margarita. They’re all a bunch of backstabbers and not to be trusted. Thing is that Frank neglects to let Rob or Brennan know that the alliance is over and they’re quite happy when the couple arrives in time to get their clue.

The clue the teams get is a Detour. The choice is “Short Walk” or “Long Climb”. In Short Walk the teams have to find the cat near Foucault’s Pendulum. What the clue does not mention is that there are two Foucault’s Pendulums in Paris. One is at the Musee des Arts et Metiers (translated by the show as The Museum of Arts and Crafts although another accepted translation is The Museum of Arts and Design) while the other is at Le Pantheon. The one at Le Pantheon is the one that they want but at the moment none of the teams actually knows that there are two or where they are. In Long Climb Teams have to climb the tower of Notre Dame Cathedral and “ring Quasimodo’s Bell.” None of the first four teams know when the places they’re going to opens but they all decide independently that “Short Walk” sounds more attractive to them than “Long Climb.”

Kevin & Drew weren’t able to make it to La Grande Roue and took the rather surprising step of opting for the stage’s Fast Forward so as not to be relegated to the same position as the four teams from the second flight. Actually, they say that the only way they’l be able to stay in the race is to use the Fast Forward, although that was hardly the reality of the situation. The Fast Forward required them to go to the Mariage Freres tea shop where they have to ask for a tea called “La Ventouriez(?)”. The manager of the shop will then provide them with their clue. It seemed to me to be a bit of an over-reaction and Kevin even worried about using the Fast Forward that early in the Race but Drew thought it was necessary and Kevin was persuadable.

Meanwhile the teams that Kevin & Drew don’t want to be joining are all being released from the Pit Stop and head towards the now dark La Grande Roue. Soon, all of the teams – with a couple of exceptions are settling down to an uncomfortable night sleeping on the streets of Paris – Paul & Amie, Dave & Margharetta and Lenny & Karyn at La Grande Roue, Rob & Brennan and Frank & Margarita at Le Pantheon, and Kevin & Drew in the doorway of the Mariage Freres Tea Shop. This leaves Pat & Brenda who eventually make their way to the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and Nancy & Emily. As we find out in the “Sidetrips” feature of the DVD set, Nancy & Emily realize that the hotel rooms (in a barge on the Seine) that had been provided for them during their mandatory rest break were still available to them so they headed back and spent the night in a nice warm and dry hotel room while the others were cold and rained on.

And of course there’s Team Guido. After determining that Foucault’s Pendulum was at Le Pantheon – and it’s surprising that no one except who or whatever helped Pat & Brenda didn’t mention the one at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metier – Bill & Joe decided to indulge their hedonistic side by visiting a neighbourhood cafe that they had patronised during the two years they lived in Paris for a glass of champagne. They then go to see the place where they lived for two years in Paris on Rue Bonaparte (the only street in Paris named for Napoleon they inform us, although that fact was relegated to the Sidetrip bonus feature). And no, this would not be the last time they reminded us that they lived for two years in Paris. They eventually show up at le Pantheon where Rob & Brennan and Frank & Margarita are waiting for them. And that order of arrival is going to be quite important in what unfolds.

Kevin & Drew smell some tea

The first teams to actually get moving are the four teams at La Grande Roue. It opens at 9 a.m. and they quickly get their clues. All four decide to do the “Long Climb option” and for exactly the reason that Rob & Brennan and Frank & Margarita think they will, because Notre Dame is a known destination – a well known destination for Lenny & Karyn. Next to get into action are Kevin & Drew. They aren’t impressed with Paris; they think that the area in front of the tea shop is just like being down in SoHo in New York. And the might even have been right if they chose to ignore the buildings in the area, most of which predate most of the buildings in New York or that Mariage Freres, the tea company whose retail shop they’re about to enter has been in business for close to 150 years (at the time that the episode was shot; it is a well known French and European brand in fact). They meet the manager – a young man who Drew had expected to be an old guy who looked like Ben Franklin  – as he arrives for work and once he lets them in they quickly get their clue…and a sniff of the tea. They get the clue sending them to the Chateau Des Baux in Les Baux-de-Provence in the south of France.

Bill approaches the cat near Foucault's Pendulum

All of the tasks for the other people on the race really get going at 10 a.m. That’s when everything else opens – the towers at Notre Dame, Le Pantheoon, and the Musee des Arts et Metiers (actually the name carved into the 18th century building says, “Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers” but a sign on a door says “Musee des Arts et Metiers; not that it matters of course). Team Guido arrives just before it opens and are surprised to find the other two teams already at Le Pantheon – and not pleasantly. They vow not to tell the other teams where they were, as if it were some sort of secret information that would do…something. The two teams they screwed over in the previous leg are less than happy to see them too. Rob & Brennan Frank & Margarita and Joe & Bill have reached an agreement they’ll go to get the clue in the order that they enter the building. That means Rob & Brennan first, Frank & Margarita second, and Bill & Joe third. But, the Pendulum and the clue, which is behind a statue of a cat that appears to be Egyptian in style, are behind a sort of low fence. As the three teams walk enter the area, all three walk past the closed gate, attended by a woman who works for the museum, who points out the gate to them after all three teams have gone past. This means that the team that is closest to the gate is the team that was third in line, Joe & Bill, who take the opportunity to go through the gate first. And since only one team can enter the enclosure at a time this blows any agreements out of the water. Frank & Margarita are second into the enclosure and Rob & Brennan – who are not happy with the way that “Bert & Ernie” (the nickname that they have given to Team Guido) have behaved. They all get the clue telling them to “find the man in the blue suit across from the Hotel de Ville,” but two of the teams aren’t happy with the order they got it in.

Over at the the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Pat & Brenda have actually seen the Pendulum. It’s visible through a skylight in the courtyard of the museum. However when they enter – and they have to pay to get in – they discover that while the Pendulum might be there, no one knows anything about a cat. It’s then that they’re informed about the Pendulum at Le Pantheon. If the way the episode is edited is to be believed, they arrived at the Pantheon after all of the teams at Notre Dame got their clues, but as usual we have no indication of “real time.”

Nancy rings Quasimodo's Bell

The teams at Notre Dame also went into action at 10 a.m. They had to climb the 297 steps of one of the cathedral’s bell towers then cross to the other bell tower along a catwalk at the front of the building. Once at the other bell tower one of each team had to climb to a wooden platform and strike one of the bells – possibly the Emmanuel Bell – with a mallet. They then descended down the steps in that tower. The spiral staircases are made of stone and they aren’t the easiest to climb, particularly for the three older people (Dave, Margharetta and Nancy), but all four teams manage it.

Bill & Joe initially try to grab a cab from Le Pantheon but eventually decide to walk. They make the assumption that everybody else – by which I suspect they mean Rob & Brennan and Frank & Margarita – all took cabs and got caught in traffic. They also make the assumption that the other teams – and here I think they mean all of them – don’t know where they’re going because they don’t know Paris (and Bill & Joe lived in Paris for two years, though they don’t say it). They are standing at a crosswalk looking for the clue markers when they suddenly notice that Rob & Brennan are standing right beside them. And a bigger shock is awaiting them when they get across the street! Not only had Frank & Margarita arrived before either of the other teams at the Pantheon got there, but every other team except Kevin & Drew (obviously) and Pat & Brenda was there ahead of them. How? Well apparently the “experts” on Paris forgot that Notre Dame is located on Ile de la Cite which is in the middle of the Seine, and that while le Pantheon is on the other side of the river from the Hotel de Ville, the most direct route crosses Ile de la Cite, very near Notre Dame. They also seem to have assumed that none of the teams at Notre Dame could either read a map or get directions from someone who knew where the Hotel de Ville was located. Sometimes Karma gets it right.

The sewers of Paris

The teams arriving at the clues find an array of equipment waiting for them. The “man in the blue suit” is a maintenance worker for the sewers wearing his work uniform and the Clue is a Roadblock. The teams must proceed to the Place de la Chatelet which is about two blocks from the Hotel de Ville. However while the team member not doing the Roadblock can go there on the surface streets, the member who is doing the Roadblock has to travel, like Jean Val Jean, through the sewers of Paris. The teams are supplied with overalls, a hard had and rubber boots. part of the route they’ll have to traverse is narrow but it is all full of what Phil describes as “steaming raw sewage.” He didn’t mention the rats, but one was shown in the footage of the sewers. There was jostling to get into the sewers (and who ever thought they’d read a line like that!) with the eventual order being: Paul, Karyn Emily, Frank, Brennan, Joe and Dave, with either Pat or Brenda doing it when they arrive after the others have left. The clue box is actually in the sewer, just at the point where the person doing the roadblock exits. The clue tells them they have to travel by train to the Chateau Des Baux in Les Baux-de-Provence.

To get to Les Baux-de-Provence the teams first have to first figure out that it isn’t in Paris – which Paul initially thinks it is. Once they know that they have to figure out which of Paris’s six major passenger rail terminals they have to travel from. In this case it is the Gare de Lyon, which serves the route from Paris to Marseille. There’s a trick in getting to Les Baux-de-Provence however. What seems to be the obvious route is to travel all the way to Marseille and then from there take a taxi to the town. People in the know however disembark at Avignon and travel the greater distance to Le Baux-de-Provence. Or at least this is what Phil tells us and what most of the teams seem to believe initially. I’ve plotted out the routs on Google Maps and checked it on Bing Maps, and it is simply not true. It is about 85 Kilometers between the train station in Marseille and Chateau des Baux, and about 30 Kilometers from Avignon to Chateau des Baux. Regardless, the time saving is about an hour.

Of course Kevin & Drew have already left for the Chateau-des-Baux. It`s never stated whether they got off at Avignon or Marseille but it really doesn`t matter. The climb the streets of the town to the ruins of the old castle where they are greeted by the Mayor of Les-Baux-de-Provence. They bask in their stage victory “with everybody looking at our behinds no less.”

The main group of teams, including Rob & Brennan, Frank & Margarita, Joe & Bill, Lenny & Karyn, Paul & Amie and Nancy & Emily all board the same train. Missing this train are Pat & Brenda of course and Dave & Margharetta. Joe & Bill make a big show of “helping” Lenny & Karyn, Paul & Amie and Nancy & Emily – and saying “you better remember this.” They help them to the “right” place on the train but then disappear on them and they have to find the place where they’re actually supposed to be. Frank & Margarita and Rob & Brennan get on another part of the train, near where Joe & Bill eventually show up. Of course Joe & Bill don’t tell the others their “secret;” they know about getting off at Avignon, and are determined that none of the other teams see them. They presumably think that their “biggest competition” don’t know about Avignon. However, independently of the Guidos and each other, Frank & Margarita and Rob & Brennan find out about the “short cut.” In fact Rob & Brennan are eager to tell their erstwhile allies about it after they’re told by someone on the train, only to discover that Frank & Margarita already knew. The two teams decide that they’ll sneak off the train in Avignon and avoid letting the other three teams see them. When they actually do get off, some of the other teams notice them getting off but, assured by a railway employee that they are on the right train they decide to continue on to Marseille.

It’s not clear that the three teams who got off the train at Avignon knew that they had all gotten off together. Rob & Brennan actually arranged for a cab to be waiting for them using a borrowed cell phone, but Team Guido don’t know about this. They fully expected to have an hour and a half lead over the teams that stayed on the train, which as far as they knew was everyone except Frank & Margarita, and they’re convinced they’re ahead of them.. Rob & Brennan told Frank & Margarita about Avignon – though they already knew – and considered themselves to be a team with them. Frank had a different view of things; Rob & Brennan were only clinging to them because they’ve used their Fast Forward and because of Margarita’s ability to speak some French. As far as he’s concerned they’re “all a bunch of fakes,” smiling in your face but plotting behind your back. He doesn’t play that game he’s “real”…except that he has yet to let Rob & Brennan know that their alliance is off.

The main group of teams in the second train initially think that everyone is aboard the same train although Nancy seems to think that someone may have missed the train. Make that two teams, Dave & Margharetta and Pat & Brenda. Editing makes it appear that the two teams got on the same train but that is not entirely clear. What is clear is that Dave & Margharetta know to get off at Avignon, which is something that will come into play and show just how big an advantage getting off at the earlier stop was.

Rob, Brennan and the Mayor of Les-Baux-des-Provance

The taxis deliver the teams at the edge of the town but the teams have to hike half a mile uphill to reach the castle. Frank & Margarita are the second team to arrive with Rob & Brennan arriving in third place. Joe & Bill are stunned to discover that they aren’t in third place as they expect but in fourth. A bigger surprise is to come however. Dave & Margharetta are arriving in Les Baux even as the teams who went to Marseille are getting off the train and into their cabs. The older couple finish in fifth place much to their own astonishment. The teams from Marseille – the self-described “underdogs” – all plan to cross together but they sort of string out on the climb. Paul & Amie arrive in sixth and they realise that the rest of their group are safe. Lenny & Karyn are in seventh and Nancy & Emily come in eight.

As for Pat & Brenda, they seem to have all the worst luck. It is dusk when they leave the train, apparently in Marseille, and dark when they make the climb up to the chateau. While their were people on the streets when the other teams arrived the only witness to their arrival is a lone dog prowling on the roof of one of the buildings. Phil is waiting for them on the mat. They’ve come in last and have been eliminated.

The order of finish was:

1. Kevin & Drew
2. Frank & Margarita
3. Rob & Brennan
4. Joe & Bill
5. Dave & Margharetta
6. Paul & Amie
7. Lenny & Karyn
8. Nancy & Emily
9. Pat & Brenda – Philiminated

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– If you go to Paris and want to follow in the footsteps of the Amazing Race teams you’ll have one big problem. You won’t find La Grande Roue. For one thing it was never called that except on the show; it’s true name is (or was) La Roue de Paris – The Wheel of Paris – and it’s not there anymore. The Ferris Wheel was designed to be mobile (unlike the London Eye for example) and was removed from the Place de la Concorde in 2002. It’s been in various places since then, most recently in Antwerp in 2008 (at least as far as I can tell).

– On the other hand Foucault’s Pendulum is still at Le Pantheon and the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers. The pendulum was designed by French Physicist Leon Foucault to visually demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. He set up the original experiment at Le Pantheon. Subsequently the original pendulum was moved to the Conservatoire National des Artes et Metiers. In 1995 a replica of the original pendulum was installed at Le Pantheon.

– Okay I admit that I like using the term “Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers”; I also dislike the translation the show gave for the name. “Museum of Arts and Crafts” makes it sound like you’re going to find the place filled with weaving and wood carving when the truth is that it bears a strong resemblance to the Museum of Science and Industry at the Smithsonian. Also it’s a lot easier to find on Google Maps if you give the French name. The same thing goes for “le Pantheon” instead of “the Pantheon.”

– Ordinary tourists can climb the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral…for 8 Euros. The lines can be long but it’s supposed to be worth it.

– For anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of French or even the FrencConservatoire National des Arts et Metiersh spoken in Canada (which is apparently some sort of weird Norman/Breton dialect) listening to Kevin & Drew try to say French words – because they sure as hell aren’t speaking French – is like listening to fingernails on a chalk board…while someone is pulling your spine out of your back. PAINFUL!

– Like just about anyone who watches The Amazing Race I like to look at the tasks and wonder which ones I would or could do. Anything that involves driving or swimming is out for me – I don’t do either – but even though I have a fear of heights I’m not sure the Gorge Swing would have stopped me. After all it’s a controlled fall. The first one that would have stymied me – in part because it was a Roadblock and I could dump it on my partner – is the sewers, mainly because of the dark and closed in nature of the place.

– Pat & Brenda have the worst luck of any of the teams in this leg of the race and it all stems from changing their collective minds about the Detour they were going to take. They had initially decided on “Long Climb” because they knew where Notre Dame was, but then quickly changed their mind to “Short Walk” because even though they didn’t know where Foucault’s Pendulum was they had plenty of time to find out, what with leaving two and a half hours ahead of any other team. And they did find out. The problem is that they found out where the original Foucault Pendulum was, not the one where the cat was. I contend that they were undone by an out of date guidebook; remember the Pendulum at Le Pantheon had only been there for six years when the show was shot. Having discovered that the Pendulum they found was the wrong one, they then went to Le Pantheon, which is another puzzler, since the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers is on the other side of the river from Le Pantheon. It would have been easier to change detours and done the “Long Climb” at Notre Dame which is between the two buildings. Finally they appear to have taken a later train than even Dave & Margharetta and probably got off at Marseille too.

– Frank’s whole attitude in this leg is absolutely ridiculous. His reason for breaking up the partnership with Rob & Brennan is quite frankly ridiculous. Both teams were desperate to get from the Arc de Triomphe to Le Grand Roue. They don’t even consider the Metro, although this was the way that Joe & Bill and Pat & Brenda had taken and instead run up the Champs Elysee hoping to get cabs. Rob & Brennan get a cab first and take it and this is the last straw for Frank; Rob & Brennan are only out for themselves, they’re a couple of phonies, and so on. And yet what were Rob & Brennan supposed to do? They couldn’t share a cab, because while we think of the racers as just two people they do have a two person camera team with them when they’re racing. It isn’t practical to stuff eight people into a standard Paris taxi. Were they supposed to have their cab wait for a second cab to come along to take Frank & Margarita? That presupposes a couple of things, namely that their cab would wait and that a second cab would stop if he saw a group of people with a cab already there. The end result could have been both teams not getting to the clue on time.

– How did Dave & Margharetta finish in fifth despite being on a later train than the “underdog” group? Well the average time between departures on the Paris-Marseilles run is 40-50minutes – call it 45 for the sake of this argument. The trip from Avignon to Marseille is 30 minutes. So the teams that took the first train and went to Marseille would already be fifteen minutes into the journey to Chateau-des-Baux when Dave & Margharetta disembarked at Avignon, but their journey is about 55 kilometers shorter. Assuming an average speed of 110 km/h that means that the trip is half an hour shorter.

– Schadenfreude probably goes along with hubris. It certainly did with Bill & Joe, who cemented their villain status in this leg. It’s not just that they went on a walking tour of their old Parisian haunts while other teams spent the night sleeping rough – and didn’t need to because they could have done what Nancy and Emily did just as easily – but it’s their attitude. We saw that in the previous episode where they dumped Rob & Brennan as allies, and we saw it repeatedly in this episode where they underestimated and denigrated the other teams for not knowing Paris as well as they did. Their assumption that the other teams would try to take taxis to the Hotel de Ville or that they wouldn’t know where to go and would get lost is one case of greatly underestimating the abilities of their competition to read a map or get directions from people on the street. Even the hubris puncturing moment when they discover that not only were their arch-rivals Rob & Brennan standing beside them but that the teams that had gone to Notre Dame were, with the exception of Dave & Margharetta, all in front of them didn’t cure them of their hubris. The whole business of “helping” the self-proclaimed “underdogs” came across as more than a bit condescending when they said “you better remember this.” When they abandon the other teams without any sort of warning, and certainly without telling them about Avignon, it guaranteed that other teams would remember the event…just not in a good way. But it was also a show of arrogance.

– Looking at the ratings for this episode, the show dropped from the previous week’s rating of 6.8/10 to a 6.0/9. It was in third place behind a West Wing repeat with a 10.4/15 and the season premiere of The Drew Carey Show. The latter was an hour long episode and there was a significant ratings shift between the first episode (7.4/11) and the second half hour (5.7/8). And I’m afraid things are going to get darker for the show when the other three networks start premiering shows.

The Amazing Race - Season 1 Episode 2

The second episode of the first season of The Amazing Race is, in some ways, better than the first. The episode’s musical scoring seems better, and the producers also seem to realize that as an audience we need some sense of where the teams are during the course of the leg. The episode introduces the “Roadblock” task to the show; there had been a Roadblock in the first episode involving cooking and eating an Ostrich Egg but it hadn’t made the finishing cut for the first episode and it isn’t seen on the “side trips” feature of the DVD box set.

Of course circumstances conspired against the show. The second episodes of Lost and The Amazing Race were scheduled to air on September 12th, but on September 11, 2001 the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington Virginia were attacked by terrorists using commercial aircraft. This meant that entertainment programming was immediately pulled from the four major networks for the remainder of the week, not restoring regular programming until the weekend. The Amazing Race returned on September 19th, while the remaining episodes of Lost would be burned off later in the year. The ratings for the second episode of the show were lower than the ratings for the first episode, which some people attributed to a backlash against international travel in the aftermath of the attacks. There’s may be some truth to this, but it isn’t an easily proven theory, and some aspects of the drop in ratings have other the viable explanations. Still, the first season of The Amazing Race, and the second episode in particular are inextricably linked to 9/11.

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The episode opens with a review of the first episode of the show, from the departure from New York to the late night arrival of Matt & Ana at Songwe Village. After the credits they show us a village that they say is Songwe but as I said in the previous post on The Race, the real Songwe Village is – or was – a resort. There is a nearby village but strictly speaking it isn’t called Songwe Village. In a voiceover Phil Keoghan tells us that the next clue is simple but tricky. They have to find the Songwe Village Museum, a tiny building less than 100 yards from the starting point. No cars are needed. The problem is that while the local people are totally aware of the museum’s location (oh yeah?!) outsiders have no idea that it even exists, and the drivers are all outsiders. We are also informed that  the teams will leave the Pit Stop at Songwe Village in the order that they arrived, twelve hours after they checked in at the Pit Stop.

The order of departure is:

1. Rob & Brennan – 11:23 p.m.
2. Bill & Joe – 11:37 pm  +14 minutes
3. Frank & Margarita – 12:05 a.m. +42 minutes
4. Lenny & Karyn – 1:52 a.m. +2 hours 29 minutes
5. Pat & Brenda – 3:35 a.m. +4 hours 12 minutes
6. Kim & Leslie – 5:33 a.m. +6 hour 10 minutes
7. Paul & Amie – 5:50 a.m. +6 hours 27 minutes
8. Dave & Margharetta – 6:24 a.m. +7 hours 1 minute
9. Kevin & Drew – 7:09 a.m. +7 hours 46 minutes
10. Nancy & Emily – 7:26 a.m. +8 hours 3 minutes

Rob & Brennan are given their “travel packet” (the term they used in the first season) not by Phil *who is nowhere to be seem) but by the local greeter from the previous episode. It states: “You are well acquainted with the Songwe Village. Now make your way to the Songwe Museum.” Rob & Brennan decide to team up with the next two teams and inform their driver that the first three teams in their cars will be travelling together “for safety.” They all pledge to an alliance to the end because they feel they are the strongest and smartest teams in the whole competition…and besides Margarita is certain she saw a sign for the Songwe Museum somewhere down the road. So off they go, an hour and forty-seven minute ahead of the next team to leave, Lenny & Karyn don’t feel the need to travel in a convoy for “safety.” They also go out on the roads looking for the museum. An hour and a half later Pat & Brenda leave and like the teams that went before them they take off in their car looking for someone who can direct them to the Songwe Museum.

So we have five teams on the roads looking for a museum that was almost literally right under their noses when they left. Eventually the “alliance” of Bill & Joe, Rob & Brennan and Frank & Margarita have to pull into a gas station. Frank is seriously mad at Margarita for saying that she saw a sign, and she insists that she thought she had seen a sign. This gives them a chance to consider their choices, and reread the clue. Rereading the clue, particularly the part where it says “You are well acquainted with Songwe Village…” This suggests to them that maybe the museum is located at the village. Someone claims that they had lost two hours; if we take this seriously and add the two hours to Frank and Margarita’s departure time of 12:05 a.m. it means that they make this discovery at around 2 a.m. when the only other team to have departed is Lenny & Karyn. Also assuming that they don’t take the same amount of time getting back to Songwe Village as it took them to get to the gas station, they could easily have found the clue before Pat & Brenda leave. For their part Lenny & Karyn find out about the museum when they stop to ask for directions. Karyn specifically says that they don’t want Songwe Village but the man they’re talking to tells them that there is a museum at the village. They find the clue while it is still dark.

Both Kim & Leslie and Paul & Amie head out by car but somehow Kim & Leslie find the museum first, driving right up to it in their car. They do find it after everyone else leaves though (or at least that’s the way it’s edited). Dave & Margharetta, leaving at 6:24 a.m. are the first team to be able to ask any of the people at Songwe Village how to find the museum. They get directions but unfortunately the directions, which start from the car park take them off on a ten minute walk down the road that turns into something a lot longer. When they see Drew & Kevin drive past they start to think that they should have driven too. Nancy & Emily, the last team to depart run into Paul and Amie who inform them that someone told them that the museum was in the village. The two teams come together with Dave and Margharetta, still on foot who confirm that the museum is within walking distance but they haven’t found it yet. The three teams working together are able to find it while Kevin & Drew are the last to find it.

The clue, when the teams find it, is a Detour called “Near or Far.” In the “Near” option teams have to travel to the nearby Mosi-Oa-Tunyu Wildlife Reserve and photograph three relatively hard to find animals using Polaroid cameras. The “Far” option requires them to travel to the Chobi National Park in Botswana and photograph one elephant. These photos have to be presented to Chief Mukini at Mukini Village, which is near Songwe Village, and is a landmark that at least some of the teams are aware of. All of the teams (except of course Pat & Brenda who are doing the Fast Forward) decide to do “Near.” It’s the right choice as Dave points out that Chobe National Park is nearly 90 kilometres beyond the Near destination. What he may not have known is that the most direct route to the park involves passing through Zimbabwe which was beginning to be increasingly isolated internationally at the time, though not to the levels it has reached today. The route to the park through Zambia included a ferry crossing of the Zambezi.

Pat & Brenda take a different approach.Unable to find anyone who can direct them to the museum they decide that it might be advantageous for them to use the Fast Forward. The clue for the Fast Forward is somewhat cryptic: “If you know what to do, then we’ve one name for you – Bundu.” Bundu Adventures is the name of a white water rafting company on the Zambezi River below Victoria Falls where the rapids are amongst the best in Africa. It’s daylight and the first three teams are already at the game reserve taking their photos before Pat & Brenda find Bundu Adventures and the clue is farther down the Zambezi in an area only accessible by white water raft. It’s an adventurous ride over some significant rapids, but when they get there they find the location of the leg’s pit stop, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

For the other teams discovering where they have to go next isn’t as easy. At the wildlife reserve they have to shoot photos of three animals; a buffalo, a giraffe and a rhinoceros.  According to Wikipedia finding the last animal on that list might not be as easy today as it appears to have been when the Race was shot. The local Black Rhinos have been wiped out by poachers in the Mosi-Oa-Tunyu reserve and a handful of White Rhinos have been brought into the park. Some teams take what appear to be extreme risks to get pictures. Nancy in particular tries to get fairly close to a Rhino standing in the road, much to the exasperation of her daughter Emily. And Emily’s mood isn’t improved when the camera doesn’t take the picture because the film pack hasn’t been put in properly. Still all of the teams manage to get their shots.

Once the teams take their photos they have to deliver them to Chief Mukuni at Mukuni Village. He is a descendant of the Chief who met Dr. David Livingstone when he became the first white man to see Victoria Falls. Before they can deliver them though they have to participate in a ritual blessing in which the Chief takes a sip of water from a gourd and essentially spits it out over them (a procedure looks like a spit take). Extra footage on the DVD also indicates that there is dancing involved, but that could be just as the teams wait to see the Chief. Once the ritual is done the Chief hands them a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower, their next destination. Most of the teams are elated, the exception is the team of Kim & Leslie: “Who wants to go to stupid Paris. I hate Paris.” As we shall see, they may have very good reason to hate Paris.

The teams are next shown back at the Johannesburg Airport although it’s not shown how they got there. Then the scramble for airline seats begins. There are no pre-booked seats for the teams to get to Paris which means trying to book the flights at the airport ticket counters. Pat & Brenda believe they have seats but nothing is immediately confirmed. A worse blow-up though happens between Amie and Kim or Leslie (I’ve never been able to tell the difference between those two). The Teachers are at the Air France counter booking a flight (it’s worth noting that she asks for four seats; teams in the race have to book seats for themselves and their camera crew – a total of four seats – but in every season since this one teams have been shown booking just two seats, with the camera team’s seats being booked off-camera). Amie is also at the counter. The one who is trying to book the flight holds up her hand and says, “And she’s not with us.” It seems like a perfectly normal thing to say, although the tone is a bit brusque, but Amie explodes. She walks away from the counter and is determined to stick her foot up their asses. Paul isn’t exactly a peacemaker; he tells Amie to punch in the jaw and the nose. As for Kim & Leslie, they don’t entirely understand what the cause of the problem between them and Paul & Amie is, but they basically automatically hate them. It takes the intervention of a lady, probably from South African Airways, to at least calm things down a bit, although Amie is still mad, because the woman doesn’t understand that this is a race.

These aren’t the only machinations going on. Bill & Joe have already cut Frank & Margarita loose from their alliance during the photo safari portion of the day claiming Frank was uncontrollable. On the flight to Paris Bill & Joe – who never tire of telling the camera that they lived in Paris for two years – discover that Rob & Brennan have never travelled outside of the United States before. For them, that’s reason enough to end the alliance because after all what can two guys who have never been outside of the USA help two guys who have lived in Paris. Thus when the first plane arrives at Charles De Gaulle Airport, Bill & Joe immediately head for the RER – Reseau Express Regional (Regional Express Network) – commuter train, abandoning  Rob & Brennan. Of course Rob & Brennan were fully expecting something like that to happen so presumably there were cracks in the alliance that even they noticed before they got to France. The other teams on the first flight are Frank & Margarita, Lenny & Karyn, Kevin & Drew and Pat & Brenda. The latter of course are able to go straight to the Arc de Triomphe where they are welcomed by a Parisian Police Officer who doesn’t look like our image of a French police officer; no Kepi but rather a standard military style hat. They’re the first team to check in.

Bill & Joe are there first to the Eiffel Tower, and are of course very pleased with themselves. They find the clue box fairly quickly and find out that they are facing a Roadblock. This is the first Roadblock that we see on The Race so Phil has to explain how they work. Teams have to decide who will do the Roadblock based only on a fairly basic clue before they undo the clue to find out the full details. In this Roadblock the first part of the clue says that the player who does it needs, “strong legs and sharp eyes.” The person doing it has to climb the stairs to the second deck of the Eiffel Tower and then “check out the telescopic view; we hear it’s monumental.” They’re supposed to obtaining a 10 Franc coin (this was pre-Euro) use one of the telescopes on that level to locate a Paris monument with a yellow & white Route Marker flag flying atop it. Bill & Joe are slightly ahead of Frank & Margarita and Rob & Brennan who are followed by Kevin & Drew. Frank, Rob and Drew all follow Bill (the dark-haired member of Team Guido) up to the observation level. While Kevin stops to catch his breath on the first level, Frank and Rob make it to the second deck and try to find the flag. This is somewhat hampered by the fact that Rob doesn’t know the Paris monuments. Bill does; he spots a “yellow flag over there” and heads down. Meanwhile Lenny & Karyn arrive and Lenny starts up the stairs. Frank eventually spots the flag on the arch but until it blows out isn’t exactly sure what it says. When he figures out it says “Monument” (actually it says MONUM’) he tells Rob and they both head down. Kevin, having finally reached the top level doesn’t seem to know what qualifies as a monument in Paris. A lady points out the arch and he looks through the telescope to see the flag. This is more than poor Lenny is able to do. He can’t see the flag so he decides to come back down. This upsets Karyn, who sends him back up again. Well sends him might be the polite ways of saying it; nags  and yells at him is closer to the truth. Lenny apparently decides that any monument will do gets a friendly tourist to point out some place to him and decides that Notre Dame is as good as any so he heads down and tells Karyn that they’re going to “Notre Dame” (pronounced like the University).

While the lead teams – less Lenny & Karyn – are heading for the Arc de Triomphe, the second flight arrives with Paul & Amie, Kim & Leslie, Nancy & Emily and Dave & Margharetta. The war between Paul & Amie and Kim & Leslie escalates over a cab. Paul & Amie seem aware that there is a line for cabs at the airport and you take them in order. Kim & Leslie appear to believe that lines are for people who aren’t from Texas and jump the line. Paul & Amie and Kim & Leslie both reach a cab at about the same time but Amie sits in the back seat first. Kim & Leslie basically bribe the driver to throw Paul & Amie, and their luggage out. This really upsets Amie. and Paul responds by telling her that they should just quit and fly back to New York! And if it gets any worse he’ll just go back to the States on his own. For their part Kim & Leslie are laughing their heads off.

Surprisingly it is Paul & Amie who are the first from their flight to arrive at the Eiffel Tower, ahead of the “party girls.” Paul goes up the Tower, so we all know that this is not going to end well. And sure enough it doesn’t. Initially unable to get change he finally is able to mime what he wants a 10 Franc coin for to a young couple and looks through one of the telescopes. He does not get instant gratification – that is he doesn’t see the flag on the Arc de Triomphe , and so he reacts in a typical Paul manner; he spins the telescope around angrily, kicks the guard rail on the observation deck and says “That’s it, I’m quitting.” Three times in one episode: must be some sort of record.

Meanwhile Kim & Leslie finally arrive at the tower. They are totally oblivious to the flag at the clue box and while hey might have seen Paul or Amie, they absolutely wanted nothing to do with them. Instead they get in a line for the elevators to go up to the very top level of the Tower. They make the assumption – based on their own odd logic – that if they’re going to send you to the Eiffel Tower, naturally they’re going to want you to go to the top, so that’s where the clue box will be. When they get there they keep asking people if they’ve seen a yellow and white flag. It gets worse when they try to say it in French and it comes out in Spanish (blanco instead of blanc).

While the teams from the second flight are arriving at the Tower, the teams from the first flight start arriving at the Pit Stop. Joe & Bill are in second place followed by Rob & Brennan, Frank & Margarita and Kevin & Drew, who are quite happy with the degree to which they’ve improved their position. Meanwhile Lenny & Karyn have arrived at Notre Dame and they suddenly have their doubts as to whether they’re at the right place. Karyn asks Lenny why he thought this was the right place and he came up with a cock and bull story – which those of us who have seen the earlier scene know to be untrue – about the telescope as you came out of the stairs pointing in the direction of Notre Dame. Karyn is dumbfounded; it might have been pointing that way because someone had just been looking at Notre Dame through it. This has cost them time and worse, precious money.

By the time that Lenny & Karyn get back from Notre Dame, and Kim & Leslie return from the top of the Tower, Nancy & Emily have already arrived and Emily has reached the Observation Deck. She has just one tiny problem – no change for the telescope. She manages to get a guy to toss her a 10 Franc coin from the upper story of the second deck but she can’t figure out what she’s looking for and gets frustrated. Paul is still up there, the temper tantrum having been exhausted, and he eventually spots the flag on the Arc de Triomphe. Meanwhile Lenny joins Emily and they are frustrated together. Lenny tries using the telescope and Emily mentions that the only Paris landmark she knows is the “Arc de Whatever.” Lenny and Emily take turns looking through the telescope and Emily sees the flag on the Arc de Triomphe and then lets Lenny take a look. They head down. At some point Kim (the dark haired Teacher) reaches the observation level and uses a borrowed pair of binoculars to find the flag.

The last group of teams are all headed towards the Arc de Triomphe. They’re all in cabs, and when they arrive most seem intent on crossing to the Arc the most dangerous way possible, by running across the Etoile – the giant traffic circle that surrounds the actual structure of the Arc de Triomphe – on the surface dodging traffic, rather than using pedestrian tunnels that are provided. David & Margharetta arrive at the Arc in sixth but while it’s not explained in this episode there is a problem with how they ended up in sixth which I will go into shortly. Paul & Amie come in seventh, The editting makes it seem as though Kim & Leslie arrive before Nancy & Emily and Lenny & Karyn but that they are delayed in a dispute with a cab driver who wants more money and refuses to give them his name. This may in fact be true but it seems somewhat at odds with some of what we’ve seen earlier. Suffice it to say that enough time passes for Kim & Leslie to finish last in this leg and be eliminated. Karma it seems is a bitch.

Final Order of Finish at the end of the episode:

1. Pat & Brenda
2. Joe & Bill
3. Rob & Brennan
4. Frank & Margarita
5. Kevin & Drew
6. Dave & Margharetta*
7. Paul & Amie
8. Nancy & Emily
9. Lenny & Karyn
10. Kim & Leslie – Eliminated

* Dave & Margharetta will receive a penalty at the beginning of the next stage for not completing the Eiffel Tower Roadblock.

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– As I said, Dave & Margharetta’s penalty is not discussed in the episode, but it is explained in the next episode. Arriving at the Eiffel Tower they didn’t see the Route Marker and Clue Box. Independently they climbed to the second Observation Level together where they encountered Paul. He told them where the clue was. They then went down to ground level where they found the Clue Box. To complete the Roadblock one of them should have gone back up to the Observation Deck and then come right back down. They didn’t do this so a penalty was applied. In this period of The Race it was the procedure that penalties for missed or improperly completed tasks like this Roadblock would be applied at the beginning of the next stage unless adding the penalty would eliminate the team. This has changed in more recent seasons of the show where penalties are either served before teams check in or teams are sent back to where they missed the task to complete it. In the current version of the The Race, Dave & Margharetta would probably be sent back to the Eiffel Tower and one of them would have to complete the requirements of the Roadblock before they could check in.

– Paul may have been the whiniest person on this season of The Amazing Race, but in reviewing the first two episodes I’ve come to the conclusion that Emily may be the second whiniest. She is alternately impatient with her mother and whining about something not going her way. In the first she got mad with her mother for trying to tell her the directions that the lady in the rest room had tried to give her. In the second episode she got mad at Nancy for trying to get a good shot of the Rhino, and then whined at her to fix the camera when it wouldn’t shoot. She was impatient and whining again at the airport in Johannesburg when first she couldn’t get an answer on the telephone and then thought that they couldn’t make their flight. She was whiny on the Eiffel Tower, but at least then she wasn’t directing anything at her mother. When watching the show initially I quite liked her, and maybe she improves, although I know that the worst is yet to come in India. But in the first two episodes I think Nancy exhibited the patience of a saint when dealing with her daughter.

– A pet peeve of mine when discussing people on the show is that they seem to depend to an insane degree on cabs. Bill & Joe are the only team to use the RER to get from Charles De Gaulle Airport to central Paris, and no one used the #6 Metro line from Bir Hakeim station to the Charles De Gaulle Etoile station right under the Arc de Triomphe. This is in spite of the fact that the Metro can be as fast if not faster (not to mention cheaper) than taking a car depending on traffic patterns. At least a couple of teams wise up in the third episode.

– A brief talk about the ratings for this episode. The ratings for this episode were 6.8/10. The source I used to get that information didn’t have the information on the 18-49 demographic. This represents a drop of about 10% from the first episode rating of 7.5/11. Both times the show finished in second place, but in the second week the show lost to a repeat episode of The West Wing, which drew a 9.5/14 rating. In the show’s first week it was opposite the season finale of Fear Factor.

At the time, and for some time to come there was a belief amongst some fans of the show that the 9/11 terrorist attacks had hurt the show; that the American people weren’t going to be attracted to a show about international travel at a time when they were cutting back on their own travel and many Americans had the attitude that international travel was dangerous. I’m not entirely sure today that there wasn’t some of that coming into play, but I’m becoming less convinced that this was a primary, or even a major factor in the ratings decline. Instead I’ve come to the conclusion that 9/11’s real impact on the show was more pedestrian. It’s generally accepted today that most new shows will experience a drop in viewership from the first to second episode; I think the usual percentage quoted is about 10 to 20%. But remember, most of those shows air their second episode a week after the first. That didn’t happen with The Amazing Race for obvious reasons. And I think the delay between the first and second episodes help to hurt viewership. Of course the fact that they were going up against a encore episode of The West Wing, then a ratings juggernaut even in reruns, didn’t help it either. And things wouldn’t improve much as new episodes of popular series began running as the new season began.

Season 1 Episode 1 Of The Amazing Race

After last year’s abortive attempt to recap Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip as a summer project, I’ve decided on something lighter and more easily digested. A sorbet as it were rather than seven course meal as it were. And since I have a reputation – mostly undeserved – of loving any and all reality shows (not true; I like reality-competition series – which should be called competition shows so as not to sully them by associating them with crap like Toddlers and Tiaras – and even then I hate dating shows, singing shows, series about dancers who aren’t untrained celebrities, and knock-offs of original ideas) I decided that the “sorbet” should be my favourite competition series, The Amazing Race.

My original plan for this summer was to take on both the first season of The Amazing Race and the seventh season, to show how the series had changed thanks to lessons learned in the original run. Those two seasons were, until recently, the only ones released on DVD, and they are the only ones to be sold in stores; the other seasons that have been released are only available from Amazon.com (and not from Amazon.ca). I have both the first and seventh seasons, and am hoping to be able to order some of the others from Amazon.com in the near future.

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It was early September 2001. Survivor had debuted the summer before and the second cycle of the series had kicked off after the Super Bowl in September 2001. The American version of Big Brother had aired in the Summer of 2000, and was revitalised in the summer of 2001 to make it more like Survivor and less like every other version of Big Brother in the world. There were a flood of competition series following Survivor and Big Brother, shows like Temptation Island, The Mole, and Boot Camp. In the summer of 2001 FOX’s latest reality series Murder In Small Town X was won by a young New York Fire Department paramedic named Ángel Juarbe Jr. Fall 2001 would feature several new competition shows, but two stood out. One was called Lost and was to air on NBC. It was produced by Conan O’Brian’s production company Conaco. The other was called The Amazing Race, and would debut on CBS.

Lost debuted on September 5th. It was a dismal production. The premise had three teams of two people who had never met before – along with a cameraman – deposited in the Mongolian desert with a small amount of money and instructions to get to the Statue of Liberty in New York, without resorting to contacting a US embassy. That was it, no tasks, no way to get money, no way to communicate with locals who didn’t speak English. One team eventually made it to New York, while another team decided to contact the US embassy and were disqualified. Lost was, in my opinion a dismal show. The contestants weren’t particularly attractive and they really didn’t have any quality that made you identify with them. The Gobi Desert setting was about all anyone saw of any country in the show was basically a featureless wasteland. But maybe the least attractive part of the show may have been that the contestants were essentially forced to beg for everything they got. The net result was, as I’ve said, dismal.

I mention Lost because its story is tied to The Amazing Race if only because Lost got it wrong while The Amazing Race got it right. Lost looked at every convention of the competition series – the competitions, the eliminations – and chose to ignore them. The Amazing Race looked at those same conventions and embraced them, but embracing them in a different sort of way.

The first episode ever of The Amazing Race opens with host Phil Keoghan standing atop a building with the New York skyline behind him. He explains that eleven teams are about to embark on a journey around the world. The teams are shown being driven in a bus into Manhattan and finally to Bathesda Fountain in Central Park. The teams are:

1. Frank & Margarita, a separated couple with a young child.
2. Paul & Amie, an engaged couple hoping to see how their relationship will handle the strain of The Race.
3. Leslie & Kim, a pair of Texas school teachers and roommates.
4. Lenny & Karyn, a dating couple; Lenny hopes to get the money he need to buy the ring that is appropriate for her.
5. Dave & Margharetta, retired grandparents who have been married for 40 years – he was a former fighter pilot.
6. Matt & Ana, a married couple who met in the US Army.
7. Joe & Bill, aka Team Guido (they named themselves after their Chihuahua dog) life partners who have been together for 14 years.
8. Pat & Brenda, two working mothers out for the adventure of their lifetime.
9. Rob & Brennan, best friends and lawyers.
10. Nancy & Emily, a conservative mother and her adventurous daughter.
11. Kevin & Drew, best friends and former fraternity brothers.

With the teams at the fountain and the introductions completed Phil arrives to explain some of what they need to know about The Race. There are eight elimination points along the race. Arrive at one of those last and you will be eliminated. Along the course of the Race are route markers where they have to pick up instructions. Along the way there are various tasks they have to accomplish; some are mental while others are physical. There first instructions are waiting at the top of the stair at the fountain. And with that he starts The Race.

The teams thunder up the steps…well with the exception of Kevin & Drew who sort of amble up the steps at a walking pace. And why not. After all, when the teams reach the top they discover that they have to fly to Johannesburg South Africa on one of three specific flights; an Alitalia flight, a SwissAir Flight, and a South African Airways flight. So the first task for most of the non-New York based teams is to figure out which airport to go to – Newark, La Guardia, or JFK (the correct answer is JFK) – and figure out how to get there. They’ve only been given $90 for this leg of The Race to cover everything except airline tickets, so some budget minded teams try to take the subway. Well actually there were only two teams that took the subway, Paul & Amie and Matt & Ana. (Apparently it was slower and more complicated to use the New York subway system to get to JFK than it is now with the introduction of the AirTrainJFK shuttle service which connects with the A, the E and the J subway lines.)

Team Guido arrive at the South African Airlines counter first ahead of Frank & Margarita, much to the consternation of Frank; Frank being upset at not being first even when being first doesn’t matter a bit will be a recurring theme not only in this episode but in the entire series. Then again so will Team Guido’s constant delight at being ahead of everyone…even when it doesn’t matter. What we didn’t see was the various other teams checking in at the airline counters, and while we did hear at least one team being surprised that the five sets of seats at South African went so quickly, we didn’t actually see it happen. The team’s flights were as follows:
South African: Rob & Brennan, Joe & Bill, Frank & Margarita, Pat & Brenda, Lenny & Karyn
SwissAir: Leslie & Kim, Dave & Margharetta
Alitalia: Paul & Amie, Matt & Ana, Nancy & Emily, Kevin & Drew

Arriving in Johannesburg the teams pick up their next clue from a guy holding a Yellow and White flag in the airport, not unlike those flags sometimes carried by tour guides trying to get their flock together. They have to drive to another smaller airport in the Johannesburg area, Landseria Airport, and reserve places on one of four charter flights with Ryan-Lake air to an unknown destination. The resultant footage shows the various teams from the South African Airlines flight jockeying for position while driving to the other airport. Eventually Frank & Margarita arrive at the office of the airline seemingly in first place only to find…Team Guido finishing up their reservations. This is too much for Frank who lets out a scream after getting their reservations that seems to attract the attention of one of the airport employees. The final shot in this sequence is Bill and Joe heading for what seems to be a room rented for the teams by the show, looking incredibly smug…as they frequently do.

There are four charter flights to take the teams to the small airport at Livingstone Zambia. The show doesn’t make clear who is on each flight although it is clear that the first one carries Rob & Brennan, Joe & Bill and Frank & Margarita. Upon arriving there the teams need to pick an SUV and find the “smoke that thunders.” They have the choice of using a local driver who came with the vehicle or driving themselves (although I believe that the driver stays with each vehicle whether he drove or not). Rob & Brennan immediately ask the driver how much he’ll charge them and he tells them $50. They immediately decide to drive themselves without engaging in the ancient art of haggling to reduce the price (previously they had stiffed their cab driver in New York, demanding all of their change back). Most of the other teams had No matter whether the teams drive themselves or are driven by locals, they have to get directions to every location they need to go to from other people. The drivers have been instructed not to answer questions about where they have to go. Some of the teams are aware that the “smoke that thunders” refers to Victoria Falls, which is the principal tourist attraction in Livingstone Zambia.

Their destination is “the Knife’s Edge,” a scenic overlook of Victoria Falls that requires the racers to cross a small foot bridge that is drenched in the spray from the falls. There are clues at the overlook wrapped in plastic, but most of the people rip them open immediately. As a result the ink on most of the clues runs a bit. The clue tells teams to go to Abseil Zambia at Batoka Gorge. There is also a Fast Forward option available. Teams who get the Fast Forward are able to immediately go to the next Pit Stop where teams have to spend a mandatory 12 hour rest period. Rob & Brennan immediately decide to go for the Fast Forward even though a team can only use the Fast Forward once. In this case the Fast Forward requires them to find “The Boiling Pot,” a place below the falls where the current has carved a sort of pool that in high water features enormous swirls and boiling turbulence (according to Wikipedia, it is also where debris sometimes including animals and people that have been swept over the falls can be found). The way to the Boiling Pot is a steep footpath which Rob & Brennan are sure no other team will attempt. They’re wrong as Dave & Margharetta, the oldest people in the race, also make it down to the Boiling Pot, only to find the Fast Forward gone.

While Rob & Brennan go ahead to the Pit Stop at Songwe Village the other teams have to find Abseil Zambia. What followed can probably be described as a mix of a comedy of errors, a comedy of miscommunication and a case of two peoples separated by a common language. And the biggest thing is that it probably all could have been resolved if the Racers had done something as simple as picking up some local tourism pamphlets (assuming any were available). Of course at the time the viewers were at as much of a loss as the Racers, but ten years later a little Internet research shows the depth of the misunderstanding.

To fully understand what is going on, it is useful to refer to a map on the Abseil Zambia website. It shows some of the key tourist destinations and landmarks in the area, and while it isn’t a cartographically accurate map it does show most of what the teams need to know. The instructions say to go to Abseil Zambia at Batoka Gorge. The problem is that they are extremely vague directions because Batoka Gorge is essentially the canyon that the Zambezi River flows through once it passes over Victoria Falls. there are six gorges that come off the river on the Zambian side. They apparently represent the location where the Falls had been in the past. The First Gorge is where the Falls are today. The Second Gorge is the location of the Boiling Pot, where Rob & Brennan and Dave & Margharetta went for the Fast Forward clue. The Third Gorge is the location of a power plant on the Zambian side. Abseil Zambia is located at the Fifth Gorge. And Songwe Village, the Pit Stop for this leg is located at the Sixth or Songwe Gorge; called that because the little Songwe River flows through it into the Zambezi.

Maybe the best way to explain this is to imagine people who have never visited Manhattan and know nothing about New York. They get instructions to go to Pier 92 on at Hudson River. Not knowing anything about New York they ask locals for directions, but they decide that the important part of the instruction isn’t Pier 92, it’s Hudson River, so they ask for directions to Hudson River. So the New Yorkers give them directions to the Hudson River but not specifically to Pier 92. Some of them actually do give directions to Pier 92 and include a local landmark that everyone in New York knows. It might even be included on local tourist brochures. The trouble is that the name of the local landmark is so generic that it sounds as though it could be any of a number of places, even though the name that the New Yorker uses is the correct name for the landmark. The person looking for Pier 92 comes away thinking that New Yorkers are stupid and that they have to find Pier 92 on their own, thereby leading them to blunder around Manhattan, while the local people wonder why these tourists are so dense that they can’t follow simple instructions.

Not all teams have trouble with directions. Bill & Joe seem to have no trouble at all finding Abseil Zambia for example, but for Kevin & Drew there is nothing but problems. Drew, the more affable of the pair – at least in this stage – buys a guide book which causes Kevin to to blow up at him (for spending money). Later Drew stops a bus to get directions and the driver tells them to turn left at “the big tree.” This sounds like nonsense to Kevin, and even worse was that Drew got out of the car to ask. And while the directions do sound vague, I would like to refer you to the map from Abseil Zambia which shows one of the major landmarks to be “Big Tree Lookout Post” (it’s apparently a large and ancient Baobab Tree). However the landmark isn’t of any use to them. Next they stop at a building where they try to get directions. Another team having troubles are Paul & Amy who go down one road and then apparently reverse course and think they see a sign (although the camera doesn’t show the sign that they apparently see). Matt & Ana stop to talk to a woman and ask her if this is “Batoka George” but she doesn’t give them much in the way of directions, or maybe she indicates that this whole area is part of Batoka Gorge – we’ll never really know because Ana almost immediately states that “she doesn’t know.” They pass a man walking down the road and they don’t even stop because they immediately assume that “he doesn’t know.” In an interview Matt said that “they might understand some words like ‘Gorge’ but they didn’t know nothing.” Well maybe (although English is the official language of Zambia), but at least they weren’t lost, and they weren’t asking very generic directions. In the car (before the interview) Ana is exasperated, wondering how people can live someplace and not know where anything is. As I’ve said this wasn’t a case of them not know where things are but of the Racers asking the wrong questions.

The first teams to reach the Abseil Zambia location are faced with a Detour, the choice of two tasks with different advantages and disadvantages. The choice here is “Air” or “Land.” In “Land” teams have to follow a path down to the bottom of the gorge to get their next clue. In “Air” teams first have to ride a zipline to the other side of the gorge and then use the “Gorge Swing” to get to the bottom of the gorge. While several of the teams call this a “Bungee Jump” it isn’t because the person making the jump isn’t dropping vertically they’re swinging like a pendulum. Bill & Joe are the first teams to make the jump, and Frank & Margarita see at least part of the action. Margarita isn’t sure that she can. It’s at this point that Frank sort of pushes her physically a few times, which would lead to controversy a day or two after the episode aired when Rosie O’Donnell (whose syndicated talk show was huge at the time) called him a “wife beater” for the way he treated Margarita. Viewed in context however it seems playful, and certainly not at the same level as at least one contestant in a later season, particularly given the way that he embraces her once she actually makes the jump. Other teams soon cross the zipline and then make the leap. Perhaps the most endearing are Dave  & Margharetta; she thinks the zipline was “way cool” while Dave tells the man helping him to put on the harness that “that’s one heck of a woman over there,” with obvious love. On the other hand the dark haired Texas teacher (I never was able to tell Leslie and Kim apart) claimed to have trouble holding up the harness. She literally said “I’m not good at holding things.” Considering that she said at the beginning that her biggest fear on the Race was “dying” this didn’t bode well for her. Nancy & Emily enjoy the crossing, though they enjoy being ahead of Paul & Amie even more. Paul & Amie are perhaps the funniest people at this stage of the Race. Amie is determined to do Air no matter what Paul wants to do, while Paul is convinced that they’re in last and – not for the last time – thinks maybe they should just quit. Throughout this task, Amie is the intrepid one while Paul is the self-described “puss.” His expression after crossing the zipline and finding out that “that was just the warm-up” is only surpassed when he finds out what the real thing is. But perhaps the defining moment of the episode was when Kevin & Drew arrive (in last place at this point) and Drew jumps. Kevin shouts out to his friend “Swing you fat bastard, swing!”

Shortly after Frank & Margarita complete the detour – at least in the way the episode has been edited – Rob & Brennan arrive at Songwe Village, which despite the name isn’t an African village but rather a small resort on the edge of Songwe Gorge styled to look like an African village, but with many modern conveniences including what are described as the “best baths in Africa. (According to the link posted here, the resort was destroyed in 2008 and there were no plans to rebuild it, however other websites I’ve looked at indicate that it is still in operation; either the resort has been rebuilt – which is to be hoped for – or those sites haven’t been updated since before the fire.) The other teams obviously took longer, and again directions appear to have been a major problem for some teams although it wasn’t shown. Clearly though last place finishers Matt & Ana got horribly lost. The teams partied into the night but they were apparently all asleep by the time that Matt & Ana rolled into Songwe Village to be greeted by the local greeter, and host Phil Keoghan. They had the dubious honour of being the first team ever to be eliminated on The Amazing Race.

The order of finish was:

1. Rob & Brennan
2. Bill & Joe
3. Frank & Margarita
4. Lenny & Karyn
5. Pat & Brenda
6. Kim & Leslie
7. Dave & Margharetta
8. Paul & Amie
9. Kevin & Drew
10. Nancy & Emily
11. Matt & Ana (Eliminated)

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The first episode of The Amazing Race came second in its time slot, losing to the season finale of Fear Factor on NBC. The Amazing Race had an 11.5/11 rating with 11.8 million viewers and a 5.1/14 rating in the 18-49 demographic. By comparison, Fear Factor had an 8.8/13 rating overall with 11.9 million viewers and 5.5/15 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Also for comparison, Lost finished first in its timeslot opposite Big Brother, with a 7.5/12 rating but lost to Big Brother in the 18-49 demographic with a 4.1/13 rating to Big Brother’s 4.6/14. Both shows were repeated later in the week; Lost on Saturday September 8th, where it had a 2.6/9 rating overall, and The Amazing Race on Sunday September 9th where it had a 5.9/10 rating and finished third in its timeslot to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and a Simpsons repeat.

There are several things viewers would notice from the this season of The Amazing Race as compared with almost every season since. There are no formal clue boxes and the flags indicating the locations of the clues are Yellow and White rather than the familiar Yellow with Red Stripes. There doesn’t seem to have been that much of an effort to indicate the position that the teams were in at most stages of the leg; Phil only mentions the team positions once during  the episode, and the editing doesn’t give us a clear picture of where the teams are relative to each other. Indeed it sometimes appears that they are all bunched together. There are no prizes for finishing first in a leg; this was actually an innovation not seen until the fifth or sixth season as I recall. Finally Phil doesn’t greet any of the teams except the last team to finish – everyone else is met by the local greeter alone.

In watching the first episode of The Amazing Race I can’t help but thinking that it isn’t as polished as the show would become even as soon as the second season. Not knowing the actual positions of the teams at various stages of the episode made things more than a bit confusing, and in my opinion detracted from the story-telling component of the show. And yet there were a lot of good things to say about the episode and the show as a whole. For one thing, it was brighter and more adventurous than Lost. It seemed like a lot more fun than the NBC show. Unlike Big Brother and Survivor it wasn’t confined to a single location; the first episode featured three countries – the USA, South Africa, and Zambia. It didn’t just seem like something the average person might be able to do, it seemed like something they’d want to do, particularly when compared to the dismal conditions on Lost or the sometimes disgusting tasks on Fear Factor. And of course it had the most important commodity for any reality-competition series, great casting.

Season 1 of The Amazing Race is available on DVD. Someone has also posted full episodes of the series on YouTube. Here is episode 1.