End of The Amazing Race

The first season of the CBS television program The Amazing Race ends tonight with the grand finale.

Since the program started, we have been Big Fans. Although, as Edward Hasbrouck points out in an interesting series of columns, the travel in the program is a distant relative of “real” life on the road (and how could it be, with TV cameras on all the time, and a time limit?), I find the show appeals to my latent desire to move. It’s like the Reader’s Digest of travel, and sometimes Reader’s Digesting something can be useful (and even entertaining).

Like the rest of North America we were biggest fans of Kevin and Drew, the rollicking New Yorkers who were eliminated two weeks ago. Now that it’s down to the finish with three teams, I’m torn between the Rob/Brennan team and the Frank/Margarita team. I am not torn, however, by the quite pleasure I take at the demise of the Joe/Bill team (aka “Team Guido” after their dog); they have been consistently snotty, and deserve to lose (of course by some miracle, they could still win, even though they’re a full 24 hours behind the others at this point).

Catherine and I agree that of all the “reality TV” shows, The Amazing Race is the only one we’d relish participating in. Unfortunately it looks they’ve already cast the next episode. I suppose there’s always next time. Still unclear as to whether having wee Oliver strapped to our back would slow us down.

Be sure to watch CBS tonight, 10 p.m. Atlantic Time, for the thrilling conclusion.