My special correspondent on this case alerted me last night that The Amazing Race, Season 4 starts Thursday night on CBS. Perfect antidote for someone like me with the travel DTs.
I can’t for the life of me figure out the allure in being identified as the Dating 12 Years / Virgins team. Personally, early out I’m rooting for the Air Traffic Controllers team. Although I suppose the ability to without ones urges for twelve years might trump the ability to control the complicated dance of landing airplanes.
Derek and I were talking last night about how interesting it would be to see a “The Making of the Amazing Race” show, given the complicated logistics of the show. You can get a taste of this in this interview with host Phil Keoghan.
And I assume that Edward Hasbrouck will resume his weekly commentary about each episode, which is always a good read.
Comments
Of all the “reality” shows on television, Amazing Race is my favourite. While the contestants on all these types of shows prostitute themselves to some extent, I refuse to watch the ones (bachelor, date my mom, etc) where the prostitution of oneself seems to be the point. What’s great about The Amazing Race (apart from the quick-tour-education of world travel) is that the contestants really don’t have much opportunity to manipulate the game (nor is there much opportunity for the producers to manipulate the audience). With games like Survivor (which I still like despite its faults) and Big Brother, the contestants (their manipulations and personalities) *become* the game. The *story* of each week is very much decided by the producers. With Amazing Race, the race is *always* the story and the personalities involved are merely secondary to the action of trying to finish ahead of at least one other team. For entertaining recaps of many television shows, I turn to Television Without Pity (www.televisionwithoutpity.com) or, less so, Planet Socks (www.planetsocks.com)which has pretty funny recaps of Survivor episodes.