TV Show Review: The Amazing Race - Season 36

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: They go to some amazing places

Cons: The race part is rather boring

The Bottom Line:

South America

Plays host to boring season

For diehards only

The Locations Were Amazing.  The Race, Not So Much

My entire family loves The Amazing Race, so we considered one of the positives from the recent strikes to be the fact that we got two seasons of the show in the 2023-2024 TV season.  Unfortunately, season 36 of the show was a disappointment, especially after the return to Amazing Race form that was season 35.

This season had to overcome the fact that it was filmed in the fall of 2022.  Countries were just starting to really open up again after Covid, so all the filming and planning restrictions we’d seen in seasons 33 and 34 were still in place.  While the show didn’t advertise it, the contestants were all traveling on chartered flights instead of finding their own way.  And the teams were starting each leg in heats.  That meant there was little chance for a team that was behind to catch up.  There were some ranking changes, but they were few and far between.  This was my complaint about the other Covid seasons.  With little in the way of taxis and public transportation being used, the teams tended to go from one task to another without any of the drama that makes the show fun.

This really hurt season 36 since season 35, which was filmed in the spring of 2023, was back to the original format where teams had to book their own flights and had bottlenecks were teams could all catch up.  This season had none of those.

Additionally, the teams weren’t that inspiring.  It was obvious early on who the strongest teams were, and so the show had little in the way of suspense or surprises.  There were several teams I was actively rooting against, but the rest of the teams were okay.  There just wasn’t anything to make us want to root for them.  Once again, the episodes were 90 minutes.  In this case, I’m not sure if that hurt or helped, especially since the season was originally created for the traditional 60 minute run time.

On the other hand, they went to some amazing places.  The season started outside the US, starting in Mexico.  From there, we spent most of the season in South America, wrapping up in the Caribbean before returning to Philadelphia.  There were a couple of tasks that I didn’t quite follow, and the teams seemed to avoid those, so we didn’t get to see how it was supposed to work.  The armchair travel is always fun even if the racing parts aren’t.

My family pretty much agrees with me on this.  While this was better than no season of The Amazing Race, it was definitely at or near the bottom of the show.  If you are a casual fan, skip this one in favor of a more entertaining season.  But if you’ve seen them all but this one, turn it on keeping in mind the weaknesses.