A Few Too Many Twists
This past spring saw season 37 of The Amazing Race. The producers tried to mix things up with some returning and some new twists to the formula. It made for a different season that was still mostly entertaining.
If you aren’t familiar with the premise, it features teams of two who go on a race around the world. Each week, they have to follow directions to new locations and countries and complete tasks along the way to the pit stop, where host Phil Keoghan gives the winning team a prize and lets the losing team know they’ve been eliminated.
Honestly, that right there is really enough for me. I love seeing where the teams go, which this season included Hong Kong, Dubi, Japan, and Portugal, among others. Watching the teams trying to deal with navigating without their phones or dealing with transportation creates some drama and unpredictability. It’s not like other reality shows where the contestants can game the game without any twists. All it can take is one unlucky break for a good team to go from first to last.
But the producers decided to really shake things up this season by adding one twist per leg. Some were familiar to fans, like the UTurn, which requires a team to do both sides of a Detour. We also saw the return of the Express Pass and Fast Forward. Others were new, like the Fork in the Foad, where teams were on parallel tracks after the Detour. I feel like some of these weren’t well thought out. Others fizzled because of the teams more than the producers not thinking things through. It will be interesting to see which if any of these make a comeback in future seasons.
The other thing that can be a problem with a season is teams that fight. Now, I get it. Your body clock gets off as you travel so you are tired. And you are stressed as you are racing. Everyone is going to get frustrated and snap at times. But some teams seem to fight constantly as the season goes along. That’s what I find hard to watch. And we get a couple of those teams here. There’s actually a very clear cut distinction between teams at one point. Both teams were frustrated by what was happening to them. One team was taking it out on each other. The other was trying to help each other deal with the frustration so they could focus. And that’s the difference between teams I root to lose and teams I enjoy watching. You really can see who has a healthy relationship and who doesn’t.
But, as I say, the locations are fabulous and the tasks are mostly fun to watch. I wish we got more than one season of this show per year since I enjoy it so much.
Like with the other recent seasons, the episodes were 90 minutes with commercials. This allows us to follow the teams a little better, which I enjoy.
Overall, season 37 is another one that fans of The Amazing Race will enjoy. If you want a different travel show, be sure to check this one out.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for stopping by. In order to combat spam, I moderate most comments. I'll get to your comment as soon as I can.