The Nine Biggest Problems With The Amazing Race

WARNING: This post contains passing references to location spoilers for the current season (TAR14). I'm only mentioning the countries themselves, not the actual locations inside them, and I have no idea which teams make it how far. And the route map has been released, so they aren't really a spoiler anymore anyway. But whatever. If you still don't want to know, skip to the bold heading with "Problem The Second: FEWER LEGS".

Okay, so. It's The Amazing Race. You remember The Amazing Race, right? It was a race, it was amazing. Mostly. (On a related note, hi, Flo!) Now, it's not "amazing", the teams are barely competent enough to write their own names, let alone "race", and I can't recall the last time I saw a "the" anywhere on this show. It started out so well, amazing us instantly with the sights of Victoria Falls, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and a rat-worshipping temple. So, quite frankly, what the FUCK happened to this show to get to a point where watching people almost literally risk life and limb to get cheese down a hill constitutes the height of classy entertainment?

I think that there are numerous glaring problems with the show now, and most of this must be fixed for the show to become truly enjoyable again. So, here goes. Feel free to comment and I'll try and reply:

Problem The First: LOCATIONS

Let's be totally honest here for a second. Yeah, I know that after fourteen seasons, you're not going to be able to get a route made up of completely new countries. Hell, excluding the very first season, we've only ever been able to do that once in the show's history, in TAR3. But at the same time, nor should we be visiting the same countries over and over. We've only got one out of twelve legs in a new country this season -- the lowest ever. Even Family Edition had two before deciding that actual culture was clearly too much for the Weavers to handle. Without giving too much away about the actual locations within said countries, the last eight international legs of this season are in countries that are well over-used by the show. Two in Russia (after we've just had two, and especially after the way the last one turned out?!), one in India (for the third consecutive season, the fourth time in the last five seasons, and the eighth time overall?!), two in Thailand, and an unprecedented THREE in China (including two in a city we've already seen before)? And the finish is in an American location the race has gone before, too. Not to mention a third LA start in a row. Famewhores, stadiums, the military, and gas guzzlers. Really, producers, we get it. Move on already. In addition, we also pass up the always-interesting Africa once again, meaning that since TAR7, we've had an average of less than one leg a season there!

Problem The Second: FEWER LEGS

In the aftermath of the thoroughly poorly-planned Amazing Race: All-Stars (or, rather, "Amazing" "Race": "All"-"Stars"), one of the things producers tried to fix was ditching two legs. Whether that was to get rid of two non-elimination legs and make the race more urgent or to try and have the till-then-seldom-boring eleventh leg be the finale is still unknown, but in either case, it was a big failure in that the final legs are when the phenomenon known as Killer Fatigue usually begins to set in. The last two seasons, we've seen hardly any of it. Yeah, there was one little incident with Dallas, but unlike with Heather and Eve, the footage I've seen actually makes me almost believe his story of the crew being partly to blame for that. In actual "Why This Sucks" news, though, not only does it get rid of the KF, therefore making it easier for people like Nick and Starr to remain faker than Ryan Seacrest's need for a girlfriend, but it also gets rid of some fairly major chances for character development. Imagine how bad TAR3 would have been if you ditched the final two non-US legs in Vietnam. Or if you lost TAR4's Malaysia legs. Or TAR5's Egypt legs. Had any of those three situations actually happened, I don't think the race would still be around today. And I can't help but wonder how good the seasons could have been with the two extra legs.

Problem The Third: PREDICTABLE PLANNING

I don't know how related this is to the previous problem this one is, but the legs themselves are getting too damn predictable. We know they're going to hold the non-eliminations until it's practically guaranteed that we're due for one. We know that the flying portion is always going to be at the very start of the episode (aside from final legs and Chile in TAR:AS[s], we've had a Roadblock or Detour before a flight or other long-distance transport exactly twice since the end of TAR6, and only a handful of other times have we visited a new destination in the starting area before flying out). We know that there's no overnight waiting in the middle of the leg any more. Now, that last one might actually be a good thing, but there should be a middle ground between the way TAR13 turned out, with the same teams leaping ahead again and again, and TAR6, where almost everything was meaningless because you'd have to wait for the Pit Stop to open. And I think TAR3 reached this point almost perfectly. Sure, all of the first eight legs had mid-leg bunching, but in many cases they were stratified departures or actual transport issues, and thus were not as glaringly obvious as what we'd get nowadays. Sigh.

Problem The Fourth: FAST FORWARDS AND OTHER IDIOTIC DEVICES

Unlike almost all of the other competitive reality shows out there, The Amazing Race was designed to reward your own competence at completing unfamiliar tasks, not to see how well you would do if this was a game about alliances, backstabbing, and general skulduggery. Until, that is, TAR5. The Yield was a dumbass idea, built solely to capitalise on all the in-fighting by TAR4's more pathetic cast members. The U-Turn, which replaced it in TAR12, was marginally better, but only because it didn't require the victims to stand around like the vengeful hockey goons they'll no doubt become when the full moon rises. The less said about the Intersection, the better. But the biggest problem here, and this manifested itself most clearly in the ninth and thirteenth seasons, has been the reduction of the Fast Forward to its current format. In the classic seasons, it was a saving grace for a team that was injured (Oswald and Danny), or a team having trouble with another task (Gary and Dave), or teams playing strategically (Kevin & Drew), or teams who used it to get out of last place (Tian & Jaree). Nowadays, there seems to be only one way to use it: When You Are In First Place. And this makes it very anticlimactic, because the teams behind can't save themselves, the teams in front just get further ahead, and it winds up being an annoying sideshow, especially when there's no chance for many of the Fast Forwards to be competitive.

Problem The Fifth: TASKS THAT SUCK

For whatever reason, the task planning since about TAR9 has gone downhill faster than a speeding hot deaf guy carrying cheese wheels on his back. There are the tasks that have nothing to do with the actual local culture at all but which seem to be designed for cheap laughs or thrills -- yes, rapping, I'm popping an eyebrow in YOUR direction. There are tasks that are boring, like searching newspapers for clues in ads. There are tasks that even border on offensive, such as the Kuwait oil fire ("If we can't have our gas cheap, then neither can you!") or the Maori tattoo matching ("Look! These people have INK on their FACES! Isn't that funny? Isn't it? ...What do you mean, 'NO!'?"). And then, on a level of suck so far below the rest of this it should probably be listed on its own, is the Traveloshitty Gnome.

As I mentioned on TWoP, the bungy jumping RoadBlock in the first leg of TAR14 acts as a metaphor for the way the show is happening. You don't have any relationship to the local culture (the sport having been invented in New Zealand), you don't have any skill necessary, you don't even get the views of the stunning Swiss scenery, because it's all taking place against a giant concrete wall.

Problem The Sixth: SELF-DRIVING AND NAVIGATION

Well, just look at TAR13. The only self-driving we saw was the driving to the airport in the premiere and the stuff in New Zealand. And aside from that, the only other stuff was guiding a crane driver in Kazakhstan and navigating the Moscow subway. Tough as that last one may be, four times in the entire race -- two of which shouldn't take more than half-an-hour each -- is just not enough.

Problem The Seventh: HEROES VERSUS ZEROES

I know there's no way to truly know how well people are going to do until they're actually racing, but the producers should have the sense of mind to not load the cast with seven or eight teams who quite clearly have no chance of winning and only three or four serious contenders. For several seasons now, it's been fairly clear which teams will do well right from near the beginning. And that's a huge issue, which unfortunately makes the better teams seem so much better than they actually are. Nick and Starr won more legs than any American team in the show's history, but I'm not going to treat them as the best team ever when they were competing against so many teams they had no chance of ever losing to. Towards the end of TAR13, I was seriously hoping for screechy, Caroline-Rhea-esque Tina to win, because it would be the only way the season could survive its poor casting. In the other two scenarios, either Nick and Starr win and prove how lopsided the casting was, which they did; or Dan and Andrew win and prove how bad the casting has gotten that these two incompetent twits could win. Ken and Tina? A little bit of both, but in smaller, less-significant doses. Let's hope TAR14 is more even.

Problem The Eighth: RECRUITING

Firstly, here, a distinction does have to be made. There's a difference between "stunt casting", which basically means that people were allowed to skip the normal audition process because the producers can guarantee them a spot on the show, like what happened with Rob and Lambuh, and "recruiting", which is what this show has become reliant on. As reports have... reported, TAR14 contestant Kris was approached by casting lady and TAR5 contestant Erika at a bar, and pressured to apply. Then, she kept calling to remind him until he actually did, in what would in any other circumstance be considered as harassment. Now, obviously, he did it voluntarily, even if reluctantly. Nobody's trying to argue that point. But consider this: If you placed him and Amanda, who were essentially hand-picked by Erika, against adorable Minnesotan social-misfit librarians Christine and Ursula, who applied because they're genuine fans of the show who discuss it to death every week, which one do you think Erika's going to support, regardless of how interesting the librarians are? And that there is the problem. It's become increasingly obvious that the people who get cast aren't huge fans of the show, and frequently have little to no interest in the trip aside from to further their own careers in the entertainment industry. Especially if they are good looking and from California. I mean, there were four people on three separate teams in TAR12 who went to the same damn high school. At the same time. Erika and chief casting coward Lynne Spiegel Spillman have both attributed the rise of recruiting to two factors -- not enough interesting people applying, and the fact that other reality shows like Survivor (which they are both also responsible for, and which has also had horrible casts recently) are doing it. Firstly, TAR's Emmy wins have consistently proven that it's a step above the other shows, and thus should not have to resort to this. Secondly, if you can't find enough interesting people in the thousands of audition tapes sent in, then YOU'RE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH. At this point, I'm seriously beginning to think I could cast this show better. And that's without ever looking at anybody's audition videos on Youtube. Well, one team's tape. But they already got on the show and won, so that doesn't count.

Problem The Ninth: EDITING

What is up with the show's editing these days? Remember when the teams were shown enjoying themselves on the experience, and when the race was so cool you just wanted to be there, doing it yourself? Now, all we seem to see is the teams mocking how poor and dirty and stinky locals are. As a corollary to this, the contestants are now edited as one-dimensional stereotypes rather than the well-rounded characters they are. Well, aside from actual one-dimensional stereotypes BJ and Tyler, that is. Think about how much we learned about bland TAR3 models Derek and Drew. Now, think about how little we learned about supposedly-interesting TAR13 runners-up Dan and Andrew.

And that, my friends, is where I'll leave the bitching for today.