I watched this week’s episode of The Amazing Race over at my mom’s house, and didn’t bother to blog away while we watched.
It was just as well, because there isn’t much to talk about.
It was obvious from the beginning that this, the leg before the finale, would be a non-elimination week. There were four teams left, and there would be four teams left at the beginning of next week’s two-hour season finale. This is one of the many ways that TAR is suffering in its later seasons – predictability.
Non-elimination legs extend the season, but there are too many of them. In fact, I’d like to see just ONE in a whole season. One. One chance to stay alive, which could come at any point. Early, late, mid-race. It would change every season. It would be a genuine surprise to viewers and to the racers themselves. What a pipe dream.
It’s too bad that this was a non-elimination leg, because had it not it might have been the best episode of the season. It had so many great elements – fun challenges that were more difficult than they seemed, bad decisions, teams rising and falling in the standings. For so much of the episode, Tim and Marie were far behind. But then the Afghanimals made a few huge mistakes – switching Detours too many times, sucking at looking for stuff – and ended up in last place. That would have been a big surprise, but instead we all just had to shrug.
Overall, I think this season of The Amazing Race was a total dud. But it wasn’t just casting, everything was off. What do you guys think, has the show lost its mojo?