Amazing Race, "This Is How You Lose a Million Dollars": Girls in bikinis, boys with surfboards

Quick thoughts on "The Amazing Race" season finale -- but really, thoughts about the difficulty of sticking with a reality competition show once the player/team you like is eliminated -- coming up just as soon as I change clothes in the back of a taxi...

Victor and Tammy won, which seemed the right outcome based on what I watched of this season. Victor could be overbearing and/or a weasel, but after his meltdown in Transylvania, he worked much better with his sister, and they tended to race harder and smarter than the competition.

Now, I say "based on what I watched" because my interest in the season dropped rapidly after Mel and Mike were eliminated. I'd put on each successive episode, sometimes make it to the end, sometimes not, and find it harder and harder to care, because I lacked either an emotional investment in another team or an admiration for them as pure Racers. (Tammy and Victor were good, but they weren't memorably good, or inventive; they just kept their mistakes, other than Transylvania, to a minimum.)

And that's become an increasing problem for me with virtually every reality show I used to follow more closely. The novelty of the genre in general and these formats in particular is long gone. So unless the show itself is irresistible in some way -- as, I hate to admit it, "American Idol" is for me, and as "Race" has (as it's focused more on character arcs and less on cool challenges and other tests of good vs. bad Racing) stopped being for me -- I have to develop some kind of allegiance to a contestant or team, and they have to last a long way, for me to keep watching. And the more of these shows I watch, the clearer it becomes that the chances of someone I like lasting to the end, let alone winning, are too small to make the time investment in the season as a whole.

"Survivor" already lost me as a concept where I'd seen every iteration I needed to see, and I thought "Race" had as well, until the casting of Mike White got me to give it another try. And for a few weeks, thanks to Mike and Mel, and to some legs that were better-designed than what we got as the season moved along, I got back into the franchise.

But barring the unlikelihood of the show casting another quasi-celebrity whose work and personality I've liked in the past, I suspect this will be the last season I watch on even a semi-regular basis.

What did everybody else think of the finale, and the season as a whole? Click here to read the full post

The Amazing Race, "Gorilla? Gorilla?? Gorilla???": Stay with the pack!

Very quick spoilers for last night's "The Amazing Race" coming right up...

Watching the episode on a DVR delay, I had a very bad feeling early on that Mel and Mike White were digging themselves too big a hole by choosing to look for the gorilla statue on their own when it was clear the other five teams were all traveling in a different direction. I had 17 other things I needed to watch, and didn't want to put one of those off just to suffer through the end of Team Schneebly, so I asked a friend who watched it live to tell me if my suspicions were correct. He said they were, I turned it off and got back to watching the new season of "In Treatment." (More on that later on the week.)

As Kisha and Jen pointed out a few episodes back, one of the elementary rules of racing is that, when in doubt, stay with the herd. Even if you're all wrong, you'll all be wrong together. But if you're wrong by yourself, you're screwed. The potential reward of being the first team to find the first clue of the leg doesn't come close to outweighing the huge risk of being by far the last team to find it.

Ah, well. Team Schneebly was my favorite, but I'm sure I'll be back next week, and for the rest of the season. Feel free to discuss all the parts of the episode I missed. Click here to read the full post

Amazing Race, "Alright, guys, we're at war!": Dreaming of painted elephants

Don't have much to say about last night's obligatory "The Amazing Race" stop in India (and am glad I mostly watch the show on CBS.com, as my recording at home was mostly Obama, thanks to the NCAA tournament pushing "60 Minutes" into the 8 o'clock hour), but I do want to make one quick point after the jump...

I again want to point out how awesome Mel White is in the way he debunks traditional modes of reality show behavior as unnecessary. I was already on board the Team Schneebly train after Mel refused to pray for the winds to change, because God has more important things to worry about than a game show, but now they're one of my favorite "Race" teams ever after Mel explained that being on a game show isn't an excuse to yell at cab drivers or other service people for working slowly. The man rules, and not just because he smoked all the young'uns on the Roadblock.

Was hoping the knuckleheaded brothers would finally go home, but it seemed fair that the flight attendants just missed surviving because they had to do the Speed Bump.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Amazing Race, "She's a little scared of stick, but I think she'll be okay!": The naked mile

Quick spoilers for last night's "The Amazing Race" coming up just as soon as I find a bride...

As Adam at Throwing Things points out, the design of this leg -- with the massive bunch at the start and three relatively simple and straightforward tasks -- meant there wasn't a lot of drama last night. Really, the only thing separating the three groups was who got lost and who didn't when leaving the train station, and then who chose the snowplow Detour (which seemed to have much less travel time) versus who chose the bride Detour. And with the season's first Non-Elimination Leg(*), even the ones who got lost at the train station didn't suffer too much from it. Perhaps the producers were hoping one player would balk at doing the run in their underwear to spice things up -- or simply thought that the spectacle of players running in their underwear would be enough to make us overlook a relatively pedestrian leg.

(*) Since I skipped the last few seasons, when the Speed Bump was introduced -- and it seems like a vast improvement on previous NEL penalties -- can anyone tell me how often teams who had to do it were able to survive that leg?

As the Race heads into India, where we're almost certainly going to see some meltdowns and at least one or two teams getting terribly lost, I'm trying to pick an obvious frontrunner, and I'm not sure I see one. Luke/Margie are the only team to win more than one leg, but everybody but the two sibling teams have won at least one. Nobody seems really superior physically to anyone else, except maybe the stuntmen, and they're so easily confused -- I loved Phil waving to them in frustration when they couldn't find the check-in mat -- that it doesn't matter. So we have a bunch of relatively equal teams that are mostly likable (other than Victor, who's a tool). No obvious heroes, and no obvious villains. My loyalty is still with Team Schneebly, but I could see this season going a lot of different ways and would be satisfied with almost any outcome. (One exception -- see previous, re: Victor and toolishness.)

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Amazing Race, "It was like a caravan of idiots": Blockheads with wood blocks

Spoilers for last night's "The Amazing Race" coming up just as soon as I see what Walter Koenig's up to...

Last week, it was clear early on who was going home, but there were enough entertaining things happening (notably Victor's meltdown) that it didn't much matter. This week, Kris and Amanda were more or less goners as soon as they got U-Turned -- given the way the leg was structured and how far along everybody else was, their only chance was if another team just couldn't unscramble "Chekhov" after hours and hours of trying -- and there wasn't enough else of interest to compensate for the lack of suspense.

I'm sorry to see the U-Turn back, by the way -- not because I think it's unfair, but because I get so sick and tired of other teams acting like it is, and getting all self-righteous about it when it's just another element of the game. Making it a blind U-Turn helped limit that, as did the fact that its victims are relatively level-headed and nice(*) and only belly-ached about it a little. But I'm not looking forward to the potential "How dare they?" reflex when it comes up again later in the race.

(*) It's kind of shocking how non-awful Kris and Amanda were, given how that type of team almost always turns out to be made up of one or two d-bags. As they seemed like the team to beat overall, it looks like Margie and Luke made a smart decision on both a micro (ensure that you're not eliminated on this leg) and macro (eliminate the biggest threat to win the million bucks) level.

Couple of other thoughts:

• I hate hate hate the decision to include previews for the episode we're about to watch at the end of the previouslies. I like watching the recap of the previous episodes because it sometimes frames things in ways I didn't notice before, but I'm going to have to either give it up or be real quick on the fast-forward button.

• Mark and Michael seem like nice guys, but they're really, really, colossally dumb.

• I loved the whip-pan from the Caravan of Idiots to the nearby repair sign, and obvious Team Schneebly found the situation funny as well.

• It amazes me that everybody first tried to do the wood stacking challenge, which seemed much trickier and more time-consuming than the construction one. (Though the latter turned out to have its own problems for the Caravan.) It wasn't quite as lopsided a choice as the one in the All-Stars season where almost everyone chose to haul bags of coal instead of giving manicures, but it was still pretty jaw-dropping.

• So far, I think they've done a good job of spending just enough time in the airports to tell us what we need to know. One group chose to connect one way, one group chose the other, and the first group got a huge lead because of that choice, even with the hours-of-operation bunch in Siberia. That's all we need, and no lingering on the annoying stuff.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Amazing Race, "I'm Not Wearing That Girls Leotoard!": Is it much further yet, Papa Smurf?

Spoilers for last night's "The Amazing Race" coming up just as soon as I find my fanny pack...

Well, you know the show's on a roll when they can put together an hour this entertaining and relatively tense even when it's clear from the 20-minute mark who's going home.

I tend to zone out during the airport scenes (which this episode had more of than the previous two), so I had to ask "Race" expert Linda Holmes to explain Brad and Victoria's mistake to me: rather than stick with the flight the majority of the teams were on, they took a flight that got in 25 minutes earlier, but with a tight connection. That's dumb, dumb racing. Too much risk for not remotely enough reward, and they got nailed for it, falling so far behind that there was no realistic way of catching up.

The last time I watched an episode like this was in the All-Stars season when Uchenna and Joyce got stuck 12 hours behind everyone else. Where that episode tried to make you forget that Uchenna and Joyce were even still in the competition, so there'd be some tension over who got to the mat, last night's show played fair and kept cutting back to Brad and Victoria as they methodically went through their hopeless quest to avoid elimination. And I think the producers did that because so many entertaining things were happening that the lack of suspense didn't much matter.

The highlight was obviously watching Tammy show the patience of a saint while dealing with Victor's monomaniacal insistence on taking them on the "Race" equivalent of the Bataan Death March, all while following markers that clearly had nothing to do with the show. I can see how the combination of Type-A personality, the older brother/younger sister relationship, and the reversal of plane fortune that saw them go from a big first place lead to middle of the pack all led to Victor's freak-out, but geez, guy -- at the very least, he could've apologized to her when they were on the mat with Phil.

The gymnastics Roadblock was fun, and the Detour was a rare instance of both tasks being physically arduous. (Though I guess the Gypsy one was a bit easier, since the locals were there to help.) And Team Schneebly came in first, thanks to Kris' goof with the fanny pack, so a good time was had by almost all.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Amazing Race, "Your Target Is Your Partner's Face": We don't have to pray just to make it today

Thanks to CBS finally getting the rights to put "The Amazing Race" up on their website, I was able to watch last night's episode this afternoon. Quick spoilers coming up just as soon as the winds change...

New season continues to be strong, and to reward me for my decision to give the franchise another chance. A minimum of airport drama, a minimum of jerkiness (though both are inevitable to some degree due to the format and the stress it creates), some well-constructed challenges and a few lucky twists of fate have all led to two very good episodes.

In particular, the drama with the shifting winds led to one of my favorite reality show moments ever, in Mel White's refusal to pray for them to change in his favor. It's such a staple of reality TV (and sports, for that matter) for people to crassly assume that God cares about who wins a game show (or a football game) and will reward whoever makes the loudest/earliest/most frequent prayers in His name, that it's so refreshing to hear someone instead believe that God has more important things to worry about. It sort of reminded me of David Cook's refusal to pimp out his dying brother for votes last season on "American Idol," in that reality TV has so lowered the bar for what we accept as human behavior in certain situations that it's almost startling to see people behave reasonably, or in any kind of manner that favors dignity over personal gain.

Even without the non-prayer, it was still a suspenseful sequence in which Mother Nature, combined with Mel's bad groin, created something far more entertaining than if the challenge had gone as planned. And while the Segway part of the Detour didn't seem exceedingly difficult, the pie-throwing was one of the more entertaining needle-in-a-haystack choices they've come up with.

I like that Steve got his on-camera moment of tenderness and support for Linda before they were eliminated, and even them snapping at each other on the drive to the pit stop didn't get in the way of that. (Again, racing makes people crabby sometimes.)

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Amazing Race 14: Go Team Schneebly!

After swearing off "The Amazing Race" (and, for that matter, "Survivor") a couple of seasons ago under the "I've seen all this franchise has to offer me" theorem, I checked out the premiere for two reasons: 1)One of the teams features screenwriter and sometime actor Mike White (aka Ned Schneebly, aka Kim Kelly's older brother, aka Buck), and 2)Several "Race"-heads whose opinions I trust, including Fienberg and Linda Holmes made it sound like this was one of the best season premieres in a long time. And so I watched, and I think I may have been sucked back in. A few reasons why after the jump...

• Though the bungee jump was in no way a game-changer (even if someone had needed a while to work up the nerve to go, no one else had the ability to jump the queue), it still looked awesome, even in standard-def, and was a reminder of the pure fun this show can be.

• The teams for the most part seem fairly likable, though I'm already done with the sibling lawyers. My rooting interest is obviously in Team Schneebly, but since I know they have no chance to win (the Race is heavily weighted in favor of more physically capable teams), I have a feeling I may be able to find some other groups to pull for.

• Phil signed "You are team number one!" for the deaf son and his mom! Big, fat, awwwwww for me from that one, even though I should have suspected he'd been working on his signing for just this occasion. One of a bunch of nice heart-warming moments.

• There was a minimum of time spent on drama at the airport, which I believe the producers have said was a change made to freshen up the franchise. As that was always one of my least favorite parts of the series -- it just reminded me of how much I hate the stress of air travel -- I'm in favor of the change.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

With so many shows debuting on Sunday -- including the entire Sunday lineups of ABC, CBS, Fox and Showtime, plus a couple of new HBO comedies -- I took the grab-bag approach to today's column, with quick-hit reviews of "Dexter," "The Simpsons," "Little Britain," "The Life and Times of Tim," "Californication," "The Unit" and "The Amazing Race."

As this is an absurdly busy time for me, the only one of those I'm going to do a separate post on for Sunday night is "Dexter." Feel free to use this post to comment on any or all of the other Sunday product (plus other shows I didn't write up, if you want). Click here to read the full post

The Amazing Race: Stop being such a jackass!

It usually takes me a few episodes to get into each season of "The Amazing Race," as there are too many teams and I lose track of which bullying alpha male I hate the most. And while the initial drive to the airport, zip line stunt, etc. slightly helps to differentiate the leaders from the followers, it feels too obligatory for me. No spoilers here, but feel free to talk about the outcome or any other impressions you had of the premiere. Click here to read the full post

Non-elimination Sunday

Brief spoilers for "The Amazing Race" and "Entourage" coming right up...

A very meh episode of "Amazing Race," and not just because it was a Non-Elimination Leg that kept the odious Eric and Danielle in the game. (You could tell they knew it was coming, too, judging by Eric's lack of urgency in the final minutes.) The Fast Forward required even less skill than the step-counting one from a few weeks ago; once Danny and Oswald agreed to do it, there was no real way for them to not complete it. The kung fu Detour looked very cool, but the ninjas seemed there for decoration and didn't really affect anyone's ability to do it. (Good on Charla, though, both for insisting they do it instead of that awful needle in a haystack choice, and for getting it done with minimal drama. Her cousin is grating and hypocritical and awful, but Charla doesn't seem that bad.) The two teams I like are in the lead, but I worry that Danny's carelessness with the money on the previous leg is going to haunt the Chas, unless they're handed a huge wad of cash at the start of the next leg and/or they have some really valuable stuff in their packs to sell.

When I was making my complaint that "Entourage" had turned into two different shows, one good (Ari), one bad (Vince/E), Fienberg pointed out that it's really three shows, because Drama and Turtle are usually off doing their own thing. This episode made that three-way split especially obvious, with Ari trying to pimp out Lloyd ("Go grab your best dress and know today that your love of (expletive deleted) is a tremendous asset to this agency") before having a rare pang of conscience, Vince and E involved in a double date story that would not end, and Turtle and Drama trolling for dates at the dog park.

The dog stuff was mildly amusing for a few minutes -- especially the latest bit of Drama wisdom: "Finicky dogs have finicky owners, and finicky owners make you wait two weeks before they'll give you a tug" -- but the double dating stuff was pure pain. Ari and Lloyd, on the other hand? I could watch an entire series built around those two, even if the other guys never showed up again. Question: was Ari's impulse to save Lloyd something he always would have done, or has the split with Vince made him more concerned about chasing people away? Click here to read the full post

The Amazing Race: C is for Cookie, that's bad enough for me

Quick "Amazing Race" spoilers coming up just as soon as I have some homemade lemonade...

The implosion of Uchenna and Joyce's Frankfurt connection meant that the producers had to spend the rest of the episode pretending like it was a four-person race, even doing the lame attempt to create suspense over who would make it to the mat in third place. They even kept U/J off-screen for 40 minutes or so in the hopes we would forget them and get concerned about whether the Yield would hurt Eric and Danielle or if the Chas could work through their spat in time. But, of course, none of it mattered, because U/J were so far back that the producers didn't even bother showing them doing the Detour and Roadblock. (Or is there a mercy rule in a situation like this where the producers don't force a team to go through the motions if everyone else has checked in by the time they arrive in the pit stop city?)

So now we're down to four teams, one of whom I love (Cha-Cha-Cha), one I'm generally fond of (the Beauty Queens), the other two of whom I despise. Why do I have a bad feeling it's going to be Charla/Mirna and Eric/Danielle racing to the final mat?

The BQs made a bad call with the Yield, which is really only valuable if you use it one of two ways: 1)If you Yield the last-place team, giving yourself an extra cushion to avoid finishing last; or, to a much lesser extent, 2)If all the teams are closely bunched together and you Yield a powerhouse team in the hopes it slows them enough that there's a chance they could go out. This was neither. Either you Yield Uchenna and Joyce (who very clearly had missed their Frankfurt connection, which the BQs and everyone else knew about), or you don't use it. Now this is going to create annoying friction and drama and give the likes of Mirna yet another excuse to act self-righteous.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Amazing Race: Never forget... until it's time for sausage!

"Amazing Race" spoilers coming up just as soon as I figure out if there's a gay insult that Eric hasn't used yet to describe the Gudios...

For a supposed All-Star season, we're seeing a lot of rookie mistakes -- and I don't mean from the contestants. This was the second badly-constructed episode (or episodes, I suppose) in a row, and while much of the blame falls on the African airports, production's usually better at working around that. Plus, what's the point of doing a non-elimination leg if it's going to be followed by one in which the tour bus separation, the Intersection and the presence of the Fast-Forward (which any smart racing teams at the front of the pack would use) make it virtually impossible to finish first, let alone 30 minutes ahead of the last-place team?

I was nervous about the Auschwitz stop, but fortunately all that was involved was lighting the Yahretzeit candle and having a moment of reflection, as I was fearing some kind of offensive Detour (Shave It or Tattoo It?). Interestingly, the beauty queens were the only ones not depicted having some kind of deep emotional reaction to the place (hell, even Eric was touched by it, and he's a complete putz), and while it could have been cut, I don't see why they would have, given the episode length and the fact that they sent them all there to get just such a reaction.

Still, I've grown oddly fond of those two, and if Oswald and Danny don't win it, I'm rooting for them. I didn't see their original season, where I gather they weren't as likable, but they've been enthusiastic and level-headed throughout this race. I loved Dustin -- or is it Kandice? I can never tell -- comparing meeting the fake Chopin to meeting Santa Claus. (I'm guessing classical piano was her Talent in competition.)

Adios, Guido. I'm sorry you guys couldn't outlast Eric & Danielle or Mirna & Charla (and is it wrong that I found Charla falling down in the armor to be hilarious?), but you really didn't have a chance to make up the time, given the way the leg worked.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Amazing Race: First team to hug Phil may be AWESOME

"Amazing Race" spoilers coming up just as soon as I paint some fingernails...

On the one hand, not a well-designed leg at all. Way, way, way too much bunching, a Roadblock in which the Racers seemed like virtual bystanders, and a Detour so lopsided it allowed the loathsome, barely competent Mirna and Charla to go from worst to first simply because the other teams were too dim to realize that selling a buck's worth of nail painting would be easier than loading 10 bags of coal.

On the other hand, it featured the spectacle of a filthy Oswald chasing Phil off the mat, which may have been the funniest thing I've ever seen on this show. So there's that. Those two better stick around at least as long as they did the first time, preferably at the expense of this week's first-place finishers and immature homophobic sexist tool Eric.

I hadn't watched the last few seasons, so I didn't know about the new rules for the bottom team in a non-elimination leg. I vastly prefer this to the old mugging policy, as I find watching reality show contestants beg for cash really distasteful. Has any team to be hit with the new penalty avoided elimination on the next leg?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Amazing Race: How do you spell "defeat"?

"Amazing Race" spoilers coming right up, with talk of the elimination at the top, so tread lightly, RSS readers...

I briefly toyed with titling this post "I hope you're all happy now (again)," but realized that would make the elimination too obvious. But CBS' suggestion that this would be the finish everyone would be talking about sure hinted that Rob and Ambuh would be taking a major, major humble, and they did.

While the prospect of the two of them winning leg after leg was going to grow tiring, and while Rob brought this defeat 100 percent on himself, I'm not jumping with joy over the result. Frankly, I'd rather have Romber, cockiness and all, around over Charla and (especially) Mirna, who are two of the most loathsome people I've ever watched on a reality show. So much to hate: Mirna complaining about her partner's "shortcomings," Mirna yelling at Charla during the signpost task as if Charla were a mentally defective child, Mirna's juvenile (and not even properly-phrased) "See you! Wouldn't want to be you!" taunt to Rob, and both of them calling Amber a bitch. They can't get off my TV fast enough. It's a measure of how much the other teams dislike them, I think, that everybody found Amber's "Got it!" misdirection so funny, even though everyone usually resents Rob and Amber's antics.

At the same time, though, I'm glad that if Rob had to lose early, it wouldn't be a loss he could blame on a broken-down car or any other kind of bad luck (which shows how much I know), but on the inexplicable disappearance of what had until now been a great Racing mind. First he screwed up with his choice of the signpost Detour, which sounded way the hell too complicated when Phil described it, then he misspelled Philippines (now spelled correctly by me) and failed to notice it and worst of all, he refused to listen to Amber when she told him it was time to give up and switch to the other task. It's rare that he's let stubborn pride get in the way of a smart Racing decision, but he buried them on that one and then finished off their fate by insisting on doing the Roadblock, even though he doesn't have the patience for a detail-oriented task like the mail-sorting. Not only did Charla and Mirna lap them on the task, but they must have done it by a wide margin, because there's no way Rob and Amber lose a footrace to them even if Charla has a small headstart.

So they're gone, and now things get interesting. Uchenna and Eric are left as physically strong racers, but neither of their partners are great at that side of the competition. The Cha-Chas, Guidos and Teri and Ian (who needs to watch those tantrums or he'll lose all this new goodwill) are the savviest travelers but are older and/or less in shape than some of the other teams, the beauty queens have no outstanding strengths but no major weaknesses, and Charla and Mirna... well... they're probably due for a non-elimination leg next week, I fear.

What did everybody else think? And is anyone else as eager as I am to watch this week's "Elimination Station" episode on CBS.com to see how grouchy Rob is in sequester? Click here to read the full post

"Rob is not Jesus"

Mailbag column this morning, including a brilliant Oscar host suggestion that will never come to pass, plus a little more on my "American Idol" equation, which I realize I should have excerpted here when it ran on Friday, so here's the relevant portion:

I've been working on this equation over the years, and it comes out something like this: (performance quality x 2) + (minutes of pre-semifinals screen time x 4) + (show placement, where end of the show equals 10 and beginning equals 1) x (judges' comments, where a rave from Simon equals 8, a scathing pan from Randy equals 9, and lukewarm sentiments equal 2) + (amount the audience feels you would be crushed by elimination, a k a the John Stevens IV Factor) - (4 for every insult of Simon) = possibility of staying, with the higher your score, the better.

A very good "Amazing Race," with a cool Roadblock, tons of great quotes (at least a half-dozen lines would have made strong episode titles), almost every variety of mistake possible (missed road signs, misread clues, showing at the mat without a clue, etc.), but at the moment Rob and Amber are competing at such a higher level than everybody else that I think the only way they can lose is by bad luck. I like having them around for entertainment value and as an example of how well somebody can race, but I don't want them to win.

Also, did anybody watch "The Winner" and have thoughts on it? And it's the last day for suggestions on tacky or otherwise unfortunate reality show contestants from the great state of New Jersey. Click here to read the full post

Pathetic little fat men

Spoilers for "Extras" and "The Amazing Race" coming right up...

And so "Extras" comes to an end, but not before we had to witness Darren Lamb and Barry off "Eastenders" each making friends with himself -- plus the implication that Robert DeNiro would be doing the same thing shortly. To quote Rainier Wolfcastle, my eyes! The goggles do nothing!

I liked that the finale had the same quasi-hopeful tone of "The Office" Christmas special. Andy's going to meet Robert DeNiro, but you don't know if any work will come of it. Andy has recognized how badly he was treating Maggie, and they're maybe flirting a little, but chances of a relationship blossoming are probably slim. Darren manages to wrangle the DeNiro meeting, but he's still an imbecile. And, of course, the final bit about the nurse preferring edgy BBC2 comedies, followed by Robert Lindsay's, "What are you, a critic?," was a nice kiss-off.

I've never been an "Amazing Race" die-hard for a lot of reasons -- scheduling, the fact that it makes me feel overcaffeinated and gives me flashbacks to all my worst travel experiences -- but I've watched it off and on over the years and am going to give the All-Star season a try. Despite Phil's hyperbole, it doesn't seem like these are, in fact, the best 11 teams ever. (Certainly, if I was only going to include one set of winners, it wouldn't have been Uchenna and Joyce.) I remain both amused by everyone's hatred of Rob and Ambuh and impressed by his skills. If you're going to make "reality game show contestant" your career, you better be good at it, and Boston Rob is. But my opinion about them is the same as it was in season seven: I want them to stick around a really long time for entertainment value, but not win.

The team I was rooting for going into last night were Kevin and Drew, and not just because Kevin's a Jersey guy. They're funny, they're good guys, and, in the first go around, they were really good racers. This time, I just feel sorry for them. Drew obviously has some pre-existing injury stuff going on, and the two of them both seem like they don't want to be there. Unless someone hits Drew with the purple healing ray in a jiffy, I can see them maybe outlasting the cannon fodder like David and Mary (who suddenly decided to lie at the most useless, backfire-ensured possible time), but not much past that. Sigh...

This didn't seem like that exciting a leg, though squeezing 11 teams into a one-hour premiere didn't help. The Detour choice was too easy once you realized the cowboys were going to do all the hard work, so outside of getting to the Miami airport early and not getting lost in Ecuador, there wasn't a lot people could do to change their fates.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Elsewhere around the dial...

... and how badly am I dating myself by referring to a "dial"? I'm at the tail end of the last generation to remember life without cable, VCRs, CDs and most of the other entertainment technology we take for granted, and it makes me feel very, very old sometimes. Anyway...

First of all, "Thief." Matt did the review yesterday, and I pretty much agree with him. I like the fact that the show's willing to be emotionally cool where all the other FX dramas are hot, but that understated quality also kept me from getting as into it as I was at this stage with "The Shield" and "Rescue Me." Great freakin' cast, though, and I like the dynamics between Braugher and Egg from "Arrested Development" ("Her?"), plus the Parkinson's-afflicted assassin, so I'll be around for a while.

Speaking of Matt, he did a "Veronica Mars" column today that's mainly about the Logan-Veronica relationship but also touches on a lot of the problems with this season:

One aspect of the (Felix) subplot gets resolved at the start of tonight's episode, but that still leaves 623 other plot threads to tie up before the end of this season. Even if you admire series creator Rob Thomas' ambition, you've got to wonder if he's spinning too many plates. The show is still exciting and funny -- it makes me laugh out loud more often than most shows that bill themselves as comedies -- but it feels cluttered, and as a result, its emotional energy is dispersed.

I'm saving "Scrubs" to watch with Marian tonight, but we saw "House" last night and I watched "Amazing Race" this morning. "House" had fun with the inevitable "Odd Couple" jokes, though I would have admired it more if they'd just copped to it by having House make a Felix Unger joke (or, as someone commented on my last "House" blog entry 8,000 years ago, just have him recite the opening narration). The promos spoiled the big surprise in the poisoning case, so the only interesting things on the professional front were House playing world's worst marriage counselor and Cameron all but stripping and sitting in House's lap as she paid off the bet.

I'm not feeling the "Race" this time, even though they're back to the traditional format. Too many obnoxious teams and too many detours that follow the simple muscle-or-luck paradigm. Interesting that Lake didn't use the Yield the way you should (you Yield the last-place team to give yourself a cushion), yet it worked out anyway because the Pinks were so slow and Ray was so fast at assembling the statue. Who the hell is there to root for this time? Click here to read the full post