Friday , March 29 2024
What is wrong with the contestants this year?

The Amazing Race Drives Me Nuts

Seriously, I don't know what to do.  I simply don't.  Should I stop watching The Amazing Race?  I like the show, usually, but I don't quite know how much more stupidity I can put up with this season.  I don't.  Maybe I should step back, let this season go, and start up again next season.  Because, I'm about at my wit's end here.  Let's examine just a wee bit about what happened last night, yes?

First, you have the insanity that is Terence and Sarah.  There was a "Fast Forward" (it allows you to complete a separate single task before going to the pit stop instead of doing the regularly assigned ones) given this week.  Both Nick and Starr and Terence and Sarah decided that they would attempt the Fast Forward rather than trying to complete the regularly assigned tasks.  Well, first off, obviously only one team should be doing a Fast Forward, not two.  To be the second team to attempt the Fast Forward you have to be absolutely, positively sure that you can finish it more quickly than the group that's already on their way to it.

Terence and Sarah were the second team to go for it, which involved heading to a restaurant to eat food.  Everyone that has ever even heard of a reality show knows that when there is a task that involves food  it means that the contestants are going to have to eat something horrifically disgusting (cow gonads, rat guts, whatever).  Well, Terence is a vegetarian.  That's right, he's a vegetarian.  Prior to that little trip to the restaurant, the man hadn't eaten meat in 15 years.  15 years!  And then he acted surprised when he found out that he was going to have to eat meat to complete the Fast Forward.  What?!?  He balked.  He tried to swallow as much as he could of the sheep's rear end, so he wasted a ton of time, and then he balked.  Sarah, who didn't want to do the Fast Forward anyway as soon as she saw that Nick and Starr were going to get there first went along with him, but if I was his partner, I might have killed him right then and there.  Either that, or I would have force fed the dish to him.

Now, those two clowns were well behind, but because Andrew and Dan are almost equally incompetent, they almost got eliminated anyway.  They, like so many people this season (Ken and Tina were guilty of it twice last night), didn't bother to read the instructions for a task.  That's right, people have been eliminated for it repeatedly this season, and yet none of the remaining teams have learned.  Andrew and Dan opted to take a taxi to the pit stop rather than walking.

Seriously, are these people crazy this season?  I'm sorry, I don't like to be quite so harsh (sometimes anyway), but this is the most incompetent group of people I've seen on a reality show since… well, ever.  Once a team gets eliminated for not reading a clue, every other team on the race should be double- and triple-checking a task's requirement, not duplicating the incompetence. 

I'm sorry, am I missing something here?  Are there points being given for foolishness?  Are the people this season betting against themselves in Vegas?  What, exactly, is going on?  Please, if you have any idea, let me know.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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