Amazing Reality Show Amazingly Overlooked...Until Now!

As many of you have heard/read me lament, I have neither extensive cable nor remote control. Most of the time, my television is tuned into NBC by default. The Donald Trump Show is on NBC on Monday nights, so the TV just kind of sits there, tuned to NBC. Naturally I'm too lazy to walk over to the TV and flip through the 5 stations I actually receive. Therefore, when you are all blogging about American Idol, Sopranos or whatever shows you watch, I can't partake of the conversation because either the show is not on NBC, or I don't have the sexy cable to even be able to watch the shows under discussion.

There is, however, one show that I actually watch that requires not only getting up to change the station, but actually being aware of when the show is on. That show is CBS's "The Amazing Race."

I freakin' love this show.

If you're unfamiliar with it, the concept is relatively simple.

Several teams (usually groups of 2, although they have had "family seasons" in the past), race around the world, stopping in random ass countries and performing all kinds of ridiculous tasks and challenges. The challanges are not grotesque a la Fear Factor, nor are they pointlessly physical a la Survivor (although the game in and of itself seems absolutely exhausing and there are a lot of very physical tasks...just not pointlessly physical). Teams are not voted off the island at Tribal Councils. They are not judged by a drunken Paula Abdul. They are not chucked off the show for refusing to eat pig ovaries or bull balls.

They are just given a task to perform and they have to NOT be the last team to complete any given task. The teams have to complete a task in a given country (at the season opener of the current series, they started in Brazil), and then fly to another country (Their next stop was in Russia, which required a 7,000 mile flight), where the next task begins as soon as they arrive.

It seems pretty grueling. The last team eliminated, a mother daughter pair, discussed their disappointment at losing at the end of the show. I had been watching these tasks over a period of four weeks, but for them, the 4 legs of the trip actually took place over only a four day period. In those four days, they went from Denver, CO to Brazil to Moscow to Munich. In Brazil they climbed a waterfall, flew a helicopter over the massive city of Rio until they found some random building, scaled down the side of a sky scraper. They then had to race to the airport, and get to Russia. In Russia, they had to dive 20 meters into an outdoor pool (dead of Russian winter), find some chapel, then undo thousands of Russian nesting dolls until they found a message. From there, they had to race to Munich, where they had to perform several more demanding and exhausting tasks. One of those tasks included learning an intricate Bavarian folk dance as seen here...



It is a fun show to watch, and it stimulates the brain a litte more than your typical reality show, where people are sitting in a living room complaining about each other a la Big Brother.

At least the stupid tasks in "The Amazing Race" are being performed against backgrounds such as this..



And if beautiful scenery such as Moscow's famed St. Basil's Cathedral and Red Square don't do it for you, you can be guaranteed to enjoy the view of the show's host, the handsome Phil K.




Perhaps the show speaks to me because I love travel and anything related thereto. But really, I think most of you would enjoy it and should give it a try!

By the way, these two fools (below), BJ and Tyler, are my favorites. They are total hippies and nothing bothers them. I think their laid back attitude, ability to find humor in adverse circumstances, and refusal to get uptight will carry them through to victory. But man, they are a couple of STRANGE dudes!