The Amazing Race All-Stars

The 11^th time is apparently not the charm for me. I used to really enjoy The Amazing Race…it was fun and it breezed through exotic locales (and past mostly perplexed and/or patiently bemused citizens of the various countries the game barreled through) but watching the first episode of the “all-star” edition left me feeling an undeniable sensation of déjà vu (and not in a good way.)

Contestants running through airports and parking lots? Check. Contestants making snarky comments about each other while proclaiming themselves as the team to beat? Check. Contestants speaking pidgin English to non-English speaking taxi drivers and other bystanders? Check. Competitions built on silly (and somewhat condescending) twists on some aspect of the host country’s culture? Check. “Wacky” scenes of contestants getting lost on highways or in the wilderness? Check. Teammates snapping at and getting exasperated with each other? Check. Host Phil Keoghan standing inscrutably at the rest stop next to some one in colorful native garb? Check.

Been there, done that…and the return of former contestants really doesn’t make it any fresher (how many times do we really need to see professional reality show contestants Rob and Amber again?) or any more interesting. I’m probably not going to watch any more of The Amazing Race All-Stars but, acknowledging the good times from the past, I wish them well.

The Amazing Race: Family Edition

The producers of the Amazing Race must have thought that having families (including some with very young children) race would be an interesting twist on the show. They were wrong.

I am an unabashed fan of the Race...teams of Americans running around the world (engendering confused stares and patient bemusement from the natives of the various countries) is often the most interesting and entertaining of "reality" show competitions...but this version (with teams of four family members) has been unwieldy and dull almost from the start.

I tried to hang with it but I find that I don't care who wins...the families I kind of liked have all be eliminated now...and any entertainment value this edition had was totally sucked away by the incessantly-whiny, relentlessly-sanctimonious, and ever-melodramatic Weaver clan (see above) who managed to fritter away any goodwill engendered by the fact that the Dad of the family was killed in some kind of accident on a racetrack (which the producers tastefully exploited by staging not one but two stunts at racetracks) with their oft-referenced, bitchy, snarky, enormously self-aggrandizing version of "Christian" piety.

Hopefully the next Race will be more fun (let's leave the kids home next time, okay?)

Battle of the Network Reality Stars

Somebody please make them stop.

Will somebody sit these reality TV "stars" down and tell them that for the VAST majority of them their showbiz "careers" began and ended with whichever reality TV show they were on?

It was kind of cute at first to watch these folks try to parlay a stint on Survivor, Big Brother, The Real World, Temptation Island, etc., etc. into a real Hollywood career but as their number continues to grow it's not so cute anymore and the straws they're grasping at...like this retread of the Battle of the Network Stars series of specials from the 70's (featuring TV stars...real honest-to-goodness actors!... of the time) which had a certain cheeseball charm to them (watching Welcome Back, Kotter's Gabe Kaplan needle The Wild, Wild West's ever-petulant Robert Conrad into sputtering fits of rage was worth the time spent watching in and of itself)...are increasingly flimsy.

Look, I really like some of "reality" TV...but only for what it is (that being wholly contrived exercises full of what David Letterman would call "stupid human tricks".)

And I even have a certain amount of fondness for some of the people participating in Bravo's Battle of the Network Reality Stars (Charla, Chip, and Kim from Amazing Race, Ryan from American Idol, and the charmingly gonzo "Dr. Will" from Big Brother, for example)...but, that said, I really had no need to see any of them participating in faux athletic events.

(And to be sure I never needed to see most of these desperate would-be celebrities in ANY context ever again...and yes I'm looking at you Richard Hatch, Omarosa, "Bachelor Bob", Amazing Race blowhard Jonathan and his spousal-abuse-victim-to-be Victoria, the ever-charming Sue Hawk, the conniving Project Runway designer Wendy Pepper, and "Joe Millionaire".)

Of course it could be worse I suppose. The folks over on E!'s Kill Reality are making a real "we're-gonna-put-it-in-the-multiplexes-(or-failing-that-on-DVD)" movie...a horror movie (insert your own joke here)...with another group of reality TV "stars" (including "Johnny Fairplay", Ethan, and one of the many Jennas from Survivor as well as, again, "Bachelor Bob" Guiney as a crazed slasher.)

*Sigh* I guess it's too late to make them stop...the celebrity bug has bit them and they're not going to stop until they make it to the top! Or at least to the bottom of the middle...

The Amazing Race

Despite being hobbled by losing their money and possessions at the end of the last elimination round, Uchenna and Joyce, the almost-always upbeat and positive couple from Houston, outlasted "Survivors" Rob and Amber to win The Amazing Race.

I didn't have a strong rooting interest for any of the teams but that they won was cool. (I hope their efforts to have or, failing that, adopt a baby work out, they seem like they might be good parents.)

Rob, gleefully playing the "villain" of this edition of the Race, added a new energy to the proceedings but he did so with such abandon (or at least so the editing led us to believe) that rooting for him to actually win was not in the cards for me. (Amber was mostly a useless, smirking appendage during the race.)

One hopes that Rob and Amber live happily ever after now that they are joined in marital bliss following their soon-to-be broadcast wedding and that, after the 2-hour Rob and Amber Get Married extravaganza later this month, they will accept that their "15 minutes" are over and they leave the rest of us alone. (I'm not holding my breath on that last point though...I fully expect that they would jump at the chance to go for another big payday on another "reality" show given the chance. Maybe Fear Factor will be doing another $1,000,000 couples edition...)

Third-place finishers Ron and Kelly have, we presume, gotten as far away from each other as possible after the way their relationship so acrimoniously imploded during the course of the series.