{"id":181,"date":"2005-02-09T23:48:37","date_gmt":"2005-02-09T23:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=181"},"modified":"2005-02-09T23:48:37","modified_gmt":"2005-02-09T23:48:37","slug":"amazing_race_wrapup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2005\/02\/09\/amazing_race_wrapup\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazing Race Wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sixth running of The Amazing Race<\/i> sputtered to an utterly disappointing conclusion Tuesday night. I don’t know if the concept is starting to wear thin or if this season simply had a less-than-optimal mix of contestants, but it just never caught fire the way the previous Race<\/i> did. The last one, The Amazing Race 5<\/i>, was great drama in the end, coming down to Chip and Kim<\/a>, a lower-middle-class married couple who were filled with wonder at the stunning locations they were seeing, and Colin and Christie, arrogant beautiful people who acted as if they were owed a victory. Chip and Kim beat them, proving that there is justice in this universe at least once in awhile.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the winners of The Amazing Race 6<\/i> have a lot more in common with Colin and Christie than Chip and Kim. But then I wasn’t thrilled with any of the finalists this time around. All of the teams I really liked were cut early on.<\/p>\n


\nThe funny New York Jews (their definition of themselves, not mine) were gone in the first episode, the sweet girls from Queens in the second. Local Utah favorites Kristy<\/a> and Lena Jensen<\/a> were next to go, eliminated by host Phil Keoghan<\/a> in the show’s first “mercy killing.” (Briefly, if you didn’t see it, the sisters got stuck on a very physical challenge that required just one of them to push over haystacks until they found a clue. The other teams all managed to complete the task and move on, but poor Lena simply couldn’t find her clue. Long after all the other teams had checked in at the Pit Stop — long after nightfall, actually — she was still flailing away, trying to finish the challenge. They would’ve been the last team to check in anyway, so Phil traveled out to the challenge site and put a stop to Lena’s misery. Sad, but I’ve got to hand it to Lena for not giving up, even after she knew they’d lost.)<\/p>\n

After the Utah girls were gone, it didn’t seem to matter who I chose to root for, they were all doomed. Father-and-daughter team Gus and Hera, retired couple Don and Mary Jean — who at least had the honor of being the oldest team to make it as far as they did — even Lori and Bolo, the buffoonish but likable pro wrestlers, were all eliminated before the two-hour finale. (Luckily the loathsome Jonathan and Victoria<\/a>, the most dysfunctional husband and wife I’ve ever seen on television, were also cast out before the finale. While Colin and Christie of TAR5 were the sort of evil you love to hate, Jonathan and Victoria were just… icky. Their constant fighting wasn’t funny or entertaining; it was disturbing. I seriously expected to see Jonathan slug his wife before it was all over, and I have a hunch he probably does when there aren’t any cameras around. They’re scheduled to appear on a primetime Dr. Phil<\/a> special next Tuesday night; while I normally wouldn’t bother watching that, I have to admit that I’d really like to see Phil tell these two what for.)<\/p>\n

As always, we were left with four teams going into the finale: Hayden and Aaron, Adam and Rebecca, Kris and Jon, and Freddy and Kendra. Hayden and Aaron were eliminated on the last leg of the race before the other three headed for the finish line, and I was perfectly happy to see them go. Aaron must have the patience of Job to put up with the whiny, bitchy, complaining Hayden. He even proposed to her right there on the show following their elimination. All I can say is that he’s seen her at her worst, so if he still wants her after the way she behaved on the Race<\/i>, he must really love her. Either that or he’s an idiot, which is also a distinct possibility.<\/p>\n

Of the three remaining teams, my sympathies were with Adam and Rebecca. Mostly with Adam. Dubbed “Hellboy” by the Jensen sisters because of his eccentric hair-do — his hair is very short overall except for two little tufts in the front that he ties up with rubber bands, so they look something like devil-horns — he’s been an interesting one to watch, one of the few reality-show contestants that has really seemed to grow and learn from the experience of doing the show. You see, Adam was kind of a wuss when the show started out, always whining and making a big deal about doing the various challenges. But over time, as he and Rebecca managed to stay in the game and progress toward the finale, you could see his confidence growing. He went from being an obnoxious screw-up to being a pretty cool guy. Unfortunately, his teammate and ex-girlfriend, Rebecca, never could get over her notion that he was a “mama’s boy.” Her attitude toward him was downright mean most of the time, which is why I was rooting for him but not so much for her. Naturally, my preferred team was the last to cross the finish-line, long after the million bucks was awarded.<\/p>\n

Anne’s choice to win the Race<\/i> was Kris and Jon, a couple who described themselves as “dating long-distance” and whose defining characteristics were niceness and a polite manner of speaking to other contestants. I accept Anne’s view that these two deserved to win because they never backstabbed anyone and were always positive, but I have to be honest: I thought they were kind of bland. They were so lacking in rough edges that it took me over half the season before I could even put names to their faces. I had nothing against them and would’ve been fine with it if they’d won, but I didn’t have much enthusiasm for them. They were just too anonymous.<\/p>\n

And then there was Freddy and Kendra, the “dating models” and the ultimate winners of The Amazing Race 6<\/i>. I’ll say this much for them: I didn’t hate them the way I hated Jonathan and Victoria. But I still hated them. I hated Kendra especially, for her general prissiness and her overly sensitive gag reflex (she was always choking on something, maybe because, as a model, she’s not accustomed to eating) and, most of all, for her appalling outbreaks of “Ugly Americanism” anytime they were required to pass through a Third World country. Her favorite description for any place that didn’t resemble Beverly Hills was to call it “a ghetto,” and her tirade in Senegal bordered on racist as she criticized the locals for continuing to “breed” despite their obvious poverty. Her boyfriend Freddy didn’t seem to have that kind of snobbishness, but he wasn’t a very likable person either — the two of them, like so many other reality-show contestants, were beautiful people of little substance. And I’m sorry to say that they won.<\/p>\n

The way in which they won sucked, too, a lame anti-climax with little tension and even less viewer satisfaction. Adam and Rebecca were so far behind the other two teams that they were no competition at all, but Kris and Jon might have had an honest chance of beating the beautiful people if not for a freight train blocking their footpath. A freakin’ freight train.<\/i> As a result, Freddy and Kendra just loped to the finish line without even having to crack a sweat. When, during the post-victory prattle, Kendra said that Freddy had proven himself “worthy of bearing [her] children,” I didn’t know whether to mock her for her Freudian slip or gag the way she did on her Chicago deep-dish pizza. Mostly I just wanted them to get the hell off my TV screen.<\/p>\n

The next Amazing Race<\/i> will begin on March 1st. I’ll be there, a die-hard loyalist to the end, but I’m really hoping that TAR7 will have a more dynamic mixture of contestants, with fewer beautiful people and kooks, and more real<\/i> people. However, the revelation that one of the new teams is the same couple<\/a> that won Survivor: All Stars<\/i> last year doesn’t fill me with confidence. The Amazing Race<\/i> has always appealed to me because it seemed to be the one reality show on which ordinary folks could actually succeed; now it looks like that possibility may be fading. I hope I’m wrong…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sixth running of The Amazing Race sputtered to an utterly disappointing conclusion Tuesday night. I don’t know if the concept is starting to wear thin or if this season simply had a less-than-optimal mix of contestants, but it just never caught fire the way the previous Race did. The last one, The Amazing Race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-glass-teat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}